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Intel's PIII/600 for sale – applies price fork to AMD K7

Celeron 500 $190 retail, PIII/600 as little as $700

Updated Ingram Micro will start selling the Pentium III/600 .25 micron processor tomorrow at a price of $705. This is for a boxed unit containing a heatsink and fan, so haggling for the processor only would bring it down to about the $650/$660 level.

Further confirmation that the chip is for sale has come from Japanese site Pricewatch< which is also reporting that this and the Celeron 500 part are available in multiple outlets. The Celeron 500 is listed at ¥27,800 (around $230), while the Pentium III/600 lists at ¥96,800 (around $790), according to Pricewatch JP.

One correspondent has sent us evidence that the PIII/600 will be on sale tomorrow. Listed as part number BX80525U600512E, it will cost dealers $705 from the Ingram Micro site and orders have already been taken. The Celeron/500 is also available and costs $190 from Ingram. An Intel representative said last week that it was inevitable that some grey stock entered the market, as it supplied its authorised channels. The retail prices show that Intel will fight hard to keep market share in both the entry level and power desktop markets. The prices in Akibahara are retail prices, remember, meaning that PC OEMs will be able to buy at prices far cheaper than these.

The indications are that Intel, otherwise, is keeping to its pricing, as first published here in April. The real question is what it will do with its (almost dead) Pentium IIs and its Celeron line, which are already at rockbottom prices.

The graph we published then reveals Intel's plans for its high end Pentium IIIs. AMD's current pricing for the K7/600 is $699, for the K7/550 is $479 and for the K7/500 is $324, when bought in 1000s. Indications are that Intel will drop its PIII/550 and PIII/533 to undercut these prices and will price its PIII/500 very low.

The prices underline Intel's intent to push its desktop pricing model even harder to stave off any threat from the AMD Athlon K7. Those parts will only become available in any quantity from the beginning of August, and the Intel Marchitects want to spoil the good benchmarks the K7 is displaying. With the gladiatorial battle hotting up over the summer period, Intel introduced some of its July 18th price cuts on its processors a month early.

We believe that there will, however, be other price cuts on PIIs and PIIIs this month or next. Unlike AMD, Intel has excellent volumes on all of its current Pentium III products and as the company moves towards the introduction of its CuMine technology in November with a 666MHz part, it will further reduce prices on its former technology to match increased volume from AMD's fabs. Intel has surprised everyone by making the 600MHz available at least a week earlier than everyone first thought.

AMD has a Vergeltungswaffe (reprisal weapon) or two up its corporate sleevies, however. The first is that given it has very little in the way of Marchitecture Funding, unlike its Big Brother Intel, it is seeding hardware sites everywhere with K7s and allowing the folk out there to benchmark them. One of our favourite Japanese sites, for example, the Happy Cat, has just published another set of benchmarks which will make AMD happy. Another factor to give AMD aid is that it will have considerable OEM support for its K7 and for its K6-III products.

Dell is unlikely to declare for the K7, but most of the other top OEMs will, thankful, at last, that they have second source for high end processors. These OEMs will have first claim on available stocks as the Dresden process ramps. Whether the technical argument will outweigh the marketing argument is the point in question. Economics of scale is on Chipzilla's side. ®

RegisterFact666 An acolyte of English Satanist Aleister Crowley who became a UK major general, JFC Fuller, helped Adolf Hitler formulate his blitzkrieg strategies in the 1930s.

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