AMD unleashes Zen 3 and reckons it's faster for gaming than Core i9

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Missed this in my previous reply, but yes, that's exactly what a lot of US companies do. Employment law in the US is horrendous.



I'm pretty sure that was all done because they weren't selling at retail price. The same with the rebates etc. you mention. If products aren't selling, then it's better to make some money on them than no money. Or to create goodwill in the marketplace. Or to try to tie people into a longer deal with a bargain up-front ("the first taste's free"). But those are all tactics that you go to when things aren't selling through the normal channels. You don't create a new product just to give it away or deep discount it, or use it as a loss-leader. That's what you do with old or bulk products.

I love your passion CAT, I really do, but you've got a very fixed viewpoint on these things. You rarely look at the business decisions that people have to make.

AMD have been the [i]bargain[i] CPU-vendor of the last 15 years. They were what you bought because you couldn't afford Intel. And if they never increase their prices they'll never break that perception. Believe me, from a business point of view being the "cheap but good enough" option isn't what anyone wants; AMD want to be the go-to provider of x86 CPUs. They need to break the perception that you only buy AMD if you can't afford Intel. They need people to believe that AMD products are the best, full stop. They need people to think of AMD as being expensive but worth it. Sadly, they can't do that without being expensive.

I'm pretty sure you've followed AMD's ups and downs for as long as I have, but perhaps you've had more of a tech and consumer eye on them. I've been watching them - particularly since roughly the Phenom 2 days - with a business eye. And this is the first time in over a decade that I sense they're not having their business hand forced by their technology being inferior. It absolutely sucks for consumers - in the short term, at least. But for long term competitiveness, they're doing exactly the right thing.

I am fed up of enthusiasts more worried about companies than themselves. Its not of any importance to a consumer. Capitalism is as much about the consumer and worker,as its about companies. Its about the person and their own margins in life. The free market for products is about consumers making sure their margins are increased. I care more about my margin.

People forget that. Because with increasing personal debt levels,one has to ask whether all of these massive stealth price increases everywhere are sustainable.Most of that money is not actually helping people,as its squirreled off to tax havens,or they get tax breaks worth billions of USD. Many huge companies,including Nvidia have had years where they didn't pay any Federal taxes:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/16/thes...s-in-2018.html

The taxpayer is paying for all of this one way or another.Then combine that with people getting their pay squeezed,something has to give. Boom and bust.

Companies needs are their problems,not mine. Nobody here cares about company margins if they want a raise. They don't care if that shop is making less margins,if they are doing a sale. Because in the end,you sink or swim according to the free market.

Criticising products and companies is part of that. Criticising tactics and pricing is very much me exercising my free market rights. If not it would be like a pseudo socialist system,ie,some level of corporate socialism,where the consumer serves the needs of the company. If you want a car it can be any car,as long as its a Lada...in white! My view is companies serve my needs,not the other way around.

Maybe if I was employed by AMD or had shares in them I might care,but I don't. If they were a UK based company employing a lot of people,and paying a lot of taxes,I might care. If they were important to our national interest,I might care.

But they are none of these,so in the end even the performance figures AMD has pushed don't justify the price.

In the end I know several people who looked at the prices,and thought they will stick with what they have for longer. I might be one,of them so in the end that is the issue here. The price increase is not matched by the performance jump relative to Intel,and AMD still has more performance issues in older games(Intel can be way ahead).

AMD had their core advantage,but sadly if they want to charge more per core,than Intel products,then objectively a number of Intel products might be a better buy.

I'm quite happy for Intel to not have competitive products right now, it keeps their pricing in check. I just swapped out my 9700K for a 9900KF for a lot less than the launch pricing (less than my 9700K cost 1 1/2 years ago). Sure it's "last gen", but honestly it's cheaper than buying a whole new platform when the performance gains are not as large as I'd want for that type of money.

Look at post 29. AMD has barely caught with Intel,and generally speaking in older games Intel seems to have a bigger advantage.

Even if reviews show a bigger jump,currently core for core,an Intel Core i5 10600K and Core i7 10700K are significantly cheaper.

It also leads to another situation if AMD is making sure its Ryzen 5 5600 is also above £200.

Will AMD drop prices once Zen2 stock is gone,or be tempted to keep pricing high?

They did this with the Athlon 64(even some Athlon XP) and some P4 models ended up being value IIRC.

What if Intel offers a 6 core Comet Lake cheaper than a 4 core Zen3 CPU??

Plus Intel luckily was stupid enough to lockdown XMP RAM speeds on its B series motherboards,because otherwise some of the Cometlake CPUs are solid value. They also have an IGP which is useful for troubleshooting.

[kalniel]

A bit pants reviews go live same day as sales as you'd think the reviews would get out early given their confidence.

