erocker With very little competition from AMD I have to hand it to Intel for not gouging the hell out of their prices.

I can assure you that will be accidental.Intel's biggest competitor just now is Intel. The reason behind this story would seem to be that they're delaying Ivy Bridge so that it does not compete with Sandy Bridge.The projected TDPs and clock for clock performance of Ivy Bridge seem to indicate that Intel doesn't need to increase performance. If pushed they should have been able to increase performance of Ivy Bridge by more than the margin over Sandy Bridge that it's delivered.I would expect that they have performance gains they could unleash should they feel the need, but unless AMD ups there game quite significantly then they won't need to.Intel are also in the favourable position with their tick/tock that should they release ivy bridge, and it performs only a bit better than Sandy Bridge, and then AMD release a killer chip.. then when it comes to the tock they can do a lower end IB-E to reach between the mainstream and high end.The biggest period of gains we've seen in recent Intel history were when AMD was kicking their arse with A64s.. that led to Intel coming up with C2D and since then AMD hasn't taken the performance crown back.Intel's strategy at the moment will be to maximise profit, while only releasing performance gains as required. Sadly that's not good for us consumers.