As we read over at The Inquirer, Intel made up its mind to sped up the launching of the new Pentium 4 processors. Actually, the entire schedule has been moved one quarter ahead: the CPU working at 2.8GHz due only in Q4 2002 will be out this quarter and the 3GHz model – in Q4, although it has been at first planned for Q1 2003.

The guys over at The Inquirer also shared with us some info on the pricing. At launch the new Pentium 4 2.8GHz will cost $637 in 1,000-unit quantities (this is what the 2.53GHz model costs now), the CPUs working at 2.66GHz and 2.6GHz will sell at $562, the ones supporting 2.53GHz/2.5GHz will drop down to $433 per unit. Note that the 2.5GHz model supporting 400MHz QPB is not on the official price list, although it can be shipped to some OEMs. The same thing is valid also for 2.6GHz CPUs with 400MHz QPB.

As for the reasons that caused the changes on the schedule seem to be more than evident. Firstly, Intel has to get ready for the upcoming launching of the 64bit AMD CPUs, and secondly, they’d better raise the ASP (Average Sales Price) of their processors. Note that after the launching of 2.8GHz and 2.66GHz models Intel will have 4 models altogether on the price-list (2.8GHz, 2.66GHz, 2.53GHz and 2.4GHz) selling for over $400. AMD couldn’t even dream of anything like that :)

In the same Q3 2002 we will see the new Celeron 1.9GHz for $138 in 1,000-unit quantities. In fact, it could be really cool if the newcomer were based on the 0.13micron Northwood-256 core. However, this seems to be just a dream of mine, as everything witnesses that the new model will still be built on the 0.18micron Willamette-128 core, and Northwood-256 comes out later in Q4 2002 when the 2GHz model is to be released.