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Both leading CPU makers yesterday cut down the pricing of their microprocessors. Intel’s price reduction was expected to happen since Spring, while AMD’s decision to reconsider the pricing of its Athlon and Opteron processors became known only last week, even though we could expect it to happen, as the Sunnyvale, California-based company always follows Intel with price-slashes.

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AMD cut the pricing of its Athlon XP chips by 6% to 30%, while Intel reduced the pricing of its high-end chips by 21% to 34.5%. Both companies are preparing for the home-stretch of the year – the Christmas sales season – and aggressive price drops are necessary to boost the demand for PCs powered by either Pentium or Athlon processors.

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Sales of servers do not really require a boost during Christmas season, as they probably go quite well. At least, now it looks like Intel is more confident in its server platforms than AMD, who has to drop the prices on its high-end Opteron CPUs by up to 40%. This may be an alarming sign, as earlier some AMD sources indicated rock stability in Opteron pricing.

Worth to note that AMD Opteron processors 100 series designed for 1-way servers and workstations also lost in value quite significantly.

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Mobile computers are also expected to sell well later this year, both AMD and Intel are reducing prices of their chips for portable devices. Since Intel promised to decrease the pricing on some of its chips for desktop-replacement notebooks earlier this year, there are no shocks that the company cut the values of Mobile Pentium 4 CPUs by up to 33% yesterday.