News AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X Is $540 off Launch Price

[Admin]

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X is on sale for its lowest price ever.

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X Is $540 off Launch Price : Read more

 

[NightHawkRMX]

I have to wonder why AMD is doing this. Intel has NOTHING that is competitive in raw CPU performance, and Intels best attempt still costs FAR FAR more.

AMD didn't need to drop their prices, but yet they still axed nearly 15% off. Not complaining.

 

[JamesSneed]

I have to wonder why AMD is doing this. Intel has NOTHING that is competitive in raw CPU performance, and Intels best attempt still costs FAR FAR more.

AMD didn't need to drop their prices, but yet they still axed nearly 15% off. Not complaining.

If I had to guess they are clearing stock.

 

[InvalidError]

If I had to guess they are clearing stock.

Yup, I'd expect Zen 3 EPYC and TR with a single double-sized CCX per CCD to be a substantial boon to high core count CPUs. Gotta shift units and clear stock while it can still get good money for them.

 

[gfg]

but compared to Intel’s $10,000-plus Xeon 8280, the Threadripper 3990X offers comparable, and sometimes higher, performance.

are you kidding?
3990X has more than double the performance of the 2x8280...

 

[spongiemaster]

If I had to guess they are clearing stock.

Why would that be necessary in a market with supposedly such high demand? And why does Intel never have to "clear stock?" Seriously, you never see Intel CPU's hit the bargain bins when a new series release is imminent. Are they just better at knowing what volume to manufacturer?

 

[JamesSneed]

Why would that be necessary in a market with supposedly such high demand? And why does Intel never have to "clear stock?" Seriously, you never see Intel CPU's hit the bargain bins when a new series release is imminent. Are they just better at knowing what volume to manufacturer?

If Zen3 is as good as many predict the multi threaded performance is going to have a large increase to a point these high core count CPU's will have to sell at a huge discount or not at all. Intel CPU's don't ever hit bargain bins, even 5 year old CPU's. Intel simply eats the lost sales so it never competes with itself but then that is what you do when you run a virtual monopoly. Intel can lose 10's of millions in old CPU's that don't sale and they make money by not reducing the prices competing with themselves on next generation sales. This will stop once AMD has close to 40-50% of the market share if that ever happens.

 

[TerryLaze]

I have to wonder why AMD is doing this. Intel has NOTHING that is competitive in raw CPU performance, and Intels best attempt still costs FAR FAR more.

AMD didn't need to drop their prices, but yet they still axed nearly 15% off. Not complaining.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-10500k-10900k&num=10
The 10900k equaled the 3900x in business workloads so basically ryzen cores just lost about 20% of value.
Maybe this swapped over to threadripper as well.

If Zen3 is as good as many predict the multi threaded performance is going to have a large increase to a point these high core count CPU's will have to sell at a huge discount or not at all.

See this is a huge problem for AMD,the over hype keeps people from buying their current products because people think that the next batch will be so much better.
When they announced ZEN it caused their revenue to drop significantly,and zen1 only got them back to EOL faildozer levels because even hardcore AMD fans knew that their first iteration wouldn't be as good as the refresh.

 

[JamesSneed]

@TerryLaze No argument. This is very likely the reason AMD is also doing a small refresh this summer to try to keep people from holding out. However if the 8-core CCX, shared cache, and IPC improvements are true Zen3 is going to be a pretty large jump.

 

[InvalidError]

Intel simply eats the lost sales so it never competes with itself

Intel does not eat the cost of unsold stock to artificially inflate its older chips' prices, it issues product discontinuance and last order notices when sales are expected to wind down in the transition to next-gen parts so it can terminate production of older parts as soon as its pre-booked final orders and warranty replacement inventory needs are met. Because of that, it rarely has excess inventory to write off.

Intel's old CPUs keep their value for a very long time simply because there aren't enough of them on the market to drive prices down while they are still relevant.

 

[spongiemaster]

If Zen3 is as good as many predict the multi threaded performance is going to have a large increase to a point these high core count CPU's will have to sell at a huge discount or not at all. Intel CPU's don't ever hit bargain bins, even 5 year old CPU's. Intel simply eats the lost sales so it never competes with itself but then that is what you do when you run a virtual monopoly. Intel can lose 10's of millions in old CPU's that don't sale and they make money by not reducing the prices competing with themselves on next generation sales. This will stop once AMD has close to 40-50% of the market share if that ever happens.

This sounds like the rant of a jaded ex more than anything with any sort of factual content. Any evidence to back any of this up?

