Intel Preparing "Daring Price Drops"

[Bozo Galora]

xbitlabs says, among others, on Aug 26 the 1.8 P4 goes from $562 to $226 a 55% price drop.

Not baaaaaad.

link

 

[bacillus]

now that's serious discounting!

 

[NFS4]

WTF!!! $226!!! That ain't half bad if you ask me...no wonder earnings were down so much AMD and Intel are punching each other sensless.

 

[randomlinh]

woohoo! price wars!!

 

[Need4Speed]

I have also heard that these price wars are comig to an end soon...Intel and AMD have both agreed to do so...since neither is making a suitable profit margin.

Just a rumor though...

 

[BigSmooth]

<< I have also heard that these price wars are comig to an end soon...Intel and AMD have both agreed to do so...since neither is making a suitable profit margin.

Just a rumor though... >>


I hope so, because that would be illegal.

 

[TravisBickle]

current P4 socket is going to die real soon. with Rambutt® memory 100% more expensive than DDR.

so if you want a dead-end system with a feeble overclock that is still more expensive than the competing (out-)performer, why not buy a P4

 

[mithrandir2001]

Yea, I wonder if the price delta between RDRAM and PC133 is the reason here. If you can get 1GB PC133 (or PC2100) RAM for $100, while 1GB PC800 costs $500...dam, that's a tremendous difference. Even on a 256MB standard, RDRAM costs $100 more...and that may be enough to push buyers from one platform to another.

 

[theplanb]

yeah.. I wouldn't buy P4 cpu even if it was at a price of duron because the mobo+ram is still expensive and no with no upgrade path.

 

[DDad]

Thanks
I have to order 20 P4's before Aug 10th.......LOL

 

[MichaelD]

Yeah, the price of RDRAM is the main reason why I won't even consider a P4 rig.

 

[thraxes]

Hmmm I looooove pricewars


Nevertheless P4 in its current form is crap... but with the new socket coming out soon and hopefully staying around for a while (if it lives as long as slot1/socket 370 than I would be happy) and on top of that next years release of the hopefully fast i845 DDR chipset, intel becomes once again something I would invest in.

 

[KpocAlypse]

<< Yea, I wonder if the price delta between RDRAM and PC133 is the reason here. If you can get 1GB PC133 (or PC2100) RAM for $100, while 1GB PC800 costs $500...dam, that's a tremendous difference. Even on a 256MB standard, RDRAM costs $100 more...and that may be enough to push buyers from one platform to another. >>



wasn't RDRAM supposed to drop in price to DRAM level by the end of the year?

EDIT: The 2.2 is the first .13 chip right? $615....ouch!

 

[MasterHoss]

Intel usually releases prices for the retail boxed chips, right? So for $226, you can get a P4 1.8GHz with probably 128MB of Samsung PC800 RDRAM. Ain't too bad if you ask me.

Yeah, the current P4 with mobo will screw you as far as upgrading to another P4 goes, but most people I know don't upgrade for clockspeed...meaning, most people don't &quot;upgrade&quot; from a P4 1.2GHz to a P4 1.8GHz....that's kind of stupid if you ask me so, TravisBickle, your argument is weak there. As far as AMD pulling ahead of Intel on current benchmarks...I'd have to credit the lack of optimized code for that one.

But still, it's going to be very interesting if Intel keeps slashing prices...hope AMD wants to hold their big price discrepency. Would that mean you could get a desktop Athlon4 for 55% lower than AMD's original asking price when that thing becomes available?

 

[damocles]

It's just as much a marketing game as a performance game.

 

[Pabster]

Bozo Galora wrote:

&quot;xbitlabs says, among others, on Aug 26 the 1.8 P4 goes from $562 to $226 a 55% price drop.&quot;

That means Northwoods and new Socket478 boards are ready. They're preparing for them and need to sell off a crapload of the Willamette core chips and clear inventories to prepare for Northwood. I'm not surprised in the least. I don't know too many people who'd be foolish enough to drop $562 for a processor these days. Even devout Intel zealots

&quot;Not baaaaaad.&quot;

That's debatable. $226 for a processor that is not only antiquated before you purchase it but offers zero to minimal performance advantage over a $160 processor with an upgradeable architecture. IMHO, it's a bad purchase, even at a &quot;daring&quot; price.

 

[JellyBaby]

<< They're preparing for them and need to sell off a crapload of the Willamette core chips and clear inventories to prepare for Northwood. >>

Plus you've got your Back to School sales to consider and this'll help boost $ale$ revenues so they can keep being a $6.5 billion/quarter company.

The upcoming .13u P4s with DDR solutions are the only P4s that personally interest me. Anything Intel does before that is just marking time.

 

[bjc112]

tell em pabster!!!!

you lucky dog..

you have probablly the faster computer on the board.. (not in clock speed though! )

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

Not only daring, but expensive. These aren't .13 parts we're talking about here. These are 217mm silicon monsters. Everyone balked when Sanders referred to Intel's price slashes as &quot;monopolistic&quot;, but after looking at this, you can't really blame them. Intel's strategy is simple, crush the opposition by giving away the P4. And it will probably work.

AMD's only hope is to keep their processors cheaper to manufacture and close in performance. With .13nm, the Palomino will be 90mm. To put that in perspective, the P4 will still be a whopping 140mm at .13nm...36% larger, and more expensive.

 

[Passions]

das this include p3 price drops too?

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

Yeah, the P3 will be dropped. It will be called the Tualatin. The castrated version will be called Celeron. The idea is to make manufaturers say to themselves, &quot;why get a PIII that may be faster when I can get a P4 and screw the customer for the same price!&quot;

Ok, I'll get off my Palomino now...

 

[Pabster]

Well Celery is dead, and it doesn't matter what flavor they manufacture it in. Duron beats it resoundly for (literally) the cost of a large Pizza Hut pizza and breadsticks. OTOH, Tualatin does appear to breathe new life into an antiquated architecture (Pentium III). I see it being far more useful in a laptop environment than a desktop, particularly since most boards won't be able to handle them. The flip side is that Athlon still reigns supreme over Tualatin, even the 512k version running 1.4GHz or so. And with the initial Tualatin prices, I think it's a no brainer. Certainly the idea is make P4 look more attractive to OEMs and VARs, but that'll only work for the totally unconscious consumer. Anandtechers, for certain, know better.