Anyone else think Intel is shooting themselves in the foot with motherboard prices?

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

Simply put, I have had a 5950x, 5900x, 5800x, 5600x, 10850k, etc. I like swapping things out. I am now running a 12600k and I think its price/performance is honestly absurd. If Intel had a lot of strong affordable board options similar to the x570 tuf, b550 tomahawk etc, AMD would be irrelevant at its current prices. I think the 5600x especially is a terrible value. It should be a 200$ chip. I think currently, the 5900x with an 100 dollar board is AMDs best value preposition nowadays. There is little reason to go with a 5600x or 5800x unless you already have AM4. When is AMD going to lower prices? Intel is laying the hammer down. Intel could destroy the mainstream market with cheaper mobos. I just don't understand it. Full disclosure, I live near a microcenter and picked up the 12600k for 225. But even with MSRP prices, intel is the better value right now. It just wouldn't even be relatively close if they had cheaper boards. The 12600k absolutely DEMOLISHES the 5600x in multi core loads. I do not understand how the 5600x is still selling for 300. I just don't. 

[maxi_g]

How is it Intels fault? For Z690 you clearly pay the early adopter tax!

[Chris Pratt]

Yes and no. I think in retrospect, they should have held off on DDR5, PCIe 5.0, etc. for 12th gen. They seem to have just wanted to beat AMD to market on those features, but the industry is scrambling to catch up now. The high cost is a direct consequence of those new features, which honestly aren't really needed or beneficial yet. 

 

If they had waited until 13th gen to match AMD releasing the same features alongside Zen 4, they'd have a much more compelling story for 12th gen now.

[Brooksie359]

I am unsure why you think that Intel is purposely jacking up the price of motherboards. The new motherboards support pcie 5.0 and ddr5 which increases the cost of the motherboards. This is not to mention that the 12600k is also selling for 300 at most places so I don't see a reason for the 5600x to drop in price by 100 bucks. 

[YoungBlade]

As long as the 5600X keeps selling at $300, it will stay at that price. I would guess AMD is still outselling Intel, even with 12th gen being a good choice, so there's no incentive to change it.

 

Why would people do that? Because the 5600X is $300 and 10 minutes of work but the 12600K is $500 and takes an afternoon to install.

 

You aren't considering the true motherboard pricing for the 5600X: the motherboard is free, because enthusiasts already own a B450, X470, A520, B550, or X570 board. AM4 was a brilliant marketing move by AMD, because it has made upgrading easy, and therefore switching is hard in a relative sense. And in that sense, you can upgrade to the 5800X for less than the cost of the 12600K and without the annoyance of a motherboard swap.

 

Plus, AM5 and Zen 4 have now been announced to appease those looking for the new shiny. Why not wait a few months and get an even better CPU on an even better platform that might end up usable for 4 or 5 years?

[Blademaster91]

The 5600X sells for $300, but an AM4 motherboard is still much cheaper, and can be used with an X470 or B450 motherboard.

You're paying the early adopter tax to have the latest thing with Intel X670, and paying extra for pci-e 5.0 and DDR5.

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

24 minutes ago, maxi_g said:

How is it Intels fault? For Z690 you clearly pay the early adopter tax!

Even b660 isn't that cheap though. Even b550 when it first came out was cheaper than z690. Intels boards are just more expensive in general. Even without the early adopter tax. 

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

23 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

As long as the 5600X keeps selling at $300, it will stay at that price. I would guess AMD is still outselling Intel, even with 12th gen being a good choice, so there's no incentive to change it.

 

Why would people do that? Because the 5600X is $300 and 10 minutes of work but the 12600K is $500 and takes an afternoon to install.

 

You aren't considering the true motherboard pricing for the 5600X: the motherboard is free, because enthusiasts already own a B450, X470, A520, B550, or X570 board. AM4 was a brilliant marketing move by AMD, because it has made upgrading easy, and therefore switching is hard in a relative sense. And in that sense, you can upgrade to the 5800X for less than the cost of the 12600K and without the annoyance of a motherboard swap.

 

Plus, AM5 and Zen 4 have now been announced to appease those looking for the new shiny. Why not wait a few months and get an even better CPU on an even better platform that might end up usable for 4 or 5 years?

That is a good point. Zen 4 isn't a couple month wait though. Isn't there one more round of Zen3 Processors coming first if I am not mistaken? And I think Alder lake will be competitive with Zen 4 anyway. I am not a fanboy either way. I just think low/mid end ryzen, at this point in time, is a bad value. Especially if you grab a alder lake ddr4 board instead of ddr5. 

[Founders]

This is nothing new man, Intel's motherboards have always been more expensive. If Intel would support a platform for more than 1 or 2 CPU releases that would make them a more tempting value. People arguing over the merits of either typically comeback to the long term support a socket gets from AMD. Dr. Lisa Sue has already confirmed that AM5 will receive a similar treatment in long term support. Intel's also happy to strip down features on lower tier chipsets and CPUs, if your board doesn't have a Z and your CPU doesn't have a K then overclocking is a no go. Efficiency also comes to mind for those that care. Sure, Intel is currently in the lead for raw compute but it comes at a cost of added heat and power, both of which will cost a user. Last point, DDR5 is in its infancy and availability is scares. At this time it offers very little value at its current price over DDR4. This point will obviously change overtime but we're not there yet. Alder Lake supports both, but you still have to chose one or the other for your motherboard. DDR4 is an easy choice today but this won't be true further down the line.         

