Intel Reacts To AMD Ryzen Apparently Cutting Prices On Core i7 And i5 Processors (hothardware.com) 224
Less than a week after AMD announced the first line up of Ryzen processors, Intel is apparently fighting back by dropping the price of several of its processors. Rob Williams, writing for HotHardware: So, what we're seeing now are a bunch of Intel processors dropping in price, perhaps as a bit of a preemptive strike against AMD's chips shipping later this week -- though admittedly it's still a bit too early to tell. Over at Amazon, the prices have been slower to fall, but we'd highly recommend that you keep an eye on the following pages, if you are looking for a good deal this week. So far, at Micro Center we've seen the beefy six-core Intel Core i7-6850K (3.60GHz) drop from $700 to $550, and the i7-6800K (3.40GHz) drop down to $360, from $500. Also, some mid-range chips are receiving price cuts as well. Those include the i7-6700K, a 4.0GHz chip dropping from $400 to $260, and the i7-6600K, a 3.50GHz quad-core part dropping from $270 to $180. Even Intel's latest and greatest Kaby Lake-based i7-7700K has experienced a drop, from $380 to $299, with places like Amazon and NewEgg retailing for $349.
No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately though many people still bought Intel processors at those prices because they found them to be worth the money. You still could have bought an AMD processor at that time, so it isn't as though you were forced to buy Intel. However, the Bulldozer architecture was garbage so most people gladly paid the extra money because they wanted the extra performance.
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> and a lot of people (you don't see many people offering to lower their salary) do as well.
That's apples to oranges. People don't take a salary based on what their life costs to live, they are paid based on what value they bring to the company. And in general peoples' value to the company they work at *rises* over time instead of decreasing as they gain experience both in the industry and in the inner workings of the company.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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The life-blood of corporations is money, and humans are naturally greedy, so it is obvious that a corporation will raise the price of a product or service to the maximum that the market can realistically support, factoring in everything such as negative perception bias, etc. When corporations forget that last part, you get $600 Epi-Pens (Heather Bresch) or Daraprim increasing in cost 56x (Martin Shkreli).
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Humans are not naturally greedy. Humans born in a greedy society (aka capitalism) are greedy.
You're denying human nature.
If you're a creationist, human greed led to Adam and Eve wanting more and pissing off God.
If you're an evolutionist, human greed caused us to rise to the top of the food chain.
Humans were greedy long before there was such a word as capitalism. In fact, you could attribute the word society to greed. Groups of people (societies) got together because they either wanted other peoples stuff, or were trying to prevent other people from taking their stuff.
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In practical terms it's the point at which when you are forced to reduce prices because of competition your vendors don't find they are suddenly getting masses of returns and re-orders at the new lower price.
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The line starts at the end user's mouth.
No eating the profits!
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Its called a market. You don't have to buy.
If there is a monopoly then it is illegal and should be broken up. Otherwise this is how capitalism works. Competition works.
Re: No surprise... (Score:2)
Intel's cost is $50 billion, what should retail be (Score:2)
Okay, I'll play along. Each year Intel spends $10 billion on fab upgrades and $13 billion on R&D. So the cost was about $50 billion to get ready to make this generation of CPUs. Based on the $50 billion up-front cost, what do you think the retail price should be?
They do get better per-core, not per-dollar or wat (Score:2)
> Presumably Intel thinks it can do better than the open market.
And empirically they do in fact get better per-core, single-threaded performance. Performance per dollar and per watt, they often lose. Their priority is single threaded performance, and their approach does achieve that goal.
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Corporations should be abolished.
Without corporations to limit liability, no one would take risks in business if the end result could mean personal financial ruin.
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Do you believe that business and merchants existed long before liability protections? If so, then you have evidence that your assertion is false. If not, then history begs to differ.
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Do you believe that business and merchants existed long before liability protections?
How many voyages to the New World would have taken place without a government charter limiting liability? Every lost ship and crew would have sent every investor to debtor prison. With a corporation for each voyage, investor liability was limited to the money they put into the venture.
