Intel To Slash Prices Up To 60%

Chuan-kai Lin writes "According to Bloomberg, Intel will slash product prices by up to 60% in order to regain market share captured by AMD." From the article: "Intel said it will reduce prices of faster dual-core chips by about 15 percent, according to Alex Lin, a product marketing manager at Micro-Star, Taiwan's third-largest maker of motherboards, which connect electronic parts in computers ... Shares of Intel have fallen 33 percent since Otellini succeeded Craig Barrett in May last year. Advanced Micro's stock has gained 77 percent during the same period. Intel fell 31 cents to $17.08 at 12:06 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading. Advanced Micro dropped $1.55, or 5.5 percent, to $26.45 on concerns that Intel will lower prices."

Comments

My god

[thePig]

Does this mean, I was paying up to 160% more than what I should have, till now?
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Re:My god

[cnettel]

No, only 150 % more. (100 - 60 = 40, 100 / 40 = 2.5, (2.5 - 1) * 100 = 150)

Cheaper Macs?

[irablum]

Does this mean even cheaper macs are forthcoming?

Ira

Re:Cheaper Macs?

[anaesthetica]

Does this mean even cheaper macs are forthcoming?

No, but it does mean that Apple's margin's will grow slightly larger. I'm sure that as a loyal Apple-user that will warm your heart. It warms mine. Yay!

Fantastic!

[Rob T Firefly]

This is just what I've been hoping for! Thank you, Intel, for addressing my needs as a consumer and forcing AMD to drop the prices on those Athlon 64s I love so very very much.

capitalism!

[minus_273]

yay! capitalism! good.

I have to wonder

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

I have to wonder how Intel is going to rationalize it when people STILL choose AMD over Intel.

Re:I have to wonder

[manno]

Not everyone's a zealot some of us use AMD chips simply because they're faster, run cooler, and suck less juice than P4's. Conroe looks to have adressed these issues, I was going to buy a opty 165 last week, for $325, but then I saw that Intel was scheduled to relese the better performing Conroe next month at some highly competative prices.

1.86GHz/2M for $183
2.13GHz/2M for $224
2.40GHz/4M for $316

Those were the prices posted before this anouncement, I hope they have dropped further. Even if they havn't I'm eyeing that 2.4 with the 4MB cahce HARD. I would gladly pay an extra $80-$90(CPU+Mobo) next month, than get an opty 165 this month that will suck more juice, and be significantly slower. I'm not loyal to any corperation, I'm going to put my money where it will give me the best return on investment...

Too late

[sidfaiwu]

AMD has already captured this share of the market (me). Their chips have provided my home assembled computers with excelent processing power, no glitches, and at a lower cost.

Re:Today's a good day to buy AMD stock, then!

[chrismcdirty]

Not only gaming's monster chips, but servers' monster chips.

Sounds Alright But...

[Valthan]

If they are doing it to capture the AMD market I think that it is going to fail because those of us on this side of the fence are here for more reasons than the "Hey, its cheaper... right?!" crowd. This will however be amazing if the price drop makes its way into the Macs, I have wanted one since they get their upgrade but I can't justify the cost...

Quite Possibly

[WombatControl]

It will either mean cheaper Macs, or Macs with more features for the same price.

Remember that Apple is not a company that tries (too hard) to compete for the bottom end of the market. Even the Mac mini isn't designed to compete with a bargain-basement Dell. Apple might very well cut their prices with cheaper chips, or they might sweeten the deal with larger hard drives, making the low-end mini use a Core Duo rather than a Core Solo, etc.

However, as a Mac owner and someone who's looking to replace an iBook with a MacBook (Pro) in the near future, this is good news indeed.

Price cut or garage sale?

[Gadzinka]

I'm too lazy to RTFA (hey, this is /. ;), but isn't the price cut the same I've read couple of days ago, which basically boiled down to cleaning up inventory of crappy Netburst processors (a.k.a. Pentium D) in order to focus on PentiumPro-derived Core architecture? Yeah, go buy yourself dual core netburst processor. With both cores communicating via external, shared FSB...

