News U.S. Retailer Reveals Alder Lake Boxed, Tray Pricing: Up To $600

watzupken

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Mar 16, 2020
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I feel the success of Alder Lake as usual is subjective to its pricing. Performance is expected to be good, at least when compared to the existing Rocket Lake/ Tiger Lake. The problem I feel is that anyone transitioning to Alder Lake will face a high cost of entry because besides the CPU, one will also need get a good motherboard, cooler, and potentially, RAM and PSU. Potentially RAM because it depends if the user chooses to go straight for DDR5 or stick with DDR4. And for PSU, I think it depends if motherboard makers will adopt the replacement for the 24 pins motherboard power connector.
 

dalek1234

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This TDP is for Base Clock or Boost Clock? Given Intel's previous CPUs' TDP specs, and actual power draw, I suspect this is for Base Clock. There is quite a large Mhz difference between Base on Boost on this chart. I fear that Boost power draw to be as ridiculously high as previous CPU gens, maybe even higher.

Interesting pricing. Looks like Intel is expecting these CPUs to not be very competitive, and is keeping prices low to hold on to market share. But pricing doesn't tell the whole story. It's about total cost of CPU ownership, and that includes the electrical bill, need for a new motherboard...

We will know for sure once real world tests have been conducted by unbiased reviewers, but of course, first these CPUs need to be released. For now it's all just marketing fluff.
 

Neilbob

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Intel's TDP ratings are always for the base clock. These new CPUs may compete with and perhaps even exceed the performance of the AMD competition, but as has been the case for the last 3 or 4 years, power consumption at boost clocks/multi-core workloads will likely be pushed far beyond the ideal efficiency curve in order to achieve this.

At least, that's my cynical point-of-view - but based on various articles I've read about Alder Lake.
 
Apr 1, 2020
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You're talking around $700 for a new motherboard, CPU, and DDR5 RAM, and be required to use Windows 11. Also if you're a professional you will likely be using software licensed on a per-machine basis, which could mean hundreds more in costs.

That's a big ask for anyone not classified as a prosumer or professional. In games, especially at high resolutions, even comparatively antique 4770k doesn't really hold back frame rates, it's still a 2560x1440 120fps and 4k 75fps processor, which TH demonstrated with the 3080. In applications the performance benefit with vary greatly of course depending on what you use, but if you're already using a 9th generation Intel CPU or Ryzen 3000 series or newer, it doesn't make any sense to upgrade unless you're a prosumer or professional where time is critical.

How Much CPU Does the GeForce RTX 3080 Need? | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)
 
As someone on a ryzen platform, I’ve got a b350 and a 3600. Maybe I should just go to a 3900x, or perhaps I’ll catch a decent b550 on sale and a 5800x or better and be happy a couple of years and see if prices drop.
 

wifiburger

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prices look good, might force Amd to start lowering Zen3/Zen4 prices especially if Intel comes on top for productivity benchmarks

What kind of prices are we expecting for a good motherboard ?
 
Apr 1, 2020
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As someone on a ryzen platform, I’ve got a b350 and a 3600. Maybe I should just go to a 3900x, or perhaps I’ll catch a decent b550 on sale and a 5800x or better and be happy a couple of years and see if prices drop.

Personally I'd do what I'm doing and getting an X570S motherboard and going long with my Ryzen 3700X. PCIe 4.0 is going to be far sufficient for bandwidth outside the server market for a long time to come, some X570S motherboards ship with 3 or 4 M.2 slots for futureproofing, GPUs are the limiting factor in games and will continue to be for quite a while, and you can drop in a 5000 series, or even a 6000 series if AMD does a Zen 3+ refresh, when prices become cheap as they are clearanced.