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.
On Monday, the Apple MacBook Air reached a new price low as a wave of sub-$1,000 ultrathin laptops get set to break onto the market.
MacBook Air prices as updated Monday on Apple's Web site
(Credit: Apple)The ultrathin, trend-setting 13-inch notebook made a steep descent from its rarefied, luxury-laptop pricing altitudes. The top-of-the-line Air with a 128GB solid-state drive fell $700 in price to $1,799 from $2,499 and gained a slightly faster 2.13GHz Core 2 Duo processor. The new prices are now posted on Apple's Web site.
The lower-end version with a 120GB hard disk drive fell to $1,499--the lowest price to date for a new (not refurbished) MacBook Air.
The price cut is happening just as PC makers, including Lenovo, Acer, Asus, and MSI, are debuting new ultrathin laptops at price points decidedly lower than the executive-jewelry genre of ultraportables that dominated the market for years.
Lenovo's 3.5-pound 13.3-inch IdeaPad U350, for example, will start at $649. At the other end of the pricing spectrum, the top-of-the-line, ultrasleek Dell Adamo is still listed at $2,699. The clock may be ticking on these lofty price levels, though.
On Monday, Apple also upgraded its comparably sized 13-inch MacBook to MacBook Pro status. The new 13-inch MacBook Pro has the same unibody design but now includes a seven-hour battery, a FireWire 800 port, an SD card slot, a backlit keyboard, and an improved LED-backlit display with a greater color range.
With Nvidia GeForce 9400M integrated graphics, a 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of memory, and a 160GB hard disk drive, the 13-inch MacBook Pro is priced at $1,199. A model with a 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB of memory, and a 250GB hard disk drive is priced at $1,499.
Intel updated its processor list Monday with new Core 2 chips for Macbook Air-class laptops and a crush of Xeon processors for workstations and servers.
The number of new processor models is 20 in all.
Intel Vice President Pat Gelsinger holds a new Xeon chip.
(Credit: Intel)As reported earlier, Intel has introduced new power-sipping low-voltage (LV) and ultra-low-voltage (ULV) processor models for laptops such as the Apple MacBook Air and Dell Adamo.
The new LV and ULV processor models include the 17-watt SL9600 (2.13GHz, $316) and 10-watt SU9600 (1.6GHz, $289). More power-hungry Intel mainstream mobile processors are typically rated at 25 watts or 35 watts.
And over a dozen new Xeon quad-core processors based on Intel's new Nehalem chip architecture were added to the Intel price list.
Processors in the Xeon 5500 series range in price from $1,600 for the 130-watt W5580 (3.2GHz) to $423 for the 60-watt L5506 (2.13GHz). Intel, for the first time, is also listing each new Xeon chip's giga-transfers-per-second rating (GT/sec). For example, the W5580 is rated at 6.40 GT/sec, while the L5506 is rated at 4.80 GT/sec.
Other Xeon 5500 series models include the 95-watt X5550 (2.66GHz, $958), the 80-watt E5520 (2.26GHz, $373), and the 60-watt L5520 (2.26GHz, $530).
Intel also debuted the Xeon 3500 series, including the 130-watt W3570 (3.2GHz, $999) and the 130-watt W3520 (2.66GHz, $284).
Samsung expects solid-state drives to reach price parity with hard-disk drives within the next few years amid steep annual price declines in flash memory chips.
Solid-state drives, which use flash memory chips as the storage medium, typically offer much better performance than hard-disk drives. But they cost more. Currently, opting for an SSD instead of a hard-disk drive will add anywhere between $100 and $600 to the cost of a laptop, depending on the capacity of the SSD.
Dell's Alienware Area-51 laptop (above) and Dell's Studio XPS 16 come with a 256GB solid-state drive option
(Credit: Dell)In a phone interview, Brian Beard, flash marketing manager for Samsung Semiconductor, said reaching price parity with hard-disk drives is just a matter of time. "Flash memory in the last five years has come down 40, 50, 60 percent per year," he said. "Flash on a dollar-per-gigabyte basis will reach price parity, at some point, with hard disk drives in the next few years." Samsung makes both SSDs and HDDs.
Beard explained why a cost gap persists between solid-state drives and hard-disk drives. "The difference in cost is fundamentally very different. A hard drive has a fixed cost of $40 or $50 for the spindle, the motors, the PCB (printed circuit board), the cables," he said. "To make the hard drive spin faster (increase speed) or to add capacity doesn't really add a lot of incremental cost to the drive." (The price for most laptop-class hard-disk drives on the market is between $60 and $100 at retail, Beard said.)
