News Intel's Confirms 'KA' CPUs Are a Promo, Avengers-Branded Chips Pop Up

[Admin]

Intel's upcoming KA-series chips leaked last month, but it turns out they are merely an ordering code for promotional chips with an Avengers box.

Intel's Confirms 'KA' CPUs Are a Promo, Avengers-Branded Chips Pop Up : Read more

 

[Chung Leong]

Here's your chance to travel through time like the Avengers and bring home an artifact from the past

 

[Soaptrail]

When you do a movie tie in isn't it supposed to occur at the same time as the movie ergo Summer 2019, not summer 2020. Is this the kind of stuff we can expect more of from Intel now that they are weaker than AMD?

 

[bigdragon]

What a strange promotion.

Avengers Endgame was last year -- it's over. Is Intel trying to cash in on the Avengers game coming out? Every article I'm reading says that the PlayStation version will be the complete version, and that the PC version will be missing content due to exclusivity deals. I don't know a single PC gamer who is happy about the situation. Intel comes across as very tone deaf here.

This promotion reads like desperation on the part of Intel and Disney. Same chip, different box art, higher price.

 

[RockoThe Great]

This looks to be a tie in with the Avengers game coming out and really has little to do with a particular movie. Intel is just getting in on the hype of the Marvel name. They can not control any other deals that the game maker makes with Sony, Microsoft, or any other game system maker. We have no idea when the deal was done and who is to say which deal came first, the Sony PlayStation deal or Intel. We get it, your not an Intel fan. I see very little desperation here. Disney\Marvel always have movies and shows in the works and Intel is like any other business and this promotion cost them very little and if they did not think it would not be profitable, they would have not done it. Deals like these are done way out and takes time to be done. I would not be surprised if this deal was first talked about when the game was being conceived in some boardroom.

 

[Giroro]

Who is Avengers branded CPU packaging supposed to appeal to?
Kids who have done enough research to build a DIY pc, but not enough to know the box doesn't matter?
Maybe Intel just wants more advertising from Disney's 9,001 YouTube personalities?

 

[jpe1701]

I don't understand why everyone is so upset about it. It's a company facing stiff competition trying to use some marketing. Same for sony. They have the rights to Spiderman iirc. I have to admit I was bummed about it though. Sony could have charged the devs for using Spiderman so they could make it available to everyone but they like to get people into the PlayStation ecosystem.

 

[TerryLaze]

Who is Avengers branded CPU packaging supposed to appeal to?
Kids who have done enough research to build a DIY pc, but not enough to know the box doesn't matter?
Maybe Intel just wants more advertising from Disney's 9,001 YouTube personalities?

Eh,AMD came out with a special CPU that had lisa su's signature laser engraved on it's lid and nothing more,you would put it in your system and never see it.
This at least you get a pretty box out of to put your thor girl figurine on to.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Eh,AMD came out with a special CPU that had lisa su's signature laser engraved on it's lid and nothing more,you would put it in your system and never see it.
This at least you get a pretty box out of to put your thor girl figurine on to.

They should have made some special versions like one with a custom CLC that the water block is shaped and has LEDs to replicate Iron Mans Arc Reactor core. That would have been a cool item.

 

[watzupken]

Eh,AMD came out with a special CPU that had lisa su's signature laser engraved on it's lid and nothing more,you would put it in your system and never see it.
This at least you get a pretty box out of to put your thor girl figurine on to.

I don't understand why everyone is so upset about it. It's a company facing stiff competition trying to use some marketing. Same for sony. They have the rights to Spiderman iirc. I have to admit I was bummed about it though. Sony could have charged the devs for using Spiderman so they could make it available to everyone but they like to get people into the PlayStation ecosystem.

While that is true, there is only 1 SKU (with limited number of units) and it is basically to commemorate their 50th Anniversary by call its the Ryzen 7 2700X Gold Edition. Intel have done that before from my memory. Plus you get a shirt and a game to go along. So in my opinion, its less marketing, more as a way to commemorate the occasion.

What I feel here is why in the world would Intel come up with another SKU giving it an A suffix, when this used to help people differentiate actual difference in the product, i.e. K = Overclockable, F= no iGPU, etc? And really, to use the brand means you pay a royalty to Disney. Why not cut the price of their chips instead of paying Disney just for marketing and box art for their CPU which you will likely chuck away into the bin or into your storeroom? Everything just smells of an Intel desperation.

 

[Chung Leong]

They should have made some special versions like one with a custom CLC that the water block is shaped and has LEDs to replicate Iron Mans Arc Reactor core. That would have been a cool item.

A mini-PC in the shape of the Tesseract would sell like hotcake, methinks.

 

[cryoburner]

Eh,AMD came out with a special CPU that had lisa su's signature laser engraved on it's lid and nothing more,you would put it in your system and never see it.
This at least you get a pretty box out of to put your thor girl figurine on to.

But you can put your Lisa Su figurine on the AMD box. : P

https://www.techspot.com/news/83615-amd-lisa-su-doubles-down-big-navi-zen.html

Avengers Endgame was last year -- it's over. Is Intel trying to cash in on the Avengers game coming out? Every article I'm reading says that the PlayStation version will be the complete version, and that the PC version will be missing content due to exclusivity deals. I don't know a single PC gamer who is happy about the situation. Intel comes across as very tone deaf here.

Most likely, the game is not going to be particularly great and will get mediocre reviews no matter what platform you're on, so the publisher is likely looking for other revenue streams. Film tie-in games like this have a history of often not living up to expectations, and the reception so far doesn't seem too promising, judging by quotes from previews of the PS4 version...

https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/marvels-avengers/critic-reviews

By partnering with Intel, I suspect they may bundle the game with those K-series processors to help move units and maintain some semblance of a player base for at least some months after launch, important for a game that seems to be largely focused on co-op gameplay. Intel gets to give out copies of a game from a popular movie franchise at a greatly reduced cost to help make their processors look a little better in terms of value, and maybe some of those buyers will in turn end up purchasing DLC for the game. Most of those getting the game with the processor probably wouldn't have bought it otherwise, so it's not like that would be cutting into the game's sales, and if bundled copies help maintain an online community for the game, that could help sales continue over time.

 

[Soaptrail]

Eh,AMD came out with a special CPU that had lisa su's signature laser engraved on it's lid and nothing more,you would put it in your system and never see it.
This at least you get a pretty box out of to put your thor girl figurine on to.

That was similar to the Intel 8088 (not the right name, but i can't find it) promo a year or two back. This tie in promo screams we are desperate for sales. Those other two were more natural promotions.

 

[TerryLaze]

That was similar to the Intel 8088 (not the right name, but i can't find it) promo a year or two back. This tie in promo screams we are desperate for sales. Those other two were more natural promotions.

It was the i7-8086k in honor of the first 8086 CPUs and it had at least 300Mhz more base and turbo,not much but it was better.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/INTC/intel/net-income
Intel more than doubled the money they make in the last two years,as soon as ryzen released, so desperation for sales is way out of the question.

• Intel annual net income for 2019 was $21.048B, a 0.02% decline from 2018.
• Intel annual net income for 2018 was $21.053B, a 119.28% increase from 2017.
• Intel annual net income for 2017 was $9.601B, a 6.93% decline from 2016.

 

[cryoburner]

It was the i7-8086k in honor of the first 8086 CPUs and it had at least 300Mhz more base and turbo,not much but it was better.

Under nearly all real-world usage scenarios, it performed almost identical to the 8700K. Motherboards tend to ignore the base clocks by default, so the only real difference is in single-core boost clocks, while multi-core boost clocks remained the same. With two or more cores in use, it was pretty much just an 8700K, and reviewers mentioned having a hard time getting the higher single-core clocks to activate due to background processes keeping more than one core active. It also sold at a pretty big price premium over the 8700K.

The Ryzen 2700X anniversary edition was a bit pointless too though, since people knew the much-improved 3000-series would be launching a couple months later. It would have been a better release for January rather than May.

Intel more than doubled the money they make in the last two years,as soon as ryzen released, so desperation for sales is way out of the question.

Ryzen launched in early 2017, and according to your numbers, Intel saw a 7% decline in sales that year. Only after they effectively slashed prices for a given level of performance with Coffee Lake at the end of the year did sales improve. So, not exactly "as soon as Ryzen released". And as I said before, that only makes sense, since Intel had been milking quad-cores as "premium" processors for so many years, that people had been holding out on upgrading for a long time. Once Ryzen launched with competitive performance and significantly more cores for the money, and Intel responded with Coffee Lake, people finally saw hardware worth upgrading to, so it's only natural that both would be seeing substantially higher sales than in prior years.

