Anyone got any idea of what the power consumption of the upcoming Core i7 45nm chips will be, say compared to a Core 2 Duo 45nm chip like the Q9450?

I'm holding off building a system until Core i7 comes out - hopefully they will be affordable, or at least drive the price of 45nm Core 2 Quads down significantly. I could build a cheap Q6600 system today, but it appears to be a heat pig/power hog.

If these roadmaps are to be believed, then it looks like all the initial Core i7 chips will have a 130W TDP. I'm hoping that this is a really big exaggeration like with the E8x00 series, which is rated at 65W but usually uses no more than 35W.

At any rate, the 130W TDP applies to the "Bloomfield" chips, which have the triple-channel DDR3 controller and QPI. The performance mainstream chips ("Lynnfield") have a 95W TDP. This has a dual-channel DDR3 controller and no QPI. Those chips should be available by Q3 2009.

For reference, the Q9450 has a TDP of 95W.

Anandtech had some numbers on their preview some months back.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3326&p=8

Ci7 is not affordable. The slowest model will cost 266 USD IIRC. S1366 motherboards are expensive, and DDR3 RAM is expensive.

It will of cource make the C2's cheaper. I wouldn't look for the Ci7 until they become 32 nm parts, because this is most likely not mature technology, and the first motherboards will get outdated incredibly fast.
Besides, I don't really need it, but that's another story.

Unless you know that you need 4 cores, go for an E5000/E7000/E8000 system.

Yep - need 4 cores. Virtualisation server.

Might wait for it to come out and then pick up a cheaper C2Q/DDR2 setup. Forgot about the DDR3 requirement.

I see. Well nobody have shown the performance of the final Ci7 yet, and Intel says it will be faster than what the early previews tell us.
So it's a good thing for you to wait, either to get cheap C2's, or a Ci7 if you realize you need it, maybe depending on how well the HT works.

I'm not sure DDR3 is expensive anymore. I'm slowly putting together a system from on-sale parts and was aiming at DDR2 because of the expense of DDR3. But, I just noticed that the DDR3 used by a motherboard that just came out was only $3 more expensive than the equivalent DDR2 I had been looking at:

Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Dual Channel Kit

vs

Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit

Of course, this could just be a special case. But, it sure puts a kink in my plans: the motherboard + RAM for the DDR3 setup totals less than the motherboard + RAM for the DDR2 setup.

The price difference between DDR2 and DDR3 shows when you compare 2 GB modules. 1 GB modules are not really worth it for a virtualisation server.

Where can you get an X58+DDR3 cheaper than lets say P35+DDR2? Also, why would you get a Core i7 on an X58 platform and cripple the system with terrible memory performance by a slow DDR3 kit like that? Doesn't make any sense. Especially when the first Core i7 chips have a triple-channel memory controller.

Sorry. I was just commenting on DDR2/DDR3 RAM pricing from what I was seeing for my own use. Since the OP wants far more performance than I'm researching, I didn't want to bring up anything more than the relative RAM costs. As you and Mats noted, my stuff just doesn't apply here.

Yep - that's the situation in Australia. Fast DDR3 is approx double the cost of DDR2, and I would want around 1.5GB-2GB per VM - so ~8GB for quad, ~12-16GB for Core i7.