Question Zen2 CPU prices Increasing; Not a good sign for Zen3?

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VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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Before Zen+ came out, we had good discounts on Zen CPUs. Likewise on Zen+ CPUs when Zen2 was coming out.

Zen3 is supposed to come out before the end of the year, and:
1) we have no leaks, and
2) Zen2 CPU prices (3600) have risen from $154.99 to MSRP ($199.99) in a matter of weeks.

What this tells me, is that Zen3 sucks, and that retails know it.

Edit: Let me explain. If Zen3 were better than sliced bread, then Zen2 would be (relatively) unsellable, at least at the same price-points, and thus, Zen2 CPUs should be discounted commensurate with the disadvantage relative to zen3 CPUs, before release, to clear stock.

The fact that Zen3 is getting ever-closer to release, and Zen2 prices are going UP, points me to a VERY disasppointing Zen3 release.
 
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TheELF

Diamond Member
Dec 22, 2012
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Breaking News!....Due to internal failure Intel throws over a Billion dollars of it's profit to a competing fab.....Film at 11
This one billion could make them 10 billions on top of the 20 billions they already make... it's only failure if it doesn't make them any money.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,583
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Yeah but intel isn't strapped for money right now, why would they make a specific number and not want to make as many as possible,it's not like they can't absorb the failure if it goes wrong.

1). they're using 10nm++/10nm SuperFETs for everything else
2). they have beancounters that tell them what is the estimated market demand for such products as DG2 and Ponte Vecchio. They reference that against advanced contract purchases and decide on how much product to push onto the market. Excess production is never a good idea. Dumping product into liquidation weakens your brand image and can make it difficult to sell future products. Scrapping product results in a complete loss. I wouldn't want to be the accountant that had to explain at a shareholders' meeting why Intel decided to buy every 6nm wafer available just because, hey, Intel had the money so why not?

If there's anything Intel still does right, it's sell things. I suspect that their marketing & sales department(s) are still very strong, and they have a good idea of how much 6nm-based product they'll need to meet market demand.
 

x_marX

Member
Apr 23, 2020
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Meanwhile, AMD Ryzen prices going up and Intel 10th gen prices plummet (relatively of course).
If it goes like this, I might be getting 10700+Z490 tomahawk instead of 3700+Z570 tomahawk.
 

Kenmitch

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
8,505
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This one billion could make them 10 billions on top of the 20 billions they already make... it's only failure if it doesn't make them any money.

A Billion dollar blunder in the end. I'm pretty sure the intention was to make the products in house. You can spin it as a win, but in the end it's still a Billion dollar blunder.
 
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chrisjames61

Senior member
Dec 31, 2013
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This one billion could make them 10 billions on top of the 20 billions they already make... it's only failure if it doesn't make them any money.

This is not what Intel had planned or had wanted. I don't see how you can keep acting like their house is in any kind of order. What set Intel apart from their competition has been frittered away and very likely forever.
 

Doug S

Platinum Member
Feb 8, 2020
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This is not what Intel had planned or had wanted. I don't see how you can keep acting like their house is in any kind of order. What set Intel apart from their competition has been frittered away and very likely forever.

Some people are just in denial. There used to be someone on the RWT boards who defended Itanium for years, when it had become obvious to everywhere else it was a flop. Heck, there are still people who seem to bring up Amiga at every opportunity to talk about how ahead of its time they felt it was, and how it got screwed by Commodore, the press, the market, what have you!
 
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lightmanek

Senior member
Feb 19, 2017
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Some people are just in denial. There used to be someone on the RWT boards who defended Itanium for years, when it had become obvious to everywhere else it was a flop. Heck, there are still people who seem to bring up Amiga at every opportunity to talk about how ahead of its time they felt it was, and how it got screwed by Commodore, the press, the market, what have you!

Hey, I like my Amiga! (Perfectly working A1200 in as new condition)
For it's time, back in 80's it was very advanced, but it's history, and Commodore's in general, shows that having successful products and selling highest number of single computer model in history (hey C64) isn't a guarantee of success if your internal politics gets in a way of proper engineering.
History likes to repeat itself.
 
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x_marX

Member
Apr 23, 2020
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Seeing how there's no such thing as a Z570 tomahawk I can see why you'd steer towards the Intel offering. /s

Sorry couldn't resist.
Haha 😄

Btw, the price increases of AMD processors mean that the supply is less than demand, right ?
May be AMD stopped cpu production in preparation for the Zen 3?

What you guys think?
 
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Kenmitch

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
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Haha 😄

Btw, the price increases of AMD processors mean that the supply is less than demand, right ?
May be AMD stopped cpu production in preparation for the Zen 3?

What you guys think?

Supply exceeding demand in certain markets along with greed of the supply chain. I guess it's possible Covid effected shipping and packaging costs? I can get all but the cheapest AMD cpu's at Microcenter below MSRP if wanted. The cheapest stuff is sold out, but I'd never buy it anyways.

I'd imagine they shifted all production to console, zen 3, and the new navi offerings a while ago. How long ago?
 
