ED#59 : Intel To Announce End-Of-Life Processors

Word has just come in from the grapevine that Intel will announce the discontinuation of six Intel Core 2 processors and four Intel Pentium D processors in November 2007. Do note that this is based on a leaked report and may still be subject to change.

In the November announcement, Intel will announce the discontinuation of the Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 and the Intel Core 2 Duo E6700, E6600, E6300, E6420 and E6320 processors in January 2008. Any orders up to this EOL date will continued to be fulfilled so expect some of these processors to still be in circulation weeks after the EOL date.

The quad-core Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700, whose Product Discontinuance Notice (PDN) was already issued to vendors in September, will be dropped this November. Intel will also drop four Pentium D processor models and three Pentium 4 processor models by October 2007. Their PDNs had already been issued back in August '07. This finally closes the chapter on the Pentium D family, although the Pentium 4 and Celeron D families will still be around with one processor each.

There are other processors (not listed in the table above) slated for discontinuation based on their steppings. We do not have information on the specific steppings or when they are slated for discontinuation, but these processors include :

• the Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 and E4300 processors
• the Intel Pentium 4 651 processor and,
• the Intel Celeron D 352 processor.

The Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 will continue to be priced at $183 while the Intel Pentium 4 651 will remain at the $74 price point for the foreseeable future. Oddly enough, Intel is scheduled to drop the price of the soon-to-be-discontinued Intel Pentium 4 631 from $69 to $59 on October 21, 2007.

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