 

[spongiemaster]

Intel does not eat the cost of unsold stock to artificially inflate its older chips' prices, it issues product discontinuance and last order notices when sales are expected to wind down in the transition to next-gen parts so it can terminate production of older parts as soon as its pre-booked final orders and warranty replacement inventory needs are met. Because of that, it rarely has excess inventory to write off.

Intel announced last October that Kaby Lake is going to be discontinued October 9th of this year.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14968/intel-to-discontinue-nearly-all-desktop-kaby-lake-cpus

Kaby Lake was released in Q1 of 2017 and Coffee Lake, its successor, was released in Q4 2017. I don't think the 7700k avoided the bargain bin in Q3 of 2017 because Intel announced 2 years after that that the 7700k would be discontinued another year after that. There are other market forces at work here keeping Intel prices from dropping.

 

[InvalidError]

Intel announced last October that Kaby Lake is going to be discontinued October 9th of this year.

October is the LAST SHIP date. Last ORDER date was over a month ago. That leaves Intel with about six months to plan shutdowns of whatever remaining fab lines it still has making those chips to make inventory match up with whatever orders it still has on its books.

Most sales of those older chips likely go to commercial and industrial equipment companies who need to stock parts for their own warranty and maintenance purposes since they may have to guarantee their equipment' performance for 10+ years and not want to re-design the system board and software for use with newer CPUs.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel-10500k-10900k&num=10
The 10900k equaled the 3900x in business workloads so basically ryzen cores just lost about 20% of value.
Maybe this swapped over to threadripper as well.

Honestly, these products are not at all comparable and are not even the same classification of the product. It makes no sense to say "A standard $500 Intel CPU sometimes beats a cheaper desktop Ryzen CPU with 2 more cores, so a $10000 Intel CPU will beat a 3 times cheaper HEDT Ryzen CPU with 36 more cores."

Notice the price difference is now over 6 thousand dollars and the core difference is 36 cores is not even close to a $100 difference in price and 2 core difference.

Unless Intel somehow manages to muster up a CPU that offers close to 3 times the performance of their existing flagship Xeon Platinum 8280 for like 1 third of the cost of the 8280, this isn't true.

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/GwrhPUirRtCtemk7pFVVRQ-650-80.png

The difference between a $10,000 8280 and a now roughly $3500 3990x is not 2 cores, not even 20 cores. The difference is the 3990x has thirty-six more cores. Even 2 8280 CPUs combined are far behind a 3990x in Maxon 3d. The only thing in favor if intel is maximum memory capacity.

Intel releasing new consumer CPUs does not change the performance of preexisting HEDT Intel and AMD CPUs. AMD still wins there.

 

[spongiemaster]

October is the LAST SHIP date. Last ORDER date was over a month ago. That leaves Intel with about six months to plan shutdowns of whatever remaining fab lines it still has making those chips to make inventory match up with whatever orders it still has on its books.

That doesn't change that the announcement came two years after the product was replaced, while AMD prices are dropping 2 months or more before their replacement arrives.

 

[spongiemaster]

Honestly, these products are not at all comparable and are not even the same classification of the product. It makes no sense to say "A standard $500 Intel CPU sometimes beats a cheaper desktop Ryzen CPU with 2 more cores, so a $10000 Intel CPU will beat a 3 times cheaper HEDT Ryzen CPU with 36 more cores."

Ok, no argument you shouldn't be comparing 2 dissimilar products. So why did you then spend the rest of your post comparing two dissimilar products?

3990x is an HEDT/workstation CPU, 8280 is as enterprise as it gets. The 8280 will work in 8p systems. That's 224 cores and 448 threads in a single system. AMD's highest clocked 64 core Epyc CPU, the 7742, is still slower than the 3990x and is currently selling for $7522.99 at Newegg. That doesn't make the 7742 a bad value, it's intended for a different market like the 8280.

 

[InvalidError]

That doesn't change that the announcement came two years after the product was replaced, while AMD prices are dropping 2 months or more before their replacement arrives.

AMD has wafer purchase agreements with fabs and has to pay up regardless of whether they use up wafers they committed to, so AMD has to sell those wafers off or write off the cost. It is cheaper for AMD to sell 12nm chips for minimal profit or even a small loss than writing off its excess 12nm wafers altogether. That's why older AMD chip prices melt like snow in a volcano when new chips launch on a more advanced process.

Intel owns its fabs, it can ramp up and down the number of lines allocated to each product on an as-needed basis throughout its products' life cycle. By the time Intel announces it is discontinuing production of something, it may already no longer have any production lines dedicated to it and the last-order date is simply so Intel can size its final production batch for the last time a production line will get allocated to it. No excess inventory, no reason to dump inventory on the market and crash prices.

