Intel will cut prices of its CPUs (opens in new tab)in the second half of the year in order to defend its market position, DigiTimes (opens in new tab) reported today citing unnmaed "PC makers" as its sources.
Intel has historically kept price cuts to a minimum. Over the last two years, however, that's changed, with some thanks due to the aggressive competition from AMD.
The most shocking of these price cuts was in October, when Intel announced the Cascade Lake-X CPUs with up to a 50% price cut (opens in new tab) immediately at launch. The move was thought to be an attempt to battle AMD's Ryzen 9 3950X (opens in new tab), which brought 16-cores (opens in new tab)and 32-threads to the X570 platform for just $750.
One example was the Intel Core i9-10980XE, which was $979 compared to$1,999 for its previous-gen counterpart. Despite that, in our i9-10980XE review (opens in new tab) we weren't impressed with the refreshing of a dated platform.
It may be a bit much to hope for another price cut from Intel. But AMD is still gaining on Intel (opens in new tab), which is a trend that's expected to continue (opens in new tab).
Any sign of cheaper CPUs (opens in new tab) is welcomed by those building a PC (opens in new tab). Of course, buying a CPU (opens in new tab) is only a part of the expense. And although we might see price cuts there later in the year, DRAM (opens in new tab)and NAND prices are expected to rise (opens in new tab) this year, making it more attractive to purchase RAM (opens in new tab) and shop SSDs (opens in new tab) today.
