AMD trolls Intel with offer to trade in Core i7 CPU for Threadripper

[Shawn Knight]

Why it matters: AMD is essentially trolling Intel here as it is only offering 40 contest winners the chance to participate. Still, a little friendly competition is never a bad thing and participants could come out ahead financially.

Intel at Computex 2018 officially announced the Core i7-8086K, a limited edition processor (only 50,000 examples are being made) to commemorate the 40^th anniversary of the original 8086 processor released on June 8, 1978.

As part of the festivities, Intel announced a sweepstakes in which it would give away 8,086 CPUs during a 24-hour span. The entry date – June 7 at 5:00 p.m. PST through June 8 at 5:00 p.m. PST – came and went without much fanfare… that is, until rival chipmaker AMD got involved.

AMD on Monday announced a promotion of its own to celebrate the “next 40 years of high-performance computing.” The first 40 US-based winners of Intel’s competition can opt to trade in their shiny new Core i7-8086K for a Ryzen Threadripper 1950X, AMD's flagship 16-core / 32-thread processor.

Those wishing to take AMD up on the offer are encouraged to check back with the company on June 25 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern for details on how to participate.

From a pure value standpoint, Intel’s i7-8086K retails for about $425 while AMD’s Threadripper 1950X commands closer to $750. Of course, you’ll also need to factor in any potential costs associated with transitioning to a different platform and perhaps even the fact that Intel’s offering is a limited edition product.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/75141-amd-trolls-intel-offer-trade-core-i7-cpu.html

 

[Teko03]

Threadripper has AMD feeling big and bad now after being irrelevant for 15 years. I'd be careful if I were them lol...they don't want to end back up where they were. Tread lightly....

 

[Lionvibez]

Competition is good for the market.

Don't see how any of this is negative!

 

[dirtyferret]

Always nice to have options

 

[ZackL04]

Id rather have the 8086k.....am I the weirdo?

 

[ShagnWagn]

Downgrade from intel 28 cores to amd 16?? is this a joke? or is amd actually faster?

 

[Teko03]

Competition is good for the market.

Don't see how any of this is negative!

I agree, but that isnt the same as trolling after being anything but for over a decade was my point. It's more of a how quickly they forget comment...AMD should probably be a bit more humble for a while lol

 

[Gabriel Pike]

Quite the snarky marketing move! I wonder if Intel will answer back.

 

[EEatGDL]

Downgrade from intel 28 cores to amd 16?? is this a joke? or is amd actually faster?

Ehm, you're going from Intel 6 cores to AMD 16. The 28-core part doesn't even have a public SKU-name announced.

 

[Evernessince]

Id rather have the 8086k.....am I the weirdo?

Well given that you can sell the threadripper and buy either 2-3 8700Ks or one 8700 binned at 5.3 GHz, yes that is just a plain bad decision.

Downgrade from intel 28 cores to amd 16?? is this a joke? or is amd actually faster?

You are missing a huge detail. It's trading in an 8086 6-core cpu for an AMD 16 core. One's worth $400 and the other is $1,000.

Competition is good for the market.

Don't see how any of this is negative!

I agree, but that isnt the same as trolling after being anything but for over a decade was my point. It's more of a how quickly they forget comment...AMD should probably be a bit more humble for a while lol

AMD only needs to be humble to it's customers. It bears no requirement to it's competitor.

 

[allenout]

Downgrade from intel 28 cores to amd 16?? is this a joke? or is amd actually faster?

It's not the 28 core one. Why would Intel give out a product which hasn't been released yet and will cost >$5000 for free randomly. No, the CPU was the highly binned 6C/12T i7 8700k know as i7 8086k costing roughly $500.

 

[hood6558]

The price of TR 1950X has already dropped 25%, from $1000 down to $750. Winners of the Intel contest better hurry up and get their TR trade-in, before it goes the way of the FX-9590 (MSRP $920 - rapid drop to $400 - now $109 and still plenty left in stock). Wait too long to sell the 1950X and they'll be stuck with it. Possibly they can trade for 3 cases of beer, or an i3.