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moinmoin

Diamond Member
Jun 1, 2017
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Not sure I can agree with this. AMD went into a coma for many years and look where they are now.
Can't agree with that take though. To the public it may seem like AMD went into a coma, but they effectively reacted back in 2011 already (when Read, Papermaster and Su joined) and it still took them until recently to become this relevant again. Intel still has to go through all the troubles AMD went through before and after that point (like the possibility of getting out of the foundry business etc.).
 
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Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
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Can't agree with that take though. To the public it may seem like AMD went into a coma, but they effectively reacted back in 2011 already (when Read, Papermaster and Su joined) and it still took them until recently to become this relevant again. Intel still has to go through all the troubles AMD went through before and after that point (like the possibility of getting out of the foundry business etc.).
2 points here IMO

1) Intel WILL come back and be the leader. The question is how long it will take. They may trade places with the likes of AMD from now on though.
2) It will take 2-3 times to come back as they have stumbled. Like 6 years or more.
 
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moinmoin

Diamond Member
Jun 1, 2017
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2 points here IMO

1) Intel WILL come back and be the leader. The question is how long it will take. They may trade places with the likes of AMD from now on though.
2) It will take 2-3 times to come back as they have stumbled. Like 6 years or more.
Imo the longer Intel takes the more unlikely it is it will be able to get back to its former position of dominance. Until very recently Intel acted from the position of strength, but it barely did anything forward looking with it.

  1. By all public indications they were incapable of correctly analyzing the gravity of the situation they are in. The blunt reaction at the Tiger Lake event where AMD's 4800U was most mentioned shows that much of Intel's staffs still appears to be at the second stage of grief, at best. That's after 5 years of internal troubles and 3 years of facing a resurgent competitor.
  2. By all public indications Intel is not nimble enough to react quickly. That's an advantage AMD arguably had, and it still took it 9 years to get to the current point, with its lowest point having been within that time. Intel is much bigger, the people that lead Intel are by all public indications not the ones with the required technical knowledge to make the correct decisions. This will take a very very long time to first unravel and then rebuild.
  3. Intel still acts from a position of unbelievable financial strength. What does it do with it? Reduce R&D spending and massive spending into stocks buybacks. That will certainly save them! /s
 
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Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
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Imo the longer Intel takes the more unlikely it is it will be able to get back to its former position of dominance. Until very recently Intel acted from the position of strength, but it barely did anything forward looking with it.

  1. By all public indications they were incapable of correctly analyzing the gravity of the situation they are in. The blunt reaction at the Tiger Lake event where AMD's 4800U was most mentioned shows that much of Intel's staffs still appears to be at the second stage of grief, at best. That's after 5 years of internal troubles and 3 years of facing a resurgent competitor.
  2. By all public indications Intel is not nimble enough to react quickly. That's an advantage AMD arguably had, and it still took it 9 years to get to the current point, with its lowest point having been within that time. Intel is much bigger, the people that lead Intel are by all public indications not the ones with the required technical knowledge to make the correct decisions. This will take a very very long time to first unravel and then rebuild.
  3. Intel still acts from a position of unbelievable financial strength. What does it do with it? Reduce R&D spending and massive spending into stocks buybacks. That will certainly save them! /s
It sounds like we agree. I will not argue how long it will take them, but I am pretty sure they have to come back at some point.
 

DooKey

Golden Member
Nov 9, 2005
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Can't agree with that take though. To the public it may seem like AMD went into a coma, but they effectively reacted back in 2011 already (when Read, Papermaster and Su joined) and it still took them until recently to become this relevant again. Intel still has to go through all the troubles AMD went through before and after that point (like the possibility of getting out of the foundry business etc.).

You have a case of confirmation bias IMO. Intel has been forward looking and they simply failed at the foundry side of business.

If Intel decided to outsource their foundry to TSMC then AMD would be on the outside looking in. Intel is a gorilla much like Apple. I wouldn't wish for them to get out of the foundry business if I was an AMD fanatic. Never forget that Intel is in much better financial position than AMD has ever been. You can't honestly compare their positions at their low points. It's apples to oranges.
 

chrisjames61

Senior member
Dec 31, 2013
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Not sure I can agree with this. AMD went into a coma for many years and look where they are now.

Totally different problems. AMD designed a crappy cpu with the Bulldozer fiasco. The main strength of Intel was they had no real competition because of their foundry prowess. They totally let that slip away due to blunder after blunder. Regaining that process lead will be a much harder thing to achieve than what AMD had to accomplish. Now they have to rely on someone else like TSMC? They will never make it all the way back.
 
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DooKey

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Nov 9, 2005
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Totally different problems. AMD designed a crappy cpu with the Bulldozer fiasco. The main strength of Intel was they had no real competition because of their foundry prowess. They totally let that slip away due to blunder after blunder. Regaining that process lead will be a much harder thing to achieve than what AMD had to accomplish.

NO, Intel has great cpu's on the drawing board waiting on process and their cpu's up till Ryzen were far superior to AMD cpu's. They aren't without engineering talent. I just have to LOL that their cpu's were simply a product of foundry process.

