Intel Drops Prices Of Low-End CPUs

The cut to the Core i3-550 is particularly interesting, because it makes that offering almost as cheap as the 2.93GHz Core i3-530—still the most affordable member of the Core i3 family, with its $113 bulk price tag. For reference, the i3-550 currently retails for $149.99 at Newegg. Seeing that processor slip closer to the $100 mark could draw some buyers away from AMD's budget quad-core CPUs, like the $99.99 Athlon II X4 640.