Freshly leaked Pentium D pricing information has added weight to claims that Intel will ship the next model in the series, the 960, at the end of this month before slashing prices in Q3 when its next-generation architecture 'Conroe' processor debuts.

Pentium D pricing data provided by DailyTech confirms earlier reports that the 960 will cost $533 at launch on 30 April before falling to $316 in Q3 when Conroe launches. Current Pentium D 9xx chips will see their prices cut on 23 April, as expected.

Four Conroe chips will ship initially: the E6300, E6400, E6600 and E6700, following Intel's new processor numbering scheme, introduced when the Core Duo mobile processor family arrived earlier this year. The four dual-core Conroes are clocked at 1.86, 2.13, 2.40 and 2.67GHz, respectively, run on a 1066MHz frontside bus and contain 4MB of cache shared between the two cores.

The CPUs will be priced at $209, $244, $316 and $530, respectively, at launch, the new report claims. At the same time, Intel will debut the VT-less Pentium D 925 at $178. In addition to the 960's price reduction to $316, the 950 will come down to $241 and the 940 to $209. Intel has already indicated it intends to phase out the 930 and 920. ®