Intel announced that it cut prices for seven of its processors by amounts up to 31 percent. The leading chipmaker said that the 3.16-GHz Core 2 Duo E8500 was reduced from $266 to $183 as of July 20; the Core 2 Duo 2.53-GHz E2700 chip is now cheaper by 15 percent at $113; the Core 2 Q6600 2.4-GHz quad processor was reduced from $224 to $193; and the 3-GHz E8400 by 11 percent, at $163.

Two Xeon server processors are now on sale, as the X3220 and the X3210 are 12 percent cheaper and the E3110 is 11 percent cheaper.

In April, Intel made a surprising spring price cut for some of its processors, such as the Q6700 Core 2 Quad or the Intel Xeon X3230. Some price cuts were as high as 50 percent, while other processors have had their price reduced by 30 percent. The motivation for that initiative remains unknown, but Patrick Ward, spokesman for Intel, said most of the on-sale processors were built on the 65 nanometer technology, while Intel is now promoting its 45nm chips.

The same goes for the current price cut: Intel wants to keep selling the soon-obsolete models built on its older technologies. If it launches new products but fails to drastically reduce prices of the previous models, no one will be buying the latter. The idea is to keep milking a certain product for all its worth, prolonging its life span, as changing technologies is expensive.