Intel Cuts Core 2 Quad Prices Up to 40 Percent

On Sunday, Intel cut the prices of its Core 2 Quad chips by up to 40 percent, scattering price drops along its other product lines, as well.

All told, the desktop Core 2 Quad processor, Intel's mobile Celeron chips, as well as single-processor Xeon chips all received price cuts.

For most, however, the Core 2 Quad price decreases were the most significant. The prices not only dropped the Core 2 Quad into a more competitive position with AMD, but also shook up Intel's price-performance hierarchy.

For example, Intel's fastest Q9650 (3.0-GHz, 12 Mbytes L2 cache) is now priced at $316, down 40 percent from $530. That means that Intel's Q9550s, a 2.83-GHz chip with 12-Mbytes of cache, is now a more expensive $369. The Q9550s, however, is also rated at a lower-power 65 watts, rather than the 95-watt envelope that the Q9650 uses, or the Q9550, which also received a more modest 16 percent cut to $266.

Intel's price cuts mean that Intel's Q9650 now commands just less than a 15 percent premium over the AMD Phenom II X4 940 "Black Edition", an unlocked part, and AMD's only processor that runs at 3.0 GHz. AMD's Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition (2.6 GHz, 2.0-Mbytes L2 cache/2.0-Mbytes L3 cache), its most expensive Phenom X4 part, is priced at $174, an 82 percent discount from the Q9650.

Intel's Q9400 (2.66-GHz, 6 Mbytes L3 cache) was cut 20 percent from $266 to $213, while the Q8300 (2.5-GHz, 4-Gbytes L2 cache) was redcued 18 percent to $183. Finally, the Q8200 (2.33-GHz, 4 Mbytes L2 cache) was trimmed by 16 percent to $163.

Other desktop processors received scattered cuts: the E7400 Core 2 Duo processor, which was reduced 15 percent to $113; and the E5300 (2.60-GHz, 2 Mbytes L2 cache, 45-nm process), the E5200 (2.5-GHz, 2 Mbytes L2 cache, 45 nm) and the E2220 (2.4-GHz, 1 Mbytes L2 cache, 65-nm) which received cuts of 14 to 24 percent to $74, $64, and $64, respectively. The 2.0-GHz E1400 Celeron processor is now priced at $43, down from $53.

Bargain notebook shoppers also received some heartening news: Intel's mobile Celeron category also received some steep cuts, on the order of 19 percent to 48 percent. After the fall, Intel has priced the entire category at either $70 or $86; speeds range from 2.66-GHz (with a 667-MHz front-side bus) down to 1.73-GHz, with a 533-MHz FSB.

Intel's highest-performance single-processor Xeon line also received discounts. The X3370, X3360, X3350, and X3330 all received discounts, meaning that buyers can now purchase the 3.0-GHz/ 12-Mbyte L2 cache X3370 for $316, down 40 percent. The other three chips all received cuts of 16 percent.