 

[spongiemaster]

AMD has wafer purchase agreements with fabs and has to pay up regardless of whether they use up wafers they committed to, so AMD has to sell those wafers off or write off the cost. It is cheaper for AMD to sell 12nm chips for minimal profit or even a small loss than writing off its excess 12nm wafers altogether. That's why older AMD chip prices melt like snow in a volcano when new chips launch on a more advanced process.

This article is about the 3990x. That's not a 12nm part. It hit reviews sites less than 4 months ago. Intel sent 10980XE's out for review last November. You want one now? How about $2700 from a third party seller on Amazon, or maybe $3000 from a third party seller on Newegg? No major retailer has ever listed this CPU. A 10980XE for $860 would be pretty sweet right now.

 

[InvalidError]

This article is about the 3990x. That's not a 12nm part. It hit reviews sites less than 4 months ago.

My point was that AMD is under constant pressure from its wafer contracts with external fabs to sell parts as fast as they come in to avoid having potentially massive write-offs of unsold inventory.

It is the same reason Zen got substantial cuts when Zen+ launched and even more substantial cuts with Zen 2's launch. Contracted wafers keep coming in regardless of AMD's ability to sell those chips. Better off selling TR3990X for $550 less today than having to put them on 50+% fire sale tomorrow.

 

[TerryLaze]

It makes no sense to say "A standard $500 Intel CPU sometimes beats a cheaper desktop Ryzen CPU with 2 more cores,

It wasn't cheaper until AMD saw the 10900k performance,both released at $500.
Yeah or the 3900x sometimes wins due to having 20% more cores.
It's not sometimes though,on average both CPUs are the same speed.

It makes no sense to say "A standard $500 Intel CPU sometimes beats a cheaper desktop Ryzen CPU with 2 more cores, so a $10000 Intel CPU will beat a 3 times cheaper HEDT Ryzen CPU with 36 more cores."

It's not about one CPU beating another, it's about how much a core is valued at.

 

[CerianK]

My point was that AMD is under constant pressure from its wafer contracts with external fabs to sell parts as fast as they come in to avoid having potentially massive write-offs of unsold inventory.

That makes complete sense, and for someone like me without deep pockets that really needs one of these for my research... that price cut caught my attention, and I will bet that many others are looking at it, as well. AMD could potentially make more (short-term, at least) profit by making that cut, and if Zen3 is that good, then maybe next TR will delay more to make up for any possible miscalculation on AMD's part now. Bean-Counters... hard to outsmart them.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

It wasn't cheaper until AMD saw the 10900k performance,both released at $500.
Yeah or the 3900x sometimes wins due to having 20% more cores.
It's not sometimes though,on average both CPUs are the same speed.

It's not about one CPU beating another, it's about how much a core is valued at.

Actually the 3900x has been below msrp for a bit now. Doesnt really matter what the prices were, only what they are.

And the 10900k has a max boost of like 1.3ghz higher than the 8280 and the threadripper has different turbo speeds than the 3900x.

Not all intel cores are the same and nor are all amd cores.

 

[JamesSneed]

This sounds like the rant of a jaded ex more than anything with any sort of factual content. Any evidence to back any of this up?

Don't be a troll. Any evidence to back what up I said a few things in that post and none of it I felt was unsubstantiated?

 

[JamesSneed]

Intel does not eat the cost of unsold stock to artificially inflate its older chips' prices, it issues product discontinuance and last order notices when sales are expected to wind down in the transition to next-gen parts so it can terminate production of older parts as soon as its pre-booked final orders and warranty replacement inventory needs are met. Because of that, it rarely has excess inventory to write off.

Intel's old CPUs keep their value for a very long time simply because there aren't enough of them on the market to drive prices down while they are still relevant.

They usually keep making prior gen parts well into the next generation and they never discount said parts to compete with themselves. My point still holds you wont find Intel parts at a discount because a new generation is coming/here as they simply don't price CPU's like that. I don't blame them I would do the same if I had a virtual monopoly. Which was my point that Intel "could" loose money on not selling prior gen parts, they don't, but they could and they still wouldn't discount.

 

[InvalidError]

They usually keep making prior gen parts well into the next generation and they never discount said parts to compete with themselves.

At a time where Intel's fabs are maxed out, it would make no sense to make old-gen parts more desirable with a discount while there is no spare fab capacity to keep making avoidable extras on. It actually would make more sense for Intel to raise MSRPs on old-gen parts to accelerate the transition to more profitable new-gen.

Also, most of Intel's sales, especially of older-gen parts, go to OEMs and SIs under volume contract pricing. No "competing with itself" there, the prices and volumes are set well in advance.