These days Europe and the USA do not generate high demand on personal computers, as the Christmas holidays ended just a few days ago. On the other side on the Earth, however, the New Year Celebration is still ahead – in China and Taiwan, as a result, a lot of consumers now get themselves new personal computers. Since pricing is a very important in Asia-Pacific region, cheap computer components are always in demand in the first quarter of a calendar year in countries like China and Taiwan.

According to Asia-Pacific sources, local distributors cannot supply enough of the cheapest Socket 478 processor: the Celeron 1.70GHz. They say that demand on low-end computers is very high, meanwhile Intel wants to shift the market to 1.80 and 2.0GHz models due to their higher price. As the Socket 478 is now the most popular platform, Intel can allow itself not to vastly fulfil the orders on low-end CPUs, hoping that OEMs and system integrators will start offering more expensive processors to their clients.

At the moment Intel sells 1.70GHz, 1.80GHz, 2.0GHz, 2.10GHz and 2.20GHz Celeron processors for $54, $69, $83, $89 and $103 respectively. The reports claim that the company will not cut the prices on these CPUs in their upcoming price reduction, hence, there is a lot of sense for the company to simply stop supplying the 1.70GHz Celeron processors and get additional profit from more expensive chips. The mentioned CPUs have done what Intel wanted them to: Socket 478 is now presented in all market segments, including low-end.

Well, it is time to leave, Celeron 1.70GHz.