According to Information week, AMD and Intel have cut their prices on their processor platforms, anywhere from 10 to 30 percent on some models, such as the Centrino and Athlon64 X2 dual-core chips. This is interesting news, considering that there is a lawsuit in Federal Court in Deleware, where Intel and AMD are going at it legally concerning improper actions in the marketplace.
As people in the industry are aware, CPU speeds have not increased greatly over the 3.5 GHz levels, and attention has turned to side technologies, such as cache levels, the depth of the instruction pipeline, direct memory accessing, and power (heat) concerns. Generally, the faster the CPU chip operates, the more power it draws, and the more heat it generates. While it may be fine and cool to install a water radiator on a desktop system, laptops cannot dissapate the heat fast enough.
Also, we need to consider the computer's subsystems with the CPU. Remember that the CPU operates at one clock rate, and the rest of the system boards, such as the PCI bus and the serial ports, often run at different clock rates. They do this to save cost -- no one needs a Parallel Port operating at 3.5 GHz... the connecting technology could never keep up at that speed, so why provide it?
I do not think that AMD is out to become the low-cost leader of the manufactures though. Ideally, the company will continue to to offer high-power chips, along with midrange, and low cost solutions. While some solutions out there require the fastest-bestest, a great many other solutions will work just fine with a mid-range hardware configuration
I hope that the prices do continue to fall. While I understand that recoveries on investments need to be made for Intel and AMD, I also like the idea of getting my hands on some new hardware, and seeing what it can do.
Christian