Intel has formally sounded the death knell for its dual-core Pentium D 820 processor, documents sent by the chip giant to its customers reveal. Come 2 February 2007, orders for the part will no longer be available for cancellation and shipped product can't be sent back.

In August this year, Taiwanese moles signalled Intel's plan to can many of its remaining Pentium D 800- and 900-series chips by the end of 2006, leaving only the 90nm 820, and the 65nm 915 and 925 available to buyers.

Later that month, Intel did indeed announce the demise of many of these CPUs. It went on to cull some more in November along with a raft of Celeron D parts.

The move is in line with Intel's scheme to push its dual-core Core 2 Duo desktop processors further into the mainstream, with its upcoming Core 2 Quad four-core chip set to tackle the higher ground. The company is known to be preparing a set of Celeron- and Pentium-branded single-core chips based on the Core architecture which will be pitched at the low-end of the market. ®