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Planning on building that new gaming rig? Here’s some good news. Putting pressure on rival chip-maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Intel has surprisingly halved the prices on its Core 2 Quad Q6700 (from $530 to $266) and Quad-Core Xeon X3230 (from $530 to $266). Overall, fourteen processors experienced a price cut, ranging from 12% to 50% off. Other CPUs with slashed prices include the Core 2 Quad Q6600 (from $266 to $244), Core 2 Duo E6850 (from $266 to $183), Dual-Core Xeon 3085 (from $366 to $188), Celeron 560 (from $134 to $107) and more. All prices reflect 1,000 unit shipments. The reason for the discounted prices is Intel’s transition from their 65nm to 45nm process. All of the chips on sale are based off of the old 65nm technology. AMD announced its plans to begin shipping their 45nm chips in fourth quarter 2008, which puts them one year behind Intel, who began selling their 45nm CPUs back in November 2007.

Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc. noted:

“Intel blankets the market from high end to low end, with multiple choices at almost every price point—each competitive with AMD on either performance or price or both. They’re making sure they have a compelling price and/or performance value proposition in every segment where they compete with AMD. In short, it isn’t getting any easier to compete with Intel.”

Read [Computerworld]