As we told you several days ago, Advanced Micro Devices has by now slashed their prices on the Athlon XP processors. We already know that the company will soon get rid of the Duron family of CPUs and already offers their lower-clocked Athlon XP chips for the price equal with higher-end Celeron processors from Intel (see this news-story). Currently Intel vs AMD price:performance competition looks as follows:

Intel Pentium 4 vs Athlon XP vs Intel Celeron Current Official Pricing
Intel CPU Model	Price	AMD CPU Model	Price
Pentium 4 3.06GHz	$637	-	-
Pentium 4 2.80GHz	$401	Athlon XP 2800+	$397
Pentium 4 2.66GHz	$305	Athlon XP 2700+	$349
Pentium 4 2.60GHz	$305	Athlon XP 2600+	$297
Pentium 4 2.53GHz	$243	-	-
Pentium 4 2.50GHz	$243	-	-
Pentium 4 2.40GHz	$193	Athlon XP 2400+	$193
Pentium 4 2.26GHz	$193	Athlon XP 2200+	$157
Pentium 4 2.20GHz	$193	Athlon XP 2200+	$157
Celeron 2.20GHz	$103	Athlon XP 2200+	$157
Celeron 2.10GHz	$89	Athlon XP 2100+	$93
Celeron 2.0GHz	$83	Athlon XP 2000+	$83
-	-	Athlon XP 1900+	$76
Celeron 1.80GHz	$69	Athlon XP 1800+	$69
Celeron 1.70GHz	$54	Athlon XP 1700+	$54
Celeron 1.40GHz	$54		-
-	-	Duron 1.3GHz	$47
-	-	Duron 1.2GHz	$42

As you may notice, the prices on the high-end AMD Athlon XP processors and comparable Intel Pentium 4 chips are equal. Moreover, the Athlon XP 2700+ costs $44 more than the Pentium 4 2.66GHz. There is no 25% difference in high-end processors pricing, as it can be seen from the numbers above, despite of all the former CEO Jerry Sanders’ claims. Frankly speaking, it is very hard to get the expensive processors from AMD simply due to inability of the company to fulfil the demand on these models. As a result, there is no sense for us to discuss their market positioning at this time – most of you will buy the Pentium 4 anyway since it will be easier to find them in stores.

As for the middle-range CPUs, the Athlon XP models 2400+, 2200+ and 2100+ still remain to be very strong rivals for the appropriate Pentium 4 processors. Furthermore, the Athlon XP 2100+ also manages to compete with the Celeron 2.20GHz and 2.10GHz very successfully: needless to say which of the mentioned microprocessors is the fastest.

The same situation with the lower-end Athlon XP and Celeron processors. With the equal price, the former can significantly outperform the latter, as a result, it seems to be more wise to purchase what AMD offers instead of the Celerons at the moment.

To sum up, AMD is a very serious competitor for Intel in the low-end and middle-end sectors. They cannot currently offer anything to outperform the higher-end Pentium 4 processors and what is even more sad for AMD, they will not be able to until the first quarter next year when the ClawHammer chips are out. I should point out that the quantities AMD will supply the x86-64 CPUs will be very low, as a result, personal computer vendors will still offer most of their powerful PCs based on Intel Pentium 4 processors. The situation may change by the end of the second quarter when AMD may finally succeed in providing significant quantities of the x86-64 chips.