QOTD: Do You Think CPUs are Overpriced?

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A few years ago I bought an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ for $600+ and just last month I bought a Q9400 which I ovrclocked to over 3.5GHz for $200. Needless to say I like the cost of things today more than a few years ago, however I do think they could get lower. I should also add that at the same timea few years ago I bought a 7800GTX with 512MB of RAM for over $500, but just last month I bought a 4890 with 1GB of GDDR5 RAM for under $200. So basically I got a newer and much faster graphics card and processor together for less than it costs me to get one of those items a few years ago.
 
Five years and beyond ago, absolutely they are overpriced. Today, we do get great bang for the buck and the capabilities that these processors can achieve is amazing sometimes. The only rip-off in today's market is the Intel Extreme line of CPU's!
 
i think the high end cpus are priced ridiculously. and i think there is far too much segmentation...there should be pricing based on 25 dollar increments starting at a base of 100 dollars. 200 being mid-rangde and 350 being the super high end.
 
Very over priced, the difference between any all all processor of the same family (E2000 E4xxx E6xxx) is the price and speed. All families are made to reach maximum speed at a safe temperature. Since some don't make it as fast as others they reduce the price and for the faster ones they jack the price up. I bet it cost $25 to make and manufacture each chip and shipping as well. Any-thing over 200% mark-up for profit is BULLSHIT. Circuit city never had over 200% mark-up and walmart has only 10-15% mark-up and it strives as a company.

Heres my math: Newegg prices and assuming it cost $25 to manufacture and ship

E1400 $50 Only $25 made on this chip, 100% mark-up very little but modest profit
E7500 $140 $115 made on this chip 460% mark-up, This should be the maximum profit allowed, ill explain below.
E8500 $190 $165 made, 660% mark up
E8600 $270 $245 made, 980% mark up 320% more markup than the E8500 for only 200 MHZ difference, that's stealing if you ask me.

All these chips are designed the same and for the same purpose, some are slightly flawed and cant perform the same, some exceed their expectations and slap $1000 price tag on it. Thats way to much mark-up for something They sell several millions per year (spent 15 minutes looking for exact number cant find it though). Walmart makes good money on 10-15% markup (Average). Intel and AMD probably have about the same costs (electric employee and running costs) as walmart (It has to be close to the same amount) but their mark-up is so much higher.

They should make 3 lines of product per core count, they dont simply cause the difference of 200 MHZ is $100. Which is stealing. They could lower the prices and reduce the bullshit of 15 products per core count (E2xxx E4xxx E6xxx E7xxx E8xxx), and have a modest profit instead of stealing from customers. But unfortunately that 200 MHZ is worth to much for them, and we all know companies wont give a free upgrade.

 
I believe prices and performance have improved quite a bit. However the C2Q have some strange prices. They are great CPU's but the prices even exceed the Core I7 920 on some of them and on others come very close.
 
I think everywhere AMD and Intel compete prices are very good. On the extreme high end devices where Intel has no competition prices are not good.
 
I suppose it's all relative. But I feel Intel's pricing/features force you to pay for more than what you need if you want to future-proof. I for one want VT acceleration, and you have to spend minimum $160 on an E8x00 series chip to get it. If you want Quad core w/ VT you have to buy Q9xx0, which is over $200. There are no "bargain" Intel chips w/ VT (although there are conflicting reports on whether the Q8400 and some e7x00 series includes VT or not). The best Intel value IMO is the E5200, which overclocks like mad, but doesn't include VT.

AMD is a little better, but if you want an efficient AND fast CPU, you have to go Phenom II. I feel the best value is the AMD 810/720BE personally, as they are under $200 and better than dual cores. The 7750/7850 are good values, have AMD-V, but are not power efficient under load.

Here's what I'd like to see:

Intel e8x00 series CPU for $110, with 6MB L2, VT & 1333 fsb
AMD Dual core based on Phenom II w/ 4-6MB L3 for
 
As others have said, Intel's Extremes I find are bit over priced. As for the rest, no...I find those to be at a very comfortable price. If there is anything over priced take a look a Gillette Blades. 8 for roughly $20...frick'n blades that cost pennies to produce. Now the technology to produce that kind of product is nothing in comparison to producing a CPU.
 
CPU's are cheap! Even the most expensive one's are still within reach for most people making a normal living. Main stream CPUs run at about $150 and good for at least 3 yrs. For about $65 you can still get into the multi-cores and run nearly 99% of all available software very very well. Pretty cheap for the motor.
 
The prices seem fine to me.I don't get why people grumble about the extreme edition prices,they aren't meant for anyone with any sort of budget anyways.The target audience for those cpu's is the same epeeners that think a Lamborgini or a Ferrari is a good buy,strictly for the people that have to have the best of the best regardless of cost.
 
