dragonsprayer :
only a total noob who never used an i7 would write this!
Sorry, but is someone supposed to talk only about hardware parts it owns or has tested for a long time? There wouldn't be much left to talk about here, I guess. It's true that I haven't used a Core i7, but I have read at least 15 reviews about it, just like about every hardware part I intend to buy, so, it's not a noob spreading BS, but a guy with pretty much a lot of information to back him up.
Sorry about not having the "placebo" effect too. Just "it feels faster" or "having the latest" means nothing to me. I have used a lot of things, from single to quad-cores, and there's really a lot of BS going around, but not the one you talked about.
People tend to justify their many hundred dollars spending with things like that, but, just because it is a new architecture, it doesn't mean everybody will "feel & do faster".
Make no mistakes about my post, though. Core i7 is an awesome product and I would happily own one (and I can, if you were just wondering), but you are wrong in many ways if you think anyone would notice the change.
When the X2 came it pretty much put Pentium D to shame in *almost every way*
and there were lots of benchmarks to back it up: then I made the switch and it was true.
When Core 2 came, the same happened, again with tons of stuff to prove its performance: there were
massive gains all across the board and no one contested it (except for some "little more than likers of X2s and AMD").
When Core i7 came, the same happened in
certain scenarios, while in others it was (and it is) just as relevant as Core 2. You have your point and all the right to be happy with your hardware, but just because you "feel" (and see) the difference it doesn't mean everyone else will - and I'm not talking only about Joe Web Surf here.
Oh, and the same is applied to X2 -> Phenom I/II, if you ask me.