AMD's CPU price cuts go live

This news isn't AMD's biggest of the day, but it will shake up the desktop market more significantly in the near term than any acquisition. AMD has promised for months that it would be dropping prices on its desktop CPUs, and today it finally made the new pricing public. You can see the full breakdown on , but our list below calls out what we think are the most significant numbers.



We don't think these prices will really do much to salvage the outlook for AMD over the next few months. Our review of the Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 showed that it's faster and more efficient than the Athlon 64 FX-62, and there's still a $300 price gap in Intel's favor. What could still be interesting, though, is the price/performance comparison on the lower end. We're trying to get our hands on both Intel's remaining Core 2 Duo chips, as well as AMD's Energy Efficient Athlons, where power consumption will have as much weight as benchmark scores in determining the overall value. But for the high-end at least, Intel doesn't need to worry.