I would wait a few weeks. Skuzzy made a post Intel is dropping prices on processors. The price reduction probably will not reach retail for a few weeks.
LA TIMES writes:
Intel Corp., the world's biggest maker of semiconductors, cut the price of some processors by as much as 48% as it confronts slumping demand and new lower-cost chips from Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
The price of the Celeron 570 processor, designed for laptops, dropped 48% to $70, Intel said Monday. One of the company's quad-core desktop-computer models, which have four processors on one piece of silicon, dropped 40% to $316. Intel kept the price of its three most expensive desktop chips unchanged.
The shrinking economy is crimping personal-computer orders, creating a glut of processors. The Santa Clara, Calif., company, mired in its worst slowdown since 2001, also faces mounting competition from AMD, which introduced chips this month at half the price of comparable Intel products. Still, the price cuts aren't a reaction to that, Intel said.
"These changes are part of our regularly scheduled price moves," spokesman George Alfs said. "Intel has been bringing higher and higher performance to a range of price points over many years."
AMD's two new Phenom II processors, unveiled Jan. 8, are the highest-performing products ever produced by the Sunnyvale, Calif., company. Outfitted with more memory and four processors, the chips sell for $235 and $275.
Intel also announced new chips Monday for "massive-compute" jobs. Those products, which have four processing cores, are designed to enable desktop computers to handle heavy-duty data crunching.
Yea right they aren't cutting prices due to AMD Phenom II release. Get real. If this is true they have been overcharging. I would bet HP, Compaq and Dell are making orders on the Phenom II as we speak and Intel is feeling the pressure at lower cost chips.
PC WORLD via Yahoo writes:
Intel on Monday announced price cuts across a wide range of chips used in mobile and desktop PCs, including cuts of up to 40 percent for its quad-core chips.
Intel's Core 2 Quad Q9650 processors are now priced at US$316, a 40 percent drop from December. Other Core 2 Quad chip prices were cut between 16 percent and 20 percent. The quad-core chips are used in high-end desktops like gaming systems.
Intel's move could be a response to increasing price pressure exerted by rival Advanced Micro Devices, which recently announced the Phenom II quad-core chips for high-end desktops. AMD has priced its Phenom II quad-core chips between $235 and $275.
Intel also cut prices of its Xeon chips for servers and Celeron processors for mobile devices by up to 48 percent. The quad-core Xeon 3370 is now priced at $316, a 40 percent drop from December, while the Celeron 570 chip was cut by 48 percent from $134 to $70.
Amid the price drops, Intel also introduced three power-efficient quad-core chips with the "s" moniker. The Core 2 Quad Q9550s processor includes 12MB of L2 cache, runs at 2.83GHz and draws 65 watts of power. The chips are priced at $369. The chip is power-efficient version of the Core 2 Quad Q9550 chip, which draws 95 watts of power.
Intel also introduced the Core 2 Quad Q9400s processor, which runs at 2.66GHz, and the Core 2 Quad Q8200s, which runs at 2.33GHz. This chips are priced at $320 and $245 respectively.
40% drop uggh, they have been rippin yall off! Intel's margins must be huge at up to 40% price reductions.
If you are looking to get the price much lower, go AMD PHENOM II, they got great reviews. For $235, the Phenom II 940 outperformed the Q9400 . It was slower in some components of WorldBench, including WinZip and Photoshop, which lowered its overall score a bit up to the Q9400. In some benchmarks it was close to the Q9650. AMD just reduced price on the Phenom II 940 from $275 to $235 and the Phenom II 920 from $235 to $195!
I know Tildeath will be all over me(With all due respect). The Intel's have more overclocking power but these new AMD processors are priced right and perform well. They performed at or above all Intels up to the Q9400. I am talking Quad core.
The Intel core i7 series continues to be the leader. If you are prepared to spend that much money, wait for the Intel price reductions and look into the core i7 series. If you are looking at raw performance, the i7 920 looks attractive but remember the motherboard(cheapest around $200) and DDR3 will cost more. Hold off a short time and see where the "chips" fall! The price gap may not be as great as your build shortly. It may even be less than the prices you posted and may be within your personal budget.
You guys will get a kick out of this:
