Intel launches new budget quad-core and dual-core CPUs

Posted at: 5:34pm 3rd September 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

Core 2 Quad Q8200 and Core 2 Duo E5200 come in at the cheaper end of the scale, while AMD drops the price of many of its Phenom and Athlon chips

The launch of Core i7 is fast approaching, but Intel still sees plenty of potential in its 45nm Yorkfield and Wolfdale cores at the cheaper end of the scale, as it’s just surreptitiously released some new 45nm LGA775 CPUs, which can be seen on last Sunday’s price list.

One of the major new releases is the Core 2 Quad Q8200, which was first rumoured to be in development back in June. As we reported then, the chip has a 1,333MHz FSB, 4MB of Level 2 cache and a clock speed of 2.33GHz. Bizarrely, though, Intel has priced it at $224 US, placing it in between the Kentsfield-based Q6600 and Q6700, both of which have higher clock speeds and twice as much Level 2 cache, although they have a slower 1,066MHz FSB. The Q8200 is currently available for £158.50 inc VAT from Scan.

Meanwhile, in the dual-core world Intel has also just released the E5200, which is currently the cheapest Core 2 chip money can buy. It’s clocked at 2.5GHz with an 800MHz FSB, and it has 2MB of Level 2 cache. However, Intel is listing its price at $84 US, which is $29 cheaper than the next cheapest Core 2; the E4500. The UK retailers we’ve checked so far are listing the CPU as a part of the Pentium Dual-Core line, rather than a Core 2 as it is on the price list, although it has twice the amount of cache as previous Pentium Dual-Core CPUs. Scan currently has the chip listed for £54.92 inc VAT.

On Monday this week, AMD also announced that it was cutting the cost of many of its Phenom and Athlon CPUs, with the priceof a top-end Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition dropping massively from $235 US to $186, and the Athlon X2 5200+ dropping from $76 US to $68. The full list of AMD’s price cuts can be seen in the table below: