Question about AMD/Intel CPUs.

[mandrigald]

I am a fairly experienced builder, having built 2 systems now. Yet I still do not understand this: Why are Intel CPUs so much more expensive than their AMD counterparts? For example, An i5 4670k is nearly $100 more than an FX-8320. I know a guy that has both of these processors and has not seen that much of a performance difference between the two to justify the $100 price difference. Can someone please explain this to us?

 

[Joshyy]

Because Intel are attempting to price manipulate, because they can and while I'm sure AMD isn't all goody two shoes, They don't/can't price manipulate as high. 

[WoodenMarker]

Intel has the better flagship and people think that the performance from the flagship cpu will somehow trickle down to the lower tiers even though that's not true. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

You're paying for the brand and reputation. Much in the same way that nVidia cards tend to be more expensive than AMD while performing the same. 

[Shd0w2]

You're paying for the brand and reputation. Much in the same way that nVidia cards tend to be more expensive than AMD while performing the same. 

Yeah, I agree with the graphics card part too. Yet I still like nVidia cards <3

[UnderADyingSun]

AMD is Barq's and Intel is Mug. Both very delicious varieties of rootbeer, but Barq's has bite!

[mandrigald]

You're paying for the brand and reputation. Much in the same way that nVidia cards tend to be more expensive than AMD while performing the same. 

So, they charge higher because they can... because people will still buy it due to their great reputation even though they perform the same?. Then why do people who are experienced with computers and such, like many on this site, who know better still buy it? 

[Flojer0]

Well it also entirely depends on what you are doing. When the FX-8150 released a couple of years ago it had issues and hurt AMD's reputation. Plus even just a couple of years back many programs struggled to use more than one or two cores. So nearly everything performed much better on Intel. Even now looking at hard numbers it can go either way depending on what you are doing. Though the differences are close enough now that without benchmarks you would be hard pressed to tell the difference.

[Oshino Shinobu]

So, they charge higher because they can... because people will still buy it due to their great reputation even though they perform the same?. Then why do people who are experienced with computers and such, like many on this site, who know better still buy it? 

Because among enthusiasts, Intel is often seen as the performance and enthusiast grade brand, whereas AMD is seen as the value oriented brand. Again, same with nVidia and AMD. 

 

EDIT: There are also a lot more high end Intel motherboards from what I've seen. 

[mandrigald]

Well it also entirely depends on what you are doing. When the FX-8150 released a couple of years ago it had issues and hurt AMD's reputation. Plus even just a couple of years back many programs struggled to use more than one or two cores. So nearly everything performed much better on Intel. Even now looking at hard numbers it can go either way depending on what you are doing. Though the differences are close enough now that without benchmarks you would be hard pressed to tell the difference.

Okay, so because AMD messed up bad in the past Intel shot up the price of their products knowing consumers would buy it. Fast forward to today where AMD has for the most part gotten their act together, people still stick with Intel to be on the safe side thus allowing Intel to keep the price up. Did I interpret that correctly?

[deathjester]

Because Intel has twice the floating point and gets twice the FPS in games that are cpu bound on 4 cores.

 

Newer games aren't going to be as bad on AMD, but some people don't want to wait a few years so AMD can play certain genres like MMO/RTS. That and I5 = 8350 in 8 thread games.

 

I don't know where you live but an I5 and a 8350 are = price, and sometimes the I5 is CHEAPER, considering you need a bigger power supply to overclock the 8350 and a Asus/Gigabyte 990fx to OC as well. An I5 overclocks on the cheapest z87 you can buy.

 

I5 and z87 at microcenter is 254.98. I have this MSI board it overclocks to 4.7 with what would be acceptable temps on water. They aren't on air which is why I run at 4.5 24/7.

http://www.microcenter.com/site/brands/intel-processor-bundles.aspx

 

8350 and board that will OC/run the 8350 well?

264.98

http://www.microcenter.com/site/products/amd_bundles.aspx

 

The 8350 is 10 dollars more and then add another 30 bucks for a better power supply to overclock it. If you want to OC to 5ghz and add a good GPU? Better add 50-75 bucks on the PSU.

 

The I7 combo was 260 something (280 with tax) a few weeks ago. Now it is 334. Add in a bigger power supply to the 8350 and you aren't that far away, and the I7 kills the 8350 at everything. 

 

Other countries? You get screwed. Sorry .

[mandrigald]

Because among enthusiasts, Intel is often seen as the performance and enthusiast grade brand, whereas AMD is seen as the value oriented brand. Again, same with nVidia and AMD. 

 

EDIT: There are also a lot more high end Intel motherboards from what I've seen. 

