In addition to the launch of new Xeon chip and the price reduction on desktop processors, Intel today revised its official prices on the CPUs designed for 2-way servers and workstations. AMD followed with the same decision shortly and now prices on the Xeon and Athlon MP processors look as follows:
| Intel Xeon (DP) Vs Athlon MP Current Official Pricing | |||
| Intel Xeon DP Model | Price | AMD Athlon MP Model | Price |
| Xeon 3.06GHz (533MHz QPB) | $722 | - | - |
| Xeon 2.80GHz (533MHz QPB) | $455 | - | - |
| Xeon 2.80GHz (400MHz QPB) | $433 | - | - |
| Xeon 2.66GHz (533MHz QPB) | $284 | - | - |
| Xeon 2.60GHz (400MHz QPB) | $273 | Athlon MP 2600+ | $273 |
| Xeon 2.40GHz (533MHz QPB) | $209 | Athlon MP 2400+ | $200 |
| Xeon 2.40GHz (400MHz QPB) | $198 | Athlon MP 2400+ | $200 |
| Xeon 2.20GHz (400MHz QPB) | $198 | Athlon MP 2200+ | $174 |
| - | - | Athlon MP 2000+ | $133 |
As you may have noticed, prices are reduced not really significantly (check old prices here) by just 11% to 16%. As a result, the situation on the market is not going to change: AMD Athlon MP processors do not cost a lot cheaper compared to Intel Xeon chips and the gap between prices is not enough to compensate the gap between higher costs of mainboards intended for Athlon MP CPUs compared to platforms for the Xeon microprocessors (see this news-story for details on the matter). In this case, Intel Xeon-based systems are going to be cheaper compared to Athlon MP powered. Either AMD has decided not to aggressively promote its MP processors now, but wait the Opteron to come and then penetrate the market with the x86-64 offerings, or the Sunnyvale has just a number of clients who are really interested in the K7 processors for their solutions despite prices and so on.




