PERformance per buck

[nines-]

Maybe i'am asking a stupid thing but.. What's the point for Manufacturer (eg Intel) of making a very-well-overclockable architecture such as core 2. why?
q6600 costs simply 300 bucks and runs 2.4 ghz.
qx6850 or 9750 - 1000+ and runs 3 ghz.
But q6600 can be over clocked to 3 ghz with standart fan and no voltage increase! And the performance will be very close to that of 6850.. 9750. And that is without spending extra 700 bucks. What is the reason of buying QX processors!? What is the reason of inventing such kick-ass-at-over-clocking architecture?
Wouldn't it be better if the over clocking was much more harder, so that people would buy high end, instead of over clocking low end quads?

 

[spuddyt]

the QX's suck bang for buck wise, but they do Overclock slightly better, due to unlocked multipliers, they will have higher Maximum frequencys, but for the more mainstream products, the only advantage is that it is guaranteed to work at a given frequency, you can be unlucky with an e2160 and find it will only go up to 2.0 ghz.... and also most people don't want to run at above stock speed, even though its fairly easy to do, they don't want to void warranty/risk breaking it (and anyone who buys a PC from an OEM like Dell will have a locked bios, and therefore can't)

 

[jitpublisher]

The percentage of people who overclock is really small compared to the whole CPU market. Since all the CPU's of a family essentially come from the same silicon, it is advantagous to get the process as perfect as possible. It is not profitable to have to keep reinventing the wheel. Get a good fab process going, and streeeeeeechhhhhhh it out for as long as possbile in order to reap the profits. But Intel is not going to release a 3.5 Ghz CPU just because they can manufacture the silicon to do it. They will only release what they *need* to release. (This is 1 form of what we call a "Market Driven" business)
A q6600 for instance, is all that is really needed to market to the masses right now.
The masses being OEM builder's like Dell, HP, Gatway. These are the important customers. By far, the majority of all the CPU's they make go directly to them. The enthusiast crowd is a small, but important sector of the market.
Of course, Intel will brand a few chips higher, and put a premium price on them. There are people who will buy them.
It's simply business and profitabilty 101.

The enthusiast market is important because they are the ones who spend hours on forums bragging about how good the "Q6600" is. People hear and read about this, and even though they won't ever overclock and will only buy prebuilt systems from Dell, they want a system with a Q6600.