[jcoley2]

I can you can begin to speculate about lower prices in a month or so:

Intel Tells Customers It Will Slash Chip Prices 50%
By Tim Culpan

June 12 (Bloomberg) -- Intel Corp., the world's largest chipmaker, plans to slash prices of some processors next month and in September to regain market share from Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

The company told customers it will cut prices of its high- end Core 2 Quad processor by 50 percent on July 22, according to an Intel document given to clients. The chips, introduced in November to run servers and the most expensive personal computers, sell for $530 each, according to Santa Clara, California-based Intel's Web site.

The move increases the pressure on Advanced Micro to follow suit as the company prepares to introduce its own quad-core processors, called Barcelona and Phenom, in the second half. This year, Intel has won back some market share lost in 2006 after being quicker to introduce chips than its nearest rival.

``When Intel wants to chase market share, they make these cuts to hurt Advanced Micro directly,'' said Albert King, who owns Intel shares among the $10 million he manages as chief investment officer at Prophet Capital Inc. in Taipei.

Chuck Mulloy, an Intel spokesman, declined to confirm or deny the price cuts, citing company policy not to discuss product prices until they are publicly disclosed.

Intel shares fell 6 cents to $21.87 in early U.S. trading. They rose 10 cents to $21.93 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading, and had gained 8.3 percent this year before today.

The reduction will bring down the price of Intel's quad-core chip in line with that of its top-end dual-core processor, most commonly used in desktop and notebook computers.

Intel also told customers it plans to reduce prices of some Core 2 Duo chips by 24 percent to 32 percent on Sept. 2, according to the document.

Not Optimistic

Quad-core chips have four processors in a single package, while dual-core chips have two. Packing more processors in a chip can help computers run multiple programs at the same time.

Advanced Micro Chief Marketing Officer Henri Richard said last week that he was ``concerned'' that Intel would cut prices of quad-core processors and drive down overall levels in the industry.

``That's the sign that I am getting right now,'' Richard said in an interview in Taipei on June 6. ``If they are pushing quad-core unnecessarily down because they think they can hurt us by doing that, then I don't think there's an optimistic view on'' average prices.

Last year, a price war led to a 42 percent decline in annual profit at Intel and a $166 million loss at Sunnyvale, California- based Advanced Micro.

Advanced Micro's share of the desktop processor market climbed to 26.6 percent last year, from 20.8 percent in 2005, while Intel's fell more than 5 percentage points to 71 percent, according to estimates by Framingham, Massachusetts-based research company IDC Corp.

For processors used in servers, Advanced Micro's market share more than doubled to 24.2 percent, while Intel's declined 12.5 percentage points to 75.6 percent, according to IDC.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by jcoley2 I can you can begin to speculate about lower priceshigher margins in a month or so:

More like that.

[Luca]

Originally Posted by jcoley2 For processors used in servers, Advanced Micro's market share more than doubled to 24.2 percent, while Intel's declined 12.5 percentage points to 75.6 percent, according to IDC.

Wait, so Intel+AMD have 100% market share for servers? Aren't there a lot of servers out there with IBM POWER chips? Or is this only referring to x86 processors? Either way, it's misleading, because AMD and Intel aren't the only chip makers out there.

[Eugene]

http://www.vr-zone.com/index.php?i=4976

Q6600 for $266. Apple should, uh, consider using these chips.

[Mark_TS]

good. My new by Labor day iMac should have the latest Intel chip

[kscherer]

Cheap chips? Where's the salsa?

[Kraetos]

Fuck, and I just bought an E6600. The price cut drops something like 30% off the retail price.

[DaveGee]

Originally Posted by Kraetos Fuck, and I just bought an E6600. The price cut drops something like 30% off the retail price.

Man... friends don't let friends shop without first knowing about slickdeals.net and specifically their hot-deals forum. That place will save you SO much cash you'll go BROKE! Seriously... its a great place to find all of the hottest deals. 750GB Seagate SATA for less than $200 (I got 2) - 500GB for below $100... etc etc etc. Biggest problem is knowing when to STOP cause like I said... you'll save yourself straight into the poor house if you're not careful.

Dave

[Eugene]

Originally Posted by Mark_TS good. My new by Labor day iMac should have the latest Intel chip

Well this round of price cuts doesn't include Merom, so don't expect anything dramatic. The next major price cut will probably just coincide with the release of Penryn sometime around the end of the year.

[Moogs]

I wonder if this means the next generation of chips will hit the scene already at lower prices or if those will go back up because of increased performance, etc. (Penryn, Nehalem).

Surprisingly, Intel gave away quite a few details about Nehalem. Although Nehalem is still based on the 4-issue Core architecture, it takes "multithreading" to a whole new level. First of all, Nehalem can contain up to eight cores per die. Combined with 2-way Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT or Hyper-Threading), you'll have the ability to execute up to 16 threads on one chip! Nehalem will also use multi-level shared cache. Pat Gelsinger indicated that only the highest level of cache would be shared, meaning that Nehalem could very well have a similar cache hierarchy to AMD's Barcelona (independent L1/L2 caches per core, but a shared L3 cache). The power of each core is "dynamically managed" which might indicate that Nehalem goes one step further than AMD's Barcelona core: it could have independent power planes. Nehalem will no longer use a FSB but a serial point to point interconnect. Even more revolutionary is the fact that Nehalem will have an integrated memory controller (IMC) and that the number of serial interconnects is variable (Intel's version of "HyperTransport").

Shaq Fu! Too bad we'll probably have to wait until MWSF 2009 to see it in a tower.

[BenRoethig]

Originally Posted by Eugene http://www.vr-zone.com/index.php?i=4976 Q6600 for $266. Apple should, uh, consider using these chips.

They have to build a machine that can actually use it first. I suspect they will update the Mac Pros to an all Cloverton lineup though with the new prices and leave a even wider gap in the lineup with possibly a slight price hike.

2.0ghz Woodcrest $316
2.0ghz Cloverton $316

2.66ghz Woodcrest $690
2.66ghz cloverton $741

3.0ghz Woodcrest $851
3.0ghz cloverton $1172

[Robo]

Originally Posted by BenRoethig They have to build a machine that can actually use it first. I suspect they will update the Mac Pros to an all Cloverton lineup though with the new prices and leave a even wider gap in the lineup with possibly a slight price hike. 2.0ghz Woodcrest $316 2.0ghz Cloverton $316 2.66ghz Woodcrest $690 2.66ghz cloverton $741 3.0ghz Woodcrest $851 3.0ghz cloverton $1172

I think the base model might actually drop in price. Right now, the Mac Pro is advertised from $2,499, but you can actually get the 2 GHz model for $2,200. Since the 2 GHz Cloverton isn't any more expensive than the 2 GHz Woodcrest, and since some of the other components have undoubtedly dropped in price since the Mac Pro was introduced, I think it's possible that the base (2 GHz) Mac Pro will start at $1,999, and Apple will start advertising the Mac Pro as starting at $1,999. The 2.66 GHz probably won't see a price hike - again, the prices of other components should drop enough to offset the small increase in moving to Cloverton - although I'd expect the 3 GHz models to increase in price (perhaps to $3,499, a $200 increase).

[Eugene]

Originally Posted by BenRoethig They have to build a machine that can actually use it first. I suspect they will update the Mac Pros to an all Cloverton lineup though with the new prices and leave a even wider gap in the lineup with possibly a slight price hike.

Building a machine to use them is what I meant...The proverbial "Mac" or "XMac" or whatever you want to call it. The ever widening gap is all the more reason to start using they're desktop oriented CPUs.