Re:No surprise... (Score:4, Informative)
Do you believe that business and merchants existed long before liability protections? If so, then you have evidence that your assertion is false. If not, then history begs to differ.
But when serious risk was needed, when machinery / railroads / technology developed that might succeed but easily may also fail, it was necessary. One of the reasons that the Industrial Revolution happened in the UK at the time it did was Limited Liability being available there. I'm not say it doesn't have other potentially bad side-effects, but is very obviously necessary for any serious progress to be made.
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Without corporations to limit liability, no one would take risks in business if the end result could mean personal financial ruin.
I would!
Says the idiot in the peanut gallery.
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What's the price of admission to said peanut gallery? I'd like to visit.
Commenting as an AC.
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On the other hand, there should be some type of -stake- in a firm. Right now, there is no responsibility. Make a nuclear reactor head out of pot metal? Just walk away. Put sawdust in shredded cheese? At worst, the company tanks.
Shareholders lose their money, lawsuits are filed, government investigates and some people might go to prison.
Right now, what was put in to limit liability enables organizations to do extremely perverted, ecologically damaging things in the name of the almighty dollar. This needs to stop, before we have another 1929.
Reforms are needed. A favorite tactic of M&A crowd is to buy a business, put the good assets into a new corporation, leave the bad assets in the old corporation, and have the old corporation declare bankruptcy. The new corporation is not always better than the old corporation.
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
What we need is to have laws and regulations that are applied to corporations, with the purpose of protecting competition/competitive markets, and that are vigorously enforced. I'm talking about Adam Smith style regulations, mind you, not some right-wing fever dream of government drunk with power regulating every last detail (though areas that are natural monopolies are going to need more stringent regulation, by their very nature). Think instead of Teddy Roosevelt style trust-busting, breaking up cartels and fighting for real competition and alternatives.
And we used to have that, too. The problem is that we grew complacent, and enforcement of those laws has grown lax - mostly because the worst among the corporations have lobbied heavily for it, and their wealthy owners have done the same. Part of the answer is probably to find ways to diminish the influence of money in politics (though I'm not aware of any easy solutions for that), but more realistically, people just need to start paying attention and voting with this in mind.
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We already have laws and regulations on corporations. What we need is competition as this article proves. Nothing incentivizes corps better than another corp nipping at their heels. Regulations usually do the opposite.
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How about a law making any profit margin greater than 5% illegal and punishable by prison time?
And how the eff would that actually work? Unless the whole world does it, there's no incentive to make anything.
"Okay company, we have $1,000,000 in seed funding. We could make a product and sell it at the legislated 5% margin. Oooor we could just not make a product and invest that money in that mining company in Australia that's returning 6%."
Even if you somehow worked out that kink, there would be zero incentives for anyone to take risks.
Okay company. We have a product making the legislated 5% margin. We
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Not all corporations are bad. The worst are ones that are required by law to maximize profits for their shareholders. Fortunately there is different types of corporations with better goals, like ensure that the employees get paid fairly and keep them with the company for long time, maybe gather some extra funds for sudden expenses. Or, corporations that try to avoid making debt, keep prices low and use profits to buy cool hardware to play with.
Indirection through representatives (Score:2)
A representative republic? IOW, a system that doesn't allow consumers to vote for specific laws.
Might have lost money even at a higher price (Score:2)
Everybody is forgetting the $50 billion Intel had to spend before they could even start making these CPUs. Intel might lose money at even the "old" (non-Microcenter) price.
It costs several billion dollars to build or upgrade a fab. Intel spends about $10 billion each year on upgrading its equipment, and $12 bilion on R&D. In order to survive, they need to have a high gross profit on each unit sold, in order to recover the $50 billion or so they spent getting ready to build a new processor. In other wor
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Price gouging is not necessary and what's to stop consumers from voting for laws that make it illegal? After all if there are no rules then why should the public not follow the same logic that the corporations do and follow their own self-interest? If their is no fairness and only self-interest and it is every man for himself then fuck the corporations. Am i right?
