As we have reported earlier in Q3 Intel plans to release faster 2.33 GHz T2700 and 1.83 GHz L2500 processors that will significantly draw down the prices of current T2300-T2600 chip prices.
It appears that the price cuts will come even earlier. According to the Chinese language version of Commercial Times (through Register) Intel is slated to cut current chip prices by up to a third in late May. After price reduction Core Duo pricing for 1000 unit quantities will look like this:
|
Intel® Core™ Duo processor |
Today’s |
May ‘06 |
% Decrease |
|
T2600 (2M L2 cache 2.16 GHz 667 MHz FSB 65nm) |
$637 |
$423 |
33.5% |
|
T2500 (2M L2 cache 2 GHz 667 MHz FSB 65nm) |
$423 |
294 |
30.4% |
|
T2400 (2M L2 cache 1.83 GHz 667 MHz FSB 65nm) |
$294 |
241 |
18% |
|
T2300 (2M L2 cache 1.66 GHz 667 MHz FSB 65nm) |
$241 |
|
|
As you can see Intel is bumping the prices of their chips one level down - T2600 in late May will cost the same as T2300 chip now, T2500 goes to T2400 level and so on. Missing from the reported reductions is they slowest T2300 chip, but it’s price should go down to a $209 level of Pentium M 740 chip, since there’s no point in selling two different speed chips at the same price.
What do these early reductions mean? We know that Intel does not like to cut prices for it’s latest chips without more expensive alternative available. And we know that things have been rocking lately there with the development 65nm chips. The chip giant was able to move ahead of schedules with the planned introductions of dual core processors. So instead of Q3 we could see new faster Core Duo T2700 chip in the end of May.
Or Intel could be feeling the heat from AMD, which plans to introduce direct competitors to the power efficient Core Duo’s in the beginning of June. So Intel can be moving to preemptively undercut it’s rival with these price reductions.
Anyway if the reports are true, you can expect a lot of cheaper and faster Core Duo based notebooks and PC’s this summer.