Quietly last night, AMD went ahead and slashed prices on existing Phenom II and Athlon II processors, discontinuing a handful of chips in the process. In addition, the company publicly introduced a handful of new Athlon II CPUs, including low-power and triple-core models. There's no more Phenom II X4 810, Phenom II X3 720, or Phenom II X2 550. No more Socket AM2+ Phenom IIs. No more processors priced higher than $200, either�you can credit the arrival of Intel's Core i5 and i7-800 processors for that. The low-power "e" chips might not be too terribly exciting, but the Athlon II X3 435 and 425 are a different story: they have three cores, relatively high clock speeds, and price tags well under $100.

Also Intel made a stealth update, adding one new processor and cutting the price of its Pentium E6300 from $81 to $74. The new processor is none other than the Core i7-960. This CPU has the same $562 list price and basic specifications as the Core i7-950, except it has a 3.2GHz base clock speed, and Turbo Boost can carry its cores up to 3.46GHz.