Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 Preview from Taiwan

Final Words: Conroe Availability and Pricing

While Intel's Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme processors will be released at the beginning of Q3 of this year it will take some time for all of Intel's shipments to be Conroe based.  The scary statistic is that by the end of this year, only 25% of Intel's Performance Mainstream desktop processor shipments will be based on Conroe.  The remaining 75% will still be NetBurst based, meaning they will be Pentium 4, Pentium D and Pentium Extreme Edition. 

Given how competitive Core 2 Extreme is with the Athlon 64 FX-62, you would expect no one to want to purchase a NetBurst based processor if they can get a Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Extreme for a competitive price.  Intel does have a plan to deal with the over availability of undesirable Pentium Ds and limited supply of Conroes; Intel would do what anyone would do if you're trying to move a lot of undesirable product: cut the price.

By the time Conroe ships, Intel's Conroe and Pentium D pricing will be as follows:

While the Pentium D has never been as attractive as AMD's Athlon 64 X2, at these prices some of them may be difficult to resist.  The $93 Pentium D 805 will be particularly hard to ignore, when was the last time you could build a solid two processor workstation for a few hundred dollars? 

The Pentium D 805 aside, the rest of the Pentium D line becomes extremely attractive after these price cuts take place, especially when you consider that AMD's cheapest dual core offering is still hovering around the $300 mark. 

Intel's price cuts are very aggressive, to the point that they are the talk of the town in Taiwan.  Every single motherboard manufacturer we met with asked us about Intel's price cuts and, more importantly, how AMD would respond.  We've been told that AMD will respond with a series of price cuts of its own, the questions when and how much remain unanswered.  Next week, in Taipei, AMD will be speaking with many motherboard manufacturers about its response to Intel's threat. 

Despite the lower pricing on the Pentium Ds, it's not like Conroe ends up being all that expensive.  The entry level E6300 and E6400 chips are both priced at $183 and $224, respectively, which is far from high.  As attractive as the Pentium D's pricing may be, Conroe's performance and lower power consumption may still end up driving more demand than there is supply. 

For the Dells of the world, Conroe availability shouldn't be too much of an issue because companies like Dell get first dibs.  For years of not going with AMD, all while demanding something more competitive from Intel, you better believe that Dell is going to soak up every last Conroe that it can. 

The problem then becomes what happens after Dell and HP have eaten their lunch, unfortunately the concern is that aggressive pricing won't be enough to reduce retail demand for Conroe.  What we're worried about happening is a very small supply of Conroes on the retail market in late Q3/early Q4, resulting in much higher street prices than what you see in the table above.  In the worst case scenario for Intel, Conroe's limited retail availability could result in a price to performance ratio equal to or worse than AMD's Athlon 64 X2. 

The benchmarks we've seen show Conroe as a very strong competitor to the Athlon 64 X2, availability could be what limits how much lost ground Intel can regain before AMD has a chance to respond with K8L. 

While performance here is extremely strong, we also haven't even touched on the overclockability of Conroe; from what we've seen, hitting above 3.5GHz on the highest end parts isn't too far fetched on air cooling alone. The absolute highest we've seen on air is 3.8GHz from a Core 2 Extreme X6800 processor. By the time Conroe officially launches, we'll be able to provide a full set of performance tests but so far we're seeing even more data to support the idea that Intel really has a winner on its hands.