The mainboard manufacturers report that Intel has slightly corrected its policy in regard to i845 chipsets family this month, as we read over here. First of all, in the beginning of the month they carried out the predicted price reduction having decreased the prices by $2, and secondly, they satisfied the mainboard manufacturers’ request and set different prices for chipsets with A3 (PC133) stepping and B0 (PC133/PC2100) stepping. According to the unofficial sources, the price difference between two chipset versions makes now around 5%, which is the same $2. This solution is absolutely logical, because it was quite strange to watch the chipsets with totally different performance cost the same.
Going over to numbers, we should say that i845 chipset with A3 core stepping costs the mainboard manufacturers around $34-$36 and B0 stepping of the same chipset – around $36-$38. In other words, the situation with the Pentium 4 chipsets hasn’t changed at all (see this news story), as the price difference between Intel chipsets and VIA/SiS chipsets is very huge.