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Chip maker Intel has cut prices between 11 and 19 percent on a host of desktop and entry server processors. The company rarely explains its quarterly price tweaks - which tend to happen in the wake of its posting of financial results for the prior quarter - and this time around was no different.

But the nature of the price cuts, which you can see here, suggests that Intel is trying to goose demand for middle-of-the road desktop PCs. That way it can get rid of inventories of old chips based on its frontside bus architecture and 45 nanometer processes, as it readies Nehalem kickers dubbed 'Westmere' for its PC lineup in the fourth quarter based on 32 nanometer processes.

Here's the rundown on the chips that did get price cuts. Pricing is the cost of a single chip based on an OEM or reseller buying them in 1,000-unit trays. Street prices for single units of any x64 chip can be (and usually are) substantially higher than the prices shown.

Core 2 Quad processors:

• Q9400: 2.66 GHz, 1.3 GHz FSB, 4 Cores/4 Threads, 6 MB L2 cache; $183, down 14 per cent
• Q9300: 2.5 GHz, 1.3 GHz FSB, 4 Cores/4 Threads, 6 MB L2 cache; $183, down 14 per cent
• Q8400: 2.66 GHz, 1.3 GHz FSB, 4 Cores/4 Threads, 4 MB L2 cache; $183, down 14 per cent
• Q8300: 2.5 GHz, 1.3 GHz FSB, 4 Cores/4 Threads, 4 MB L2 cache; $163, down 11 per cent

Core 2 Quad Low-Power processors:

• Q9400S: 2.66 GHz, 1.3 GHz FSB, 4 Cores/4 Threads, 6 MB L2 cache; $245, down 12 per cent
• Q8400S: 2.66 GHz, 1.3 GHz FSB, 4 Cores/4 Threads, 4 MB L2 cache; $213, down 13 per cent

Core 2 Duo processor:

• E7500: 2.93 GHz, 1.07 GHz FSB, 2 Cores/2 Threads, 3 MB L2 cache; $113, down 15 per cent

Pentium desktop processor:

• E6300: 2.8 GHz, 1.07 GHz FSB, 2 Cores/2 Threads, 2 MB L2 cache; $81, down 4 per cent
• E5400: 2.7 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 2 Cores/2 Threads, 2 MB L2 cache; $74, down 12 per cent
• E5300: 2.6 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 2 Cores/2 Threads, 2 MB L2 cache; $64, down 14 per cent

Celeron desktop processor:

• E1500: 2.2 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 2 Cores/2 Threads, 512 KB L2 cache; $43, down 19 per cent

Xeon uniprocessor servers:

• X3330: 2.66 GHz, 1.3 GHz FSB, 4 Cores/4 Threads, 6 MB L2 cache; $188, down 14 per cent

Intel did not cut prices on its existing Core i7 'Nehalem' desktop and workstation chips or on its various Core 2, Celeron, and Atom processors for notebooks and netbooks. And with the exception of one server chip that had its price reduced shown above (the X3330), all Xeon and Itanium prices remain the same as they were when the last price cut was announced back in April. Intel is apparently happy with its competitive positioning for all of these chips. ®

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