Why tf does everyone expect Zen to be super cheap if its awesome? If Zen competes with Intel, and seriously actually is competitive, like Haswell-Broadwell level IPC, then why the fuck would they sell a 5960X/6900K Equivalent for $300? Jesus I hope that AMD doesn't do that. If you can compete, charge for the product and make a profit. If they price'd a 5960X/6900K equivalent at $700/800, that would be a steal and would make AMD some money. That price would undercut Intel, whilst still turning a sizable profit for AMD. There is no reason for AMD to sell a 8 core, hyperthreaded, competitive part, for $300. Like they can't charge the Intel prices, but if you expect them to sell that fast of a part for $300, I think your out of your mind. What I want to see is a lineup more like this:
$140 Quad core no Hyper
$250 Quad core with Hyper
$750 Eight core with Hyper
$1550 16 core with Hyper
And if Intel responds by moving a 6 core to the mainstream, shift all of those prices down and offer higher clock or core count varients of each.
and then above that a robust lineup of opterons with lower tdp's, ECC support, TONS of pcie, and core counts up to 24 or 32 cores. Now that would be awesome.
Sounds about right for the Quad Cores, although I would think the 8 Core would be along like $400-500ish, maybe $600-700 if it somehow keeps up with Intel's 8 Core CPU at all and $800-1200ish for the 16 Core. Honestly, I am just hoping Zen pushes the envelope, set the standards higher and lower the price of the higher CPUs like the i5's and stuff, maybe even bring 6-Cores to the mainstream like you said, don't really expect their first line up of Zen to succeed against Intel, that's an unrealistic expectation.
Honestly though, with the i7 5820K costing $320, it already felt like border-lined mainstream, the X99 Mobos were just really expensive when I got it. Honestly though, my reasoning why the 8 Core part may not cost as much as Intel's is simply cause there is a slim chance it will perform as well at all, so they may have to undercut Intel, a 40% IPC most likely isn't gonna get Zen to Skylake's level. But yeah, $300 might be as ridiculous.
The thing is, AMD is going to need to largely undercut the 'intel' market, as the Zen CPU is NOT going to be faster then intel, its just not possible. They will also have to somehow convince people who are SOLD on using intel (most the world) to buy their Zen, the only way to do that is to have a CPU which significantly undercuts the competitions price.
That is how they sold their FX and 8core series CPU's and its the way they will need to sell the Zen regardless of what improvements they think they have in keeping up with Intel...
I'm with you on the cheap and cheerful train. A somewhat capable quadcore will be enough for my needs. Something for all the Dell Optiplexes of the world. Most prebuild PCs that friends or acquaintances of mine bought had AMD FX CPUs due to the price.
I'd be surprised if they want to go for a X99 competitor. I'd rather expect some sort of server stuff. That is a very diverse market. I mean there are ARM servers (Tianhe-2) and even Power8 servers. There must be segment where AMD thinks they can compete.
Many people believe that to be true but in fact they actually are.. Maybe slightly less expensive than Intel at the counter part (say 20 dollars cheaper) but they still are.. Like I'm so surprised at the level of forgetfulness.. AMD price ganged even when they were the underdog back with k6.. Like holy crap guys
Dude I'm with you on this post 100 percent you are absolutely correct they will make it expensive.. What we are saying here is a bunch of hopeful fanboying about cheap fast amd parts
As long as its lower than Intel's pricing, AMD can price it however they want and it would still be a better value than Intel. There is no reason in hell for them to charge $300 for a part which matches the performance level of a $1200 part from Intel... They can't charge the same level of "Enthusiast" or "Intel" tax, but there is no reason that they can't actually charge a good bit for a high performing part. I really hope AMD's fanbase isn't exclusively cheap fucks like me, because Zen may fall flat on its face if nobody actually buys some of the higher priced parts...
Where the hell do you come up with this shit? Nobody is being a hopeful fanboy here and nobody thinks that AMD will make bargain bin priced chips. We're just saying that Zen chips that are similar to Intel in performance will be priced lower than Intel. And that's good enough. If they're less expensive then Intel you can't accuse them of price gauging.
AMD will keep their prices reasonable because they know if they do not then they cant compete. Plus history shows that AMD has always targeted mainstream markets and budget oriented users. Intel was only able to hike prices for a number of years because they became dominant in the market place without any real competition. If AMD starts providing some real competition once again then prices for Intel products may drop a little too at least for consumer oriented products.
Competition is good and we really want AMD to get it right this time with Zen, it does not necessarily mean they have to produce the absolute best CPU and spend a fortune doing it what it means is they have produce something that keeps up with Intel Tech, gives them a platform to build upon in future and allows them to stay sustainable in the market among enthusiasts and mainstream users. Steps AMD has taken in the console market will also yield long term rewards and the relationship with ARM. Whilst they may not have kept up at all in the CPU race with Intel in the past 5 or so years from a business perspective AMD has done some good work and they have seen the market trends for at least another decade I think hence their alliances are very strategic and position them to derive income from a number of sources.
Intel took a more bold approach in the early 2000s after AMD64 was licensed to them, they determined that if they just poured a whole lot of resources into their CPU architecture they would ultimately win the processor arms race which for a while now they have proven. To put this into perspective Intel invested up to 100million dollars or more on engineers alone. I think when viewed appropriately we cant always expect that AMD and Intel are equal competitors, which is why AMD has attempted to define themselves in the market differently. And interestingly enough team red still appeals quite a lot to enthusiasts.
I personally think Intel makes great products but their pricing strategy can come under criticism at times. As for AMD their products and price scales very nicely, and people can often build quite decent machines with AMD hardware without having a lot of money, the distinction between the two companies then is that Intel probably prefers staying at the more expensive end of the market whereas AMD caters to the more mainstream or budget buyers.
As customers we benefit from competition hence we want AMD competing with a product that delivers equal performance to Intels i5/i7 consumer grade cpus and priced accordingly. For Zen I suspect pricing to be between 200 for a lower end processor up to 500 for the higher end enthusiast grade ones and sub 200 dollar APUs for low cost markets, I do not genuinely think they will go beyond that level.
If the rumored engineering samples are anything to go by (which is a big IF but anyway), I'm thinking that it feels likely that AMD plays a conservative game when it comes to clock speeds both nominal and boost in order to keep the power consumption down. Since after all they're going for 8C/16T at 95W. Hopefully there's room for overclocking even if it might need a lot higher power budget, but I can't help but feeling a wee bit anxious that their quest for power efficiency in the design might end up limiting the maximum reachable clock speeds significantly as well. IPC and power usage is certainly important, but it's far from everything on desktop.
I'm certainly prepared to pay a good price, since I expect an 8C/16T chip to be worth it. We can at least feel safe that the motherboards won't be very expensive.