AMD to cut high-performance Athlon prices
ebnews.com
AMD to cut high-performance Athlon prices
By Mark Hachman
Electronic Buyers' News
(03/23/00, 08:59:51 PM EST)
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said it will lower prices on three of its latest Athlon microprocessors tomorrow, March 24.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD said today it will lower prices
by $100, or about 10%, on each of its 950-, 900-, and 850-MHz Athlon speed grades. OEMs and end users will not receive a price break on the 1-GHz Athlon, introduced March 6 for $1,299 in 1,000-unit lots.
According to the company, the 950-MHz Athlon will be priced at $899, while the 900-MHz chip will cost OEMs $799. The price of an 850-MHz Athlon was also cut to $749.
AMD will leave the prices for its other Athlon products unchanged. The company's 800- and 750-MHz Athlon prices are $599 and $489, respectively, while the midrange 700- and 650-MHz Athlons cost $389 and $299. The low-end 600-MHz Athlon is priced at $229.
The prices of AMD's K6-2 chips were unchanged, although rival Intel Corp. will apply pressure by launching 600- and
566-MHz versions of its Celeron microprocessor Wednesday, according to OEM sources.
A spokesman for Intel, Santa Clara, Calif., confirmed that the new Celerons will use the Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) instruction set used by the Pentium III line, but would not confirm the date of the introductions.
To make the manufacturing process simpler, Intel will manufacture the chips with 256 Kbytes of on-chip cache, but disable half the memory to keep the chip compatible with the features of the Celeron product line. The spokesman compared Intel's decision to an automaker's choice to design several different car models using a common chassis. |
