The processor price war in the second half may erupt early with AMD's most recent release of its Athlon XP 2400+ and 2600+ processors on top of Intel's scheduled launch of its new 2.8GHz Pentium 4 processor and its impending price cuts on September 1.
AMD on Wednesday officially introduced its latest processors, the Athlon XP 2400+ and 2600+, both manufactured on the high-end 0.13-micron process. Although AMD may still be comparatively slower than Intel in transferring production to 0.13-micron technology and in raising its products' actual working speed, the two new processors nevertheless mark the company's first step in pushing its processors' speed up to 2GHz.
With processor speed standards for entry-level desktop PCs shooting above 2GHz in the second half, AMD's rollout of its two high-end products is expected to help maintain its market competitiveness.
Still, the company is continuing to face fierce competition from Intel in both performance and prices. The chip giant reportedly plans to launch three faster P4 processors, running at clock speeds of 2.6GHz, 2.66GHz and 2.8GHz, respectively, in late August, and to slash prices for its 2.5GHz and 2.53GHz products from US$637 to US$243, making them even cheaper than the Athlon XP 2600+'s quote of US$297.
In the fourth quarter, Intel will push its processor speed further up to over 3GHz.
Despite the two companies' aggressive efforts to raise processor speeds, experience from the first half indicate that faster speeds may not do much to stimulate overall buying sentiment.

Source: DigiTimes

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