Sure, the public could very well pass that law. I'm guessing that after doing it, a lot of companies would move out of that area. There's no law that says that they have to do business, so if there's no incentive, why stick around?
Capitalism and free markets operate on the principles that people (and collectives of people) are self-interested and greedy pricks. If you notice that someone is selling widgets for $200, but think you could sell them for $150, you're probably going to do it because no one wan
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You forgot Comcast. Check and Mate.
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For those less knowledgeable Mao and Stalin killed over 100 million of their own citizens in their attempt to create the ideal world. The new man, homo sovieticus and all those wonderful 5 year plans leaving millions starved and brutalized.
Now let's compare this with Comcast. Don't like Comcast? Don't fu**ing use it.
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Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Interesting)
But, it's a direct admission that they were basically gouging for want of competition.
Absolutely. My big question is... I have a PC Build coming up. I went Intel 5 years ago due to lack of a realistic AMD alternative. How good is AMD Ryzen? Is it merely competitive with Intel, or are we back to the golden days of "Buy Intel for brand name, buy AMD if you want to save a few hundred bucks for something just as good?"
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Informative)
Intel appears to edge out in single core performance, but by less than 5-10% depending on processor and we still haven't seen single core performance of Ryzen 5 or 3. Ryzen multi-core performance spanks Intel like a red-headed stepchild. Moreover, this is the first iteration of Ryzen, so performance gains probably have farther to go for things like IPC than Intel's current processors. Basically, unless you're planning on waiting for Coffee lake and believe there will be a greater improvement than another 3% IPC gain, Ryzen is as good or better than Intel's offerings especially with the lower TDP.
Re: No surprise... (Score:2)
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[...] ripen over time (like a banana - a reference to an old IT joke) [...]
My coworkers and I got revenge on a manager by ordering Chinese takeout for our overtime dinner on a Friday night, dumped the leftovers in the wastebaskets, and left the wastebaskets inside the manager's office with the door closed over a hot summer weekend. Manager almost passed out when he walked into his office on Monday morning. Took a week to air out his office.
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Every post you make makes me hate you more you passive agressive cunt.
"Fear is the path to the dark side... fear leads to anger... anger leads to hate... hate leads to suffering." — Yoda
You try to sound like such a fucking man, then have a conversation and don't work the overtime, instead of the bullshit you pulled.
When THE ENTIRE DEPARTMENT (30 people) dumped leftover Chinese takeout in the manager's office, upper management investigated and fired the manager for being an ineffective leader.
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Intel appears to edge out in single core performance, but by less than 5-10% depending on processor and we still haven't seen single core performance of Ryzen 5 or 3.
Well so far AMD has intentionally only compared their own 8C chips with Intel's 8C desktop chips that have been clocked very conservatively, all the good chips go to the way more profitable server market and not against the far more price-similar quads. So the quad core i7-7700k is still king of the hill in single threaded with Ryzen 1800X trailing offering about 80% performance (2.02 vs 1.62) in Cinebench single threaded. Of course 8x80% is much more than 4x100% so if your applications use multithreading w
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The other factor that is rarely mentioned is the available motherboards and chipsets.
Hopefully AMD's chipset offerings will be a match for Intel this time around. Things like the SATA controller, how fast it is, how many ports, how well it works with SSDs, if it supports M.2 or whatever the latest stupidly fast interface is... And USB, if you use a lot of USB drives. Things like PCIe lanes are pretty plentiful these days, fortunately.
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Would you like bacon with your game ?
Re: No surprise... (Score:3)
AMD is a cheaper build all around. The low end Motherboards can be had for about $100 and still have most of the features you'll need.
Unless, of course, you're a professional gamer, and need quad-SLI or something crazy, AMD is probably more than good enough. Take the savings on the Mobo+CPU and invest in a better SSD or GPU is probably a better use of your money if you want more percievable performance.
Personally, it's always a cost decision to me, and AMD always comes in cheaper. I'm planning to buy a mid-
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I can't speak to the setup in question, but overall value is usually my metric rather than pure price. For the past decade, Intel has typically provided more performance per dollar for their CPUs at lower power consumption and heat generation. If Ryzen manages to change that dynamic, then that's a win for everyone.
