Agree, but these are in effect "price cuts."
Price cuts are fine - as long as Intel never calls them that in response to AMD, that's just bad for business.
It was going to happen anyway, Intel's product roadmap is largely driven by OEM requests.
Yes, eventually. AMD just pushed it ahead. I doubt KBL-R has any six core mainstream offerings (but I'm looking ahead to Coffee Lake in 2018, clearly, and versus Zenver2, which has a 15% or so performance improvement).
I don't see Intel even being capable of moving a six-core CPU with KBL-R. They may just let AMD have their time in the sun - the retail end user isn't directly important to them anyway.
There's no legal reason for Intel to "let" AMD gain market share; if Intel wins its market share fair-and-square, then that's AMD's problem, not Intel's. For example, Intel had no issues killing the Cat core line in value notebook/desktop with Bay Trail-D/M and its successors.
To contrary, Intel has already been found guilty of violating many laws... in Europe. Intel will absolutely be willing to pay with a billion of lost revenues if it prevents them from needing to face multi-billion fines in Europe... an action that will support their newly competitive opponent and look bad with investors at the same time. AMD will not need to a file a complaint for this to occur, from my understanding of the ruling (not entirely aware of the intricacies of European anti-trust law).
Intel's contra-revenue investments were undoubtedly illegal. In time, they may even have to pay for that. I think someone has to file a legal complaint, first, and AMD is the only party capable of doing so... since it is a different market with a different class of products.
How I read this, please tell me if I'm wrong: you're saying that Intel will build superior products at each tier and have higher price tiers for products that AMD doesn't have direct competitors for.
If AMD can drive Intel to build better products for the money, then that's great for everyone, no matter which brand you prefer
Yes, there's no real downside for the consumer
It's just a matter of how AMD can manage to benefit from their investment - and how we, as responsible consumers, can help to ensure they benefit. For a very short period of time AMD has an upper hand in the HEDT performance market - equal to superior performance at vastly superior prices. That will not last until the end of the year. Intel will force that gap closed by hook or by crook or any combination of the two.
Zenver2 will come out sometime in 2018 to compete, primarily, against Coffee Lake. Both of these will likely be 15~20% improvements over their outgoing architectures. Coffee Lake, from rumors, has a six core native die. This is all Intel was going to give OEMs and consumers... and there's no way Intel would upgrade that to an 8-core die in less than a year.
Cannon Lake, however, has time to be changed to include an eight-core die.
Coffee Lake should be a more than 15% bump in MT applications. The 15% bump Intel was referencing was probably Kaby Lake Refresh-U -- it has 2x the cores, but all core turbo is likely significantly lower in 15W envelope than it is for the dual core parts (for obvious reasons, 14nm++ is not magic).
I think KBL-R and Coffee Lake are possibly one in the same, though there's a lot of confusion surrounding both (or maybe I'm just the one confused?). Both were scheduled to be released at the same time (late 2017), both have had the same rumors about them... I just think the original Coffee Lake was a different product entirely and now it's just a Kaby Lake refresh (a.k.a. Sky Lake refresh #2).
It is also possible that the two products target different markets and both exist concurrently.
Facebook
Twitter