Intel Prescott's pricing strategy

AS WE GO to press today, Prescott is due to launch, barring a catastrophe, and below we tabulate the expected prices for the Pentium 4 microprocessors, based on the latest roadmaps show to the INQUIRER by Intel customers.

There are some important things to note here. Intel's short term strategy is to displace existing Northwood cores with Prescott cores, but late last week we were being told that even mighty distributors like Ingram Micro weren't able to supply all the speed grades that will displace the old ones.

If Intel launches its 3.4GHz Pentium 4 with 2MB L3 cache at the same time as the Prescott, we believe that's something of a smokescreen. Note that this is ultimately based on the Xeon MP "Gallatin" core, and this chip won't be available in quantity. Even though it's being positioned as an "extreme gaming" chip, its price indicates that it's not in the mainstream.

You will also note the future grades of 3.6GHz and 3.8GHz Prescott Pentium 4s are to be launched in an indeterminate future. These are likely to use the LGA 775 socket, and later this year these sockets will displace the existing 478 pin socket that Pentium 4s currently use.

The pricing on the chips is aggressive - note the $640 or so Intel normally charges for its top end desktop processor, appears to be missing from the current menu, although that pricing level is being re-instated later in the year.

How important is that top whack desktop price to Intel's revenues? Perhaps it hopes that sales of the Pentium 4 "XE" will go some way to make up for the deficit. µ

Chip	February	Launch	Launch	Launch	Bus/Cache
P4PXE 3.4		$1000			800/2MB
P4PXE 3.2	$925				800/2MB
P4P3.8*				$640	800/1MB
P4P3.6*			$640		800/1MB
P4P3.4E*		$415			800/1MB
P4P3.4*	$415				800/512K
P4P3.2E*	$275				800/1MB
P4P3.2*	$275				800/512K
P4P3.0E*	$220				800/1MB
P4P3.0*	$220				800/512K
P4P3.06*	$220				533/512K
P4P2.8E*	$178				800/1MB
P4P2.8*	$178				800/512K
P4P2.8A	$165				533/1MB
P4P2.8	$165				533/512K