AMD's struggling Phenom 9500 quad core has dropped to just under €150 on the European market. When it was launched six months ago it was priced at €240, but prices rapidly plummeted to around €170, primarily due to the overblown TLB issue and lackluster performance.

Still, it's the cheapest quad-core CPU on the market. Intel's venerable Q6600 is currently priced at €180, but it must be noted that the 2.4GHz Intel outperforms the 2.2GHz AMD.

The really interesting thing is that AMD is about to launch its tri-core Phenom, which is touted as an affordable alternative to quad-core processors. Obviously, a tri-core at slightly higher clocks should end up a bit cheaper than the Phenom 9500, and that's beginning to sound like a pretty nice deal.