EP, about pricewatch: yes, I beleive the Pricewatch is very informative. The idea is that you must look at all speed grades and prices at once and that will help to make the conclusion. You say:
How do you know? Maybe there's plenty around because it's not selling?
Ok, let's examine. Suppose a speed grade has 8 pages on Pricewatch. Then you look at how prices are distributed.
1. If first page is cheap and then 7 pages are expensive, you can conclude that many shops have some leftovers from past weeks and chips are moving so slow that their iventory is priced above current market price. That means channel is stuffed.
2. If the difference between lowest and highest price is only $50 you can suspect that those are not inventories, but anyone is getting chips more or less at the same time.
3. Moreover, if price is falling and price difference is still $50, you can conclude everybody is getting new chips at lower price every monday and last week inventory is mostly sold out. That means the cpu is selling very, very well.