14 DAY TRIAL // It is reported that Intel sent a message to its more than 130.000 resellers and white-box builders worldwide, informing them that the company will cut prices of its still new quad processor family next week. The move of the giant chip producer can be seen as a way of responding to AMD's similar move, in a price war that lasted for some months already. AMD now has almost all its products at a much smaller price (many AMD processors are even 33% cheaper), but since AMD has no quad core processors, its price cuts affect the top of the line dual core Athlon FX models.
The news site InfromationWeek cites Intel: "Beginning July 22, 2007, Intel is reducing prices on select quad-core boxed processors sold through Intel Authorized Distributors. In addition, on July 29, 2007, Intel will be reducing prices on select quad-core server SKUs." As Intel now has only three quad core processor models (the Core 2 Quad Q6600, Core 2 Quad QX6700, and Core 2 Extreme QX6800) it is very possible that the discount will affect only the low and middle level processors, leaving the price of the high end QX6800 intact.
It appears that now Intel is in the position to beat AMD into oblivion with its own weapons. At the same time, Intel must be willing to cut some prices to encourage people to buy as many quad cores as possible. Because the quad core family is still young, Intel is willingly dropping a wide profit margin. While dropping a high average selling price now, Intel is preparing to retake more of the market and to make room for the upcoming 45 nm based quad cores, as they will arrive while AMD still has only the 65 nm generation.
"AMD Phenom desktop processors are on track for launch in the second half of 2007" said a spokesman about the recent rumors that the new 10th architecture which power both Phenom and Barcelona is having major problems. Even so, AMD is under a lot of pressure to release as soon as possible a new processor family and at the same time plan a new price war with Intel.