Intel plans to slash all Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad CPU prices again just 3 months after the previous drop on April 22. With a remarkable price cut of 50%, AMD is facing another harsh battle with Intel.

Following a $30 price cut for the PSP in the USA earlier this month, Sony has now officially reduced the price of the handheld across Europe. The price in the UK will be coming down from £149.99 to £129.99, with the rest of Europe having the price slashed from €199.99 to €169.99. This comes after months of Sony ruling out any price cuts, with the changes being effective from May 4th (a week on Friday). There have also been five new platinum titles launched for the console at £14.99 each - Ridge Racer 2, Tekken: Dark Resurrection, Killzone: Liberation, LocoRoco, and MotoGP. With the DS being sold for £99 in most retailers across the UK, this reduced price gap gives Sony a better chance of competing in the portable consoles' market.

techPowerUp! doesn't tend give much news attention to other site's reviews, other than listing them just under the date each day, but this is perhaps more interesting than most. Legit Reviews has posted an quite thorough comparison between the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ and the Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 when it comes to gaming - two very similarly priced processors at $184 and $185 respectively. The conclusion by the author is that when running games with AA and AF at normal resolutions, the performance difference it too hard to call, which is somewhat justified. However, when you look deeper into the benchmarks it becomes quite clear that, on two very similar systems, AMD's offering is certainly victorious in the majority of benchmarks, often by quite a noticeable margin (15+ frames per second). In fact, the Core 2 Duo only outperformed the X2 on two tests: it had 0.1 more FPS in Call of Duty 2 with 4 x AA and 16 x AF, and 1 FPS more in Quake 4. Although this test doesn't allow for overclocking potential, it would certainly suggest that AMD may still offer more bang for your buck when it comes to gaming with CPUs costing around $200 at stock speeds.

AMD has published price cuts for its desktop processor range with prices falling up to US$200 for high-end Athlon 64 FX-70 series processors. Several products have also been discontinued including the socket AM2-based Athlon 64 FX-64, and the socket 745-based Sempron 3400+ and 3000+. AMD's official website still shows processor pricing effective 20th February 2007, while DigiTimes has the new price cuts chart here.

In the second half of this year Intel plans to cut prices of its Viiv platform chipsets in order broaden its market presence. The ICH8-DH did cost round about 5 US$ in the first and only 3 US$ in the second quarter. Its upcoming successor, the ICH9-DH will start with a 1 US$ price tag - the tag will be almost more expensive itself then.
After all Intel got some serious competition with AMD's Live! solution and won't be as successful as with the Centrino platform motherboard makers think.

A Sony spokesperson confirmed to GamesInsdustry.biz that the price for Sony's PlayStation Portable Core package (includes a PSP, the battery and an AC adaptor) was cut to 169.99 US$. Last week the official retail price for the same bundle was 199.99 US$.
Asked for a similar European action the Sony Official said there is nothing like this planned yet.

Intel Price Cuts to Start on April 22nd

Intel plans to unveil significant price cuts on their current fleet of processors as they prepare to go to battle in the quad-core market. On April 22, Intel is slated to announce a 40 percent price cut on its current quad-core processors and significant drop on Core 2 Duos. As previously reported here, Intel plans price cuts on its Core 2 Duo E6300, E6400, E6420, E6000 and E6700 processors, and the reducaions will range from 20 percent on the low end to 40 percent on the high end. There's also a 40 percent reduction planned for the Q6600 processor. However, Intel's mobile Core Duo processors will be unaffected by the April 22 price drop and the company will continue to sell entry mainstream Core Duo processors like the T2300 for more than $200.

Toshiba, one of the major names in HD DVD, is planning to cut the price of all three of its HD DVD players next month. The top-end HDX-A2 will fall from $1,000 to $800, the mid-range HD-A20 will fall from $600 to $500 and the low-end HD-A2 will also fall $100 from $500 to $400. These prices cuts should take place at the start of next month, with Blu-ray already set to become much cheaper once Sony releases its new player later this year. HD DVD has fallen behind in sales with the release of the PS3 which brings Blu-ray to the market at a much more competitive price.

