AMD readies price cuts, Opteron, Clawhammer intros

SOURCES CLOSE to AMD's plans in Europe say the firm has big pricing moves and product releases set for the end of this month - July 28th.

And some details have emerged of its plans for the Athlon 64, also known as the Clawhammer in times of yore. Some surprises here, but first the price cuts.

AMD will use the 28th of July date to make price changes on its Athlon MP (multiprocessing CPUs), and will also cut prices on Opterons as well as releasing new models.

These moves, in part is prompted by the Xeon price cuts and the introduction of a 1MB Xeon cache, still slated for the 13th of July, according to our information.

The prices are for CPUs in trays, rather than the boxed versions sold through Avnet, AMD's master distributor.

On the 28th, AMD will price the MP 2800+ at $220, the MP2600+ at $170, the MP 2400+ at $125 and the MP 2200+ at $113. The MP 2000+ will fade into the memory, it's being "EOLed" (end of lined).

The uniprocessor socket 940 Opteron 144 will cost $650, the 142 $427, and the 140 $220.

Meanwhile, the Opteron 244 will be priced at $670, the 242 at $440, and the 240 at $250.

The new Opteron 246 will cost $767 at its launch.

Prices for the Opteron 800 series are $2050 for the 844, $1250 for the 842 and $730 for the 840, according to the normally reliable sources.

More intriguingly, while AMD will introduce its Athlon 64 in September, so meeting its promise, the first iteration appears to be a 940 pin socket, according to our information. That will quickly shift to a 939 pin Athlon 64 and AMD will released its "value family" of Athlon 64s with 512K of level two cache and using the more widely expected Socket 754. It hasn't set prices on these introductions yet. µ

See Also
AMD confirms INQ's Opteron model labelling scoop
Opteron launch plans revealed
How AMD will sell Opterons against Intel chips
AMD accidentally leaks info about 246 launch
Intel set to cut Xeon prices by a third, launch 1MB cache unit
AMD's Opteron. Does it measure up?