Gawd, I was afraid that Intel would never put to sleep this monstrosity...

Robert

The prices drops are for the P4

[ajiva]

Notice that the price drops are the same day as when Core 2 Duo is released (July 23rd), that means
the price drops are on the older P4s. That's great if you don't mind getting a P4, but Intel is doing what any other company would do. Drop prices on older products to clear out space for newer ones. Makes sense.

AMD's joining the party

[adam1101]

Begun these Price Wars have.

Seems like it already happened

[Wylfing]

I do my own whiteboxing, and whiteboxing for all the friends and family around (Ubuntu only of course!), and I have always used AMD processors. This has been mainly a price decision. AMD chips and boards have always been much less expensive than Intel. However, I recently did my first Intel box. It was a success, and the price was more or less the same. I was pretty impressed, and I gave up a little of my AMD snobbishness.

Re:Some Other Suggestions For Intel

[DrDitto]

2) Keep adding more cache so more synthetic benchmarks fit completely in high speed memory to inflate those SPEC scores

LOL! Now we criticize Intel for their superior SRAM technology (Intel can fit twice as much cache capacity as AMD for the same chip area). Server workloads see much higher working sets than SPEC. Even assuming you have AMD's fast on-chip memory controller, every cache miss will result in the processor spending 50+ nanoseconds doing nothing (the instruction window will fill up in no time). With a 3-issue superscalar at 3GHz, this is ~ 450 lost opportunities to retire an instruction.

So yeah Intel, keep adding more cache "to inflate those SPEC scores".

Price correction? How about old-model clearout!

[Mr.Fork]

This is NOT a price drop but a price correction for Intel since they've introducted a new product line. Sort of like when Chevy does for their 2007 models arrive this fall with their 2006 still on the floor. It's NOT a 'let's get our marketshare back from AMD' but a 'oh crap, we still have a tonne of P4 chips left. Sheesh!

Macs don't use Pentiums. 1 faster Core Duo coming.

[MojoStan]

From TFA:

the world's biggest computer-chip maker plans to reduce prices on Pentium processors by as much as 60 percent...

Intel officials told them the price cuts will start July 23...

Intel said it will reduce prices of faster dual-core chips by about 15 percent... Intel also told him that it plans to lower Pentium prices by 60 percent.

TFA doesn't say specifically which Intel CPUs will get the big price cuts ("as much as 60 percent"), but I think it's pretty obvious that they're talking about the Pentium D and Pentium 4 processors, which Apple does not and will not use in their Macs. The smaller price cuts ("about 15 percent") is probably Core Duo because Intel plans to introduce a faster model (2.33GHz) on June 25.

The big price cuts will supposedly start on July 23, which is also the day Conroe (LGA775 Core 2 Duo for desktops) will be introduced. Conroe will be replacing the current Pentium D and Pentium 4 processors, and eventually Celeron D (Apple will not use any of these CPUs). Compared to Conroe, the current high-end Pentium D will look like a mid range CPU. The mid-range Pentium 4 will look like a low-end CPU. The big price cuts will look appropriate. Note that Pentium D, Pentium 4, and Celeron D will work in Core 2 Duo desktop motherboards.

Apple so far has only used Yonah-based Core Duo and Core Solo, which don't use the same chipsets and sockets as Core 2 Duo for desktops. Core 2 Duo for notebooks will not be introduced until late August at the earliest, so I'm sure the big price cuts will not apply to Yonah CPUs. The smaller price cut mentioned in TFA (15 percent) makes sense because a 2.33GHz Core Duo will be introduced on June 25. This new fastest Core Duo should be priced about the same as the current fastest model (2.16GHz) and the second-fastest model is usually about 15 percent cheaper than the fastest.