That, of course, doesn't mean those sales will keep up though. Once people have those higher core-count processors, they will have less incentive to upgrade in the coming years, and it's likely that AMD forced Intel's hand into cutting price-per-core faster than they would have preferred, to avoid losing significant sales. I wouldn't say Intel is in "desperation" by any means, but they arguably are not sitting as comfortably as they were back when they practically owned the market, even if short-term sales are up.

 

[TerryLaze]

Under nearly all real-world usage scenarios, it performed almost identical to the 8700K.

Yes I started with that basically,I said not much but it was better,it had higher numbers...it's something.

Ryzen launched in early 2017, and according to your numbers, Intel saw a 7% decline in sales that year.

Well with that logic ZEN caused AMD to lose 93% net income in the year of release...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMD/amd/net-income

• AMD annual net income for 2019 was $0.341B, a 1.19% increase from 2018.
• AMD annual net income for 2018 was $0.337B, a 1121.21% decline from 2017.
• AMD annual net income for 2017 was $-0.033B, a 93.37% decline from 2016.

and it's likely that AMD forced Intel's hand into cutting price-per-core faster than they would have preferred, to avoid losing significant sales. I wouldn't say Intel is in "desperation" by any means, but they arguably are not sitting as comfortably as they were back when they practically owned the market, even if short-term sales are up.

Still with the same broken record...they doubled their business while AMD is still struggling with even staying in the black numbers.
Intel is sitting much more comfortable on double the money than they used to on only half the money.

 

[spartaman64]

I don't understand why everyone is so upset about it. It's a company facing stiff competition trying to use some marketing. Same for sony. They have the rights to Spiderman iirc. I have to admit I was bummed about it though. Sony could have charged the devs for using Spiderman so they could make it available to everyone but they like to get people into the PlayStation ecosystem.

because this is what they are spending their money on instead of research??

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfeWhYj5zkQ

 

[TJ Hooker]

Well with that logic ZEN caused AMD to lose 93% net income in the year of release...
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMD/amd/net-income

• AMD annual net income for 2019 was $0.341B, a 1.19% increase from 2018.
• AMD annual net income for 2018 was $0.337B, a 1121.21% decline from 2017.
• AMD annual net income for 2017 was $-0.033B, a 93.37% decline from 2016.

The text you quoted is computer-generated, and clearly whatever algorithm was used to generate it doesn't know how to properly handle negative net income. Scroll down in your link to see the actual numbers presented in a sane way.

Their net income was -498M in 2016, and -33M in 2017, it makes no sense to phrase that as a 93% reduction in net income when in reality their net income situation improved massively (2018 vs 2017 comparison is also screwed up). They had lost about half a billion a year on average for the previous 5 years, 'almost' broke even in 2017, then then made 300+M the next couple years. Clearly 2017 represented a significant step in the company's return to profitability and improving its financial state.

 

[TerryLaze]

The text you quoted is computer-generated, and clearly whatever algorithm was used to generate it doesn't know how to properly handle negative net income. Scroll down in your link to see the actual numbers presented in a sane way.

Their net income was -498M in 2016, and -33M in 2017, it makes no sense to phrase that as a 93% reduction in net income when in reality their net income situation improved massively (2018 vs 2017 comparison is also screwed up). They had lost about half a billion a year on average for the previous 5 years, 'almost' broke even in 2017, then then made 300+M the next couple years. Clearly 2017 represented a significant step in the company's return to profitability and improving its financial state.

Sure,it's also difficult because it's hard to tell how much they put into research development and production of ZEN in the previous years.

 

[TerryLaze]

because this is what they are spending their money on instead of research??

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfeWhYj5zkQ

It's not like intel is poor and had to choose between one or the other...
And here is a round up on what happened when steve implemented all his believes,a massive fail.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/1...-next-inc----the-most-successful-failure-ever

 

[cryoburner]

The text you quoted is computer-generated, and clearly whatever algorithm was used to generate it doesn't know how to properly handle negative net income. Scroll down in your link to see the actual numbers presented in a sane way.

