Something important to mention with the evolution of modern cpu prices are the price wars we saw between AMD/Intel that began in 2006. AMD had the performance advantage in early 2006 with it's Athlon X2 line and Intels Pentium D just didn't match up very well. When Intel launched Core2, it gave much better performance than AMD's Athlon X2, and they even sold it at a lower price point. This forced AMD to drop prices, and they continued to go back and forth with new price cuts. Now today, AMD still can't match the top performance, so they offer more at lower price points than Intel.