14 DAY TRIAL // And this is for real. INTEL has postponed this campaign because they wanted to see how much will AMD sell with its new 65nm line. Moreover, INTEL also wants to see when the new Agena architecture will come out. Things are looking good for AMD because the new native quad-core line will be at least as fast as INTEL?s Core 2 CPUs. Motive for which, until the first INTEL 45nm CPUs come off, AMD might prove quite a contender.
It?s a rather complex reasoning that has pushed INTEL into thinking of such a price cut. Don?t get me wrong, I?m not complaining. I like price cuts and I guess everyone does. But such a mass move gets me thinking that INTEL is afraid of loosing one more battle. Maybe AM2+, HT 3.0, 2B Instruction Fetch, more precise Branch Prediction and Out-of-Order Load Execution, 4 Double Precision FLOPS/Cycle, Dual 128Bit SSE calculation and Load per Cycle is too much for them. Or maybe they?re just being cautious.
Anyway, Intel has decided to make a remarkable price cut to minimize the risk. Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.40 GHz/4MB L2 x 2/1066MHz FSB), which is coming in the beginning of 2007 is planned to be cut from $851 to $530, an impressive 37.7% off. Meanwhile, Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66 GHz/4MB L2/1066MHz FSB) and E6600 (2.4 GHz/4MB L2/1066MHz FSB) will be cut from $530 and $316 to $316 and $224 respectively, a 40.3% and a 29.1% off their initial price tag.
The cheaper Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13 GHz/2MB L2/1066MHz FSB) and E6300 (1.83 GHz/2MB L2/1066MHz FSB) are also going down from $224 to $183 (18.3%) and from $183 to $163 (10.9%). But as it turns out, INTEL will add 2MB extra L2 Cache to them (total 4MB L2 Cache). These 4 MB L2 Cache versions, Core 2 Duo E6420 (2.13 GHz/4MB L2/1066MHz FSB) and E6320 (1.83 GHz/4MB L2/1066MHz FSB), are going to launch on the same day when the initial prices will go down. The E6390 CPU (E6400 without VT) has disappeared from INTEL?s roadmaps for now.
The ready-to-be-launched E4300 and E4400 CPUs will also be priced lower than expected but we don?t have the exact numbers yet. With this mass move, INTEL plans to extend its Core based product shipment. The plan here is to remove older NetBurst parts from the market by the end of 2007. And with these prices, I guess it will happen.