AMD shakes up processor prices

By Alun Williams

Posted on 30 May 2002 at 15:35

Following in the wake of Intel's pricing move, AMD makes cuts of up to 52 per cent for its mobile and desktop processors.

As with the Intel changes, the high-end mobile processors see the largest reduction. At the start of the week Intel cut prices for the 1.7GHz Mobile Pentium 4-M by 53 per cent and AMD has now cut the top of the range Mobile Athlon XP 1700+ by 52 per cent, from $489 to $235. Other Mobile Athlon XP cuts are: the 1600+ halved to $192, the 1500+ down 30 per cent to $175 and the 1400+ down 21 per cent to $150.

On the desktop side of things, processor prices are cut by up to a third. The Athlon XP 2100+ is now priced at $224, a fall of 32 per cent, the 2000+ is $193, a decrease of 31 per cent and the 1900+ falls 22 per cent to $160. The 1800+ and 1700+ see a cut of 10 per cent with the 1600+ remaining unchanged at $130.

AMD's processor for budget systems, the Duron, sees cuts of around 15 per cent for the desktop offerings. Processors clocked at 1.3 and 1.2GHz are now priced at $72 and $68. For Mobile Durons, those clocked at 1.2, 1.1 and 1GHz are priced at $120, $89, and $69 respectively.

To complete the picture - on the server side - the Athlon MP 2000+ processor sees a cut of 20 per cent, while the Athlon MP 1900+ and 1800+ fall 10 per cent

Consumers should see the benefit of lower priced systems as these changes are fed through to computer manufacturers.

Pricing is based per chip on 1,000 unit batches of the processors.

As with Intel the price changes are to help make way for forthcoming higher-end processor releases. At the other end of the scale, AMD desktop Durons clocked at 1.0 and 1.1GHz have now fallen off the price list.