Rumour: AMD to drop prices in April

Pilum

Member
Aug 27, 2012
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As Digitimes reports, AMD may drop prices in April: "Prices of AMD's APUs including A8-5600K, FX-8320, FX-6300 and FX-4300 will see 8-15% drops and the CPU maker will also start shipping its A4-4000 in mid-April for sales in mid-May priced at US$40."

If this should be true, the current prices are still not low enough to clear all the WSA-enforced production volume. What will happen once Haswell hits?
 

mrmt

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2012
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If this should be true, the current prices are still not low enough to clear all the WSA-enforced production volume. What will happen once Haswell hits?

Just look at q3 and q4 results from the last two years.
 

colonelciller

Senior member
Sep 29, 2012
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What will happen once Haswell hits?
you think people will notice Haswell?? the Haswell specs are not impressive in the slightest and Intel's market milking is getting on people's nerves. I'd say that Haswell is doing PR damage to the Intel brand.
 
Mar 10, 2006
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you think people will notice Haswell?? the Haswell specs are not impressive in the slightest and Intel's market milking is getting on people's nerves. I'd say that Haswell is doing PR damage to the Intel brand.

Haswell's focus is on lower power and boosting battery life. Want high performance? IVB-E will be out in Q4.
 
Mar 10, 2006
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What price can be expected for an 8 core IVB-E?

Want the performance? Be ready to pay for it. The market has spoken, and at the high volume mainstream price points, it wants thin and light laptops, not high powered workstation class PCs.

Welcome to capitalism!
 

AtenRa

Lifer
Feb 2, 2009
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If this should be true, the current prices are still not low enough to clear all the WSA-enforced production volume.

You completely forgot to quote the following,

AMD plans to cut some of its APU prices at the end of April to welcome its next-generation Richland APUs, set for launch in early June

:whiste:
 

daveybrat

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Jan 31, 2000
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FX-6300 is definitely the best bang for the buck gaming processor for the money as it is. Another 8-15% drop in price is just icing on the cake. Definitely prefer that over the overpriced i3's that are currently in it's price range.
 

Ketchup

Elite Member
Sep 1, 2002
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you think people will notice Haswell?? the Haswell specs are not impressive in the slightest and Intel's market milking is getting on people's nerves. I'd say that Haswell is doing PR damage to the Intel brand.

I don't know why people wouldn't. Plenty noticed Ivy Bridge, and it was the die shrink chip. Since Haswell is going to be the micro-architecture "Tock," I think plenty will notice.
 

NTMBK

Lifer
Nov 14, 2011
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I don't know why people wouldn't. Plenty noticed Ivy Bridge, and it was the die shrink chip. Since Haswell is going to be the micro-architecture "Tock," I think plenty will notice.

Really? Your average customer sees an i5. They are aware that there is a spectrum of performance from i3 to i7, and also that there have been i5's out for a few years now. You really, really think that they would notice, or care, that it is an SB, an IB or a Haswell? Or for that matter a Nehalem?
 

Homeles

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Dec 9, 2011
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They probably don't notice, but when I have to put my salesperson face on, I'll be sure to point out which models are using the newer chips and inform them of the performance improvements and such that the new ones offer. I.e., last summer when the new generation of MacBook Pros came out, I'd tell them that Ivy Bridge is about 10% (think the last ones came with a bit of a clock bump) faster and the graphics are 40% or so faster. I'll ask them what kind of workloads they run, and make a recommendation from there. Pretty sure the Sandy Bridge ones were discounted.

Some of the more astute ones will catch the difference between 3rd and 2nd generation i7 or i5, but that's the extent of their knowledge. A select few of them even know what quad cores are! But for most people, it really doesn't matter; they're all just email/facebook machines.

Side rant: memory and hard drive space are not synonymous.
 
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NTMBK

Lifer
Nov 14, 2011
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They probably don't notice, but when I have to put my salesperson face on, I'll be sure to point out which models are using the newer chips and inform them of the performance improvements and such that the new ones offer. I.e., last summer when the new generation of MacBook Pros came out, I'd tell them that Ivy Bridge is about 10% (think the last ones came with a bit of a clock bump) faster and the graphics are 40% or so faster. I'll ask them what kind of workloads they run, and make a recommendation from there. Pretty sure the Sandy Bridge ones were discounted.

Some of the more astute ones will catch the difference between 3rd and 2nd generation i7 or i5, but that's the extent of their knowledge. A select few of them even know what quad cores are! But for most people, it really doesn't matter; they're all just email/facebook machines.

Does it not feel a bit similar to the car model? You go into a showroom looking for an Impala- you know you like Impalas. You had a good Impala you bought 20 years ago. You don't know or care that it's effectively an entirely different car by this point. This is what I'm seeing- you're just buying a "Pentium", or an "i3", with no knowledge of the vast improvement you're getting. No Pentium->PentiumII->PentiumIII->Pentium4 type branding improvement, just stagnation. Most people would expect an i7 to beat an i3, even if the i7 was Nehalem and the i3 was Haswell.
 

