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July 21, 2009
Intel Slashes Prices on Core 2 Quad Processors
Perhaps as an indication that Intel ( News - Alert) – the world’s largest maker of computer chips, and a company which bested Wall Street expectations with its second-quarter earnings report last week, despite a loss of about $400 million – is preparing to release a new crop of processes based on the Nehalem chip architecture, it has dropped prices on some of its Core 2 Quad processors found in desktop PCs.
Prices for the Core 2 Quad Q9400 (2.66 GHz) and Q9300 (2.5 GHz) were reduced by roughly 14 percent from $213 to $183. Prices for the slower Core 2 Quad Q8400 and Q8300 chips fell by about 11 percent, while prices for the low-power Core 2 Quad Q9400 and Q8400 chips dropped by 12 percent and 13 percent, respectively.
The new chips on the horizon are quad-core processors code-named Lynnfield (nicknamed Core i5 by some sources) to be released in the second half of 2009, based on the 45 nanometer Nehalem microarchitecture that’s superfast (fewer data path bottlenecks) and requires less operating power. Lynnfield will be a more “commercial” or “mainstream” incarnation of Nehalem technology for the desktop, as opposed to the Nehalem-based Core i7 chips Intel released in late 2008 for high-end workstations running such things as 3D graphic software and other multi-threaded applications, a specialty of Core i7 technology.
Another Nehalem-powered processor, code-named Clarksfield, is a quad-core chip for laptops, expected to be introduced simultaneously with the Lynnfield.
Moreover, Intel is planning an eight-core Nahalem CPU that may appear toward the end of 2009. It will also be produced using the 45 nm process. Interestingly a die-shrunk 32 nm version of Nahalem, called Westmere, is also scheduled for release at some point in 2009.
As stated previously, Lynnfield may debut under the designation Core i5, just as Intel’s code-named “Bloomsfield” chips ultimately became “Core i7”. Like Core i7, Core i5 has four cores, is based on 45 nm technology and supports Hyper Threading, which means that each core can handle two two processing threads. It will also use the same 8 MB of shared L3 memory design as found in Core i7. Unlike the Core i7, Core i5 will use a dual channel instead of a triple channel integrated DDR3 memory controller. However, Core i5 can talk directly to PCI Express 2.0 graphics over up to x16 lanes (two x8’s which would require two video cards).
Intel has also significantly dropped prices for dual-core chips for low-end desktops. 2.2 GHz Celeron E5100 chips are now 19 percent cheaper, $43 instead of $53. Moreover, 2.93 GHz Core 2 Duo E7500 chips were reduced 15 percent, from $133 to $113.
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Richard Grigonis is Executive Editor of TMC (News - Alert)�s IP Communications Group. To read more of Richard’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Michael Dinan
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