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Along the same lines, I was wondering how would the Linux support would be, and duckduckgoing a bit, it seems that AMD has been pushing out kernel updates for some time. Looks promising. Some links for the lazy [reddit.com] ones [phoronix.com].
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I guess that all depends on Intel's willingness to try to drop prices. We could certainly see another "golden age" if Intel thinks they can get away with selling equivalent (to AMD) chips at higher prices due to their brand. I would not consider this scenario a "golden age". I think a true golden age (for the consumer) would be where every manufacturer drops prices to be as competitive as possible.
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
But, it's a direct admission that they were basically gouging for want of competition.
How much are they gouging? What is the payback period on their R&D? What is the investment in the chip fab to make these things, and how far into the payback period are they now?
Will these price drops mean that they have to extend the payback period to recoup the costs of the smaller-feature fab? Will that delay the 7nm mass production they've announced for 2020?
I don't know the answers to these questions. I do know some of the questions to ask. Let's not jump to conclusions without understanding the data.
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Intel's not brining their best R&D to bear on the desktop. Starting with the "Core" line, Intel has made mobile their core focus, advancing desktop/server chips a side-effect. The last several generations have done little except expand the on-board graphics and reap automatic benefits of smaller manufacturing processes. That's why this window of opportunity was open for AMD to actually make a desktop chip to the best of their ability.
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Indeed. I have been following the prices of the four-core Skylake i5 and i7.
In my local currency the price has risen by as much as 20% since last summer.
That is still 10% if currency fluctuations are taken into account.
No price drop when Kaby Lake was introduced, the prices have still risen.
Re:No surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying I like it, or agree with it, but maximizing profits is different from gouging. Maximizing profits is a legal obligation to shareholders for publicly traded companies such Intel. Gouging is the exploitation of exigent circumstances such as a natural disaster in order to maximize profits. Gouging is unethical, and in some cases illegal, but it's not what Intel was doing.
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Fairly popular myth, but companies are merely required to serve the interests of their shareholders. That includes long-term value growth and paying dividends, not just maximizing profits. And if that long-term growth requires retaining experienced personnel, that can be traded for profit maximization.
The myth probably exists because it's easier to prove financial mismanagement than HR mismanagement. After all, money doesn't decide on its own to leave a company, but people do. So you tend not to see lawsuit
World class fabs, R&D aren't free (Score:3)
Not necessarily.
It costs several billion dollars to build or upgrade a fab. Intel spends about $10 billion each year on upgrading its equipment, and $12 bilion on R&D. In order to survive, they need to have a high gross profit on each unit sold, in order to recover the $50 billion or so they spent getting ready to build a new processor. In other words, they could make $200 per cpu, and still lose money overall.
Let's work through it with smaller numbers to demonstrate the concept.
Suppose you buy a mach
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But, it's a direct admission that they were basically gouging for want of competition.
There are plenty of older chips and AMD chips. Why would it be price gouging when you could get stuff at half the price for barely noticeable drop in performance.
Also, Intel sold $50 dual core Pentium chips whose single core was as fast as an i7.
Some people have to have Intel i7. It's not gouging when plenty of alternatives exist.
On the other hand, the CPU market has stagnated because AMD wasn't keeping up. Ryzen will decrease prices but hopefully it will lead to products with features that define the
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I'll take the electronic's industry gouging over health care any day. Each year I get more features/power/perf from my electronics for less money. Conversely, each year I get crappier health care for more money. And it is no wonder when the some generic drug that sold for peanuts now goes for insane amounts with absolutely zero improvement. Imagine if Intel tried to sell a 486 for 5 grand a pop?
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Much ado about nothing.. for now.. (Score:5, Informative)
The centerpiece of this 'article' seems to focus on Microcenter, which ALWAYS has priced drops and sales like this going on.
Everybody take a deep breath and see where we're at this time next month.
