Dell Computer Corp, now number two in the Intel-based workstation market after Hewlett-Packard Co, has cut the prices of its machines by up to 9.5%. That means a dual-processor WorkStation 2.10 with dual 450MHz Pentium II or III chips, 64Mb RAM, 6.4Gb hard drive and Diamond Permidia graphics accelerator costs $2,372, only 5% or so above single processor Pentium III machines just released by HP and Compaq Computer Corp. Dell shipped a total of 375,000 workstations last year according to International Data Corp figures, compared to HP’s 390,000 (HP sold an additional 90,000 RISC-based Unix workstations). Given that the standard price of 450MHz Pentium IIIs is $496 in quantities of 1,000, the pricing gives some idea of how much preferential treatment a volume shipment firm such as Dell can demand from Intel.