Ketchup

Elite Member
Sep 1, 2002
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Really? Your average customer sees an i5. They are aware that there is a spectrum of performance from i3 to i7, and also that there have been i5's out for a few years now. You really, really think that they would notice, or care, that it is an SB, an IB or a Haswell? Or for that matter a Nehalem?

Depends how you describe an average customer.

An average customer at Best Buy or Walmart? no.

An average company who runs their clients and servers on Intel hardware? probably.

Those of us in tech forums? most definitely.
 

NTMBK

Lifer
Nov 14, 2011
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Depends how you describe an average customer.

An average customer at Best Buy or Walmart? no.

An average company who runs their clients and servers on Intel hardware? probably.

Those of us in tech forums? most definitely.

I'm describing anyone who a Pentium, i3, i5, or i7 is aimed at, i.e. the majority of the consumer market. A company looking to run servers on Intel are Xeon customers anyway.
 

Homeles

Platinum Member
Dec 9, 2011
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Does it not feel a bit similar to the car model? You go into a showroom looking for an Impala- you know you like Impalas. You had a good Impala you bought 20 years ago. You don't know or care that it's effectively an entirely different car by this point. This is what I'm seeing- you're just buying a "Pentium", or an "i3", with no knowledge of the vast improvement you're getting. No Pentium->PentiumII->PentiumIII->Pentium4 type branding improvement, just stagnation. Most people would expect an i7 to beat an i3, even if the i7 was Nehalem and the i3 was Haswell.

Well I don't buy or care for cars, but I get what you're saying. If you're able to catch on to the "X generation core i series" vs. "Y generation core i series," there is that logical progression that there was with Pentium -> Pentium II etc. But the iSomethingMeaningless as Charlie likes to call them really are something meaningless. Heaven forbid I have to explain the difference between an i3, i5 and i7. On the desktop, it's easy. With laptops, it's very easy to lose track of what offers what. Stupid dual core i7s screw everything up. The model numbers aren't all too helpful either.

I'm aboard the SSD boat, so I try to push those over faster CPUs when it makes sense.
 
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StrangerGuy

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May 9, 2004
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I'm describing anyone who a Pentium, i3, i5, or i7 is aimed at, i.e. the majority of the consumer market. A company looking to run servers on Intel are Xeon customers anyway.

All they know i7 is "somehow better" than an i5 and that "somehow" its irrelevant anyway since they are more I/O bound than anything these days.
 

NTMBK

Lifer
Nov 14, 2011
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Well I don't buy or care for cars, but I get what you're saying. If you're able to catch on to the "X generation core i series" vs. "Y generation core i series," there is that logical progression that there was with Pentium -> Pentium II etc. But the iSomethingMeaningless as Charlie likes to call them really are something meaningless. Heaven forbid I have to explain the difference between an i3, i5 and i7. On the desktop, it's easy. With laptops, it's very easy to lose track of what offers what. Stupid dual core i7s screw everything up. The model numbers aren't all too helpful either.

I'm aboard the SSD boat, so I try to push those over faster CPUs when it makes sense.

I do kind of pity the marketing department here. Just consider the reaction here when someone asks a seemingly simple question, like "does it make sense to upgrade from a Core 2 Quad to an Ivy Bridge Core i3?" You immediately need to start asking whether he uses a discrete GPU, whether his workload is GPU heavy, whether his workload is thread heavy, whether it is amenable to instruction level vectorization... they no longer have a single knob to turn labelled "performance" (i.e. clock speed).
 

Ketchup

Elite Member
Sep 1, 2002
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I'm describing anyone who a Pentium, i3, i5, or i7 is aimed at, i.e. the majority of the consumer market. A company looking to run servers on Intel are Xeon customers anyway.

I am sorry, you never mentioned that you were looking at one market. In that cause, you are most likely correct.
 

Homeles

Platinum Member
Dec 9, 2011
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I do kind of pity the marketing department here. Just consider the reaction here when someone asks a seemingly simple question, like "does it make sense to upgrade from a Core 2 Quad to an Ivy Bridge Core i3?" You immediately need to start asking whether he uses a discrete GPU, whether his workload is GPU heavy, whether his workload is thread heavy, whether it is amenable to instruction level vectorization... they no longer have a single knob to turn labelled "performance" (i.e. clock speed).

Yeah, I work in computer service, so thankfully I don't have to sell computers often. There's a point where you just have to give up and let them live in blissful ignorance. On one hand, you want the customer to get what's best for them, but there's always upper management breathing down your neck to get bigger numbers. If they really want to pay $300 more (or whatever the cost is) for a 100MHz faster CPU in their MacBook... who am I to stop them?
 

Edgemeal

Senior member
Dec 8, 2007
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With laptops, it's very easy to lose track of what offers what.

Ya I don't know what i7 I have in my note, all I know is its 4C/8T and there was 2 or 3 more expensive CPUs then this one at the time, but geez a few % faster cost ya another arm and a leg, it gets ridiculously more expensive, they basically bend you over and rape you for that last extra % of performance LOL, hmmmm that must be where the "Intel Inside" came from! :awe:

Be interesting to see what AMD has new this summer.