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I came here to say this. I've been buying from Micro Center for years, and even worked for them for a summer in the '90s. Their CPU prices have been discounted for quite a long time, and I think it's fantastic that I can I can get a great price from a brick-and-mortar store. And I recommend shopping there to all my friends.
But to call out their everyday discounted price as a "price drop" is simply bullshit. The Core i5-6600K that is pictured in the article? I priced that for a friend last fall, and it
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Heh came here to also see if anyone else caught this as well. I had this discussion with a few friends who saw these articles and said 'ZOMG Price drops!!!!'. After having just built a machine this past summer with 95% microcenter parts and also spec'd out a few for friends I had to remind them that these were the same prices they have already been for months
MOD PARENT UP (Score:3)
The parent is correct. Micro Center typically sells CPUs at a discount. It's one of the great things about living near one. But their prices are not representative of Intel's normal MSRPs, and importantly, what you'll pay for their products everywhere else.
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The centerpiece of this 'article' seems to focus on Microcenter, which ALWAYS has priced drops and sales like this going on.
Everybody take a deep breath and see where we're at this time next month.
Yeah, it was this price on Black Friday last year for the CPU. At that time, Ryzen wasn't even a word.
I agree it's a just a Microcenter sale.
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Exactly!
Intel's real response to Ryzen is the start of a new dirty tricks campaign: http://wccftech.com/intel-play... [wccftech.com]
(well, it worked the last time)
and they are still profitable?! (Score:2)
Holy moly! Intel's initial markups must have been higher than Lindsay Lohan on an average Tuesday.
i7 8 Core 16 Thread = $299 (Score:2)
Until then why should a user get less cores for more money?
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and full 40-44 lanes of pci-e!
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intel is a cheap company. I used to work for them as a contractor. I saw it first-hand.
they sit on a ton of money but are stingy as hell.
typical american big corp. sigh ;(
maybe if they fired their 'diversity officer' (yes, that's a real job at intel) and hired based on skills and need rather than quota by race and gender (and h1b, of course) they'd be able to lower selling costs.
but of course, any lowering in real cost never makes it to the consumer sales price. the ceo's keep all the booty, again, as u
Re:i7 8 Core 16 Thread = $299 (Score:4, Insightful)
maybe if they fired their 'diversity officer' (yes, that's a real job at intel) and hired based on skills and need rather than quota by race and gender (and h1b, of course) they'd be able to lower selling costs.
They may have selected some staff poorly but I think a far more important issue is that their 14nm process advantage technique had led to poor yields that they are still tock tock tocking on. Not saying that Intel made bad choices, but they are screwed because poor yields at 14nm means no yields at 10nm. They know it which is why they've just done massive layoffs and they keep talking up their new "cloud strategy."
AMD isnt Intels primary competitor. AMD "catching up" is a symptom of Intels real problem, which is that Intel's vertical branding strategy ultimately isnt competitive against the rant-a-fab conglomerates like TSMC which are being driven by the massive sales of ARM processors and accessory chips, and one by one these rent-a-fab's are beating Intel to 10nm. These Ryzen chips are still just on 14nm like Intel and being made by one of these rent-a-fab's. You ain't seen nuthin' yet. What the hell is Intel going to do when all the rent-a-fab's are shipping mostly 10nm product?
If you have Intel stock.. I highly recommend that you sell now before its too late. Double check your retirement accounts.
Micro Center! (Score:2)
Way to plug my favorite store!
It does seems as though this chain has really exploded in the last several years. I seem to recall there only being a handful of them. Now there are over 2 dozen nationwide.
Kind of surprising that a brick-and-mortar store is expanding operations in this day and age. Especially with the old-school commission-based sales floor model.
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things were great in the sf bay area - until MC moved away and never came back ;(
pretty sad. I prefer to NOT go to frys and MC was a good alternative.
I really miss MC. wish they'd consider coming back to the bay area. of all places, it makes sense for them to be here, even with 'high priced' real estate (their claimed reason why they sold their only bay area store to wally world..) ;(
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Way to plug my favorite store!
