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Athlon, Sempron prices slashed to meet Core 2
by Cyril Kowaliski — 9:59 AM on July 24, 2006

The ATI acquisition has been getting most of our attention this morning, but AMD has also unleashed a barrage of price cuts today as a preemptive response to the upcoming launch of Intel's Core 2 processors. The cuts are massive, with some chips seeing their price tags more than halved and the entire Athlon 64 X2 line sinking to below $301. AMD's revised pricing will position Athlon 64 X2 and Athlon 64 FX processors against the Core 2 lineup like so:

Intel	Price	AMD
Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz/4MB)	$999
	$827	Athlon 64 FX-62 (2.8GHz/1MB)
Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.67GHz/4MB)	$530
Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40GHz/4MB)	$316
	$301	Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (2.6GHz/512KB)
	$240	Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (2.4GHz/512KB)
Core 2 Duo E6400 (2.13GHz/2MB)	$224
	$187	Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (2.2GHz/512KB)
Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86GHz/2MB)	$183
	$152	Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.0GHz/512KB)

The Core 2 Duo E6400 and E6300 won't become available until the fourth quarter of this year, so AMD's new pricing may allow it largely to avoid direct competition with Intel's new offerings for a few months. Since, going by our benchmarks, the Athlon 64 X2 5000+ is slower than the Core 2 Duo E6600 more often than not, this pricing strategy appears wise. Only the Athlon 64 FX-62 will wander into Core 2 price territory, though it, too, is often trounced by the Core 2 Duo E6700.

AMD's price cuts also extend to the single-core Athlon 64 and Sempron lines. The Athlon 64 3800+ has been brought down from $290 to just $112, with the 3500+ and 3200+ models following at $91 and $81, respectively. As for the Semprons, they're now down to $101 and below.

On the mobile front, AMD also applied some not-so-staggering price cuts to the single-core Turion 64 line, bringing the chips from $354 to $263 and below. The dual-core Turion 64 X2s haven't budged, however.

Tags: CPUs