Pay More for Less With the Intel Core i9-9900KF

[Guest]

Intel Core i9-9900KF goes up for preorder at B&H Photo Video for $582.50 (~ £442.57).

Pay More for Less With the Intel Core i9-9900KF : Read more

 

[salgado18]

I thought you were benchmarking them... :/

 

[gasaraki]

But Intel has no control over how much B&H charges. B&H can charge $1000 and if they can sell it at that price, good for them. Intel can't say "well we sold this to you at $488 and you can't sell it at X dollars".

 

[gasaraki]

I thought you were benchmarking them... :/

It's a click bait article.

 

[logainofhades]

But Intel has no control over how much B&H charges. B&H can charge $1000 and if they can sell it at that price, good for them. Intel can't say "well we sold this to you at $488 and you can't sell it at X dollars".

Intel isn't charging less for this cpu either. Suggested price is essentially the same.

https://ark.intel.com/compare/190887,186605

 

[jimmysmitty]

But Intel has no control over how much B&H charges. B&H can charge $1000 and if they can sell it at that price, good for them. Intel can't say "well we sold this to you at $488 and you can't sell it at X dollars".

This.

And why is the 9900T even listed? Its not even an official chip. The IHS even states "Intel Confidential" which means that is an ES chip that someone is trying to sell off as a official CPU.

This has happened before plenty of times.

Just an FYI I did some digging and found this site:

http://intel.fusionmedia.com/technical-library/cfl-s/technical-library-old.html?grouping=rdc%20Content%20Types&sort=title:asc

The CPU, i9 9900T, has a SPEC code of QQC0. If you search for that you will find a DCL (Dear Customer Letter) for that which states its an ES from 7/2018. The 9 series launched in 10/2018.

Now I cannot access the letter as this looks to be an Intel internal site page with a log in but that alone says that the 9900T is nothing more than an ES that was found and is being sold. You can find plenty of Intel ES chips for sale, especially in other countries.

Now maybe I am wrong and Intel might launch a low power i9 9900. They have launched low power i7s before but it seems odd that the SPEC code is that old. I would expect the SPEC code to change at this point in time as they hammer out bugs and issues.

 

[King_V]

I thought you were benchmarking them... :/

It's a click bait article.

I don't think so. Even ignoring the B&H portion of it . . that the MSRP of the non-F is equal to or LESS than the F version is pretty appalling.

 

[King_V]

But Intel has no control over how much B&H charges. B&H can charge $1000 and if they can sell it at that price, good for them. Intel can't say "well we sold this to you at $488 and you can't sell it at X dollars".

I'm not sure.... now, keep in mind this is from 30 years ago... but when the original Nintendo Entertainment System was a big deal in the late 80s, they controlled the price with an iron fist.

The regular NES sold for $99.99. I worked at Toys R Us part time when I was in high school, and I saw how much Toys R Us paid per unit. We could've offered sales and still made money, but Nintendo forbade it. Toys R Us wasn't what you'd call a bit-player back then.

When Tengen had their issues with Nintendo, and Nintendo said "Pull Tengen games off your shelves" . . . . Toys R Us couldn't comply fast enough.

They said jump, we always replied "how high?"


Not sure if any company could get away with that these days, but if anyone could, it would be Intel. They've pressured Dell and similar companies to not sell AMD machines in the past.


Granted, I don't really think Intel's got any motivation to keep any sort of control on the prices. So far...

 

[cryoburner]

I thought you were benchmarking them... :/

They did. Follow the in-article link to their 9900K review. Performance should be identical, minus the integrated graphics. I suppose it could be worth investigating whether the KF chips are as likely to overclock as well as the K ones, but that would require a number of samples from different sources to get a clear picture, and is probably best left to reports from companies like Silicon Lottery.

As for the pricing at B&H, they are primarily a camera store that has branched out into other electronics, so it wouldn't surprise me if whoever decided on the pricing for that pre-order wasn't entirely aware of how a 9900KF differs from a 9900K, just that its a newer version of the processor. So, they might simply assume that it's something people will be willing to pay extra to pre-order. And some people who are similarly unaware probably will.

Even so, Intel really should give these things a lower MSRP, even if it's just a $10 difference. Integrated graphics might not be an essential feature on a higher-end processor like this, but they can be convenient to have. With the Ryzen 3000-series processors likely coming within a matter of months, and likely offering very competitive performance to this CPU at a much lower price, you would think Intel would try to be a little more competitive with their pricing. Perhaps they just want to get as much price-gouging in while they still can. : P

 

[jaexyr]

(The Review is in another article)
If given the choice between two new identical vehicles, one has heated seats, the other does not. Same price. Which would you pick?

