Intel, AMD Slash Mobile Pricing

And its top rival, Advanced Micro Devices, followed suit.

Intel had suggested earlier this month it would experience pricing pressure during the quarter. Tuesday the Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker chopped 30 percent off the price of its Centrino 755, with 2 Mbytes of L2 cache, 2GHz processor and 400MHz FSB, reducing it to $495 from $709. The pricing is retroactive to Oct. 17.

Price cuts in the overall Centrino lineup ranged from 30 percent on the high end to a more modest 10 percent on the 1.6GHz Centrino offering. Prices were reduced on some of Intel's stand-alone Pentium M processors. Pricing was based on 1,000-unit quantities.

Rival AMD, Sunnyvale, Calif., also significantly cut pricing in its mobile lineup. The company lowered the price of its top mobile chip, the Mobile AMD Athlon 64 processor 3400+, to $243 from $432, for example. The AMD prices are also based on 1,000-unit quantities.