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

1 minute ago, Founders said:

This is nothing new man, Intel's motherboards have always been more expensive. If Intel would support a platform for more than 1 or 2 CPU releases that would make them a more tempting value. People arguing over the merits of either typically comeback to the long term support a socket gets from AMD. Dr. Lisa Sue has already confirmed that AM5 will receive a similar treatment in long term support. Intel's also happy to strip down features on lower tier chipsets and CPUs, if your board doesn't have a Z and your CPU doesn't have a K then overclocking is a no go. Efficiency also comes to mind for those that care. Sure, Intel is currently in the lead for raw compute but it comes at a cost of added heat and power, both of which will cost a user. Last point, DDR5 is in its infancy and availability is scares. At this time it offers very little value at its current price over DDR4. This point will obviously change overtime but we're not there yet. Alder Lake supports both, but you still have to chose one or the other for your motherboard. DDR4 is an easy choice today but this won't be true further down the line.         

12700k and 12600k are actually more efficient than 5800x or 5900x in gaming. In productivity, its not even close, AMD wins. But in gaming, these chips suck down a shockingly low amount of power. The 5600x is another story all together and is an efficiency wizard all around. 

[Founders]

1 minute ago, Ryan829 said:

Isn't there one more round of Zen3 Processors

Sort of, AMD is releasing the 5800X3D with their new layered cache architecture (3d V-Cache). June of this year at the earliest. 

[Middcore]

7 minutes ago, Founders said:

Sort of, AMD is releasing the 5800X3D with their new layered cache architecture (3d V-Cache). June of this year at the earliest. 

 

I fully expect this to be another 3000 series XT-style stopgap wet fart of a release. If the 3D cache was actually a game-changer performance they would hold it back to AM5 chips to entice people to upgrade their platform. 

[Brooksie359]

4 minutes ago, Middcore said:

 

I fully expect this to be another 3000 series XT-style stopgap wet fart of a release. If the 3D cache was actually a game-changer performance they would hold it back to AM5 chips to entice people to upgrade their platform. 

No I think that wouldn't make a ton of sense seeing as it would require a much bigger redesign to make it compatible with the new AM5 socket instead of just modifying the 5000 series cpu a little bit. It would be dumb to sink too much time and effort into the new 3d cashe versions when zen 4 is right around the corner. 

[Founders]

Just now, Middcore said:

 

I fully expect this to be another 3000 series XT-style stopgap wet fart of a release. If the 3D cache was actually a game-changer performance they would hold it back to AM5 chips to entice people to upgrade their platform. 

Not quite, the XT SKU's were just the result of slightly better binning so there wasn't going to be much of a gain overall. Stacking cache is a fundamental change in the architecture. It probably won't be a great leap on Zen 3 but it will give us a peak at what Zen 4 could offer with more L3 cache available.   

[Mister Woof]

2 hours ago, Chris Pratt said:

Yes and no. I think in retrospect, they should have held off on DDR5, PCIe 5.0, etc. for 12th gen. They seem to have just wanted to beat AMD to market on those features, but the industry is scrambling to catch up now. The high cost is a direct consequence of those new features, which honestly aren't really needed or beneficial yet. 

 

If they had waited until 13th gen to match AMD releasing the same features alongside Zen 4, they'd have a much more compelling story for 12th gen now.

Agree, and to add to this, Z690 power delivery seems to be WAY overbuilt for 12th gen, probably unnecessarily so.

Probably fallout from prior series having a lot of stinkers that couldn't really push their top end chips even at stock (lookin at you ASROCK)

[Chris Pratt]

3 hours ago, Middcore said:

 

I fully expect this to be another 3000 series XT-style stopgap wet fart of a release. If the 3D cache was actually a game-changer performance they would hold it back to AM5 chips to entice people to upgrade their platform. 

XT was just binned chips that went about 100-150MHz higher on the clocks. That was obviously a nothing burger from the start. 3D-V is actually a big deal, as cache is actually Ryzen's secret sauce. Intel still wallops AMD on pure IPC, but AMD clawed their way to the top with features like predictive branching and such that rely heavily on cache. It's why Ryzen chips have almost always had more more cache than Intel, and adding another 64MB of even even faster access cache is actually a big deal.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Mister Woof said:

Agree, and to add to this, Z690 power delivery seems to be WAY overbuilt for 12th gen, probably unnecessarily so.

 

AMD boards also. In fact more so. Most AMD chips aren't breaking 200w. Why the need for 16 phase? There isn't. More parts cost more money. We the average consumers don't know any better. Most of AMD's chips can be run on 4 phase easily.