yeah the biggest issue with the current netburst based cores are the thermal and power issues...not a huge deal but it is a draw back
That said these last few 65nm netburst cores have finally started to demonstrate the actual potential of netburst...was always meant to operate at high frequencies and once you can break through about 5Ghz they'll really start to take off
As for this core and why it's so cheap...Intel has always been big on producing pretty scalable cores as they have to make rather cheap sales to large corporations such as schools so price has always been an issue hence why they've been pushing a cheaper fabrication process
This will also of course outperform anything in its pricerange and will also prove a very very good core for an entrylevel computer...however compared to Opterons and other K8 cores that can easily reach 50% overclocks which push them up around the 3ghz mark for about $100 more than this will be significantly faster IMO and the price of DDR1 vs. DDR2 would also come into play