VR-Zone

With Intel's upcoming Ivy Bridge processors expected to launch in April of next year, it appears that Intel is already concerned about having too much stock of its current Sandy Bridge processors and is as such planning on reducing the price on at least is mobile Core i3 and Core i5 processors. What isn't clear is if Intel is planning on doing the same for the desktop parts or not.

Digitimes is reporting that Intel has apparently told its notebook partners that the company is about to drop the processor pricing by some 10 to 15 percent depending on model, although for some reason the high-end Core i7's are apparently not part of this discount deal.

As to how much of an impact this will have on the final product is a different matter, as many notebook makers are already offering very cheap notebooks with Core i3 and Core i5 processors and although we're expecting that some of this discount will be passed on to consumers, we don't think we'll see an equal reduction in price of the final product.

Even so, it might be worth hanging on for Ivy Bridge if you're not in a rush to get a new notebook, as the new processors do offer some advantage over Sandy Bridge, although most are not CPU performance related. As we've seen in the many leaks to date, the overall platform as a whole is better than Sandy Bridge and the cost isn't expected to be any higher than what a Sandy Bridge equivalent product costs today.

Source: Digitimes