CrunchGear

We here at CG love dual-core processors. In fact, our office motto is “more cores, more better.” So we were happy to read PriceGrabber.com’s dual-core processor Market Trends data from Market Reporter, the company’s statistical database tracking consumer shopping behavior on the site, that predicts prices on AMD’s and Intel’s dual-core chips will drop considerably in the remaining months of 2006. By its estimation prices have already dropped an average of 28 percent in the year between July 2005 to 2006. The current average price among the top 15 dual-core CPUs is $379.

It will be interesting to see how each manufacturer will fare in the second half of 2006. The third quarter will reflect the tightened competition for AMD and Intel as heavy shipments of dual-core processors will be released. AMD aims to ship six times the amount of processors shipped in the first half of 2006, estimated at 9.8 million of the Socket-AM2 and Socket-939 Athlon 64 X2 processors. Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor, labeled the “Conroe” chip aims to increase performance by 40 percent, while reducing power consumption by 40 percent. For both manufacturers, the key to outperforming their competition will be to balance the right mix of both price and performance to attract consumers.

Couldn’t have said it any better ourselves. The fact of the matter is, despite all the hoopla surrounding the performance gains of the Core 2 Duo processors, AMD makes some very competitve CPUs and its prices remain lower than Intel’s. And now with Dell selling AMD-based systems, AMD’s brand recognition is sure to pick up. Oh yeah, and let’s keep in mind that those Intel performance gains are in comparison to the overall poor-performing Pentium D chips.