Intel quietly trims low-end desktop CPU prices


by Cyril Kowaliski — 12:12 PM on October 18, 2010

It's too bad Intel doesn't have an RSS feed for its price list, because the chipmaker has made a habit of making slight tweaks to that list without telling the public. An updated list went up yesterday, and it includes adjustments to the prices of several low-end desktop processors:

Processor Speed Cores/threads Architecture Old price New price
Core i3-550 3.2 GHz 2/4 Nehalem $138 $117
Pentium E6700 3.2 GHz 2/2 Penryn $86 $75
Pentium E5700 3.0 GHz 2/2 Penryn $75 $64
Celeron E3400 2.6 GHz 2/2 Penryn $53 $42

The cut to the Core i3-550 is particularly interesting, because it makes that offering almost as cheap as the 2.93GHz Core i3-530—still the most affordable member of the Core i3 family, with its $113 bulk price tag. For reference, the i3-550 currently retails for $149.99 at Newegg. Seeing that processor slip closer to the $100 mark could draw some buyers away from AMD's budget quad-core CPUs, like the $99.99 Athlon II X4 640.

Incidentally, Intel's new price list also makes relatively small (6-9%) adjustments to a pair of low-voltage Core i7 mobile processors: the Core i7-640LM and the Core i7-660UM. Check the full price list in PDF format for more details.

   
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