Intel Corporation today lowered the prices on the desktop family of Pentium 4 and Celeron microprocessors. The reduction was not so aggressive as the company initially planned and even published the lower prices on Intc.com web-site.

Intel Pentium 4 Pricing, effective November 10, 2002
Model	New Price	Price Cut (%)
Pentium 4 3.06GHz	$637	-
Pentium 4 2.80GHz	$401	21%
Pentium 4 2.66GHz	$305	24%
Pentium 4 2.60GHz	$305	24%
Pentium 4 2.53GHz	$243	-
Pentium 4 2.50GHz	$243	-
Pentium 4 2.40GHz	$193	-
Pentium 4 2.26GHz	$193	-
Pentium 4 2.20GHz	$193	-
Intel Celeron 4 Pricing, effective November 10, 2002
Celeron 2.20GHz	$103	-
Celeron 2.10GHz	$89	-
Celeron 2.0GHz	$83	19%
Celeron 1.80GHz	$69	17%
Celeron 1.70GHz	$54	22%
Celeron 1.40GHz	$54	27%

The Pentium 4 3.06GHz, as well as Celeron 2.10 and 2.20GHz processors will only be unveiled later this month and the prices we mention at the moment are preliminary and may be changed without notice from Intel.

Basically, Intel does not need to lower the prices more significantly these days since AMD currently cannot provide a lot of high-end chips and only offers the Athlon XP 2400+ and 2200+ in mass quantities, meanwhile Intel has been selling its high-end Pentium 4 2.80GHz CPUs for almost three month already. Intel does not currently offer the Pentium 2.0GHz chips in the official price-list, as a result, the Athlon XP 2000+ only competes with the Celeron 2.0GHz in terms of price and performance, hence, there is almost no sense for the Number One processor maker to reduce the costs of the Pentium 4 2.20 and 2.40GHz, especially keeping in mind AMD’s inability to fulfil the demand on Athlon XP 2400+ chips. When later this year, or in early 2003, AMD will offer the Athlon XP 2700+ and 2800+ processors in substantial quantities all around the world, Intel will definitely lower its current prices on the CPUs as well. At the moment AMD only supplies its Athlon XP 2600+ and 2700+ to Asia and Europe in limited quantities only and the microprocessor giant has nothing to fear.

Intel’s arch-rival will change its processor pricing later this week as well. The Athlon XP 2200+ chip will cost a little bit more than $100, while the Athlon XP 1600+, 1700+, 1800+, 1900+, 2000+ and 2100+ CPUs will cost less than $100, according to DigiTimes.