 

[GeforcerFX]

The price of TR 1950X has already dropped 25%, from $1000 down to $750. Winners of the Intel contest better hurry up and get their TR trade-in, before it goes the way of the FX-9590 (MSRP $920 - rapid drop to $400 - now $109 and still plenty left in stock). Wait too long to sell the 1950X and they'll be stuck with it. Possibly they can trade for 3 cases of beer, or an i3.

There is a massive difference between the 1950x and the 9590, the 9590 was outclassed by Intel's chips from day 1 at almost any price point it has been at, Intel has nothing even close to the 1950x at $750.

 

[Evernessince]

The price of TR 1950X has already dropped 25%, from $1000 down to $750. Winners of the Intel contest better hurry up and get their TR trade-in, before it goes the way of the FX-9590 (MSRP $920 - rapid drop to $400 - now $109 and still plenty left in stock). Wait too long to sell the 1950X and they'll be stuck with it. Possibly they can trade for 3 cases of beer, or an i3.

Oh no! They are going to be stuck with a 16 core 32 thread 4.2 GHz CPU! Whatever will they do....

You are confusing a price drop because a product is bad and a price drop because AMD is about to unleash it's second generation threadripper 2 products in august. Intel won't even have a response for that until at the earliest the end of the year.

 

[hood6558]

The 10-core i9-7900X beats the 16-core TR1950X by one place 14th vs 15th place in Passmark high-end CPU chart. Both have original MSRP of $1000. The Intel i9-7900X is now $869, the TR 1950X is now $750. Why do you think AMD dropped the price, if they are so great? And why do you think Intel hasn't dropped theirs as much? Even Intel's 8-core i7-6900K (last-gen Broadwell-e, 54th place) still commands a $1000 price tag - how do you explain that? https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

 

[Evernessince]

The 10-core i9-7900X beats the 16-core TR1950X by one place 14th vs 15th place in Passmark high-end CPU chart. Both have original MSRP of $1000. The Intel i9-7900X is now $869, the TR 1950X is now $750. Why do you think AMD dropped the price, if they are so great? And why do you think Intel hasn't dropped theirs as much? Even Intel's 8-core i7-6900K (last-gen Broadwell-e, 54th place) still commands a $1000 price tag - how do you explain that? https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Not a single major review outlet uses passmark and for good reason. But how about we not cherry pick and just show you all the numbers.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1465-amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-1920x/

I'll put a star next to the processor that wins each benchmark

SiSoftware Sandra 2016 - Memory bandwidth

1950X - 63.4 GB
7900X - 63.4 GB

Cinebench R15

1950X - 3028 *
7900X - 2180

PCMark 10 - Modern Office Benchmark

1950X - 5859 *
7900X - 5157

Excel 2016 - Monte Carlo Simulation (lower is better)

1950X - 1.66 *
7900X - 1.90

VeraCrypt 1.2.1 - AES Encryption / Decryption

1950X - 24.1 / 21.5 *
7900X - 16.3 / 15.9

7-zip - 32MB dictionary

1950X - 88223 / 57893 *
7900X - 59270 / 57117

Handbrake 4K H.264 to 1080p H.265

1950X - 18.9 *
7900X - 17.8

Adobe Premier Pro CC - Export YouTube 2160 4K 60 FPS H.264 (lower is better)

1950X - 128 *
7900X - 143

Blender - Ryzen Graphic (lower is better)

1950X - 13.4 *
7900X - 17.3

Blender - Gooseberry (lower is better)

1950X - 1914 *
7900X - 2156

Corona 1.3 - Render time (lower is better)

1950X - 71 *
7900X - 93

POVRay 3.7 - benchmark.pov 1080p (lower is better)

1950X - 210 *
7900X - 287


Oh , would you look at that the 7900X doesn't have a single star. The 1950X beat the 7900X is every single professional application tested in the review. Many of those wins come with a significant margin of victory as well. You can look at other major reviews around the web as well, they all say the exact same thing.

