We’ve learned that Intel can afford to drop the price of its cheapest quad-core all the way to $100, but it doesn’t want to do it simply because it doesn’t have to.

Quad-core is sexy and theoretically faster than many dual-cores and Intel has created quite a nice marketing scam around them.

Most of the time quad doesn’t mean much faster than dual but people still want to have four cores rather than two, even when it means a lower clock speed.

Intel has the financial sense to drop the quad-core all the way to $100 per quad-core CPU, but currently it doesn’t have to, as AMD doesn’t really compete well with Yorkfield 45nm quad-core.

If Intel does it, this would mean that it would hurt its very healthy average selling prices, and we don’t see this happening. In case AMD comes out with some fearsome competition, which won’t happen anytime soon, Intel can drop the price and hurt AMD’s financials even more.