Intel's Q6700 Core 2 Quad processor was being sold for $530 until today, when the price dropped 50% to $266. The price of the Intel X3230 processor was also cut in half, and a series of Core 2 Duo and other Xeon chips are now over 30% cheaper. The cheapest processor still in production - the Celeron 430 - dropped 23% to a low $34.

This is bringing in more bad news for AMD, which has been facing serious drops in sales with 5 continous quarters of losses and still in debt from the acquisition of ATI. The quad-core chips offered by Intel now have a similar price to AMD's recently announced triple-core CPUs, thus forcing AMD to cut its prices or face the current trend of poor sales.

Intel did not specify any reasons for the dramatic price cuts, saying it's only a seasonal pricing adjustment done every April, and that they are trying to make way for the new 45 nm processors. Analysts also agree that it's common for Intel to cut prices this time of year, but are suprised by the dramatic amount and the number of chips affected.

The following list shows Intel's most significant price cuts, but not the complete list: