Sources close to Intel said today that the Pentium III when released will cost less that the 450MHz PII does now. The Pentium II 450MHz currently costs $459 when bought in units of 1000, suggesting that Intel will pitch the Katmai-III lower than at first expected. And this is the update. Intel said today (Friday) that the price of the CPU is currently $562. But, spookily, the price we quoted above will not be far off the price when the Pentium III is launched...spooky. Although Intel will reveal that the chip is called the Pentium III on the 11th of January, as we exclusively wrote here a year ago, the company is still on target for a release date of the end of February, the same source said. (See also: Katmai is Pentium III) Additional instructions still under a non disclosure agreement include write back to memory without going through cache. ®