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Intel starts to shuffle chip prices, specs

Not the end for .25 micron but the beginning of the end

Chip giant Intel will use next weekend to make some minor price reductions on its Pentium III family but will start to use its price fork extensively in January, as revealed here earlier. While Intel will make some small reductions on Pentium IIIs across the range on the 12th of December next, the biggest cuts will come 23rd of January next. Our understanding is that Intel will also make a spate of announcements early in January, on the 10th. It will use that latter date to confirm its offensive against AMD's introduction of the 750MHz Athlon, but will also take the opportunity to start waving goodbye to members of its .25 micron Pentium III family. On the 23rd of January, Intel will slash the price of its flip chip, socket 370 Pentium III-600, which supports the 133MHz bus and has 256K cache in the chip, to $310/1000 or so. It will use that opportunity to semi-retire the .25 micron version of the Pentium III-500 by cutting its price to around $190/1000. Intel needs to rationalise its desktop lines -- even its customers, big PC vendors -- are getting confused. And it will trumpet to the world its Pentium III-750 MHz part, which is likely to be around $740/1000. However, sources differ as to whether the 750MHz part will support the 133MHz front side bus -- documents we have seen seem to suggest that the two flavours of 750MHz Pentium IIIs only have 100MHz bus support. The next bout of price cutting from Intel will be on the 27th of February and apply to both Celerons and Pentium IIIs. If some of these dates don't produce the results we expect, that is because Intel warns its customers, never mind us lowly journalists, that things can change in the twinkling of an eye. And sometimes they do. See, for example, in the story below about confirmation of price cuts for the 12th of December what it tells its distributor and dealer channel in advance. Intel is also expected to announce a 533MHz Celeron processor on the .25 micron process in early January. ®

See also

Intel confirms 12 December price cuts
Intel will cut Coppermine prices earlier than expected>
Intel to intro 750MHz CuMine PIII on January 10th

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