New Intel chip prices

Chipzilla's new price list introduces three new Xeons and a solitary Pentium III, along with price cuts of up to 44 per cent on existing parts. All prices are for 1000-unit quantities.

At the high end, there's a new Xeon at 933MHz with 256KB on-die cache (two-way SMP only) at $794, while the 866 and 800MHz parts drop by 23 and 29 percent respectively to $612 and $435.

The most significant new arrival is the Cashcades 700MHz Xeon with 2MB on-die cache – it makes its debut at $1,980, while the 1MB L2 version costs a mere $1177. Both these parts can run in four way and above SMP configurations.
Somewhat bafflingly, the previous big cache part, the 0.25 micron 550/2MB, stays at its hefty price of $3692.

We would have expected to see a big drop in price here – for that price, which would you rather have – a 550/2MB or a pair of 700/2MBs? Seems crazy to us, although an Intel Europe spokesman maintains there is still steady demand (and availability) for the 550MHz beastie.

On the desktop, the 933MHz Coppermine arrives with a price tag of $744, with lesser parts having up to 31 per cent lopped off their costs. There is no change on the $990 PIII 1GHz chip, but as you can't actually buy one, who cares?

All PIIIs between 500 and 667MHz are now priced the same at $193 – coincidentally the cost of a one-way ticket to the gulag for chips in this class.

Smaller cuts for the cheaper Celeron chips see the fastest 600MHz part down 19 percent to $112, while the 466 and 500MHz Celeries are now at their end of life $69 pricepoint – just enough for a supersaver ticket on that midnight train to you-know-where.

Mobiles see the biggest cuts, with the Celeron 550 down 44 per cent to a very-attractive $96. The SpeedStep 600, 650 and 700MHz parts are all down by just over 30 percent, with the fastest part now costing $380. ®