Steve put it best in his summary...

"Core i9 Killer: Who Is It For?

That was a lot of data but it all indicated one thing: total domination by AMD's new Threadripper processors. Their only weakness was gaming but there's really no point in buying Threadripper for that. If your goal is great gaming performance and you have $1,000 to spend on a processor, get the $340 Core i7-7700K and pocket the change for the best GPU you can afford. The 7700K is significantly cheaper and much better suited for gaming."

No stop playing coy and just admit the 1950X is a better processor.

 

[ET3D]

If AMD really wants to do it right, it should release specially binned ThreadRipper X1986 and offer that as a replacement.

 

[hood6558]

I wouldn't trade any Intel quad core for the 1950x, not even my i5-2500K. No need for a slow, power-sucking white elephant heating up my house. I don't do things that require 16 cores, nor do I live for "bragging rights"; epeen is for the young and foolish. All the thousands of young fools who claimed they would buy one upon release, most of them never did, they just talk crap in forums about how great they supposedly are, without a actually knowing anything about them or what things they are good for. I pity the poor "gamers" who bought them and were sorely disappointed, once they got over their orgy of braggadocio. So keep talking, you only expose your self as a poser without a clue. For certain uses, they may be cheaper than equivalent Intel parts, but they'll never be better at those tasks. Intel should never have let AMD goad them into this core war BS to start with. Let the uninformed beat their heads against TR while the rest of us laugh at your macho posturing. If I actually had a need for that many cores and couldn't afford Intel, I would consider buying one. Now all the posers can lie about how they'll be buying the new 32 core version.

 

[Evernessince]

I wouldn't trade any Intel quad core for the 1950x, not even my i5-2500K. No need for a slow, power-sucking white elephant heating up my house. I don't do things that require 16 cores, nor do I live for "bragging rights"; epeen is for the young and foolish. All the thousands of young fools who claimed they would buy one upon release, most of them never did, they just talk crap in forums about how great they supposedly are, without a actually knowing anything about them or what things they are good for. I pity the poor "gamers" who bought them and were sorely disappointed, once they got over their orgy of braggadocio. So keep talking, you only expose your self as a poser without a clue. For certain uses, they may be cheaper than equivalent Intel parts, but they'll never be better at those tasks. Intel should never have let AMD goad them into this core war BS to start with. Let the uninformed beat their heads against TR while the rest of us laugh at your macho posturing. If I actually had a need for that many cores and couldn't afford Intel, I would consider buying one. Now all the posers can lie about how they'll be buying the new 32 core version.

You do realize that AMD processors are actually more power efficient than Intel right?

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-7-1700-cpu-review,5009-8.html

"I pity the poor "gamers" who bought them and were sorely disappointed"

Good thing they were never targeted at gamers....

Am I to take your failure to debate the data provided by TechSpot and Tom's Hardware clearly disproving your points as concession that you were wrong? Please try to stay on point next post, I don't need to listen to another rant.

 

[SirChocula]

I wouldn't trade any Intel quad core for the 1950x, not even my i5-2500K. No need for a slow, power-sucking white elephant heating up my house. I don't do things that require 16 cores, nor do I live for "bragging rights"; epeen is for the young and foolish. All the thousands of young fools who claimed they would buy one upon release, most of them never did, they just talk crap in forums about how great they supposedly are, without a actually knowing anything about them or what things they are good for. I pity the poor "gamers" who bought them and were sorely disappointed, once they got over their orgy of braggadocio. So keep talking, you only expose your self as a poser without a clue. For certain uses, they may be cheaper than equivalent Intel parts, but they'll never be better at those tasks. Intel should never have let AMD goad them into this core war BS to start with. Let the uninformed beat their heads against TR while the rest of us laugh at your macho posturing. If I actually had a need for that many cores and couldn't afford Intel, I would consider buying one. Now all the posers can lie about how they'll be buying the new 32 core version.

