AMD Ryzen 5000 launch: "Fastest gaming CPU," higher clocks, higher prices

[Avro Arrow]

The minimum price of entry went up from $200 to $300 so that's a legitimate gripe. However you will always pay more for new tech, so it shouldn't be an unexpected one.

Where on Earth did you get THAT idea? I don't know if you're aware of this but the selling price of the IBM PC model 5150 was $1,565USD in 1981 with a whopping 16K of RAM. If we paid more for new tech, we'd be paying like $50,000 for a modern PC. Banish that thought from your mind immediately because you're just setting yourself up to get screwed by believing that lie.

What if I told you that nVidia charged the EXACT same amount of money for its top-end cards for five generations (over 10 years)? What if I told you that tech isn't supposed to go up in price, it's supposed to DROP. Where did you get this "ALWAYS" crap from? Man, they programmed you but GOOD!

Now, tech gets CHEAPER as time goes on and personally, while I have had an all-AMD rig for years, I am not the least bit impressed by what AMD is doing. In fact, I'm downright pissed off. AMD not only increased prices but removed the fans from all CPUs over 65W and the one that's being included with the Ryzen 5 5600X is the Wraith Stealth, the cooler that used to be reserved for the Ryzen 3 CPUs. My R7-1700 came with a Wraith Spire RGB and my R5-3600X came with a standard Wraith Spire.

AMD is starting to nickel-and-dime its customers, something that it should know not to do because its success was based on the fact that it DOESN'T do that. The problem is that AMD for years saw all the dumb people bending over and taking it from Intel because Intel was "the fastest" and so now they're just like "If that's how it works..." which is a cop-out when they know better.

AMD is still alive today for two reasons and it seems to have forgotten one of them. They are:

1. ATi kept AMD alive when AMD couldn't keep themselves alive
2. A lot of people bought AMD over Intel because even though Intel and nVidia's performance was better, their corporate ethics were non-existent.

So now AMD wants to be like Intel? Well, here's why what AMD is doing is hopelessly short-sighted. Intel still holds the lion's share of the market and things can always go wrong. Intel is still VERY capable of coming out with something that can beat Ryzen simply because they have the money to do so.

If AMD starts gouging like this, they can be quite certain that if something goes wrong and Intel becomes king again, nobody is going to sympathise with them and AMD really WILL die. If AMD keeps the principles that got them where they are, Intel will be in real trouble. As things are right now, Intel is extremely glad that AMD is pulling a **** move like this.

 

[Endymio]

I don't know if you're aware of this but the selling price of the IBM PC model 5150 was $1,565USD in 1981...What if I told you that tech isn't supposed to go up in price, it's supposed to DROP....tech gets CHEAPER as time goes on... If AMD starts gouging like [this] nobody is going to sympathize with them...

In 1981, the price of a fab was a few million dollars, and new nodes were a year apart. Now a fab is $20 billion and new nodes can take 3+ years to develop. I realize the period 1981-present has been your entire life, but lightning-fast advances coupled with precipitous price drops are not mandated on stone tablets sent down by God. Since you believe AMD is shirking its responsibility to provide you cutting-edge processors at ever-cheaper prices, why not design, develop, manufacturer, debug, market, and sell your own.. and get filthy stinking rich in the process?

 

[Lew Zealand]

Where on Earth did you get THAT idea? I don't know if you're aware of this but the selling price of the IBM PC model 5150 was $1,565USD in 1981 with a whopping 16K of RAM. If we paid more for new tech, we'd be paying like $50,000 for a modern PC. Banish that thought from your mind immediately because you're just setting yourself up to get screwed by believing that lie.

What if I told you that nVidia charged the EXACT same amount of money for its top-end cards for five generations (over 10 years)? What if I told you that tech isn't supposed to go up in price, it's supposed to DROP. Where did you get this "ALWAYS" crap from? Man, they programmed you but GOOD!

Lol, chill out Mr. Caps. This is business economics and very good business at that. Sure, the same old tech from a year or 5 ago goes down in price but new tech that nobody else can compete with costs more, not less. That's why Nvidia kept their prices similar for a while: they had AMD to compete with. And when AMD fell behind, then Nvidia kicked them in the balls with better tech at higher prices. If the consumer will pay more for those higher performing parts they can get nowhere else, then the business has done their job right.

