Intel cuts Core i7 950 . price in half

Intel has slashed the price of its Core i7 950 processor by nearly fifty percent. In addition, the American chip manufacturer has introduced six new processors. A hexacore Xeon processor is the fastest of the six.

The new price list for CPUs has been in effect since August 29. With a decrease of a thousand processors, the unit price of the Bloomfield-based quad-core Core i7 950 fell from 562 to 294 dollars. As a result, the price of the 3.06GHz ticking quad-core has decreased by 48 percent. The only other drop in the new price list is the price for the quad-core Xeon W3550, also ticking at 3.06GHz; that price was reduced by 24 percent from $387 to $294.

Intel introduced six new processors for September. The fastest of these is a hexacore Xeon. This W3670 does its job at 3.2GHz, has 12MB L2 cache and costs $885 at launch. For consumers, Intel introduced the Core i5 560. This dual-core with a clock speed of 3.33GHz should cost $138. That’s as much as the slower-clocked Core i5 550, which didn’t get a price cut.

The other CPU introductions are in the lower segment. Intel introduced two new Pentium dual cores. The E6800, clocked at 3.33GHz, costs $86 and the 3.0GHz E5700 costs $75. The dual-core Celeron E3500, clocked at 2.7GHz, costs $52. The latest introduction is the dual-core Atom N550, with a clock speed of 1.5GHz. This one costs $86.