I'm not that convinced that Intel would want to "drive the rapid adoption of these chips, allowing it to phase out the older models quickly". It makes no sense to lower the price of more recent gear below older gear if that is what you wanted. You'd rather lower the older stuff to ridiculously low levels to get rid of it.

And, to me, they would have to go much lower before they meet AMD's price level. Agreed, Intel's chips are faster. But that's it. For a handfull of money, there is still more AMD than Intel. Conceded, i am no gamer, and a low-end AMDx2 suits perfectly well outside of the world of Vista for all my needs.

Actually, and here comes my suspicion, maybe Barcelona isn't all too bad. It would make quite some sense to get the freaks into the mood of buying cheap 1333 gear, before they could ever ponder of going back to the previous market leader, AMD.

It would help if you would include a table showing each CPU, the old price and the new price.....