AMD drops Phenom II prices

Tit for tat

The problem with not having the overall performance leadership is that your pricing is essentially determined by that of the company that does.

This is the situation AMD has found itself in since the launch of Intel's Core 2 architecture. It has to be able to show at least parity when it comes to the price/performance of its CPUs and ideally, given Intel's stronger brand and greater commercial resources, superiority.

When we reviewed the Phenom II, we concluded the 940, which launched at $275, was better than the equivalently priced Intel Q9300. However, yesterday Intel dropped the price of the faster Q9400 to $213, instantly rendering the Phenom II 940 much less competitive.

So it came as no great surprise to see the 940 going for £187.44 inc VAT on Scan, where only last Friday it cost £220.73. Similarly the 920 is now £160.87, down from £189.74 on Friday.

Raj Suman of distributor Avnet confirmed that they're now offering the 940 and 920 to the trade at street prices of $235 and $199 respectively. He also confirmed that the Intel Q9400 is going for a street price of $230 to the trade.

We also spoke to Andrew Buxton, who heads up AMD's CPU channel in the UK, and he made it clear that he now believes that the Phenom II 940 now offers better price/performance than the Intel Q9550. The new price to distribution of the 940, said Buxton, is $219, while Intel's published price for the Q9550 is $266.

Incidentally, in our haste to inform you of the Intel price cuts yesterday, we omitted the news that it also launched some new CPUs. Among these are low power (65W vs 95W) Core 2 Quad parts, designated by an ‘s' after the model number. There's roughly a $100 premium on these over the full power models.

Here's a table showing all the new Intel CPUs.