It does seems as though this chain has really exploded in the last several years. I seem to recall there only being a handful of them. Now there are over 2 dozen nationwide.
Kind of surprising that a brick-and-mortar store is expanding operations in this day and age. Especially with the old-school commission-based sales floor model.
I have one within driving distance. GREAT store for picking up clearance items at about %20 off the going retail on stuff. I've purchased 2 mother boards and CPU's there along with a couple of video cards, mostly on clearance there in the last year. Usually you can haggle a bit on the clearance prices if the item has been sitting there awhile. In fact, on big ticket items you can usually haggle a little on non-clearance items if you try and have similar prices online.
Watch their "price match" though. I h
Re: Micro Center! (Score:2)
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Dont discount their house brands. Microcenter has house brand usb/sd/microsd/etc memory that is usually the cheapest they have in store but will run just as well as any name brand and just as reliable
Having a microcenter nearby is awesome, I live about 1/2mile from the denver store, which also makes it dangerous. But it is really nice being able to spec out a machine and run down the street to pick it all up and have better prices than newegg the majority of the time
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Competition (Score:2)
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Re: Competition (Score:2)
In all my years of running AMD chips with stock Heatsink/Fan coolers, have I ever run into a heat issue. I even scrape off the thermal compound because it adheres and makes removing the CPU a pain in the ass. I bent pins on an old Athlon back in the day and broke the CPU due to that stuff.
I monitor temps rather closely, and when idle it sits around 28-30ÂC. Under really heavy load it can spike up to about 60-65ÂC, but even that is still within their recommended range.
Now, my system is in the basem
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Ryzen seems to be quite competitive as it stands looking at the glossy PR ads. The question is really about durability. AMD has a history of running things a bit hot and not achieving the same reliability as Intel.
Then you'll be pleased to look at the TDP column in side by side comparisons of Ryzen and (especially) i7s. Ryzen is 95W TDP. i7 with exactly the same single-thread performance (to within the margin of error) and worse multi-thread performance is 140W TDP.
That's right, Intel has been faffing about with their failed 10nm process node for so long that they're now the ones selling the slower, much hotter chips. A complete role reversal. It is quite amusing for those of us who remember the AMD of the '90s.
U
Buy AMD & Support a Healthy CPU Marketplace (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, I reason in a similar vein. If we want to have a competitive market we have to make sure both players can stay in the race.
At least that's my reasoning for the upcoming Ryzen debut, and unless the reviews are as scathing as for the previous architectures I will be going with them for this round.
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I don't love intel, the company. but their chipsets have always been better than amd.
sata on intel chips is as good as it gets for consumer boards. same with intel's gig-e chips.
their cpus are very low power, these days, too. i7 with 4 cores and 8 threads being 35w of power.
if amd can match these ideas, I'd gladly give them a chance again.
also, intel's hd video on-chip is now good enough to sofware decode just about any movie, even on an i3 or 'pentium' style chip. wonder if amd's video playback is that
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For the last ten years, AMD hasn't been competitive - either in price, performance, or even things like power usage and heat generation.
AMD is used only in the "cheapest of the cheap" laptops and home desktops. Then they sucked up a major graphics card manufacturer who was also suffering the same problem - ATI vs nVidia only had one sensible choice for many years - and still never really improved.
Sorry, but it's a one-horse race for a reason. And I don't see that Intel PC prices are prohibitive, they cert
Re: Buy AMD & Support a Healthy CPU Marketplac (Score:3)
I don't see AMD as inferior. In fact, Intel licenses some tech from AMD.
Cost is the only factor in my opinion. Inching out a couple more CPU cycles for twice as much money is counter productive (again, my opinion). 99% of the market really does not need the performance of a i7-7700K, where an AMD APU from last-gen is probably still overkill.
