Xeon delay stories wrong, says Intel

A year ago From The Register No. 89 -- a year ago. Plus ca change or what? Reports that higher end Xeon processors are delayed are spurious, Intel said today. But at the same time, details of pricing changes to arrive on the 24 August have emerged, as well as future plans for its high end chip platforms. Reports on US wires had said Intel had delayed four way server versions of its Xeon processors because of a problem with its high end NX chipset. But an Intel representative said that Xeon multiway processors had already started to ship and that no delays were anticipated for four way systems. Only a month after Intel cut prices on a range of its processors, it is preparing for further introductions and price slashing. Sources at an OEM close to Intel's plans, gave the following details about pricing on the 24 August. The PII Xeon 400MHz with one Mb of level two cache will drop in price from $2,840 to $2,680, the same part with 512K of cache dropping to $1,060 from $1,120. At the desktop level, the PII-450, which is a new introduction, will remain at $670. The PII-400 will drop from $590 to $480, the PII-350 from $420 to $300, the PII-333 from $320 to $230, the PII-300 from $210 to $190, while the PII-266 will stay at $160, effectively ending its existence as a desktop chip. Intel last week confirmed it was bringing forward two Celeron processors with a Mendocino core and the OEM said that the prices now looked like this. The 333MHz Celeron with Mendocino core and 128K of cache on board, one of Intel's new introductions at the low end, will start at $200. The 300A, which also has 128K of on chip cache, will cost $150. The 300MHz Celeron will now drop in price from $160 to $110, the 266MHz Celeron to $90 from $110. The Celeron 266MHz will npow disappear towards the end of October. The Intel representative said he was unable to comment on future price cuts, but these figures show that the chip giant is now engaged in a dual process where top end Xeon chips are being sold at a far higher premium than their performance would seem to justify. Meanwhile, sources said that Intel was still on target for its 370-pin Socket, as earlier revealed here. The introduction of this socketed solution could well spell the end of the road for Intel's Celeron plans. ®