Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14925/intel-cascade-lakex-for-hedt-18-cores-for-under-1000

by taspeotis • 7 years ago

202 146 7 years ago

anandtech.com

philliphaydon• 7 years ago

Hmm they definitely worried about threadripper 3.

2019 - year consumers win.

noipv4• 7 years ago

Ryzen9 [3900X 12C/24T and 3950X 16C/32T] both @ 105W will be Intel HEDT's coffins

tracker18• 7 years ago

I think the next ThreadRipper release will be what really kicks Intel HEDT line. The new pricing structure seems competitive against the R9 series. I've already bought AMD and don't plan on switching for 4-5 years though (3600 waiting for 3950x to drop).

s5ma6n2• 7 years ago

Finally, they were basically asking double price for some CPUs until there is a strong competition. This is a really good example why competition matters for the consumers. I hope similar situation happens for GPUs too. Right now NVIDIA asks for way more than the cards' worth.

seamyb88• 7 years ago

This is a really good example why competition matters for the consumers.

Imagine how much quicker the fair pricing would be if there were standards and regulations, like what goes into every other aspect of its design.

pjc50• 7 years ago

I think this is a poor example for the pro-regulation argument; it's a more or less classical market where competition drives innovation, but the cost of entry is very high.

The only applicable regulation I can think of might be "dual sourcing".

another-one-off• 7 years ago

I can't quite interpret what you are saying; so I'll say what I hope you are saying:

If the x86 and x86_64 instruction sets became an open standard so that anyone could implement them; that would be great for consumers. If Intel is in a position to halve prices in the face of competition there are obviously not enough players in the market.

PixelOfDeath• 7 years ago

Even if it may still take some years, I have really high hopes for chiplet GPUs.

stochastic_monk2• 7 years ago

Would the GPU have its own RAM or simply share address space with a CPU?

Jonnax• 7 years ago

I guess so but for a lot of buyers they're not even considering AMD. They're just using it as a stick to beat Intel with for a better deal.

andrewstuart• 7 years ago

The real problem is that AMD doesn't invest enough in the software.

Nvidia's Linux support absolutely puts AMD to shame.

The biggest lesson in hardware is that "it's the software support, stupid". Too many hardware manufacturers think they are selling hardware alone. They are selling hardware AND the software that makes it work.

A computer is useless without software support. Witness the vast array of essentially useless ARM devices out there because none of them have usable software drivers/Linux support.

distances• 7 years ago

Which buyers exactly? Enthusiasts seem to be switching overwhelmingly to AMD: e.g. Mindfactory having AMD at 81% now. [0] Anecdotally, there seems to be a lot of resentment towards Intel for their shenanigans, I don't personally know anyone who's even considering Intel for their own builds.

It's a different matter for laptops where consumers have much less say on the topic, of course.

[0] https://m.imgur.com/gallery/9edvLSn

pradn• 7 years ago

Even if AMD is used just as a leveraging stick against Intel, that's a win for customers.

There's the old story of talking to an Oracle salesman while drinking from an IBM coffee mug - to signal that there's other viable options and get a better deal.

llampx6• 7 years ago

Thanks, but I'd still rather buy AMD since they actually offer competition. I fear that if I buy Intel now, I'm basically saying to them that they can pull whatever shenanigans they like and they're still untouchable.

zecg• 7 years ago

You're missing out on a host of vulnerabilities.

Grangar• 7 years ago

At risk of missing sarcasm, a large reason all these vulnerabilities in Intel are found is their market share. Same as when OSX was considered "unhackable" - it just wasn't worth the effort. AMD is likely just as bad, but it's not uncovered (yet).

Supporting the underdog is a good idea nonetheless, but not for this reason per se.

sixothree2• 7 years ago

This incompatible socket thing is driving me crazy. I "just" bought a new motherboard and now I can't use any current products.

SketchySeaBeast2• 7 years ago

I've never even considered that a problem - my time between upgrades is so long that the last motherboard had DDR3, and the one before that DDR2. If you're a once a year upgrader I could see it, but given the slow progression of CPU performance as of the last half decade (AMD's rapid jump to parity not withstanding), I can't see a real reason why to upgrade that often.

jmpman• 7 years ago

How much of Intel’s demise is due to their layoffs from 4 years ago? Did they cut too deep and mess up the secret sauce?