Anyway, if it all fails they'll go outside to superior processes. They can pay for far more wafers than AMD...at this point in time. They could still fail if they stick to their foundries too long without fixing them. At least AMD knew when to cut bait, both from a fiscal and engineering stand point.

I'm not here to defend Intel or AMD. I want the fastest cpu's I can get. I just think all of this Intel is dead routine is the same as it was when everyone (including me) said AMD was dead when they were pumping out junk. AMD doesn't have some secret sauce that means they dominate from now on. Using the arguments of AMD fans when they were down that they didn't want Intel to be a monopoly... do we really want AMD to be a monopoly?
 

Doug S

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Feb 8, 2020
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Intel's not dead but they will never be the process leader again, and it seems less and less likely they will even be able to keep up.

If Intel can't keep up and they're relegated to buying TSMC wafers like AMD then it just comes down to who has the better designs. I don't see any reason why either Intel or AMD should have any long term advantage there.

Both have had some good designs (Core, Athlon) and taken wrong turns (P4, Bulldozer) Obviously Intel has a lot more resources so they can afford to hire bigger teams, but bigger isn't necessarily better - especially when more layers of management get in the way of engineering.
 
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Golgatha

Lifer
Jul 18, 2003
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I see it as a sign that they moved most of their production to Zen 3, so the 3600 is getting into short supply. Hopefully this means the new processors will be available soon!

I think this is more likely. I bought my 3600 from Microcenter for $154.99 about a month ago. They went out of stock for roughly a couple of weeks, and now they're back in stock at $199.99.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
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do we really want AMD to be a monopoly?
Of course not. And if I were to be honest, I would say that their 10th-Gen Core CPUs, excluding their now-a-bit-old-and-musty UHD630 (which still have HDMI1.4 output, and can't actually drive UHD displays @ 60Hz over HDMI, bleh), are fairly somewhat competitive with Zen2 CPUs, in many cases (in gaming at least), in terms of price/performance. At least at the lower end. I was thinking of picking up some 10th-Gen Intel gear, you can get an H460 "Steel Legend" micro-ATX board, with dual PCI-E x16 (physical) GPU slots, and dual M.2 NVMe slots (routed through the chipset), AND a RealTek 2.5GbE-T port, for $90 on sale right now at Newegg. By comparison, the cheapest AM4 micro-ATX with a RealTek 2.5GbE-T LAN chipset onboard, is a B450 Asus PLUS-S micro-ATX board, for $129. And the i3-10100 is $119, which has 4C/8T, compared to the on-sale Ryzen 3 3100 4C/8T for $114.99, and NO iGPU.

Granted, the AM4 platform offers overclocking, both CPU and RAM and graphics, and the Intel platform, pretty-much, for anything lower than a "Z" board, does not. So my comparisons in terms of features are apples to oranges. To pay for an overclockable CPU and chipset/platform on Intel is QUITE a bit more. But for what consumers are actually shopping for, I think my comparison makes some sense.
 

maddie

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Jul 18, 2010
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Intel's not dead but they will never be the process leader again, and it seems less and less likely they will even be able to keep up.

If Intel can't keep up and they're relegated to buying TSMC wafers like AMD then it just comes down to who has the better designs. I don't see any reason why either Intel or AMD should have any long term advantage there.

Both have had some good designs (Core, Athlon) and taken wrong turns (P4, Bulldozer) Obviously Intel has a lot more resources so they can afford to hire bigger teams, but bigger isn't necessarily better - especially when more layers of management get in the way of engineering.
It's so strange that you need to write this for some, as reality is so obviously showing us this as being true.
 
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prtskg

Senior member
Oct 26, 2015
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yes terrible terrible news for intel for the last three years,let's all press like to pray for intel at this time of utter desperation,how will they ever recover from making twice the net income per year...
vb0yhR9.jpg
BTW, what's the reason for big difference between 2017 and later incomes?
 

Doug S

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Feb 8, 2020
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BTW, what's the reason for big difference between 2017 and later incomes?

Without looking into it since I'm not invested in Intel at all I'm gonna guess it is the new tax law allowing them to repatriate overseas cash at a lower rate. The rules allow companies to do it over time (up to 8 years) so it may impact multiple years. There's also the impact of lower tax rates for profits made in the US.

A company will have previously declared that income, but they may or may not have reserved money for future taxes owed when the money was brought back to the US. If Intel was reserving money at a higher rate than they actually ended up having to pay, the freed up money becomes profit at repatriation time. Some companies were reserving little or nothing against future taxes to juice their income numbers, but Intel was profitable enough they wouldn't have needed to play those games.
 
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TheELF

Diamond Member
Dec 22, 2012
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BTW, what's the reason for big difference between 2017 and later incomes?
Producing 14nm has become super cheap after so many pluses and being able to finally add additional cores without killing off AMD completely made them able to sell much more product.
A lot of people wouldn't upgrade their systems because going from 4/8 cores to 4/8 cores wasn't enough of an upgrade for most people.
If they added more cores before ZEN came out AMD would be dead right now but with ZEN AMD still makes enough to at least stay above water.