As you may notice, there will be no significant price reductions and moreover, according to the current plans, the prices will not collapse by the end of the first quarter despite of the fact that Intel plans to launch its powerful Springdale family of chipsets in the second quarter 2003. It is quite strange, because the Santa Clara, California-based CPU maker will make a lot of efforts in order to promote the Springdale series of its chipsets, what cannot be done without leaping the price on the previous core-logic products. At least, Intel will not be able to rapidly penetrate the market with the novelty.

Intel’s Springdale PE and CanterWood chipsets will support 800MHz processor bus as well as dual-channel DDR400 memory that will be called as PC3200 by then. The Springdale PE is to substitute the current i850E (and possibly E7205) on the high-end platforms, hence, it should not be a lot more expensive compared to the i850E, about $45, I’d bet. There are two more versions of the Springdale planned, the Springdale-P, a core-logic for not expensive computers with 400/533MHz PSB support, and the Springdale-G that also incorporates a graphics core and supports 400/533MHz Quad Pumped Bus. Both chipsets will bring dual-channel memory support into mainstream market and maybe also the ICH5, along with Serial ATA-150. Given the presence of graphics core in the Springdale-G, I believe the latter will cost a bit less than $40, while its discrete brethren will be priced at a bit more than $30. The CanterWood is targeted at workstations and entry-level servers, hence, it may cost from $55 to $65, I think.

In short, although there is a slight chance that on the 30th of March Intel may reduce the prices a bit more than it is currently stated, the whole picture of the core-logic market in Spring 2003 from Intel’s point should be now more or less clear.