Robin Hoods Playground

Intel Price Cuts Reach 50% on Select Processors
by: Shane McGlaun
Intel cuts prices and introduces four new CPUs

Intel is currently enjoying great success in the marketplace with its line of Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad and Celeron processors. AMD at the same time is seeing huge drops in its profitability and is making workforce cuts to help profits.

Just last week AMD posted a Q1 2008 loss of $385 million and announced plans to restructure its business. Yesterday, Intel announced price cuts on some of its quad-core processors of up to 50%. The new pricing by Intel will not help AMD in the marketplace with price becoming less of a factor.

News.com reports that Intel slashed the price of its Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.66GHz processor from $530 to $266 and the similar quad-core Xenon received the same exact price cut. Intel also cut prices of some of its older technology processors as well. The Celeron 430 dropped from $44 to $34 while the dual-core Celeron E1200 dropped from $53 to $43.

Pentium Dual Core processors also saw prices cut with the E2200 going for $74 after cuts and the E2180 going for $64. Along with the price cuts Intel also introduced a pair of new Celeron processors. The dual-core Celeron E1400 runs at 2GHz and will retail for $53 and a Celeron 570 running at 2.66GHz will sell for $134.

A pair of new Core 2 Dup processors was also introduced with the 2.83 GHz E8300 retailing for $163 and the E7200 running at 2.53GHz costing $133.

Yeah seems like AMD is desperate. I am going to build a new quad core system in about 3 weeks. I looked at the Phenom, and all the benchmarks have the Q6600 trashing it. Throw in the massive OC potential for the Q6600 and it's a no brainer really. The Phenom does run cooler and use less power from what I read, but it is behind in terms of raw processing power.