All I hear is emotional ranting without an ounce of data to back up what you've said. Intel's koolaid must come in great flavors to have you defending them to the death like that, lol.

 

[Jyrkz]

I would trade it in. no questions asked. overall a better system.
its good to see AMD kicking INTEL *** again

 

[hahahanoobs]

It's trolling, because the buyers of a binned 8700 (8086k) are NOT looking at TR, so....

 

[Knot Schure]

The 10-core i9-7900X beats the 16-core TR1950X by one place 14th vs 15th place in Passmark high-end CPU chart. Both have original MSRP of $1000. The Intel i9-7900X is now $869, the TR 1950X is now $750. Why do you think AMD dropped the price, if they are so great? And why do you think Intel hasn't dropped theirs as much? Even Intel's 8-core i7-6900K (last-gen Broadwell-e, 54th place) still commands a $1000 price tag - how do you explain that? https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Not a single major review outlet uses passmark and for good reason. But how about we not cherry pick and just show you all the numbers.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1465-amd-ryzen-threadripper-1950x-1920x/

I'll put a star next to the processor that wins each benchmark

SiSoftware Sandra 2016 - Memory bandwidth

1950X - 63.4 GB
7900X - 63.4 GB

Cinebench R15

1950X - 3028 *
7900X - 2180

PCMark 10 - Modern Office Benchmark

1950X - 5859 *
7900X - 5157

Excel 2016 - Monte Carlo Simulation (lower is better)

1950X - 1.66 *
7900X - 1.90

VeraCrypt 1.2.1 - AES Encryption / Decryption

1950X - 24.1 / 21.5 *
7900X - 16.3 / 15.9

7-zip - 32MB dictionary

1950X - 88223 / 57893 *
7900X - 59270 / 57117

Handbrake 4K H.264 to 1080p H.265

1950X - 18.9 *
7900X - 17.8

Adobe Premier Pro CC - Export YouTube 2160 4K 60 FPS H.264 (lower is better)

1950X - 128 *
7900X - 143

Blender - Ryzen Graphic (lower is better)

1950X - 13.4 *
7900X - 17.3

Blender - Gooseberry (lower is better)

1950X - 1914 *
7900X - 2156

Corona 1.3 - Render time (lower is better)

1950X - 71 *
7900X - 93

POVRay 3.7 - benchmark.pov 1080p (lower is better)

1950X - 210 *
7900X - 287


Oh , would you look at that the 7900X doesn't have a single star. The 1950X beat the 7900X is every single professional application tested in the review. Many of those wins come with a significant margin of victory as well. You can look at other major reviews around the web as well, they all say the exact same thing.

Steve put it best in his summary...

"Core i9 Killer: Who Is It For?

That was a lot of data but it all indicated one thing: total domination by AMD's new Threadripper processors. Their only weakness was gaming but there's really no point in buying Threadripper for that. If your goal is great gaming performance and you have $1,000 to spend on a processor, get the $340 Core i7-7700K and pocket the change for the best GPU you can afford. The 7700K is significantly cheaper and much better suited for gaming."

No stop playing coy and just admit the 1950X is a better processor.

I'd still take the 7900X over the 1950X.

I game a lot, and you'll note there are zero gaming references in your post.

...and Intel overclocks very well.

 

[misor]

@AMD, how about giving that 'threadripper cpu' for the first 40 commenters of this techspot page?

 

[theBest11778]

It's funny to see community reaction to a changing landscape. Intel still has gaming and nothing else, and that's even subjective. My computer is used for much more than simply gaming on it. AMD right now provides good gaming performance, excellent productivity, and dominates price/performance. While the race is close today Intel won't be competitive next year at all. People need to stop rooting for brands and start buying the best values.