You've programmed yourself incorrectly if you have some expectation that new tech is supposed to get cheaper. Relax and buy competitive parts then, and leave the cutting edge tech for people who are willing to pay more to get more.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Lol, chill out Mr. Caps. This is business economics and very good business at that. Sure, the same old tech from a year or 5 ago goes down in price but new tech that nobody else can compete with costs more, not less. That's why Nvidia kept their prices similar for a while: they had AMD to compete with. And when AMD fell behind, then Nvidia kicked them in the balls with better tech at higher prices. If the consumer will pay more for those higher performing parts they can get nowhere else, then the business has done their job right.

You've programmed yourself incorrectly if you have some expectation that new tech is supposed to get cheaper. Relax and buy competitive parts then, and leave the cutting edge tech for people who are willing to pay more to get more.

The problem here is the hypocrisy. AMD used to slam Intel and nVidia for things like this and now they're doing it? As for tech that nobody can compete with, there was a good long stretch where nVidia was #1 every single year but their top cards didn't go up in price over five generations regardless of whether or not ATi had produced a worthy competitor.

You seem to have been around a bit (I could be wrong) so I have a hard time believing that you don't remember this. The video card price hikes started post GTX 9xx series so this is a recent thing, not the norm like you appear to think it is. I'm not the only one who has noticed this worrying trend, Jim from AdoredTV has seen it too (He and I talk in twitter via DM) and he put out a video that shows it in all its glory:

If you're perfectly happy getting IRS-calibre screwed, that's fine, but don't admonish me for being pissed off about it. I did my first PC build in 1988 and haven't stopped since. I also worked at Tiger Direct for years so I know this industry and how it works is supposed to work.

This is just more needless corporate squeezing of consumers because no matter how much they rake in, it will never be enough and more than anything else, that ruins an industry completely. We already have one Intel, we sure as hell don't need two. AMD became successful by NOT doing things like this so there's no way that it NEEDS to.

 

[Lew Zealand]

The problem here is the hypocrisy. AMD used to slam Intel and nVidia for things like this and now they're doing it? As for tech that nobody can compete with, there was a good long stretch where nVidia was #1 every single year but their top cards didn't go up in price over five generations regardless of whether or not ATi had produced a worthy competitor.

Hypocrisy is a good word for it. So many companies take financial advantage as soon as they have the option, but then cry foul when a competitor does exactly the same. I suppose I'm just used to it by now. It's one of the features of a relatively free market.

You seem to have been around a bit (I could be wrong) so I have a hard time believing that you don't remember this. The video card price hikes started post GTX 9xx series so this is a recent thing, not the norm like you appear to think it is. I'm not the only one who has noticed this worrying trend, Jim from AdoredTV has seen it too (He and I talk in twitter via DM) and he put out a video that shows it in all its glory:

You may be forgetting release prices for many GPUs, as the GTX 780 came out at $650. That's not even the 780 Ti. When the competitive R9 290 came out, Nvidia's prices came down.

Now that AMD hasn't been competitive in the top GPU space for the past 4+ years, there's no risk to Nvidia for raising prices. Which they did successfully, selling all the 1080 Tis, 2080s, and 2080 Tis they could make. If people will pay, then you're selling at the right price. If you can't keep up with sales, you may even be charging too little. Sucks for the average consumer but then it's not like the $500 1080, 2070 or 2070 Super were bad options. Plus all the competitive cards available below them (which comprise every card I own).

This is just more needless corporate squeezing of consumers because no matter how much they rake in, it will never be enough and more than anything else, that ruins an industry completely. We already have one Intel, we sure as hell don't need two. AMD became successful by NOT doing things like this so there's no way that it NEEDS to.

AMD's recent CPU successes came because they needed to undercut the competition as they needed to recover from an previous inferior product line. And their new product line was only better in some of the metrics. So they needed good prices to entice us away from a known good product.

Now AMD's product line is allegedly better in all metrics, so they are free to charge what the market will bear (ie: what consumers will pay). I hope Intel gets off their duff and gets good 10nm or 7nm CPUs out soon or we'll be stuck in yet another one horse race with higher prices.