But wouldn't a true enthusiast be able to see past the BS to realize that they are paying more for nothing? 

[deathjester]

But wouldn't a true enthusiast be able to see past the BS to realize that they are paying more for nothing? 

 

Go play Guild Wars 2 and get back to me. I just linked you a store where you can walk in and buy an I5 with OC board for cheaper then a 8530 and OC board. 

 

A 8350 at 5ghz will get like 20 fps MAX in Guild Wars 2 in World vs World where a I5 at stock will get 30 plus. OC the I5 will get close to 40. They aren't close because FPU is horrid on AMD. 

 

An 8350 is like a 4ghz I7-920. It is old technology on an old die, running massive voltage. People with I7-920's had the same performance as a stock 8350 with a OC in 2008...and just like AMD? They needed a massive power supply to achieve it. 

[Oshino Shinobu]

But wouldn't a true enthusiast be able to see past the BS to realize that they are paying more for nothing? 

A lot of the time it's not for nothing, but it's just that the performance increase is small relative to the price. An enthusiast might choose Intel over AMD purely because they're an Intel 'fanboy', or they might want every last bit of power. There are a lot of reasons why someone may pick Intel over AMD, but it comes down to the individual. 

[mandrigald]

Go play Guild Wars 2 and get back to me. I just linked you a store where you can walk in and buy an I5 with OC board for cheaper then a 8530 and OC board. 

 

A 8350 at 5ghz will get like 20 fps MAX in Guild Wars 2 in World vs World where a I5 at stock will get 30 plus. OC the I5 will get close to 40. They aren't close because FPU is horrid on AMD. 

 

An 8350 is like a 4ghz I7-920. It is old technology on an old die, running massive voltage. People with I7-920's had the same performance as a stock 8350 with a OC in 2008...and just like AMD? They needed a massive power supply to achieve it. 

Not questioning your intellect or anything, but I am sensing just a little bit of fanboyism going on here. Now I don't own Guild Wars 2, but one of my friends (not the same one mentioned in my question) has it and he runs it fine with an FX-6300 alongside his 7950.

[mandrigald]

A lot of the time it's not for nothing, but it's just that the performance increase is small relative to the price. An enthusiast might choose Intel over AMD purely because they're an Intel 'fanboy', or they might want every last bit of power. There are a lot of reasons why someone may pick Intel over AMD, but it comes down to the individual. 

I see what you are saying, but if Intel is pricing things higher even though the performance isn't relative to the price simply because they know people will buy it aren't they essentially taking advantage of people?

[Flojer0]

Okay, so because AMD messed up bad in the past Intel shot up the price of their products knowing consumers would buy it. Fast forward to today where AMD has for the most part gotten their act together, people still stick with Intel to be on the safe side thus allowing Intel to keep the price up. Did I interpret that correctly?

Close, @deathjester hit on it. The bulldozer architecture had about half of the ipc (instructions per clock) performance of sandy bridge (think i5-2500k/i-2700k). So the only software that took advantage of all the cores stood a chance at approaching the performance of a 2600k, or even beating the 2500k. Then recall that when it launched the 2500k was $220 here in the USA and the FX-8150 launched at around $260. AMD has improved their per core performance but you are still looking at around half the ipc compared to Intel. If as a developer you can make your software use eight cores effectively then a stock FX-8350 will edge past a stock i7-4770k. But most software is very far from even using four cores right. Though for most people here games are the most difficult thing to run and many people, including Linus have shown that there is negligible performance difference between the two. Sometimes even if the numbers tell a different story it doesn't really matter.

[deathjester]

Not questioning your intellect or anything, but I am sensing just a little bit of fanboyism going on here. Now I don't own Guild Wars 2, but one of my friends (not the same one mentioned in my question) has it and he runs it fine with an FX-6300 alongside his 7950.

 

FPS isn't fanboyism. I have owned AMD in the past, I would have went with a 280x over my 770 if they weren't 100 dollars more due to coin miners. AMD simply sucks due to FPU on MMO's and RTS games and they are all not 8 thread games.

 

Go check the Guild wars 2 forum or WoW forum or Rome Total War forum. People are TICKED OFF about buying AMD. 

 

Many popular games are not 8 thread. Planetside 2 and BF4 (8 thread titles) are the only MULTIPLAYER games where a 8350 can = an I5. 

 

Logan from Tek Syndicate manipulated the weak minded by showing single player GPU bound FPS titles that require jack from the CPU. You could run the same test on the Intel or AMD and get different scores every time, because it is GPU bound. 