My 4ish year old AMD FX-8320 does way more than I actually need. I'm upgrading to a Ryzen 1700 (the 65w TDP chip) simply because I want something newer, as in my experie
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The few Intel builds I've done were for performance die hards, spending $4000+ because they believed that Intel was the end-all, be-all, even though the games they play are hitting GPU bottlenecks, and the CPU is sitting there at 50+% idle. Could have saved $500+ to put into a better GPU... but people don't listen when they go by forum posts of evangelists claiming Intel is the best thing since sliced bread, even though their $1200 CPU only bests AMDs $400 CPU by 10%-15% at best.
I think you may be setting up a bit of a strawman argument by comparing $1000+ Intel processors with $400 AMD processors. I'm not even sure which AMD processors you are talking about since an FX-9590 or FX-8350 are both between $150-$200.
When most enthusiasts are building a computer and choosing between Intel or AMD, I would say they are probably comparing an Intel i7-6800K to an AMD FX-8350. That would be $410 vs $150, 13575 Passmark vs 8938, 33 Passmark per $ vs 60 Passmark per $, 140W vs 125 W, 97 Passma
Daraprim (Score:2)
Buying an inferior product to "stick it to" a competitor who actually is better and infinitesimally more expensive
Keeping a competitor in business helps the market leader remain "infinitesimally more expensive" rather than Daraprim expensive.
Cuts in US Only? (Score:2)
Re: Cuts in US Only? (Score:2)
Personally I will wait (Score:2, Informative)
I've had AMD in the past, when they were good (pre Phenom days). Then I switched to Intel. It seems like AMD are finally getting serious again, that's good. Because with the rumors flying that Intel is soon going to be supporting Windows only on their chips, there is no fucking way I will continue to buy from them if this turns out to be true.
Price is only a secondary concern. It was important when you were buying a new rig every year. But since the pace of progress has slowed, I don't mind shelling out m
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AMD is not "getting serious." The performance improvements for AMD are mainly due to Global Foundries opening up a 14nm fab.
The performance delta between AMD and Intel has been highly correlated with the difference in transistor density ever since the first Core. AMD doesnt own any FAB's any longer and hasn't since those first Core's. Global Foundries was started when AMD's spun off its FABs into a separate rent-a-fab model enterprise,
Re:Personally I will wait (Score:4, Informative)
The performance improvements for AMD are mainly due to Global Foundries opening up a 14nm fab.
This is pretty incorrect. You don't get 52% IPC uplift just from a process node shrink. The Bulldozer family was a double whammy of bad for AMD because it was a bad design choice as well as them being stuck on an older, less power efficient node.
Had they released Zen chips on their old node sizes, they would have still realized the IPC gain, but would have had to work with lower clocks and higher power consumption. They're now competitive with Intel on performance/watt, that comes from the node shrink, but they're also competitive on performance/clock, which comes from the new architecture which doesn't have such boneheaded decisions baked in like a shared FPU between two Bulldozer "cores"
AMD hasnt really designed any bonehead chips. Ever. They just havent had access to parity FAB's.
Bulldozer was AMD's Netburst moment. It failed hard vs Intel on everything except specific multithreaded integer workloads, and even then only beat Intel at much higher power consumption. Every tech reviewer on the planet who knows what they're talking about has shouted it from the rooftops. The Core architecture pulled ahead of AMD's Phenoms and they never recovered till Zen.
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Does AMD have anything like the dreaded Intel Management Engine hardware Trojan? It would be nice if my next PC was reasonably secure.
Re:Personally I will wait (Score:4, Informative)
Does AMD have anything like the dreaded Intel Management Engine hardware Trojan?
Yes [libreboot.org]. AMD Platform Security Processor.
The Platform Security Processor (PSP) is built in on all Family 16h + systems (basically anything post-2013), and controls the main x86 core startup. PSP firmware is cryptographically signed with a strong key similar to the Intel ME. If the PSP firmware is not present, or if the AMD signing key is not present, the x86 cores will not be released from reset, rendering the system inoperable.
The PSP is an ARM core with TrustZone technology, built onto the main CPU die. As such, it has the ability to hide its own program code, scratch RAM, and any data it may have taken and stored from the lesser-privileged x86 system RAM (kernel encryption keys, login data, browsing history, keystrokes, who knows!).
