Intel has several rounds of price cuts and new processor introductions lined up for April, May, and July, according to DigiTimes. The site has used its sources at motherboard manufacturers to amass a detailed list of the incoming changes.
The first set will come on April 19. That's when Intel will roll out a $183 Core 2 Quad Q8400 clocked at 2.66GHz, hand-in-hand with a lower-power Q8400S version. Price cuts will come, too, but don't get too excitedâ€â€DigiTimes says they'll only apply to the now long-in-the-tooth Core 2 Quad Q9300 and low-power derivatives of current Core 2 Quads. These "S" models have 65W power envelopes, down from 95W on the regular quads.
On May 31, DigiTimes claims Intel will follow up with a 3.33GHz Core i7-975 and 3.06GHz Core i7-950 priced at a respective $999 and $562. At the low end, you can look forward to a $133 Core 2 Duo E7600 and a couple of new sub-$100 chips. Interestingly, the list of cuts doesn't mention any changes to current Core i7s, even though the two aforementioned chips will purportedly have the same prices as the existing i7-965 and i7-940. Maybe Intel will just swap them out.
Finally, on July 19, rumor has it the chipmaker will bring the Core 2 Quad Q8300 to $163, drag the Core 2 Duo E7500 to $113, and apply $10 price cuts to a couple of 45nm Pentiums and a dual-core Celeron. Nothing particularly groundbreaking there, perhaps, but the Pentium cuts could put some pressure on AMD. Then again, the rumor mill hints AMD will have some 45nm Athlon X2s ready the month before.