Swings and roundabouts - there isn't a competitor's release to spoil so rather than paper reviews why not have product available to buy as soon as you've read the glowing reviews? Lack of confidence would be to release reviews only *after* the product was being sold.

[scaryjim]

I am fed up of enthusiasts more worried about companies than themselves. ...

Good job I'm not an enthusiast then

You might not think that a company's needs are your problem, but the simple fact is that the entire market is dependant on what companies do now. AMD's decisions will shape the market for at least the next year, and possible several. And their needs inform their decisions.

So actually their needs are your problem, which I think is demonstrated excellently by just how passionate you are being in your disagreement with their decisions.




Gods I missed Scott Bicheno's Hexus output...

[sykobee]

Great CPUs, but I'm wary of the pricing.

AMD have priced at a point they feel they can sell all they can make. I get it, that's what they should do, but when Intel starts looking a bit of a better deal in places you have to stop and think before putting down your money.

Sure, lower TDP (massively lower TDP in reality) does have a real world value and Intel can touch them here for a year at least.

The 5900X actually looks like relatively good value - 12C for less than twice the price of the 6C.

Wonder if some of these will actually launch cheaper on the day, and AMD aren't giving competitors time to reconsider their pricing before AMD launch.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Good job I'm not an enthusiast then

You might not think that a company's needs are your problem, but the simple fact is that the entire market is dependant on what companies do now. AMD's decisions will shape the market for at least the next year, and possible several. And their needs inform their decisions.

So actually their needs are your problem, which I think is demonstrated excellently by just how passionate you are being in your disagreement with their decisions.




Gods I missed Scott Bicheno's Hexus output...

This is 2020,not the year 2000. The fact is you don't even need a desktop to do a lot of stuff. I am sure AMD selling that 8C Renoir laptop for £600 is making much less margins than a desktop 8C CPU. I am also sure,if I decided to move to consoles,AMD is also marking less margins on those too. In fact 75% of all gaming revenue is not from PC,and I am sure from the remaining 25% a lot of it is games which can run on toasters.

Plus that is not even considering that for most day to day usage,an ARM based system would do the job. So if they want people to reconsider their upgrade plans,or even consider competitors products,then its really their fault.

In the end,enthusiasts on forums have this weird view,AMD,Nvidia,have some magical sway over them,forcing them to have to increase their budgets way above inflation. This is afterall the same free market,where governments have stepped into regulate pricing in favour of consumers,especially WRT to energy costs,or fines on pricing cartels.

A lot of these regulatory actions only happened due to concerned citizens exercising their free market rights. Read about Ralph Naider and how he took on the big US car companies. Keeping quiet,does not yield anything. If people had kept quiet,AMD wouldn't have reversed direction on the B450/X470 BIOS updates. If consumers hadn't rallied against Nvidia and GPP,that would have gone forward. If gamers hadn't rallied against microtransactions,we would never have seen EA reverse direction on ST BF,and neither would we be seeing more regulations being pushed regarding in-game gambling.

Its been shown time and time again,companies only push these things,if there is no blowback. Its upto consumers to do this. Its how we got the whole budget/mainstream computer market. If people had kept quiet,we would be back to how the computer market was in the early 1980s,ie,more expensive,and much smaller overall. Affordability is one of the reasons computers became widespread...not so much processing power. Consumers need to do this,otherwise if you keep quiet and bare it,you will end with a Lada at Mercedes prices!

Great CPUs, but I'm wary of the pricing.

AMD have priced at a point they feel they can sell all they can make. I get it, that's what they should do, but when Intel starts looking a bit of a better deal in places you have to stop and think before putting down your money.

Sure, lower TDP (massively lower TDP in reality) does have a real world value and Intel can touch them here for a year at least.

The 5900X actually looks like relatively good value - 12C for less than twice the price of the 6C.

Wonder if some of these will actually launch cheaper on the day, and AMD aren't giving competitors time to reconsider their pricing before AMD launch.

Exactly. They should have been trying to keep closer to previous generation prices,meaning Intel has no way to maneuver. They did the same with the Athlon 64 by increasing pricing,and Intel was given space to breadth.

If Intel decides to unlock XMP RAM settings on B series motherboards,then it would cause problems for AMD,if their cheapest Zen3 6 cores is well over £200.

Unless AMD was sandbagging on gaming performance figures,the Ryzen 7 5800X is literally the same performance as a Core i7 10700K. The Ryzen 5 5600X is around 10% faster than a Core i5 10600K,but costs more,and the Core i5 isn't aggressively clocked at stock either.

[jimbouk]

Wowsers, this got rather heated!

Price a bit high and not offering good value? I would imagine sales will suffer then. Not exactly a problem for an enthusiast not to buy an overpriced chip! So long as there is another competitive player in the market then anyone who can read a few reviews and do a bit of math can work out what they should buy.

