Price cuts bring Pro closer to Pentium
By Tom Davey
Looking to make the Pentium Pro the processor of choice for
corporate desktop PC buyers, Intel Corp. next month will
drop the price of the high-end CPU to levels approaching the
standard Pentium chip.
At the same time, Intel has eliminated its scheduled November
quarterly price cuts on all Pentium chips, officials confirmed late
last week. As a result, after Aug. 1, OEM customers will not
see another price reduction until next February.
Because that new policy does not apply to the Pro, prices for
that chip could be nearly the same as Pentium prices this fall.
The narrowing price gaps are simplifying the choice between
standard Pentiums and Pentium Pros for some corporate
customers.
"I was recently debating about whether to buy a 200MHz
Pentium [PC]," said Leo Kominek, a product engineer at
Eaton Corp., in Galesburg, Mich. "But I found out the Pro 200
with 256K [bytes of] cache was only about $250 more, so I
bought that."
Starting Aug. 1, Intel's price for a 200MHz Pro with 256K
bytes of Level 2 cache will drop to about $575 each in
1,000-unit quantities, according to sources close to the Santa
Clara, Calif., chip maker.
That's only about $65 more than Intel will be charging for the
200MHz Pentium, which ships with no L2 cache. Likewise, the
180MHz Pro with a 256K-byte cache will fall to $485,
dropping to an $85 premium over the price of a 166MHz
Pentium with no cache (see chart).
"It's getting so you can build a Pro system for close to the price
of a Pentium," said Kevin Roberts, a product manager at
Advanced Logic Research Inc., in Irvine, Calif.
Roberts added, however, that prices of components such as
chip sets and motherboards will have to come down before the
Pentium Pro achieves pricing parity with the Pentium.
But even with a modest price premium, Pro-based desktops
will soon become the system of choice for corporate users who
want to migrate to Windows NT because of the chip's superior
performance on 32-bit code, said Nathan Brookwood, an
analyst at Dataquest Inc., in San Jose, Calif.
"Many of the desktop management security features that IS
managers want are tied in with NT," Brookwood said. "It's the
industrial-strength operating system."
Other major Intel developments include the following:
Because of more advanced manufacturing techniques at
Intel, the 150MHz Pentium Pro is about to fall off the
map. Intel's August price for the 180MHz chip will be
less than that for the 150MHz version.
Intel's reason for the paradox: The company has moved
nearly all of its Pro manufacturing from a 0.6-micron to a
0.35-micron manufacturing process. Because the
180MHz chip is made with the new process, it is much
smaller and Intel yields many more chips from each
silicon wafer.
Intel's next version of the Pentium Pro, a chip on a card
sold without L2 cache, will not be available until at least
the second quarter of 1997. When news of the chip,
code-named Klamath, first leaked out of Intel's labs
early this year, sources said the chip should be on the
market by the first quarter of next year.
Although Intel could manufacture the chip almost
immediately, according to sources, the company is so far
ahead of its competitors that introducing it earlier would
only cannibalize other products and cut into profit
margins.
The P55c, Intel's new multimedia version of the Pentium,
will be available to customers in November. But OEM
sources said the chip will be in very short supply the first
couple of months.
Intel officials declined to comment on details of the
August price cuts.
Narrowing Gap
Intel price cuts bring Pentium Pro close to Pentium levels
CPU
May price
August price*
200MHz Pentium
NA
$510
200MHz Pro w/25K bytes of
cache
$707
$575
166MHz Pentium
$498
$400
166MHz Pro w/512K bytes of
cache
$809
$680
*Analyst Estimates
Intel's Price Cuts for August
Clock Speed
May price
Aug. price*
Reduction
Pentium
200MHz
NA
$510
NA
166MHz
$498
$400
20%
150MHz
$364
$300
18%
133MHz
$257
$205
20%
120MHz
$188
$135
28%
100MHz
$134
$105
22%
75MHz
$105
$105
0%
Pentium Mobile
150MHz
NA
$350**
NA
133MHz
$307
$245
20%
120MHz
$208
$145
30%
100MHz
$134
$105
22%
Pentium Pro
200MHz/512K***
$1,217
$1,100
10%
166MHz/512K
$809
$680
16%
200MHz/256K
$707
$575
19%
180MHz/256K
$600
$485
19%
150MHz/256K
$534
$534
0%
* Based on analysts' per-chip estimates for 1,000-unit quantities.
** Will not be on Intel's official August list, but should be available next month.
*** Cache.
Are new ratings misleading?
Intel Corp. has come out with a new version of its ratings
system that compares various Intel CPUs.
But buyer beware: The new benchmarks may mislead users of
16-bit code into thinking the Pentium Pro and Intel's
forthcoming multimedia version of the Pentium, code-named
P55c, will perform considerably better than the standard
Pentium.
The Santa Clara, Calif., company's iCOMP Index 2.0
eliminates all 16-bit code from the original 1992 version of the
ratings system. Each ratings index is a blend of several common
industry benchmarks. Intel has also added a multimedia
component to the new iCOMP and uses compilers optimized
for the Pentium Pro processor.
"Windows 95 still has a bunch of 16-bit code," said Linley
Gwennap, editor of The Microprocessor Report, in
Sebastopol, Calif. "Even if you're running 32-bit apps on
Windows 95, [iCOMP 2.0] overstates the performance."
Other Intel tests have shown a 200MHz Pentium Pro is only
55 percent faster than a 120MHz Pentium when running 32-bit
applications under Windows 95, Gwennap said. But iCOMP
2.0 rates the Pro's performance boost at 120 percent over the
120MHz Pentium.
The compilers Intel uses go a long way toward making the Pro
look good. "Intel's smart compilers are like the test cars at
Indianapolis and are not available to software developers," said
Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Dataquest Inc., in San Jose,
Calif.
Intel officials acknowledged that iCOMP 2.0 is most useful to
the subset of buyers who run 32-bit applications such as
Photoshop and AutoCAD on Windows NT.
--T |
