Mark and ALL, Article...Intel cuts prices on PII and Pentium MMX...
Pentium, Pentium II prices cut
By Brooke Crothers and Michael Kanellos
October 27, 1997, 3:45 p.m. PT
update Intel (INTC) announced price cuts on its processors ranging up to 40 percent, pushing high-end PC pricing down to the middle of the market and further intensifying competition at the low end.
Effective today, the price for a Pentium II, Intel's premier chip, running at 266 MHz will fall 21 percent from $669 to $530.
The 233-MHz version of the Pentium II, already beginning to show up in a number of systems just above the $2,000 price mark, tumbles 24 percent to $401 from $530. Based on today's cuts, it's soon likely to dip below $2,000.
Intel processor price drops
Processor % decrease
266-MHz Pentium II 21%
233-MHz Pentium II 24%
233-MHzÿMMX Pentium 22%
166-MHz MMX Pentium 23%
200-MHz Mobile MMX Pentium 20%
166-MHz Mobile MMX Pentium 22%
133-MHz Mobile MMX Pentium 40%
Source: Intel
This brings personal computers with Intel's top-of-the-line chips below the $2,000 price point in record time. Previously, this took years to occur: With the Pentium II it has happened in a matter of months.
Intel's fastest chip, the 300-MHz Pentium II, is now priced at $738, down from $851. Like all other Pentium II processors, it comes with 512K of cache memory built in, to speed system performance.
Pentium Pro pricing did not change.
Price cuts for Intel's venerable Pentium chip line were also aggressive.
The desktop PC version of the 166-MHz Pentium with MMX technology plummeted 23 percent to $112 from $145. This should further accelerate price competition in the sub-$1,000 PC market, one of the hottest market segments today.
The price of the desktop version of the 233-MHz MMX Pentium declined 22 percent to $300 from $386.
The new extra-low-power 120-MHz MMX chip for mini-notebooks is priced at $106. Mini-notebooks are a new category of ultrasmall portable computers from companies such as Toshiba and Mitsubishi.
The 200-MHz MMX Mobile Pentium for notebook PCs fell 20 percent to $423 from $530, while the mainstay mobile 166-MHz MMX Pentium was reduced 22 percent to $273 from $348.
The mobile 133-MHz Pentium with MMX dove 40 percent to $106 from $177, making the chip a likely candidate for sub-$1,500 and sub-$1,200 notebook PCs.
The 133-MHz "classic" Pentium (without MMX) is priced at $85.
Intel has been aggressively trimming chips prices this year: Pentium II prices have dropped over 20 percent since the first quarter while Pentium MMX prices have dropped over 60 percent.
Presaging Intel's moves, Hewlett- Packard dropped prices on its Vectra line by up to 16 percent, bringing the price of a Vectra VE with a 166-MHz Pentium MMX chip to $958. A Kayak workstation with a 300-MHz Pentium II, on the other end of the spectrum, is now $2,955.
Gateway cut the price of a high-performance 300-MHz Pentium II system and a 19-inch monitor to under $3,000. The company is also selling a system with a 233-MHz Pentium II at $1,979.
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Mark, thanks for the insight. I didn't realize Phoenix had taught Microsoft and Intel a few tricks in the OS. It's really amazing how intertwined so many of the tech companies are.
If Intel is having some difficulty in accepting it's leadership, it certainly isn't from being reluctant to push the envelope and bring the fastest processor to the masses.
With this newest price reduction, I look for some amazing machines being sold for less than 2K in the very near future.
Michael |
