More Cores for Everybody

The less time until the much anticipated and waited for arrival of AMD Barcelona quad core processors in the following months, the more pressure Intel applies on the market and on AMD. After a price cut not even weeks old, a new one is coming up, together with some new processors from the Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Duo families. In order to get rid of the lower end processors and free its inventory for the next chapter in the AMD vs Intel war, the company slashed the prices of its entry-level quad-core processors by 50 percent.

The new pricing policy for 1000 unit purchases, cut most dramatically the price of the Q6600 quad core processor (running at 2.4GHz and a frontside bus of 1066MHz) which reached $266. Four new processors from the Core 2 Duo family were announced, all with a frontside bus frequency of 1333MHz (E6850 running at 3Ghz, E6750 running at 2.66GHz, E6550 at 2.33GHz and finally E6540 running at the same frequency). According to the TGDaily Web based news site the only difference between the E6550 and E6540 is that the latter implements Intel's "Trusted Execution Technology" which was formerly known as LaGrande Technology.

These latest moves in the price arena will put additional pressure on AMD's desktop and server pricing board, more so since AMD has no direct CPU capable of beating the quad core family from Intel neither in benchmarks, nor in real life applications. Intel already controls much of the CPU market with its quad core processors priced at an affordable level for both desktop and server systems and it has just shown the capacity to drop prices way below their normal marks. This could mean lower profit margins from the Barcelona core based processors when they finally hit the market for AMD and even worse, it would mean another all across the board price reduction in an effort to remain competitive.

While Intel now has the luxury of targeting its major price cuts only for the lower-end products and only symbolic reductions for the rest of the line, AMD is on the defensive and it is forced to play a losing card in an effort to maintain even a small market share. According to the hardware site Ars Technica, "As time passes, it's becoming increasingly clear just how much AMD's future is riding on Barcelona and Phenom-and how badly Sunnyvale needs its next-generation product to be a breakout performer, capable of returning some measure of price control to the flagging CPU manufacturer."