Intel’s next 3 price cuts   Posted on 17/10/2008 at 13:46 by Marc

	VR-Zone has published the list of Intel prices up to January 18, 2009. Included is of course the price cut planned for next weekend for the Q8200, Q6600, E7400, E7300, E2220 and E2200. But Intel is also planning a cut on November 30. The Q8300, a Penryn quad core at 2.5 GHz, will also come on the market at $224. This Penryn is exactly the same as the Q9300 ($266) except for a cache of 4 MB rather than 6. Also coming on sale are the Pentium E5300 (2.6 GHz, $86) and Celeron E1500 (2.2 GHz, $53) as well as the Core 2 E7400 (2.8 GHz, $133) which will result in a price cut for the E7300 from $133 to $113, which is the current price of the E7200. The next price cut is planned for January 18. The arrival of an E7500 (2.93 GHz, $133) means the E7400 will be cut from $133 to $113. The E5200, E2220 and the Celeron E1400 will also have their prices readjusted. As you can see, the cut only concerns the entry-level part of the range. Due to lack of competition, Intel has no need, nor is it in their interest to reduce the prices of processors in the Q9000 or E8000 range. A damn shame, we say!

Intel’s Ibex Peak will be known as the P55   Posted on 17/10/2008 at 13:37 by Marc - source: VR-Zone

	Intel’s Ibex Peak chipset will be marketed as the P55. Programmed for the third quarter in 2009, it is, you’ll remember, for the LGA1160 platform. As these are Lynnfield processors which have all the features previously associated with Northbridge, such as the memory controller (double channel DDR3) or the PCI Express controller (16 channels configurable in 2x8 or 1x16), there will be just one chip with all the features of the ICH. Compared with the ICH10, it supports 8 rather than 6 PCI-E x1 Ports, and retains 6 SATA and 12 USB 2.0 ports and a Gigabit Ethernet interface. The interconnect between CPU and P55 is still on the good old DMI bus, the bandwidth requirements being lower. The Core i7 / X58 will however be on the new QPI, but here the PCI-Express lines reserved for graphics cards are at the same level as the chipset, which is the reason for higher bandwidth requirements.

Better figures at AMD; much better at ATI   Posted on 17/10/2008 at 10:51 by Marc

	AMD has announced a turnover of USD 1.776 billion for the third quarter, which is a 32% rise on the previous quarter and 14% year on year. It should however be noted that these results are partly due to the sale of a manufacturing procedures license that AMD sold for USD 191 million. AMD has announced a net loss of only USD 67 million for the quarter, much improved on previous quarters: USD 1.189 billion for the last quarter (!) and 396 million a year ago. The graphics division is doing very well with a turnover of USD 385 million and an operating profit of 47 million. Last quarter, ATI had a turnover of 248 million compared to 275 a year earlier. The processor/chipset arm is also posting improving figures with a turnover of 1391 billion and an operating profit of 143 million, compared to a turnover of 1101 million in the second quarter and 1283 million in the third quarter of 2007. These good figures should nevertheless be seen in the context of the license sale because the 191 million revenue from that is included in the figures for the processor division. If we discount the license sale, figures are in fact down on last year.

Athlon X2 7750 and 7550   Posted on 16/10/2008 at 14:38 by Marc

	AMD seems to have abandoned its previous plans for the Kuma, its dual core CPU based on K10 architecture. Expreview, who had already been able to get their hands on a sample CPU a month and a half ago, has reported that these CPUs are now likely to be on the market by the first quarter of 2009. Apparently two models are to be launched, the Athlon X2 7750 and 7550, clocked at 2.7 and 2.5 GHz respectively. Like the Phenom X3 and X4, they will have a 2MB L3 cache and will support DDR2-1066, with TDP fixed at 95W. Lets see if these plans don’t change yet again between now and January...

Intel’s road paved in gold   Posted on 15/10/2008 at 12:05 by Marc

	Intel has just announced a record third quarter income of 10.2 billion dollars for net profits of 2 billion and operating profits of 3.1 billion. Compared to the third quarter of 2007, Intel recorded a 1% increase in revenue, 44% in operating profits and had 12% higher net profits. The company specifies that it had record sales in terms of units sold for processors as well as chipsets while revenue from the Atom platform was 200 million dollars. Overall, the average sales price of processors is falling if we include the Atom but it remains stable if it is excluded. Gross profits increased again and are 51.2% higher than the same period last year or 55.4% higher than the previous quarter to attain 58.9%. Let’s hope AMD can make it back on top!