Intel Core Duo Price Drops in May?

[ffakr]

merom price differential

Yes, Intel has been pushing prices down aggressively to fight AMD. They seem to have been pricing their dual-core P4 chips lower than anyone suspected too.

I don't see this as being about how cheap Merom will be though. It's about what price Core Duo will fall to. It's also about supply chain and market perceptions.

I understand the point about the Core Duo in the Macbook but in reality.. the price differential between a low end core duo and a core solo isn't as large as the difference in the Core Duo line between the low end and the top tier parts. In other words, there wouldn't be that much of a difference in price and it positions the recently released macbook to be the younger sibling of a revised Core2 MacBook Pro. I'm looking at it as leapfrog. If the macbook and the macbook pro had been released simultaneously we'd have likely seen the core solo in the macbook. Since it came out just recently, the duo made more sense.

JMHO of course. I think there is an economical reason for a yonah and a conroe but there is also a marketing issue. There is a balancing act between making a new product obsolete proof to have enough value and putting in too much or too little cpu. With Intel pushing the release schedules, Apple may have decided to go dual core 32bit on the low end if only because they didn't want the macbook to look hopelessly out of date in 3 months. Apple certainly doesn't have a history of frequent product line changes.

 

[manic]

I think the macbooks would look relatively underpowered to dells and the like if they werent fitted with the merom. Apple is not going to push their prices down. Theyve been pretty clear theyre comfortable with the current spec difference between the MB and MBP. Graphics pros are going to stick with the Pro. Macbooks are for students/ home and small business users. Im seriously in line for a macbook, but I can imagine thousands probably going with a similarly priced dell if they were available with merom.

My point is, keeping the distance between MBs and MBPs doesnt seem enough reason for apple to cripple its consumer notebook. And it would be the only reason, given that the core2duos can fit in the same socket its been used today and that prices are the same.

its just not like apple.

 

[ffakr]

true market parity

The 'dell angle' is a good point. I had honestly not considered that which is depressing because it's so obvious in retrospect.
Apple has real parity with other vendors now so they can't fudge the performance figures on the hardware side.

I don't think this is an indication that Apple will drop Core Duo. Perhaps I've missed it but I didn't see any indication that Merom will kill off the Core processor line. I was under the impression that Core Solo and Core Duo will continue. They'll likely become the new Celeron.
I'd be shocked if Intel killed off a perfectly good product line because something better came along just months after release.. especially since they'll get a significantly larger yield per wafer on Core compared to Core2. The increased logic will be nothing compared to the space used by doubling the L2. Core will just be cheaper to make and it will still be plenty fast for a long time.
Seriously, a Core Duo machine in a laptop with integrated graphics is very computational heavy. If we're talking about the value side of computing, Dell is certainly going to keep Core even if it only saves a few dollars per unit because that's Dell's business model.. make money in the pennies per component.

Unless Intel is planning to kill Core Solo and Core Duo when Core 2 comes out.. there's no chance they'll stop making Core laptops. This will eventually become the chip for the $499 laptop specials in the Small Business Store.

 

[manic]

youre right that core duos wont be phased out immediatly and that they will surely drop in price. Maybe youre surprised that intel would do such a thing (cannibalize its core duo line), but remember, its otellini now.

Just read yesterday in cnn/money that he said, in a meeting with analysts, that woodcrest will be out in june, conroe in july and merom in august, stating it was very ambitious programme. they want to show a clear reaction to amd because analysts have been hammering them pretty bad lately. it really benefits us in the end.

And remember. you just said it youself: dells business model is to make pennies. apples is not. they charge a serious premium for computers that are beyond their direct competitors.

anyway, were just guessing here. perhaps apple will keep the macbooks wth core duo and drop their prices, but i think they probably offer a high end merom MB because they know people will hold back from buying if meroms are available and the macbooks are only available with yonahs.

 

[manic]

this is just out today. Meroms will come in 2MB and 4MB L2 cache flavors. Perhaps the low white macbook will be fitted with the 1.83 part with 2MB and the Black high with the 2 (upgradable to 2.16) 4MB part. Macbook Pros would then be fitted with the (much) more expensive 2.16 and 2.33 parts.

remember that theses chips are much more efficient per clock than were the P4s, so a 166Mhz bump is not as shabby as it would have been on the P4s, let alone a 333mhz one.