[title]Cheaper 915 Chipsets in January[/title]
In an effort to boost sales of its new Pentium 4 platform, Intel has decided to introduce two value versions of its 915 chipset – the 915PL and 915GL – in the latter half of January 2005, according to sources at Taiwan motherboard makers. The 915PL/GL will support DDR400 only, instead of supporting both DDR and DDR2 which is a standard for Intel 915P and 915G chipsets, the sources noted. The new chips are still compatible to the LGA775 CPUs and the PCIe technology.
However, the list prices of the 915PL/GL will be about 30% lower than the 915P/G models, the source pointed out.
The value versions of the 915 chipset are introduced in response to demand from Intel clients who have voiced that the prices of 915-based motherboards are too high to encourage end-users to migrate to the new platform, said the sources.
The FOB price of the new PCIe-enabled motherboards built using the 915PL/GL chipsets will be fixed at around US$70, compared to US$80 set for the 915P/G-based models, the sources stated.
With the introduction of the 915PL/GL-based motherboards, the proportion of the LGA775 CPUs to Intel’s overall shipments of Pentium 4 CPUs will be raised to 30% in the first quarter of next year, from the current 15%, the sources predicted.
| Intel 915 chipset unit prices (US$ for 10k unit lots) |
| Chipset | Current price | New price (Dec 26, 2004) | New price (Apr 3, 2005) |
| 915P | 35 | 33 | 31 |
| 915G | 40 | 38 | 37 |
| 915GV | 35 | 33 | 31 |
| 915PL | - | 22 (Jan 2005) | - |
| 915GL | - | 27 (Jan 2005) | - |