 

[kinggremlin]

(The Review is in another article)
If given the choice between two new identical vehicles, one has heated seats, the other does not. Same price. Which would you pick?

If I lived in a hot place, I wouldn't care. I may even prefer the one without heated seats as they can make the seats uncomfortable over time. Not everyone needs integrated graphics. If the CPU without IGP was $.50 cheaper, I'd go with that one. I haven't had an IGP in years and have never missed it.

 

[kinggremlin]

But Intel has no control over how much B&H charges. B&H can charge $1000 and if they can sell it at that price, good for them. Intel can't say "well we sold this to you at $488 and you can't sell it at X dollars".

I'm not sure.... now, keep in mind this is from 30 years ago... but when the original Nintendo Entertainment System was a big deal in the late 80s, they controlled the price with an iron fist.

The regular NES sold for $99.99. I worked at Toys R Us part time when I was in high school, and I saw how much Toys R Us paid per unit. We could've offered sales and still made money, but Nintendo forbade it. Toys R Us wasn't what you'd call a bit-player back then.

When Tengen had their issues with Nintendo, and Nintendo said "Pull Tengen games off your shelves" . . . . Toys R Us couldn't comply fast enough.

They said jump, we always replied "how high?"


Not sure if any company could get away with that these days, but if anyone could, it would be Intel. They've pressured Dell and similar companies to not sell AMD machines in the past.


Granted, I don't really think Intel's got any motivation to keep any sort of control on the prices. So far...

There are still companies out there that enforce minimum advertised pricing. Bose I believe is one of those. Usually agreeing to that is a condition of being an "authorized reseller." I have never heard of a company trying to implement and price ceiling for their products. No reseller would want to agree to that.

 

[Geef]

"And many would point out that having integrated graphics on a processor is extremely useful for diagnosing system malfunctions."

This piece of info is very useful and important. Thanks for mentioning it.

 

[valeman2012]

Right now its just speculations for KF chips until someone actually can confirm there no disabled iGPU inside....Articles are spreading misleading reports

It make no logical sense for Intel raise money on a expensive product. It expected to have heatroom those F or KF series.

 

[eldakka1]

Just buy it!

 

[justin.m.beauvais]

Obviously some executive saw more letters and assumed that like many things in the tech industry that more means better, and priced it accordingly. Now he has to double down and claim availability or some other nonsense to justify the price when it was really just his mistake.

At least that is my theory.

 

[urbanman2004]

Old habits die hard. Guess Intel will never learn. On another note: 3700X FTW

 

[PapaCrazy]

Someone should take bets on the K/KF temp difference. Point spread and everything. $20 here says they're within 3c apart.

 

[techy1966]

"Pay more for less" Yep this seems to be the new mantra for pretty much everything now days. You see almost every company doing things like reducing box or package size with less inside but still keep the price the same or even have the gull to raise the price because well somebody has to pay for that shrunk down new snazzy packaging after all. SO when I see Intel do this as well with these CPU's it really does not surprise me very much. Welcome to the new millennial world where next to no one knows the value of anything any more and it will only get much much worse over time.

 

[bluesky.m66]

Intel Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) is also missing/disabled on the 9900KF, according to Intel Ark comparison with the 9900K.

Intel describes TXT - "...provides hardware-based security technologies to build a solid foundation for security. Built into Intel’s silicon, these technologies address the increasing and evolving security threats across physical and virtual infrastructure by complementing runtime protections such as anti-virus software."

So, no graphics and no security equals more price??

 

[King_V]

And now they're replacing the solder thermal interface with thermal grease for it? Seriously - did they use Saturday morning cartoon villains as their model for product management?

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-solder-grease-i5-9400f-igpu,38547.html

 

[cryoburner]

And now they're replacing the solder thermal interface with thermal grease for it? Seriously - did they use Saturday morning cartoon villains as their model for product management?

Well, that article is specifically referring to the i5-9400, which is a locked processor with moderate boost clocks that probably wouldn't benefit all that much from solder. The unlocked 9000-series i7s, on the other hand, likely needed solder even just to reliably hit their stock boost clocks. My guess is that solder was a temporary solution to push a little more performance and higher core counts out of 14nm, and when they finally get around to launching their 10nm parts, I suspect they may return to using thermal compound across the board.