What happened to old CPUs going down in price? :)

[Charles Kozierok]

After I mentioned in another thread that I was running an i7-920, I thought to myself... "Hey, that thing was not exactly state of the art when you built this box a couple of years ago. Maybe it's worth looking into an upgrade."

So I went looking around for some other LGA1366 Socket CPUs, to see what it would cost to get a bit more oomph. And boy, talk about sticker shock! All of these early generation Core i7 chips are still in the $500-1000 range online, despite being more than four years old. I could probably build a new IB system that would be faster than the top CPU I could put in this thing, for less money.

I was surprised.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Same reason you can find 1000$ 36GB SCSI drives

 

[CHADBOGA]

LGA1366/LGA2011's pricing has always been a farce in my opinion, which is why I bypassed them for LGA1156 & LGA1155.

 

[jvroig]

It still happens for AMD, but not for Intel (at least, not in the past five or so years that I've been watching price trends).

You've already seen the Intel prices, so no need for me to give examples there. For AMD, though, all their Phenom (Agena), Phenom II (Deneb) and Thuban line of chips became available for much less than their debut price. Same for their Athlon II line.

It also happens that they (AMD) need the more aggressive price cuts, so it makes sense.

Intel just obsoletes a line when a replacement comes, and doesn't bother to cut the prices of the obsoleted line. It makes sense when they control a majority of the market and they release chips that take over the old price brackets, so consumers are never without an option within their budget and Intel never finds itself having new products compete with discounted old products (that are more powerful).

 

[Charles Kozierok]

It makes sense, I suppose -- they really want you to buy new platforms, not upgrades for old systems.

But at the same time, they are leaving money on the table. My guess is that the still-$1000 Core i7-990X is not any faster than the $200 Core i5-3570. Building a whole new system is not something I want to do for another couple of years. But if I could get an i7-990X for $200 I would probably buy one.

Instead, I'll just live with my 920, and Intel will get nothing.

Also surprised at the lack of after-market supply. Even used ones go for asinine prices.

 

[jvroig]

But at the same time, they are leaving money on the table. My guess is that the still-$1000 Core i7-990X is not any faster than the $200 Core i5-3570. Building a whole new system is not something I want to do regularly, but if I could get an i7-990X for $200 I would probably do it.

Those parts are very limited production anyway, most of those chips probably go as Xeons where they sell for much higher prices and more volume. It's a forecast supply thing, I'm sure they've nailed it down to minimize the opportunity loss. The upside is that the market does not get conditioned into waiting for price drops (it should be said though that pricing according to time ("want it now" crowd vs "can wait a while/more time" crowd) is a valid economic/pricing strategy, but Intel never seems to use it now, so that leaves me to conclude their bean counters have determined it is more profitable to do their current strategy than the alternative).

Also surprised at the lack of after-market supply.

This is the more interesting thing. Normally, stock left in the channel or in actual vendor's warehouse would be a free-for-all - distributors/vendors, rather than take the full cost of the loss for unsold products, would be content to sell most/all of them off at discount so as to mitigate the losses c/o unsold stock.

But I've never seen this happen, at least not for Intel in my own favorite brick-and-mortar PC chain, and even in our company suppliers.

I can't be sure, naturally, but this must come as an agreement between Intel and the distributors regarding discounting of the items. I don't know what they do instead. I can't imagine that nobody has left-over stock that they'd rather sell for cheap rather than rot forever in the warehouse, so something else has to be happening to take care of that.

 

[Sheep221]

I guess it is intentional, the performance barriers between nehalem, SB and IB are not that notable, so if they would lower the prices dramatically for first generation, the SB wouldn't be as sucessfull. One way or another, they have to sell the older remaining stock very slow with these prices.

 

[RaistlinZ]

I think if they discount their old CPU's you'll be content to just buy a 990X and use that for the next 3 years instead of buying a newer CPU. Buying new will force you to also buy a new motherboard, so they make money there as well.

There's no point for them to compete with themselves by dropping prices too much. A $500.00 i7-3930x is still marginally faster than a 990X despite being 246Mhz slower. Best just to upgrade to a new platform than spend big money on old flagship chips anyway.

 

[ShintaiDK]

No production, no supply. Plus there might still be warranty cases to cover.

Thats simply all there is. Same reason why DDR2 cost more than DDR3 and so on. I dont think its because memory makers are affraid you buy DDR2 instead of DDR3.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

I think part of it also is the lack of obsolescence mentioned. New systems are just not that much faster than old ones, so there's not a lot of turnover from upgrades, and existing chips are still in use. There aren't that many of these chips being dumped because they're not all that much slower than what's out there now.

Kind of a testament to the lack of progress on the performance front since Conroe. Multicore is limited by software; frequencies are limited by the power wall; and it appears all of the low-hanging fruit in the microarchitecture world was picked long ago.

 

[Phynaz]

AMD happened.

Intel used to do quarterly price drops - January, April, August and November. Now that AMD is no competition for them anymore, so there's no need to lower prices.

 

[Sheep221]

I think part of it also is the lack of obsolescence mentioned. New systems are just not that much faster than old ones, so there's not a lot of turnover from upgrades, and existing chips are still in use. There aren't that many of these chips being dumped because they're not all that much slower than what's out there now.

Kind of a testament to the lack of progress on the performance front since Conroe. Multicore is limited by software; frequencies are limited by the power wall; and it appears all of the low-hanging fruit in the microarchitecture world was picked long ago.

