Intel cuts desktop chip prices
Updated at 10:30 a.m. PDT: adding processor retail price discussion.
Intel reduced prices on desktop processors late Sunday, with a many of the cuts coming on quad-core processors. The price moves come just before Advanced Micro Devices' planned earnings announcement on Tuesday.
Intel's Core 2 Quad processors saw a heavy concentration of cuts. The 2.66GHz Q9400 was cut 14 percent to $183 from $213, while the 2.5GHz Q8300 fell 11 percent to $163 from $183, among other standard-power Core 2 Quad price moves.
The Core 2 Quad "low power" chips also saw cuts. The Q9400S, for example, was cut 12 percent to $245 from $277.
A Core 2 Duo desktop processor (two cores), the 2.93GHz E7500, fell 15 percent to $113 from $133.
Pentium desktop chips got cuts ranging up to 14 percent, while the 2.2GHz Celeron E1500 was reduced 19 percent to $43 from $53.
A Xeon server processor, the 2.66GHz X3330, was cut 14 percent to $188 from $219.
Update: These price cuts, however, do not necessarily reflect retail prices of Intel chips. Newegg, for example, lists the Q9400 at prices lower than Intel list prices, as one reader points out. That said, Intel's Sunday list-price cuts may affect retail prices in the future.
Brooke Crothers has served as an editor at large at CNET News, an editor at Dow Jones' Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, and a senior editor at InfoWorld. His CNET blog covers chip technology and computer systems, and how they define the computing experience. He also contributes to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. Follow Brooke on Twitter @mbrookec. 
That said IMHO the current CPUs passed 'good enough" awhile back. Most of my customers are lucky to hit 15% on even the bottom of the line dual cores. They all have just so much horsepower that for everyday usage even the cheapest one will be "super fast" to the customer. And when I can put together a fully loaded AMD 7550 for $350-$400 for the whole thing? You just gotta love that.
- by AppleSuxLeo July 26, 2009 9:54 AM PDT
- They didn`t drop prices on the more desirable quads though...the 9550/9650 :(
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