Understandable. However, I feel like with the lack of competition at this moment. I honestly can't see a Zen product being MSRP >$500 in the consumer market. Now on the server/datacenter side hell yeah they'll be cranking out $2000-$3000 chips for quad socket massive number crunching stuff.
AMD can't charge the exact same price as Intel, but if the part compete's with intel than there is no reason for AMD to not make close to Intel-level profit margins.
AMDs strategy isn't to compete, or even create hardware which directly competes with intel/NVidia high end releases, what they do is create midrange hardware which segments their competitors into the high end market alone, sort of cutting the head of the hydra.
I'm guessing the 8 cores zen will probably be priced at around the same as the 6700k or so, give and take a few bucks. That would effectively segment Intel into the high end market with their *cough stupidly priced 1k $+ enthusiast market.
AMD have no interest in competing in the high end hardware, It is a battle which is simply not worth fighting since only a very small segment of the market shops there.
They used this exact strategy with the RX 4xx as well.
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True so let's say you're right. Then I would personally say that (last I checked 6950k was $1100) to me AMD needs to pull a repeat of the 1080 vs 2 480s and charge around $650-$750. Saying same/better performance at half cost.
EDIT: That being said I think AMD has the right frame of mind to go after the mainstream
There's a massive difference your ignoring, AMD isn't marketing the 8 Core 16 thread Zen part as a mainstream part. They showed it benchmarked against the 6950k, and showed it edging out. They can't charge more than $275 for an RX 480, because the performance doesn't make sense if that card is $320. Now, if the Card performed like a 1070, you can bet your ass it'll cost 1070 money. Idk where this, "AMD doesn't care about anything above the $200 price point," mentality came from in the community. The Fury X, was a direct competitor to the 980 Ti, and Vega isn't going to challenge the 1060 again no its going to be a higher end card. If you think AMD is going to limit themselves to only the cheapest price range your out of your mind.
The higher end DOES make sense to compete in for in multiple ways. Its great fucking PR, the best you can get. The Titan card is this for Nvidia, it makes no sense but it guarantees Nvidia is always the leader in performance. That's the best BR money can buy. The higher end makes better profit margins. Do you think Nvidia makes more money on the 1080 or the 1060? The *80 series cards from Nvidia, actually do sell okay. The 980 and 980 Ti both sit around 1.4% of the market on the steam hardware survey, and those cards are massive profit for sale. Are you kidding?
AMD THEMSELVES said this: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/05/amd-admits-it-cant-be-the-cheaper-solution-will-refocus-on-performance/
You can want AMD to deliver a Zen 8 core at $350-400 all you want, but that isn't sustainable...
Never said anything about not caring about "above 200$". AMD aims for the mainstream market, and maybe the 8 cores will cost more than the 6700k who knows. But AMD isn't gonna go full retard with their pricing of these CPUs , and call it "enthusiast" like Intel did and charge what was it? like 1800 bucks for the 6950.
AMD will price the 4-6-8 cores so they're affordable to the mainstream of computer users e.g. NOT 1800 bucks but rather my guess is around 300-400, maybe even 500 bucks. And release a server line of the ZEN line as well with a enterprise price tag attached to them as well.
They don't have to give you their 8 core part for $500 if it competes with the Intel $1100 part. They can charge way more for that. They're a business after all, not a charity...
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Guess only time will show, i think this is one of those subjects where there just different opinions.
Time will show, but I'd bet my ass that the principles of business will always shrine through. AMD is still in a corner and strapped for cash, its not a good time for them to be giving away the best they have to give.
The only way I see AMD pricing a Zen 8 core around 400 is if it is more of a competitor against intel's 400ish dollar 6 cores than their 8 core chips. Which I suppose is quite possible.
Whatever Zen ends up looking like AMD will try to maximize the return on all that r&d.
Great Scott; AMD might actually be able to pull this one off. Probably not going to be like the Athlon64 days but it is still nice to see a product from AMD that is not released horribly obsolete.
This is called the Halo effect.
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As excited as I am for ZEN im much more excited for there new motherboard platform. This 990FX chipset is not ageing well and it would be nice to get modern features like M.2 slots and DDR4 as well as PCIE 3.0 support. I have an older (but respectable) 7970Ghz and im curious to see if PCIE 3.0 and DDR4 will net some extra performance.
There are newer mobo for the FX actually with M.2 and USB3.1 Type A now, a little late but at least it's there.
well to put it more clearly new platforms with an upgrade path ^^ hehe
New Intel and AMD chips will only support Windows 10. Yay?
http://fudzilla.com/news/processors/41484-new-intel-and-amd-chips-will-only-support-windows-10
It will only support the Windows Version 10, but that title is kind of misleading because Linux will be supported ofc. No windows 7 or 8.1 though, just 10.
Although, I wonder if this is something that can be hack at the software level as oppose to a bios limitation to the hardware like when Intel disabled overclock on their non-K parts.
What I've heard is that the Windows Kernel Itself won't be patched to fully support these chips on older windows, for either Kaby Lake or Zen. You might still be able to run Win 8.1 or 7 on them, but you might loose some features that would have to have been hard coded into the OS specifically for these chips. I'm no operating systems programmer though, so don't take my explanation for it as gospel xD
Well, if someone hasn't figured out how to run DX12 on Windows 7 by now, then I don't think Zen specific optimization/features will make it anytime soon for those platforms as well.
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