A tight supply of Intel’s 845PE chipsets has been recently reported in the market, with gray-market prices for the product soaring and gray-market vendors running out of stock.
According to motherboard company sources, the gray-market price of the 845PE is said to have risen from US$29.20 per unit last week to US$3-5 higher than the chipset’s official quote of US$30.50.
However, the supply problem was caused more by the supply/demand imbalance than by market popularity of the product, industry sources said, as the 845PE differs little from the 845E in specifications except for its DDR333 support.
On the supply side, affected by the tight chipset deliveries from VIA Technologies and Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS), motherboard makers have turned to manufacture more Intel-platform products for the moment, thus boosting demand for Intel chipsets. However, the tight 845PE supply was mainly due to the limited amount Intel released in the initial launch stage.
Given the less advanced specifications of Intel’s chipsets this year, the shipment ratio by board makers of Intel-based products has dropped to 50-60% on average. The number, however, may start climbing now that VIA and SiS have been unable to completely meet chipset demand.
Article translated by Christy Lee and edited by Richard So
