With AMD's refined B3 revision Phenom processors now released, Intel has promptly counter-attacked by introducing some big price cuts across many of their desktop and server processors; no less than 18 of them in fact.

The biggest drop can be seen in the Core 2 Quad Q6700, taking a dive from $530 down to just $266, whilst the good ole' Q6600 sees a drop from $266 down to $224. Several Core 2 Duos, Pentium/Celeron E series and Xeon processors also see some nice price cuts.

News.com has the full rundown.

Intel posted price cuts on Sunday that included reductions of 50 percent on select quad-core processors. The chipmaker also introduced new Celeron and Core 2 Duo processor models.

The price of the Core 2 Quad Q6700 (2.66GHz) fell 50 percent from $530 to $266, while the quad-core Xeon X3230 (2.66GHz) saw an identical cut: from $530 to $266.

Celeron price-cut highlights include the Celeron 430 (1.8GHz), reduced 23 percent from $44 to $34 and the dual-core Celeron E1200 (1.6GHz), falling 19 percent from $53 to $43.

The dual-core Xeon 3085 (3GHz) was reduced 29 percent from $266 to $188, and the Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 (3GHz), from $266 to $183, or 31 percent.