For inflation hawks. What kind of inflastion is this?
Chip maker to cut prices of Pentium II and III chips by up to 41 percent. Cheaper desktops already in the works.
Intel Corp. will cut prices on its desktop Pentium II and Pentium III processors by as much as 41 percent on Monday, ZDNN has learned.
Intel will lower its 550MHz Pentium III from $658 to $487, a price cut of about 26 percent, sources said.
The 500MHz Pentium III will receive the largest price cut, a whopping 41 percent from $423 to $251, sources said.
The 450MHz Pentium III will be reduced by about 21 percent from $230 to $183, sources said.
The recently introduced 600MHz Pentium III will stay the same at $669, sources said.
Pentium II price cuts
Intel will also lower prices on Pentium II chips.
The Pentium II 450MHz will be reduced from $230 to about $183, while the 400MHz will fall from $173 to about $163, sources said. All of the listed prices are in 1,000 unit quantities.
Intel officials would not comment on it processor pricing.
Intel, however, discloses these price cuts to PC makers well in advance. The PC makers use the information to plan their own price reductions and to plan new models based on the new, lower chip pricing.
Cheaper PCs for holiday season
The reductions from Intel mean, for example, that a number of low-cost 500MHz Pentium III desktop models will be available for the upcoming holiday buying season, sources said.
Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HWP) and IBM (NYSE:IBM) will utilize the price cuts Monday by announcing price reductions on their desktop models, sources said.
Gateway Inc. (NYSE:GTW) Friday cut prices across the board on its consumer PCs. The company's largest price cut came on the Essential 450. The desktop PC -- configured with a 450MHz Pentium III, 64MB of RAM, 6.8GB hard drive and a 17-inch monitor -- was reduced from $1,499 to $1,299, company officials said.
HP will reduce prices by up to 17 percent across its Vectra and Brio desktop PCs and Kayak PC Workstations, sources said.
A Vectra VL model with a 500MHz Pentium III, 64MB of RAM and a 6.4GB hard drive will be priced at $1,205, a 17 percent reduction. Brio models will receive a similar discount. A Brio BAx model, for example, with a 450MHz Pentium III, 64MB of RAM and a 13GB hard drive, will be reduced by about 10 percent to $1,198, sources said.
IBM is expected to follow with price cuts on its PC 300 desktops and Intellistation Workstations, sources said.
Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE:AMD) may follow Intel on Monday with processor price cuts of its own. |