 

If you do not play MMO's or RTS? Then AMD is fine. If you do? Don't expect miracles out of a chip that scores 13000 in a FPU test (cpu bound game this matters) compared to a chip that scores near 30,000. 

 

AMD is older tech. It is fine in a 8 thread game and blows in 4 core games that aren't GPU bound.  An I3 is better then a 8350 is Guildwars 2 or WoW, which is downright pathetic...

[mandrigald]

Close, @deathjester hit on it. The bulldozer architecture had about half of the ipc (instructions per clock) performance of sandy bridge (think i5-2500k/i-2700k). So the only software that took advantage of all the cores stood a chance at approaching the performance of a 2600k, or even beating the 2500k. Then recall that when it launched the 2500k was $220 here in the USA and the FX-8150 launched at around $260. AMD has improved their per core performance but you are still looking at around half the ipc compared to Intel. If as a developer you can make your software use eight cores effectively then a stock FX-8350 will edge past a stock i7-4770k. But most software is very far from even using four cores right. Though for most people here games are the most difficult thing to run and many people, including Linus have shown that there is negligible performance difference between the two. Sometimes even if the numbers tell a different story it doesn't really matter.

I understand that Intel has more powerful per core performance, but if the performance isn't any different or the performance difference isn't very big how do they justify pricing their products much higher than their AMD counterparts? 

[Flojer0]

I see what you are saying, but if Intel is pricing things higher even though the performance isn't relative to the price simply because they know people will buy it aren't they essentially taking advantage of people?

I don't have the quote handy but I recall hearing somewhere that "The horse that is one second faster is worth twice as much". I also heard that apparently Formula one race teams spend $1 million to shave one second off of a lap time. The lesson being that you eventually hit a wall of diminishing returns where additional investment won't get you proportional gains. Also on the consumer level once you leave the FX-8350 behind Intel has absolutely no competition. So If someone needs the performance of an i7 nothing from anyone else will cut it. So intel has the right to charge what they want until someone can undercut them.

[Oshino Shinobu]

I see what you are saying, but if Intel is pricing things higher even though the performance isn't relative to the price simply because they know people will buy it aren't they essentially taking advantage of people?

Technically yes, but this is common in all industries. And even though many people know about this, they'll still pay it due to knowing and trusting Intel. 

[mandrigald]

FPS isn't fanboyism. I have owned AMD in the past, I would have went with a 280x over my 770 if they weren't 100 dollars more due to coin miners. AMD simply sucks due to FPU on MMO's and RTS games and they are all not 8 thread games.

 

Go check the Guild wars 2 forum or WoW forum or Rome Total War forum. People are TICKED OFF about buying AMD. 

 

Many popular games are not 8 thread. Planetside 2 and BF4 (8 thread titles) are the only MULTIPLAYER games where a 8350 can = an I5. 

 

Logan from Tek Syndicate manipulated the weak minded by showing single player GPU bound FPS titles that require jack from the CPU. You could run the same test on the Intel or AMD and get different scores every time, because it is GPU bound. 

 

If you do not play MMO's or RTS? Then AMD is fine. If you do? Don't expect miracles out of a chip that scores 13000 in a FPU test (cpu bound game this matters) compared to a chip that scores near 30,000. 

 

AMD is older tech. It is fine in a 8 thread game and blows in 4 core games that aren't GPU bound.  An I3 is better then a 8350 is Guildwars 2 or WoW, which is downright pathetic...

What if somebody doesn't play MMOs though? Lots of people dont. Unless you are a DEDICATED MMO player I don't see the justification in paying so much more just to see a performance boost in ONE genre of game.

[Oshino Shinobu]

I understand that Intel has more powerful per core performance, but if the performance isn't any different or the performance difference isn't very big how do they justify pricing their products much higher than their AMD counterparts? 

They don't need to justify it. People will pay it, so they price it there. If people refused to pay it, then they would lower their price. It's not Intel that would need to justify selling it at that price, ti would be the consumer that 'needs' to justify paying the price for it. 

[mandrigald]

Technically yes, but this is common in all industries. And even though many people know about this, they'll still pay it due to knowing and trusting Intel. 

Then what is this deathjester guy trying to tell me? If it isn't justified then what is he arguing for?

[mandrigald]

They don't need to justify it. People will pay it, so they price it there. If people refused to pay it, then they would lower their price. It's not Intel that would need to justify selling it at that price, ti would be the consumer that 'needs' to justify paying the price for it. 

Then why the hell would anyone ever pay for it?

 

EDIT: I understand they need to profit but it just seems kind of scumbaggy to me to charge that much more for the same performance.