"When you contrast this with SSDs, they also have a fixed cost for the PCB and the case and the controller, which is lower than the fixed cost of a hard drive," according to Beard. "But as you scale the capacity of the SSD up, the cost scales linearly. For example, if the spot price of the flash chip itself is $2, a 64GB drive is going to cost $128 just for the flash and then you would add the fixed cost of the PCB and the case, he said. So, the cost will double as you double the capacity, according to Beard.
This argument, however, works in favor of lower solid-state drive pricing too--as flash memory prices drop and densities and capacities increase. And Beard added that "there's a lot of pressure for OEMs (PC makers) to match the price to the traditional pricing in the hard-drive industry." Samsung is also a PC maker and faces the same pressures.
And what will happen to the price of SSDs this year? "The rest of the year is quite unpredictable. Because the SSD price is directly tied to the price of flash, no one knows. Everyone is just giving their best guess as to what will happen in the flash market," he said. To date, flash memory prices have dropped so much that chipmakers can't make money.
"Every major flash manufacturer posted major losses in Q4. So flash and SSD manufacturers are under a lot of pressure to make a profit," Beard said.
Where is the price-per-gigabyte sweet spot for solid-state drives going to be later this year? "On the business side, the sweet spot is 64(GB) moving to 128. On the consumer side it's definitely 128 moving to 256," he said.
Samsung SSDs with a capacity of 256GB have been shipping since January. Dell offers these drives in some laptop models already. 256GB drives are just now "rolling out into mass production," Beard said. "We'll start shipping it to some of our smaller customers about right now."
Note: Currently, on a Dell Studio XPS 16, opting for a 128GB SSD instead of a 7200rpm 320GB HDD adds $200 to the price of the system. Opting for a 256GB SSD adds $400.
No, this isn't a price cut reflected on the Apple Web site. And it's not much. But if you're in the market for a high-end MacBook, every dollar counts. Besides, Apple will probably match the lower price.
At major resellers like Newegg, PC Connection (i.e., Mac Connection), and Buy.com the latest version of the high-end MacBook Air (1.86GHz, 128GB solid-state drive) is now selling for--hold your breath--$2,399 instead of the listed $2,499 on the Apple Web site. Not much. What is best described as a price snip rather than a price cut.
Listing for Apple MacBook Air (1.86GHz, 128GB SSD) on newegg.com
(Credit: newegg.com)But my question is, did Apple green-light this? Or is this simply resellers adjusting their pricing to market realities. (I would imagine that luxury laptops like the MacBook Air are not jumping off the shelves at resellers these days, considering the state of the economy.)
Whether Apple green-lighted it or not may be immaterial, however, because (some? most? all?) Apple stores have a policy that stipulates: if you find an Apple computer priced lower at a major reseller (like Mac Connection), they will price-match it up to 10 percent of the listed Apple price. (This is the policy at the Apple Store that I frequent.)
Maybe there's a trend here. Maybe Apple will even make an official price move. Makes sense, right? The economy is in a tailspin and consumers have less disposable income, so Apple caves and officially cuts prices before the scheduled introduction of new MBA models. But then again, this is Apple. It doesn't have to stoop to unscheduled price cuts--so much for that fond hope.
After a technology review site claimed Intel solid-state drives slow considerably after extended use, Intel said it has not been able to duplicate the results.
SSDs have been gaining in popularity because independent testing done to date has typically shown that SSDs--especially the newest generation of drives--outpeform hard disk drives.
A review, however, entitled "Long-term performance analysis of Intel Mainstream SSDs" on technology Web site PC Perspectives claimed, among other things, that the Intel X25-M solid-state drive may degrade in performance as a result of "internal fragmentation" and that "a 'used' X25-M will always perform worse than a 'new' one" and, in some cases, drives "would drop to significantly below manufacturer specs."
The reviewers claimed that they made an effort to reproduce real-world scenarios. "Dozens of different scenarios were played out on our drives. XP / Vista installs, repeated application / game installs, batch copying of files...were all liberally applied to the X25-M." The review concluded that "all three of our SSDs suffered a drop in performance regardless of the type of workload applied to them."
In response, Intel made a statement on Thursday. "Our labs currently have not been able to duplicate these results," Intel said. "In our estimation, the synthetic workloads they use to stress the drive are not reflective of real world use. Similarly, the benchmarks they used to evaluate performance do not represent what a PC user experiences."
Intel continued. "In general, when a PC's drive (SSD or HDD) is full, there will be some reduction in system performance, however the performance reduction reported by PC Perspective is higher than we generally expect, which is why we are looking into the methodology."
Intel has slashed solid-state drive prices, but probably not enough to sway many consumers.
Intel's mainstream, and currently most widely available, 80GB X18-M was cut to $390 from $595--about a 34 percent drop in price. But paying almost $400 for an 80GB drive may still be too much to ask of consumers when, for example, a 160GB, 7,200-rpm laptop hard-disk drive from Toshiba can be had for less than $100 on Amazon.