Although the conroes were boom back than, there has definitelly been a notable progress between nehalem and conroe.
Nehalem introduced intregrated graphics core and memory controller, and allowed for greatly higher frequencies.
We have windows xp based conroe computers still at work and I find them very annoying and slow to use.
Though my 2009 penryn based laptop feels quite responsive.

 

[scannall]

I'm still using an overclocked i7-920. There wasn't a compelling reason to upgrade to either of the Bridges'. I'll upgrade when Haswell arrives, just to have something new I guess.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

It makes sense, I suppose -- they really want you to buy new platforms, not upgrades for old systems.

But at the same time, they are leaving money on the table. My guess is that the still-$1000 Core i7-990X is not any faster than the $200 Core i5-3570. Building a whole new system is not something I want to do for another couple of years. But if I could get an i7-990X for $200 I would probably buy one.

Instead, I'll just live with my 920, and Intel will get nothing.

Also surprised at the lack of after-market supply. Even used ones go for asinine prices.

Yeah, every time I think about upgrading to the 990X, I see the prices and instantly change my mind. This build will be five years old this year (can't believe it, socket 1366 has amazing longevity), so eventually I will upgrade to Haswell-EP when it comes out. None of this mainstream 4 core garbage, give me MORE CORES!

 

[crashtech]

Kinda waiting to see if a successor DP socket to 2011 will help ease prices. Right now I'm running dual 771 quad cores and there is little that can touch them on a performance per dollar basis, certainly not any 1366 CPUs of which I am aware.

 

[Idontcare]

AMD happened.

Intel used to do quarterly price drops - January, April, August and November. Now that AMD is no competition for them anymore, so there's no need to lower prices.

Yep, last time I remember Intel doing regular price drops on an existing SKU it was with the Q6600 which started around $800 and dropped to $500 and eventually $260 over the course of 12 months or so.

 

[NTMBK]

Speak for yourselves guys, the processors in my Intel rig cost me 0.4% of what they did new.

 

[Torn Mind]

Yep, last time I remember Intel doing regular price drops on an existing SKU it was with the Q6600 which started around $800 and dropped to $500 and eventually $260 over the course of 12 months or so.

What was topsy-turvy was that AMD did the price drops on Bulldozer when the battle was Bulldozer vs. Sandy Bridge.

 

[Roland00Address]

Furthemore it isn't just the lack of competition from AMD.

If you use the same socket for more than 1 tick/tock you may be able to convince someone to do a drop in upgrade. With only a tick very people will upgrade from sandy to ivy. If someone is doing an upgrade then the old part goes on sale in the used market.

Same logic with AMD and the new processor market. Some AMD boards can go from Dual Core Phenom IIs all the way to Eight Core FX, or Dual Core 6000+ to Six Core Thubans. AMD new products compete with AMD old products, thus the old products get discounts.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Look at it on the flipside - you can probably get $150+ for your CPU and probably a good amount for the motherboard, meaning an upgrade to 1155 will cost you almost nothing... That's what any of us do here - upgrade on the cheap by flipping our old gear on the forums or ebay (or locally if that's an option).

 

[StrangerGuy]

A Q8400 costs as much as a i5 3470 locally. There MUST be (dumb) people who think going from a low-end C2D is to that in 2013 is a respectable purchase.

 

[ViRGE]

AMD happened.

Intel used to do quarterly price drops - January, April, August and November. Now that AMD is no competition for them anymore, so there's no need to lower prices.

It's a bit more complex than that. Intel's whole strategy has changed since then.

When Intel needs to introduce faster processors they merely discontinue the old ones rather than reduce the price. The introduction of 2700K for example didn't mean the 2600K got pushed down, it meant the 2600K was discontinued. The 2550K was then introduced to replace the 2550K. This way the 2600K never had a price cut, while still allowing Intel to (very) slowly trickle down improved performance at any given price.

Among other things, this allows Intel to keep their Core i3/i5/i7 stratification alive. The i7 will always be a $300+ part; if Intel needs a faster sub-$300 part they will discontinue the cheapest i7 and introduce an oddly familiar i5 with similar clockspeeds (but without the HT).

 

[Plimogz]

But the 2700K was 15$ more than the 2600K for nothing more than a 100MHz multiplier bump.

A while back, with stronger competition, Intel would replace+discontinue old processors at the exact same price.

It seems like it can be argued that 2600K-->2700K was actually a price increase, given that they're the exact same chip, separated only by a single clock bump, and this on SKUs with unlocked multipliers to boot.

 

[ShintaiDK]

But the 2700K was 15$ more than the 2600K for nothing more than a 100MHz multiplier bump.

A while back, with stronger competition, Intel would replace+discontinue old processors at the exact same price.

It seems like it can be argued that 2600K-->2700K was actually a price increase, given that they're the exact same chip, separated only by a single clock bump, and this on SKUs with unlocked multipliers to boot.

No competition actually gave you the cheapest CPUs you ever had.

Also CPU prices today gets adjusted for inflation.

 

[StrangerGuy]

No competition actually gave you the cheapest CPUs you ever had.

Also CPU prices today gets adjusted for inflation.

I remember paying $350 for an XP1700+, 256 MB DDR333 and an Abit NF7 mobo and that was as low end as it got in 2003 where AMD was super competitive in price/performance.