Intel will be releasing new Xeon models in Q3 this year. The quad core 5300 series will get a 3.0GHz part to take the lead from the current 2.66GHz model. The single processor line up will get a 2.66GHz part as well. Besides higher clocks the new models will remain identical to the current parts.

Additionally Prices for most Xeon models will be lowered in a very aggressive way, obviously to battle AMD's Barcelona chip. A quad core Xeon could be yours for just over $200 (1.6GHz model) in July. For a full list of new prices check out DailyTech.

DigiTimes compiled a comprehensive chart about the latest price cuts Intel is about to announce. The source of these information is an Economic Daily News report which states Intel was forced by AMD's new low-cost chipset RS690 to slash the prices earlier than planned. So it makes quite sense that only the remains of the Desktop NetBurst microarchitecture CPUs are affected:

As you may have noticed, RAM prices have dropped sharply over the past few months. Turns out that it's a good idea to "buy low, sell high", to quote a familiar stock market tip. The prices are only temporary, and as Vista really gets popular among consumers, and as prices get too low to compensate for manufacturing costs, manufacturers will simply raise prices again. Expect to see prices go back to "normal" during the second half of 2007. In the meantime, feel free to buy plenty of RAM while prices are still low and reasonable.

Although most will agree that the best value way to obtain a Blu-ray player is still to buy a PS3 (from as little as $499), Sony is planning a new Blu-ray player due for release this summer which will be cheaper than current stand alone player. The Blu-ray player offered by Sony at present is the BDP-S1, which retails at around $999 and is only attracting a very small number of customers. However, the new BDP-S300 will soon become the cheapest standalone Blu-ray player with a price tag of $599. According to Sony, the new player will offer the same features as the BDP-S1, along with the ability to play CDs as well as being more compact - about the same size as your average DVD player. This is still noticeably more expensive than the cheapest HD DVD players, which can be found for under $400, but it should help to further boost Blu-ray disk sales, which have already been helped by the PS3.

AMD has announced price cuts for its mid- and low-end Athlon 64 X2 processors. According to AMD's website, pricing for high-end Athlons, including the FX series, X2 5600+ and 5400+ remains unchanged, while the X2 5200+ saw a hefty cut from US$403 to US$295. The price of the single-core Athlon 64 3800+ also fell from US$108 to US$101, however, the price of the slower 3500+ remained unchanged. Prices for the lowest speed CPU, the Athlon 3200+ is no longer posted on AMD's website. Pricing for the lowest-end Sempron processors also fell with the 3200+ being reduced from US$67 to US$51, and the 3000+ (both 256KB and 128KB L2 cache versions) falling from US$56 to US$41 all in 1000-unit tray quantities. Click here to see the complete list of price changes.

Intel has released its newest addition to the Core 2 Duo family with the new low-end E4300. Running at 1.8GHz, this CPU has a frontside bus speed of 800MHz and a 2MB L2 cache, the first processor in the range without a 1,066MHz FSB. Although Intel hasn't provided any details yet itself, news of this processor was first released in November 2006 when it was leaked on the company roadmaps. Two more low-end Core 2 Duos are expected next quarter, the 1.6GHz E4200 and the 2GHz E4400, both with an 800MHz FSB. These new CPUs are aimed at lower performing systems with a tighter budget in mind - the E4300 should cost around $163.

AMD has cut prices on four ATI products earlier this week. The products affected by the price cut include AMD ATI Radeon X1950 XTX, ATI Radeon X1950 CrossFire Edition, ATI Radeon 9550 and TV Wonder 200 PCI. Under the new pricing AMD ATI Radeon X1950 XTX and ATI Radeon X1950 CrossFire Edition will drop to $429 from the previous $449 while the ATI Radeon 9550 will drop to $79. AMD TV Wonder 200 PCI will drop down to $49. This is distributor pricing and only affects built by ATI products. It is unknown how the price cuts will affect retail pricing from local and online resellers. Other ATI products such as the Radeon X1950 Pro, X1650 Pro, TV Wonder 650 are unaffected.