Personally I think IME/PSP would be great things to have: if I could set a jumper and burn my own firmware image and signature verification key, then unset the jumper.
Too bad that's not happening...
Bring 'em on down... (Score:3)
This is great news, especially for people who don't have to have/build the latest and greatest. I am still happily running an intel Core2 Quad Core. But this means that the price of lower end parts, and used parts, should go down accordingly. The top of the line parts of today will be the hand-me-downs of tomorrow. My kids all have hand-me-down computers that are very capable for the things they do.
Forget Intel... (Score:2)
Give AMD a Chance if they Deliver (Score:2)
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Except these arent price cuts, these were microcenters already existing prices. Ryzen did absolutely nothing to affect these. Hell some of their prices are even more expensive than they were a few months back
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I have always bought AMD over Intel for my personal computer builds. I really don't care at all if I have the best FPS in a game. As long as it isn't laggy. AMD has always been able to deliver what I need. It's icing on the cake that they are the underdog as well.
Optimisitc (Score:5, Interesting)
Everything we've seen about Ryzen indicates that it'll deliver amazing performance per dollar.
We need official street pricing, more benchmarks, and OEM offerings. Most desktops and virtually all laptops are prebuilt. It's up to the OEMs to not take bribes from Intel and build products around Ryzen. With the support we've seen for Polaris in laptops, I think the outlook is good.
We've got no idea what they've got planned for servers. I hope we see something soon, because it takes much longer for vendors to build a server around a new CPU and socket than a desktop or laptop. Intel's desktop CPU prices are grossly inflated, but their Xeon prices are barbaric. If Ryzen can offer a similar value proposition in the server market as it seems to in the desktop market, then that means I can go with AMD and lose some single-threaded performance, gain multi-threaded performance (as I'll have more cores), and save a bunch of cash. I can use that cash to get more RAM and more/better flash.
If AMD can get some mindshare back, then Intel is going to be forced to compete or at least slash prices. I do believe that mindshare still starts with the nerds building their own PCs. If AMD can get an average Joe to hear about "Ryzen", then when OEMs do put out their offerings they stand to claw back a lot of marketshare.
We've also got Vega on the GPU side. Polaris is an amazing performance/$ architecture, but we've seen very little of Vega. Nvidia is poised to release the (almost) full size Pascal chip soon too (presumably as a new Titan or 1080 Ti SKU). What we've seen of Vega has it beating out the 1080 by a moderate margin. Going purely based on die sizes from the full GP100 Pascal chip from the Tesla products, we can forecast that a 1080 Ti / Titan Whatever will blow the existing 1080 out of the water. Vega will either have to be a huge surprise in terms of performance or as great a value as Polaris to claw some desktop GPU marketshare back.
If the next Xbox and Playstation ever materialize they'll likely stick with AMD for both the GPU and CPU for ease of backwards compatibility, and they will almost certainly be running Ryzen & Vega. AMD lost Nintendo this time around, with Nvidia powering the Switch. Even before it releases there are rumors of a "Pro" or upgraded model running on the Tegra X2 platform instead of the Tegra X1. I doubt we'll see such a thing for at least a full year. (At which point Tegra X3 will be out.) AMD still has at least one unannounced contract for a custom design. It's almost certainly for the Xbox Scorpio, and we'll get the reveal at E3.
If what we've seen of Ryzen holds true, and if Vega is competitive, AMD is going to have a great 12-18 months.
Goes to show Competition is a good thing (Score:2)
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Left 4 Undead 3 confirmed.
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But I'm running OpenBSD on AMD, you insensitive clod!
That means my rig is UNDEAD....
No that would be running SCO. People still doing that are about as common as vampires too.
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It's not just that their chips are usually a better value but without AMD you would have a monopolistic Intel charging through the nose with minimal innovation.
What? AMDs are and has always been awesome values. Their FX and APU chips have always been incredible values.
My work computer has 4th gen i7 and at home I have a FX-8320 and for programming tasks I can't really tell any sort of difference. The AMD is half the price.