It is starting to look like there will be a chip price war as AMD drops prices on Trinity. Word on the street is that Chipzilla is getting to ready to drop its prices too.

AMD has priced the Trinity chips starting at $53 in quantities of 1,000. Its new new dual-core A4-5300 desktop processors are priced at $53, which is the lowest of all Trinity desktop chips. It is much lower than the Intel Core i3 processors, which are based on the Ivy Bridge microarchitecture and start at $117.

AMD also shipped the new A10-5800K chip that can be unlocked for $122. Intel's unlockable processors start at $216, according to a price list. We should know today after AMD announces its pricing on other Trinity chips.

Already Lenovo earlier this week announced the ThinkCentre M78 desktop, using AMD's new chips to get a price tag of $479.  The cheapest Lenovo desktop with an Intel Core processor is the ThinkCentre M72e, which starts at $659 with a Core i3-2120.

With sales slowing the only way that the two can keep inventory moving is to have a price war. At the moment the only way to tell them apart is that Intel's Ivy Bridge chips are better in overall performance and AMD's Trinity chips offer better graphics.

If the price of AMD chips drops then the performance gains in keeping an Intel system are not worth the money.