CPUs overpriced?

That depends on where you live. In Eastern European countries the prices are sky high. At least compared to people's salaries.

I spent 324$ on my i7 920 two months ago. Whenever i go on Newegg i can't stop banging my head against the desk while reading 250$ for a i7 920 after rebate.

Rebates... do you know we don't even have these here?

Simply consider the fact that the avarege persons sallary in my country is roughly 450$, with lowest salaries being half that.

For the life of me i can't figure out why that is... Why is this CPU up to 35% more expensive in my shithole of a country than they are in the US...

Is it that the US has lower VAT rates? (VAT is 19% here). Does my country charge some sort of border tax for IT hardware? Or are the IT hardware companies that import these parts GREADY BASTARDS, adding that 20, 30, maybe even 35% to the part's price, so they can fill their fat f****** pockets?

Same story for GPUs. Mainboards and HDDs are priced the same. Memory modules are cheaper here. For example, the 6GB 3Channel kit of Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600MHz set me back 85$. The same kit costs ~100$ on newegg.
 
no, CPU are fairly decently priced in our days.

I tell you what's expensive?

Graphics card, they cost a fortune in Australia. Most people won't be able to afford a GTX295 until ages.

GTX295's price nearly compares to the i7 965's price and IMO CPU is more important than GPU
 
Desktop CPUs seem to be priced fine. its the "server" grade ones that are overprice.
There seems to be some mentality that kicks in whenever somebody says this is a "Server" and they take that to mean the price MUST be 3x to 10x that of retial.

Example from my own systems:
last year I went to upgrade my aging socket 940 Opteron CPUs from single core to dual core. at the same time i wanted to look into the low power versions of the same chips. What I found was the "normal" dual core Opteron 280 was $200. but the "low power" version of the same one was $800. WTF? 4x price increase for less power consumption? For $600 i can buy a LOT of electricity.
Also keep in mind these chips are 5 YEARS old. Try to buy a 5 year old dsektop CPU today and see how much you have to pay. I guarantee its a lot less than $200 for a single 2.8ghz chip.
 
I think so because so many processors have things that are put in just locked. I mean it costs the same for them to make a processor with the blocked features as the one with the unblocked. Now if their making processors with 3 cores because the 4th core in that batch is bad then I'd understand the price difference and also their trying to get the most out of what they have instead of throwing out the whole processor. But if they make a quad core and just disable the 4th core and charge less then whats the point? If it costs them say $100 to make a 4 core processor wouldn't it cost them the same to make a 4 core and disable a core?
 
I think prices are fine now. Extreme editions don't count they are for a market of cashed up people who don't do thier homework and they sell so the price is right.

For normal CPUs i think prices are quite good for now. I'm more worryed about what will happen to cpu Prices if AMD falls over.... AMD is not exactly making a profit at the moment. 2.9 billion dollar loss over the last year... Don't know how much longer intel will have competion to keep thier prices down..

Also if AMD falls over will intel even have to release new CPUs? No competetion to compete with. They could keep older CPUs out for longer less of a need to develop and release new stuff.
 
NO! CPUs today are cheaper than ever before. I can't believe the performance you get today. $55 buys a person a CPU that 3 years ago was the fastest CPU around. The cheapest Intel CPU, the $40 Celeron 430, is just a bit faster than a 3.0GHz HT-enabled P4. For $30 you can get a Sempron that is a rebadged Athlon64 3500. No, CPUs are not expensive. There's a ton of performance to be had for next to little $$$. I use a Celeron 420 at 2.66GHz for my daily computer. That's equivalent to a 4+GHz P4 or Athlon FX-57. Hardware has really surpassed software at this point, with the exception of some of the latest games.
 
[citation][nom]joefriday[/nom]NO! CPUs today are cheaper than ever before. I can't believe the performance you get today. $55 buys a person a CPU that 3 years ago was the fastest CPU around. The cheapest Intel CPU, the $40 Celeron 430, is just a bit faster than a 3.0GHz HT-enabled P4. For $30 you can get a Sempron that is a rebadged Athlon64 3500. No, CPUs are not expensive. There's a ton of performance to be had for next to little $$$. I use a Celeron 420 at 2.66GHz for my daily computer. That's equivalent to a 4+GHz P4 or Athlon FX-57. Hardware has really surpassed software at this point, with the exception of some of the latest games.[/citation]

*facepalm* It's not efficient though, I'm not saying CPU's are expensive in general , AMD throws out great deals and they're prices is what I'd expect , but Intel is just plain... bad.
 
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