Intel Corp., the world’s biggest producer of central processing units, Monday slashed prices of its desktop and mobile processors prior to the back-to-school season to accelerate sales of “Intel Inside” PCs.

The world’s largest supplier of chips for personal computers lowers pricing of its chipsets every quarter pretty regularly in order to free space on the market for future higher-speed microprocessors and also speed up sales of its products. Monday’s price-reduction comes just when PC makers continue to build-up inventories for back-to-school season.

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Intel’s top-of-the-range Pentium 4 560 (3.60GHz) processor has dipped 35% to $417, while slightly less powerful Pentium 4 550 (3.40GHz) chip reduced in pricing 33% to $278. Besides, Intel has also slashed pricing of its Celeron D chips aimed at entry-level and mainstream markets as well as on some Mobile Pentium 4 products targeted at desktop-replacement notebooks. The company’s desktop chips price changes reflect processors in older-generation mPGA478 packaging as well as in new-generation LGA775 packaging.

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As expected, Intel did not lower pricing of its Pentium 4 Extreme Edition that still cost $999 and $925 in business quantities for 3.40GHz and 3.20GHz versions respectively.

Intel Corp.’s arch-rival Advanced Micro Devices is expected to reduce pricing of its chips later this week, a month after the company has performed certain manipulations with its pricing.