Their net income was -498M in 2016, and -33M in 2017, it makes no sense to phrase that as a 93% reduction in net income when in reality their net income situation improved massively (2018 vs 2017 comparison is also screwed up). They had lost about half a billion a year on average for the previous 5 years, 'almost' broke even in 2017, then then made 300+M the next couple years. Clearly 2017 represented a significant step in the company's return to profitability and improving its financial state.

That's kind of hilariously broken. They considered going from -33M to +337M as a 1121% decline in net income, when if anything, that should be presented as a 1121% increase. I guess they're calculating it as a decline in losses, but the generated text doesn't imply that at all. The numbers show huge improvements year over year, and nothing indicates that AMD has been "struggling with even staying in the black" the last couple years. Their net income for the last quarter was more than triple that of the same quarter last year.

 

[TerryLaze]

The numbers show huge improvements year over year, and nothing indicates that AMD has been "struggling with even staying in the black" the last couple years. Their net income for the last quarter was more than triple that of the same quarter last year.

2017 they made negative money.
2018 they made 337 thousand
2019 they made 341
The last three quarters where 170>162>157 a small but constant decline even during lock down.
Now it's true, I don't have any idea if an international business can get by with making about 350 thousand a year or about 600 if this year continues like this but compared to the 5 to 6 bil intel made almost each quarter since 2018 it looks like they aren't doing all that well,at some point they will have to invest in new designs and I have no idea how much that would set them back.
Maybe this is what a healthy company looks like I don't know.

 

[jimmysmitty]

2017 they made negative money.
2018 they made 337 thousand
2019 they made 341
The last three quarters where 170>162>157 a small but constant decline even during lock down.
Now it's true, I don't have any idea if an international business can get by with making about 350 thousand a year or about 600 if this year continues like this but compared to the 5 to 6 bil intel made almost each quarter since 2018 it looks like they aren't doing all that well,at some point they will have to invest in new designs and I have no idea how much that would set them back.
Maybe this is what a healthy company looks like I don't know.

They are absolutely healthier than they were pre-Zen. How healthy is a good question. I would say they are doing well. But as I have said Intel has their hands in a LOT of things that AMD does not so even if AMD takes quite a bit of market share Intel can easily still profit especially since a lot of thos markets are much higher margin than consumer CPUs and some are higher margin than servers and HPCs.

AMD is a CPU and GPU technologies company. I would call Intel a semiconductor technology company. Hell even just a Computer Technology company since they have been there for most every major standard we use today. USB 4 should have their own Thunderbolt built into it. They just happen to have a large focus on CPUs and process technology and, possibly, soon GPUs.

 

[TJ Hooker]

2017 they made negative money.
2018 they made 337 thousand
2019 they made 341
The last three quarters where 170>162>157 a small but constant decline even during lock down.
Now it's true, I don't have any idea if an international business can get by with making about 350 thousand a year or about 600 if this year continues like this but compared to the 5 to 6 bil intel made almost each quarter since 2018 it looks like they aren't doing all that well,at some point they will have to invest in new designs and I have no idea how much that would set them back.
Maybe this is what a healthy company looks like I don't know.

AMD's income numbers are in millions, not thousands.

Yes, Intel's income still dwarfs AMD's. That has little to do with whether AMD is profitable though. The fact that a company (AMD or otherwise) isn't managing to achieve billions in income and/or roughly equivalent income as a competitor, is in no way indicative of that company 'struggling to stay in the black'.

AMD is continuously investing in new designs, as clearly evidenced by their regular cadence of new CPU releases in the last few years, not to mention significant improvements to their GPU tech in the form of RDNA. It wasn't a one and done expenditure to develop Zen and then stop spending money in R&D.

 

[TJ Hooker]

That's kind of hilariously broken. They considered going from -33M to +337M as a 1121% decline in net income, when if anything, that should be presented as a 1121% increase. I guess they're calculating it as a decline in losses, but the generated text doesn't imply that at all.

Yeah, it appears the % values are calculated simply by taking [(current year income)/(last year income) - 1] x 100%. If the result is negative it states it as a "decline" in income. This only produces valid outcomes if the past year's income is positive though. I'm guessing somewhere there's a case where a company had zero net income in a particular year, and the auto-text is broken because it tried to divide by 0