Maybe once the old stock is cleared prices will drop? Seems like sound business sense to price your new stuff higher so you don't have to give away the old at cut price. Does that make a bargain hunting enthusiast happy? Hell no, but as I said just buy an Intel if the prices are to high.

[Crowls]

These initial prices are clearly indicative of a few factors beyond simple profiteering, they expect to sell all they can make to start out with, they will also want to run down stocks of 3000 series cpus and also give themselves room to cut prices nearer to the time of Intel's next launch.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Nvidia Turing pricing was the same tactic - they didn't want to reduce Pascal pricing. Most people called it out for what it was. Then Nvidia kept the prices higher even after Pascal sold out. Its not even bargain hunting. Even at £250 a Ryzen 5 5600X isn't massively higher price/performance than a £180~£190 Ryzen 5 3600,if we assume the former is 30% faster overall. At nearly £300 it looks to be worse! AMD better be sandbagging performance at nearly £300!!

That is also not considering,that as Ryzen 5 3600 has oscillated between £150~£190,and that the Ryzen 9 CPUs seem to have actually gone down in price.

Another issue,is you can get a Core i5 10400F for £30~£40 cheaper than a Ryzen 5 3600. That is enough to cover the extra cost of a Z series motherboard to run the RAM at full speed:
https://www.techspot.com/review/2032...core-i5-10400/

Its actually quicker than a Ryzen 5 3600 for gaming if the RAM is run at XMP.

[Tabbykatze]

Jesus, I'm gonna need a whole cheeseboard for all this whining.

Honestly, you're going to go to what, Intel?

I'm too exhausted to even make an argument but after reading the whole thread, Cat, you're upset because your image of AMD is now sat firmly in rose tinted glasses now. They're competitive, they have fight and they're the only one of the big two to have actually mads a thorough headway in processor advancement these last 3-4 years. Buying £1000 worth of stock 4 years ago would have netted me 45k (doesn't quite work like that, but you get the metaphor).

All your posturing and anger is based on that AMD now holds the crown and because oc that, they want to command the authority through their price.

It's a mindshare tactic and it's stupid but it works.

But on top of the fact that I'm seeing in many forums of "only this, only that". Like...what? I honestly would love to know what AMD could do to make some of these nonces happy.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Jesus, I'm gonna need a whole cheeseboard for all this whining.

Honestly, you're going to go to what, Intel?

I'm too exhausted to even make an argument but after reading the whole thread, Cat, you're upset because your image of AMD is now sat firmly in rose tinted glasses now. They're competitive, they have fight and they're the only one of the big two to have actually mads a thorough headway in processor advancement these last 3-4 years. Buying £1000 worth of stock 4 years ago would have netted me 45k (doesn't quite work like that, but you get the metaphor).

All your posturing and anger is based on that AMD now holds the crown and because oc that, they want to command the authority through their price.

It's a mindshare tactic and it's stupid but it works.

But on top of the fact that I'm seeing in many forums of "only this, only that". Like...what? I honestly would love to know what AMD could do to make some of these nonces happy.

I find it funny all of you were attacking Intel and Nvidia about their tactics(false annoyance in retrospect?). I remember only 2 years ago most here were mocking Nvidia for Turing and its price increases. But Nvidia were also top dog too??

Yet,the moment AMD do,its all fine. Its the same hypocracy back in the Athlon 64 days. All the false tears against Intel and Nvidia,but the moment AMD did it was fine. AMD gets a pass Intel and Nvidia don't.

More hypocracy and double standards by people. Look at some of the comments from Rollo years ago. They were a paid marketeer and was mocked by most of the forum a decade ago,for what some of some of you are nowsaying. The same kind of terminology some are using. Think of the company,performance means more money,companies are not charities,you should pay more,don't moan,etc. People are just repeating it without realising it. 10 years ago,people were not having any of it!

This is the same country,where people moaned about energy prices so much,the government has stepped in and put caps on prices.

I only care about price/performance - which was how enthusiasts and overclocking became a thing in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

I remember people saying anyone who pointed out what Titan SKUs would do to the GPU market was just complaining needlessly. Yet years later what was predicted happened,and suddenly people had group amnesia.

So in the end if you want to excuse make for these kind of price increases,then do so. Eventually you will price yourself out of the market even if it looks OK for you now. History will repeat itself.

[jimbouk]

Its actually quicker than a Ryzen 5 3600 for gaming if the RAM is run at XMP.

So people will buy the alternative. Not sure what all the fuss is about. Not like they have a monopoly at any segment in the market is it? I'm fine if any company want to price their product uncompetitively in a comparative market.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

So people will buy the alternative. Not sure what all the fuss is about. Not like they have a monopoly at any segment in the market is it? I'm fine if any company want to price their product uncompetitively in a comparative market.

