AMD slashes Athlon prices in race with Intel

AMD today hoped to preempt Intel's anticipated late-July price cuts by making its own, touching on virtually all of the CPU maker's home processors. Most processors see cuts at about 25 percent, according to the company. The gaming-oriented 3GHz Athlon 64 FX-74 sees the biggest drop and declines from $799 to $599 in bulk; its mainstream equivalent Athlon 64 X2 6000+ drops a similar percentage to just $178. Low-end processors also see a reduction with the most basic, 1.8GHz Sempron 3200+ costing as little as $31.

While the chip lineup largely remains the same, particularly low-end, dual-core processors have also been replaced, says AMD. Both the Athlon 64 X2 3600+ and 3800+ swapping out in favor of the 2.1GHz Athlon 64 4000+ and 2.2GHz 4200+ at prices of $73 and $83 each. All the cuts take effect immediately but will have varying prices depending on the system builder or the reseller.