Intel Cuts Price on Core 2 Quad Chips

Chip maker Intel quietly slashed the prices of several of its desktop processors, including its Core 2 Quad chips, over the weekend. Prices on other product lines were lowered as well, some by up to 48 percent. The cuts lower the premiums on some chips to within 15 percent of rival Advanced Micro Devices' products.

Core 2 Duo and Pentium processor prices were also reduced, but one of the largest price cuts was reserved for the Core 2 Quad CPU, the Q9650, which lost 40 percent of its price. It now lists for $316. The price of the company's lowest-priced processor, the Core 2 Quad Q8200, was reduced to $163. Intel's mobile Celeron 570 processor received the biggest price slash, dropping 48 percent to $70 from $134.

The single-processor line of Xeon family also received cuts, with a 40 percent discount offered for the 3.0GHz, 12MB Level 2 cache X3370, now priced at $316. The Intel Core 2 Duo and Intel Pentium Dual Core chips, both part of the company's entry-level product lineup, also received cuts. Intel's E1400 Celeron Dual Core processor received a 19 percent cut, dropping the price to $43 from $53. The full list is available here.

The news comes on the heels of Intel's disheartening fourth-quarter report last Friday, which recorded a 19 percent revenue dip and a stunning 90 percent plunge in profit. The company posted a net income of $234 million. On a conference call, Intel executives predicted the rough economic climate would continue to negatively influence demand in the near future, predicting about $7 billion in first-quarter sales.