Solid-state drives, particularly the newest generation of SSDs, typically offer much better performance than hard-disk drives.
Hewlett-Packard, one of the largest users of Intel solid-state drives in both consumer and business laptop lines, provides an even more stark contrast. Adding an 80GB Intel SSD option on the 13-inch HP Pavilion dv3z laptop increases the price by $480 over a 250GB, 5,400-rpm hard drive.
On the desktop it's not much better. Because Intel SSDs benchmark so well, they compete with the fastest hard-disk drives. But they fall short on price per gigabyte.
A 300GB Seagate Cheetah very-high-performance 15,000-rpm hard-disk drive, for instance, is priced at $466.99 at CDW, a major online reseller. (Other resellers sell the drive for less.) The Seagate drive is virtually the same price as the Intel 80GB SSD yet offers vastly more capacity.
Intel also said it is selling its newest laptop-use 160GB X18-M/X-25-M solid-state drive for $765. Its high-performance 32GB X25-E and 64GB X25-E for servers are priced at $415 and $795, respectively.
Memory chip prices shot up on Monday--a welcome bit of news for beleaguered chipmakers, who have been caught in a relentless downward price spiral.
Prices for DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory), the main memory in PCs, shot up as much as 26 percent, according to data posted on DRAMeXchange. A number of reports have attributed this to the bankruptcy of Germany-based chipmaker Qimonda, and seem to indicate that this will relieve some of the pressure on prices caused by oversupply.
The price of certain DDR2 (Double Data Rate, second generation) memory chips rose as much as 28 percent Monday. Flash memory also rose, with 16-gigabit chips rising more than 5 percent.
DRAM chip traders in Asia were returning from a week-long Lunar New Year holiday in China and Taiwan.
"I think it's just the first chance for the markets to respond to the demise of Qimonda," said Avi Cohen, managing partner at Avian Securities, which tracks the memory chip market. He also attributed the price rise to "recent commentary from Samsung and others of expected slightly higher DRAM contract pricing."
Last month, Qimonda, which held about a 10 percent DRAM market share in the third quarter of 2008, became the first major memory chipmaker to file for bankruptcy as a result of the decline in memory chip prices and worldwide credit crunch. Economic officials with the German state of Saxony said that talks about finding investors for Qimonda were ongoing but the outcome was uncertain, according to a Reuters report Monday.
Market researcher iSuppli forecast in December that DRAM revenue would drop 19.8 percent in 2008. Among the world's top 10 memory chip suppliers, the largest declines in revenue, according to iSuppli, will be seen by Qimonda, with a plunge of 40.7 percent; Hynix, with a 29.1 percent drop; Taiwan's Nanya Technology Corp., with another 29.1 percent decrease; and Powerchip Semiconductor, also of Taiwan, with a 23.4 percent reduction.
Updated on January 19 at 8:15 a.m. PST with additional information throughout.
On Sunday, Intel instituted broad price cuts on processors, spanning the Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo, Pentium dual-core, Celeron, and Xeon product lines.
Some of the cuts are in response to Advanced Micro Devices' recently-introduced Phenom II "Dragon" desktop platform. AMD's Phenom II X4 940 (3.0GHz), for instance, is priced at $275.
Intel cuts were concentrated on quad-core chips like the Q9650 (3.00GHz), reduced 40 percent, to $316 from $530, to counter AMD's Phenom II. But Celeron processors received some of the largest reductions. The mobile Celeron 570 (2.00GHz), was slashed 48 percent, to $70 from $134, for example.
Some Xeon processors also received hefty cuts. The price on the X3370 (3.00GHz), for instance, was cut 40 percent to $316 from $530.
The Pentium dual-core E5200 was reduced 24 percent to $64 from $84.
The mobile Core 2 Duo P8600 was shaved 13 percent, to $209 from $241. The P series of mobile Core 2 Duo processors have a thermal envelope (Thermal Design Power or TDP) of 25 watts versus 35 watts for mainstream mobile chips.
Intel also introduced new processor models such as the desktop Core 2 Duo E7500 (2.93GHz), priced at $133 and the Core 2 Quad Q9550s (2.83GHz), which is a low-power variant--with a thermal envelope of 65 watts--of the 95-watt Q9550.
Intel is planning price cuts to its lower-end mainstream quad-core processors on January 18.
Barron's Tech Trader Daily first reported the news, citing Pacific Crest analyst Michael McConnell.
These cuts are happening because of the recent introduction of Advanced Micro Devices' 45-nanometer Phenom II and "Shanghai" Opteron processors.
AMD's quad-core Phenom II "Dragon" processor platform has been garnering solid reviews and its Shanghai server chip has been adopted by top-tier server suppliers including Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Dell, IBM, and Fujitsu.
Cuts are expected mainly on quad-core processors, though other processors may also receive cuts.
