AMD definitely is going to be in a better position come January than they are now, but I don't think they are going to go for such aggressive pricing as you mention. I'm expecting that the Phenom X4 940 will come in at around $300, maybe a bit more depending on how it performs and whether or not AMD gets greedy like they did at original Phenom launch (where parts were way overpriced and not competitive with Q6600 at all). If they are sensible they will target the 940 at the Q9550 and not any higher.
It doesn't matter how much the i7 920 costs, the platform costs are so much higher that the actual CPU cost is almost irrelevant. Even if the Phenom X4 940 comes in at $350, here's just an example of what total cost might be vs. i7:
Phenom X4 940: $350
790FX/SB750 Motherboard: $190
4GB DDR2 Memory: $30
Total Cost: $570
Core i7 920: $300
X58 Motherboard: $300
4GB DDR3 Memory: $150
Total Cost: $750
Deneb just has to compete well with Q9550, which will be a much harder task.... P45 vs. 790GX is a fair fight in both performance & price, no advantage there..... both use cheap DDR2 memory..... and Q9550 hits 4GHz pretty regularly on the P45 platform. Deciding that battle will require us to wait for reviews, because it is too close to call for now.





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