Intel will introduced its latest Celeron D budget desktop processor on 27 August - the day it ships 'Tulsa', the 65nm dual-core Xeon MP, incidentally - before slashing the line-up's prices on 22 October, it has been claimed.

The August arrival is the 3.46GHz, 533MHz frontside bus, 512KB L2 cache Celeron D 360, DigiTimes reports. The part will debut at $84 per CPU when sold in batches of 1,000 chips.

On 22 October, the report continues, the price will fall to $74, a reduction of 11.9 per cent. Intel will prune the prices of the rest of the Celeron D range on the same day, knocking 6.8 per cent to 14.5 per cent off what it charges for them.

It's also going to reduce prices on 23 July, with prices coming down by between 18.5 per cent and 8.5 per cent, the report claims. ®

Read our review of Intel's Core 2 Extreme and Core 2 Duo processors here