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Originally Posted by Cid Highwind
Budget as well? Does this also go for mainstream consumers who don't overclock? I know that all those Pentium Dual Cores (e2xxx) aren't faster than the old X2 from AMD at stock speeds, but has Intel went as low with the prices to push AMD out of the market there as well?  |
Unfortunately, yes. E2180 for $70 has been spotted in Vietnam, and performance of that chip versus the Athlon64 X2 4400+ is... about on par, but the E2180 obviously has a lot of potential.
It's a matter of the even lower-end markets now, and Celeron 4xx series are beating the Athlon64 LE-16xx series. I guess it all boils down to Celeron E1xxx and Athlon64 X2 "budget edition" now.
Edit: And maybe the price drops on older Intel processors are due to the appearance of these budget 45nm processors, the E7xxx series. They are priced almost at the E6300 level (on par with E4500, E4700 processors) and run at clocks that are much more insane. I'd bet anything that those will be very widely used for PS2 emulation once the dusts have settled in July... or maybe August.