MisterTea3• 7 years ago

The CPU bugs go back much further, probably the late 00's in the beginning of the end. Short sighted speed cheating got them into this mess.

wbhart• 7 years ago

I'm no Intel fanboy, but I think it is too early to speak of Intel's demise. They are still making a lot of money. I mean, AMD only has single digit penetration into the datacentre market, for example, and Intel is still compelling on mobile.

And I suspect the real answer is they set their targets too ambitiously with their new node. Their 10nm was simply too big a jump with too many unproven technologies, with too many unexpected obstacles.

But I wouldn't count them out of the game just yet. They are an aggressively competitive company. They'll be back.

chapium• 7 years ago

Just look at what happened to amd around 2010. Intel can punch back. Hard.

tracker18• 7 years ago

Considering purchasing cycles are over the course of years that's not surprising. My work issued laptop is just over a year old, and I wouldn't expect a new one for another 3-4 years. Not to mention purchasing contracts that are negotiated once or twice a decade that may specify Intel.

AMD is expected to double their penetration by the end of the coming year in the server space, which is huge. I think they'll also make inroads into the laptop space as well. Given that they're the preferred APU for next gen consoles won't hurt their sales to developer channels either.

I would be surprised if they haven't captured about 1/3 of the overall x86 market by the end of 2021, which is where Intel will probably be where they want to be technology wise, until then it's AMDs game.

self_awareness• 7 years ago

Yay, competition. Gotta love it.

zantana• 7 years ago

Yes it in the midst of all the complexities of the various monopolies, oligopolies and inefficiencies in the modern marketplace, its refreshing to see the system work as promised. Just like in the Athlon days, even people who would never in a million years use AMD's product, or even know of its existence benefit from its products.

vbezhenar3• 7 years ago

Now it's an interesting battle. I want to build new workstation, probably in 2020. I was going to go to Threadripper route, but now I have a choice and that's awesome.

alimbada3• 7 years ago

It's only a choice if you're willing to settle for:

- a long list of security vulnerabilities which, when fully patched and recommended features (including HyperThreading) are disabled, results in a huge loss in performance(~25% in some reports)

- lower power efficiency due to still using 14nm process

- platform uncertainty, i.e. will upgrading mean buying a new motherboard?

vbezhenar3• 7 years ago

AFAIK Intel patches many of those security issues in new CPUs, so performance loss won't be as severe. I don't care about power efficiency, as electricity is cheap enough for me and I'm buying computer for many years, so I'm unlikely to benefit from CPU upgrading in 7 years anyway.

Basically for me it's about:

* Security issues. They are real for Intel and performance loss is real.

* Inter-core communication latency. I don't particularly like this chiplet design for AMD, when some cores have a long time to talk to other cores. Intel seems like a safer play here. But I did not research about their HEDT CPUs, may be it's the same for Intel.

* Balance of frequency/cores. While more cores is better, I think that after 12 cores I don't really need more. And single-thread performance is always important.

* Other issues. I don't like that AMD had multiple issues with its Zen CPUs, especially with Linux. Crashes, RNG bug, overall Linux compatibility. I'm feeling like Intel takes Linux compatibility much more seriously and Intel overall seems like a safer bet for stable system.

gravypod2• 7 years ago

TR4 will likely support PCIe 4.0. It seems to make sense to me to pick Threadripper because of this. Ignoring costs the future-proof of having tomorrow's IO interconnect is probably worth a few bucks for a work machine.

tracker18• 7 years ago

PCIe 4 is only really worth it for enhanced storage drives... and they do come with some heat and related performance penalties if the case airflow is insufficient.

Depending on your workloads, it may well be worth it for you though.

vbezhenar3• 7 years ago

I can't imagine scenario where PCIe 3.0 is not enough for me. Even for storage it only matters for a linear I/O and I don't care about it that much. Random I/O won't saturate PCIe interface, it's not fast enough on any disk.

