Intel puts Pentium IIIs on sale

Intel has dropped the prices of its Pentium III chips for desktops and servers.

The chipmaker continues its Pentium III closeout sale, eyeing the chip's eventual departure from the desktop PC market, where it will be replaced by the Pentium 4.

Intel on Sunday sliced between 10 percent and 20 percent from the list prices of its desktop and server Pentium III chips.

On the desktop front, the company dropped the price of its 1GHz Pentium III by 17 percent to $143. Meanwhile, it cut the 1.1GHz and 1.13GHz Pentium III chips by 10 percent each. Both now list for $173. Intel also dropped the prices on its 850MHz, 866MHz, 900MHz and 933MHz Pentium III chips by 12 percent each. All are now priced at $143.

On the server side, Intel cut the price of the 1.26GHz Pentium III-S by 20 percent to $241, and the 1.13GHz Pentium III-S by 14 percent to $202.

Intel also cut the price of a lone Celeron desktop chip, the 950MHz, by 7 percent to $64.

The company generally schedules these kind of price cuts well in advance as they serve to make room for the introduction of new, faster chips or to clear out stocks of older processors.

But Intel has cut Pentium 4 prices more aggressively of late to help bring the chip into the mainstream PC market and to be more competitive with offerings from rival Advanced Micro Devices. AMD held its prices steady as of Monday morning. It last dropped its Athlon and Duron list prices on 29 October.

Analysts say that thanks to better-than-anticipated demand, some high-end AMD and Intel chips are in short supply.

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