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Intel slashes CPU prices, intros new chips
by Cyril Kowaliski — 11:03 AM on April 24, 2007

As expected, Intel has slashed priced across its Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad lines and introduced three new desktop chips. Intel itself has yet to make an announcement—or even update its official price list (PDF)—but the folks at DigiTimes quote the following figures:

Processor	Old price	New price
Core 2 Quad Q6600	$851	$530
Core 2 Duo E6700	$530	$316
Core 2 Duo E6600	$316	$224
Core 2 Duo E6420	-	$183
Core 2 Duo E6400	$224	$183
Core 2 Duo E6320	-	$163
Core 2 Duo E6300	$183	$163
Core 2 Duo E4400	-	$133
Core 2 Duo E4300	$163	$113

A quick look on our price search engine appears to validate those prices as well as the existence of the new Core 2 Duo E6420, E6320, and E4400 processors. The E6420 and E6320 chips are simply versions of the original E6400 and E6300 with 4MB of shared L2 cache instead of 2MB. As for the Core 2 Duo E4400, it's 200MHz faster than the original E4300: it runs at 2GHz with 2MB of L2 cache, an 800MHz front-side bus, and no support for hardware virtualization.

Along with Core 2 price cuts, Intel reduced prices across its Xeon 3000-series processor line, which now more or less mirrors Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad pricing. The firm also trimmed pricing for its Pentium D 935, 925, 915, and 820 chips, bringing them all comfortably under the $100 mark.

With Intel's Core 2 cuts and AMD's April 16 cuts in mind, here's how Intel's and AMD's current-gen, dual-core desktop lineups now match up:

Intel chips	Price	AMD chips
Core 2 Duo E6700	$316
	$241	Athlon 64 X2 6000+
Core 2 Duo E6600	$224
	$188	Athlon 64 X2 5600+
Core 2 Duo E6420	$183
Core 2 Duo E6400	$183
	$178	Athlon 64 X2 5200+
	$167	Athlon 64 X2 5000+
Core 2 Duo E6320	$163
Core 2 Duo E6300	$163
	$136	Athlon 64 X2 4800+
Core 2 Duo E4400	$133
	$121	Athlon 64 X2 4400+
Core 2 Duo E4300	$113
	$104	Athlon 64 X2 4000+
	$83	Athlon 64 X2 3800+
	$73	Athlon 64 X2 3600+

Intel has clearly leveled the playing field with these latest cuts, but AMD still seems to be doing reasonably well in the sub-$150 arena. We plan to explore the price to performance relationship between these chips in more detail soon.