MisterTea3• 7 years ago

At that price point I'd rather spend a little more on AMD and get 24 cores. Because let's be honest, if you got the money to build a REALLY high end PC why are you penny pinching on the CPU? 200-300 isn't a big leap when the motherboard costs more than that difference.

tyri_kai_psomi• 7 years ago

Gotta hand it to this place, it's one of the few places I visit where 200-300 dollars is considered penny pinching. The other is the country club.

snagglegaggle• 7 years ago

Computers at this level are durable goods and ostensibly help you take an income, so it's not too strange.

MisterTea3• 7 years ago

When you have $1000 to drop on a CPU I'm quite sure you can also afford a country club membership ;-).

yummypaint• 7 years ago

Given the amount of time people on hn spend using their computers, it isnt that surprising. Most people probably spend much less time commuting, but that amount of money is considered reasonable for vehicle maintenence expenses that probably recur more often than people buy a new computer

symfoniq• 7 years ago

If I was building new, I'd go AMD, too.

As things stand, I already have a 8-core X299 system, and the fact that I can drop an 18-core CPU into it after a BIOS update is compelling. But it seems unlikely that there is a large enough audience in this situation to juice Intel's profits or prevent them from losing more market share to AMD.

PedroBatista• 7 years ago

Intel's offering still looks bad compared to AMD.

Before the price cuts it looked pathetic, so I guess it's an improvement.

BoorishBears4• 7 years ago

Why is it with every AMD sales-related submission I see, the level of discourse in the comments is barely one step above name calling?

My pet theory is that there's just a ton of casual investors who have also become emotionally invested in AMD...

jdjdjjsjs• 7 years ago

Or it could be, as people have said many times before and the actual subject of this article confirms, that people were sick of Intel using its near Monopoly in the past to price gouge its customers and slow walk tech improvements.

Someone1234• 7 years ago

They called Intel's old price "pathetic." That's hardly a low level of discourse, and not really tantamount to name calling.

It isn't a particularly insightful comment, I'll acknowledge that, but this response seems like it lowers the quality of the thread more than the comment it is replying to (and arguably breaks the sites rules by suggesting the other poster have ulterior motives for posting what they posted).

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

And:

Please don't make insinuations about astroturfing. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried, email us and we'll look at the data.

Beltiras• 7 years ago

Still bleeding profusely on the server side of things. AMD still has a 4X on performance and a considerable energy savings to boot.

bryanlarsen3• 7 years ago

Much more significant IMO is the rumours of heavy discounting for Intel server chips and the wide variety of laptops of AMD laptops exhibited at Computex 2019. AMD doesn't have significant market share in servers or laptops yet, but those are signs that it may be coming...

mbfg• 7 years ago

The question is how much of this is pure marketing, given Intel's supply problems, and how much is this a real product. Will Intel actually be able to match demand for these products in the short term? It's an easy marketing win if you promise half price parts but customers enmasse can't actually buy them.

tracker18• 7 years ago

Given the ability to actually buy an r9-3900x anywhere close to list price, I'm not sure it really matters either way at the moment.

wil4212• 7 years ago

I am getting served ads that are redirecting my browser 10 times and showing something like those scammy Amazon gift card ads. On mobile safari.

Synaesthesia• 7 years ago

Yeah it has gotten worse. You should run an adblocker on your iOS device.

nvrspyx2• 7 years ago

To add, I recommend Adguard, 1Blocker X, Wipr, or Firefox Focus. Out of those, I believe only 1Blocker X has a cost, although AdGuard has a subscription for DNS privacy and security/custom filters.

I personally use 1Blocker X.

sukilot• 7 years ago

Is there a website that maps popular intel chips / chipsets / builds to AMD competitors?

Also, what's the deal with sockets? What sets of intel chips are mutually compatible and incompatible with others, and how does AMD compare?

marcosdumay2• 7 years ago

The deal with the sockets is that the best CPUs stop being compatible with your motherboard only once every 4 or 5 years, and you'll only be denied an upgrade in a decade. In a quick search I got a compatibility enumeration:

http://www.buildcomputers.net/amd-cpu-socket.html

acd• 7 years ago

Intel CPU TDP is 165W we have global warming. AMD has a TDP of 65W and 105W

We have gone from 200W power supplies to 1kW power supplies in PCs.

Intel slashes prices in face of AMD competition

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