Nvidia jacks up pricing,most on here laughed at pricing,even though Turing was quicker than the previous generation and introduced new features. That was fine. Intel introduces new CPUs which are faster than AMD for gaming,but cost more per core. Many here,said Intel was overpriced,etc and it was all about price/performance. That was fine.

Moment AMD starts pushing its prices up,with higher per core price than Intel. That is fine,totally fine,and to plan. Oh noes! Stop moaning! Poor AMD. They need monies! How dare you criticise AMD!! Its the flip-flop which I don't understand.

Even on AMD Reddit,which is notoriously protective of AMD,they are pointing out Intel is probably better value in certain segments:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comment...an_some_ryzen/

Top rated comments:

Agreed, can't fault them for making the 5900X a halo product since it's now the best desktop CPU.

But the 5600X and 5800X pricing doesn't make sense to me. It's a big improvement over Ryzen 3000, but only a few percentage points ahead of Intel in most games. I can't see why someone would pay $100 more for a 5800X over a i7-10700K.

The value curve is upside down. The low end is supposed to be where the value is, but instead the 5900 is the best value.

They are trying to do the upsell trick like popcorn at the cinema, where you can buy a thimble full of popcorn for $9, or a wheelbarrow full for $10.

Maybe Hexus,is out AMDing AMD Reddit?

It was the same with the RX5700XT. They priced it high,and had to drop prices. They did it with the RX5600XT too.

[JayN]

only 19% more IPC

I recall Ice Lake's Sunny Cove mean IPC update is 18%. Maybe a Tiger Lake-H or the Rocket Lake-S will do the job.

I'm also interested in what Xe-HPG does, since I saw a note recently that it will be supported in oneAPI.

[Iota]

Look at post 29. AMD has barely caught with Intel,and generally speaking in older games Intel seems to have a bigger advantage.

Even if reviews show a bigger jump,currently core for core,an Intel Core i5 10600K and Core i7 10700K are significantly cheaper.

It also leads to another situation if AMD is making sure its Ryzen 5 5600 is also above £200.

Will AMD drop prices once Zen2 stock is gone,or be tempted to keep pricing high?

They did this with the Athlon 64(even some Athlon XP) and some P4 models ended up being value IIRC.

What if Intel offers a 6 core Comet Lake cheaper than a 4 core Zen3 CPU??

Plus Intel luckily was stupid enough to lockdown XMP RAM speeds on its B series motherboards,because otherwise some of the Cometlake CPUs are solid value. They also have an IGP which is useful for troubleshooting.

I think until we see the official reviews, we don't really know exactly where AMD are truly on IPC, especially in comparison to Intel products. Pricing wise the 5xxx series / Zen 3 looks like a bit of a snafu on the part of AMD, they're being both competitive on performance but uncompetitive on pricing. Sure the halo product of the 5800X, charge a bit more for that, it's lower down the product stack that makes little sense to me, unless we're all missing something and they'll be more competitive than we think they are.

I recall the Athlon 64 / P4 era, Intel could only compete on clock speeds (unlike today where their IPC isn't massively different). For those who game, the difference is negligible though and the difference between then and now is massive. Back then people were lucky to be gaming above 720p, fast forward to today and most people are still only gaming at 1080p with a few exceptions for 2K and 4K gaming. Most people are not going to notice a huge difference in terms of gaming between using a newer Zen 2 / Zen 3 platform and the comparable Intel platforms.

I think we'll possibly see pricing movement a few months after launch, likely towards January 2021, but that entirely depends on Intel. Most people were berating Intel on pricing, including me, however that position has moved on most products (from what I've seen recently). For example the i7 10700K is about 8% cheaper than the previous generation 9700K was, so in the sense of AMD being competitive to lowering prices, it has accomplished that. Seems like the market is working as anticipated, with the exception of pricing lower down in the AMD product stack where a bulk of sales happen. Perhaps AMD have hit higher costs due to the pandemic, which is why we're seeing this pricing, without seeing the financials though we're not really going to know if this is down to something like that or if it's just the pricing structure they've chosen to go with while the previous generation goes below a certain stock level.

Edit: This leaves Intel masses of room for manoeuvre, especially if they start unlocking features on chipsets etc. Be interesting to see how they respond.

[Corky34]

Can't see those prices sticking around for long, my guess is they'll reduce prices in the new year or in response to what Intel does, if anything.

[DanceswithUnix]

I'm don't see me buying at these prices during these uncertain times where you can't be certain you will have a job in 3 months time. But then RRP prices don't generally last long, so will have to see what happens after Christmas. Vega 7 didn't stay release price for long

We still have the APU prices to come and they usually hold up the lower end and now include the key 6 core parts, though I'm not too hopeful of any bargains there from the way things are going.

On the plus side, I've not seen anyone say "AMD will be bankrupt in 6 months" so that's a nice change