AMD Ryzen 5000 Series / Zen 3 Launch

[Slartifartblast]

Let meeeee

Entertain you ?

[JS987]

I wouldn't expect to find Renoir in your local computer store since we aren't selling them into retail yet. The 3200G and 3400G should be pretty widely available though.

It is probably intentional shortage. Computer store wants to sell X instead Y because of higher profit. It happens also will other products.

JS987 This isn't the best answer, but you can find Ryzen 5 Pro systems with the 4000 series APUs for around $500 USD. Because of my unique situation, a ZoL user, I'm going to have to look into buying my system from somewhere like there and upgrading it to suit my needs because AMD doesn't sell Pro APUs to the public and, AFAIK, the Pro APUs are the only APUs to have guaranteed ECC memory support.

That Core i3 is current crisis plan. Current system will be replaced when many new features will be available like AV1 decoding, Freesync.

[torsionbar28]

And as I am not an AMD shareholder,

Sucks for you, I bought new BMW's for me and my wife after selling a few AMD shares this year. As spectacular as the entire Zen architecture has been for computing, so too has the rise in AMD share price for shareholders. Like a literal money machine. A mere $10k invested in AMD shares in early 2016 is a cool half $mil today.

[torsionbar28]

I am getting DeJaVu of the 2005 era.
Intel had to push their Pentium 4 processors to very high temperatures and power usage to keep pace with the Athlon X2's that AMD had at the time.
Everybody also doomed Intel ...

Next thing, Intel released the Core2 Due, that was miles ahead of AMD. It took AMD more than 15 years to close that gap.

That's because Core Duo was just a respin of the Pentium M "Banias" mobile chip. Banias was known for its superior power efficiency and IPC at much lower clocks than P4, and it was widely speculated that intel would pivot Banias into a desktop product. ITX and embedded systems had already been doing this before intel officially made the move. P4 had been pushed into silly high clocks (for the time) and absurd power/TDP levels and was simply no longer competitive. Essentially, Intel got lucky with the Banias mobile product line.

Today does indeed feel like P4 era for Intel once again, but this time intel has no alternate savior microarch in its portfolio. Intel's mobile/desktop/server are all aligned on the same microarch today. It will take intel many years to close the gap this time, and all they can do is once again throw power at it, increasing clocks, power consumption, and heat output in the process, producing less compelling products.

[rickst29]

Either everyone here is completely broke or lead very sad lives....

I unfortunately resemble both halves of that remark. For me, the 6-core and 8-core pricing is not attractive at all. The 8-core 5800x, in particular commands a $150 price premium over the 6-core, which is already quite expensive. The only one which seems to offer an attractive 'most-bang-for-the-bucks' value scenario is the 12-core 5900x, with which you get 4 additional cores for only $100 more than the 8-core version. (It also seems to offer a slightly better maximum default boost clock.)

My own usage is multithread video encoding, not gaming. More cores would be good for me, but $549 is more than I can handle - even if would reduce my encode times to roughly 1/3 of my current wall times.

[benjiro]

Its called lack of competition.

If Intel has no competition and increases prices, people desirably yell "Booooo" at Intel ...
If AMD has no competition and increases prices, people ... wait, your telling us to be happy about it? Because its AMD? No ... that is fanboyish talking.

We are not AMD or Intel fans, we are consumers. Every price increase or less value per dollar translates into our pocket. It does not matter if its AMD or Intel doing it.

Its funny to see how AMD prices have increased over the generations.

Ryzen 1:

$499 got you a 8 Core monster when Zen 1 got released. $399 got you a slightly slower 8 Core monster. And this was with the backdrop of Intel 4 Core CPU's.

Today:

$799 gets you a 16 Core monster, with Zen 3. $550 gets you a 12 Core. $450 gets you a 8 core. $300 gets you a 6 Core. And this is with the backdrop of Intel 10 Core CPU's


What does anybody notice?

* Your paying more for a 8 Core, then when Ryzen 1 got released 3 years ago. Yes, IPC gains happened but your actual value / core has gone down.
* Your not getting anymore top of the line CPU's for $499. Now that money does not even get you the 12 Core anymore.
* Even second tier CPU like the 1700X was only $399. A second tier CPU now is the 5900X at $550.
* Even the 6 Core got a nice 50% price increase as most people normally buy the almost same performing "second tier" 6 core aka the non-x, what is again missing.

And do not mention Zen 2 because we know just like with previous generations, that Zen 2 is going to stop production and after a few months, supply will dry out. Its a bad sign when people tell you to buy the previous generation.

Its like we are sliding backwards and its like we are looking more and more at Intel/Nvidia, then AMD. Now AMD is talking about buying more companies again, the main reason what frankly destroyed AMD in the first place, was their original buying and building habits ( combined with lack of investment ). I remember AMD its fall vivid. The arrogance that killed its market dominance at that time and we are starting to see the same signs again.

AMD: Hey, we got money, lets not invest this into better products to dominate the market. No, lets buy more Billion dollars companies and "hope" things go better with the integration then it did with all our past ventures.

Maybe people can not see what is going on. While AMD does deliver on the technical parts, they have also been systematically increasing prices / market segmenting their CPU's over the generations, just like Nvidia had done. And while everybody can say AMD is a company that needs to make money. It does not excuse a fanboyism about how AMD needs to be exempt from criticism when they are pulling the same stuff that Intel/Nvidia does.

A lesson is simple: Without competition any company will increase prices / segment product into high prices etc. It does not matter if that company is called AMD or Intel or Nvidia. That bad thing is that the one's who end up paying more, is ... the consumer. Do not kit yourself.

[skeevy420]

Its called lack of competition.

If Intel has no competition and increases prices, people desirably yell "Booooo" at Intel ...
If AMD has no competition and increases prices, people ... wait, your telling us to be happy about it? Because its AMD? No ... that is fanboyish talking.

We are not AMD or Intel fans, we are consumers. Every price increase or less value per dollar translates into our pocket. It does not matter if its AMD or Intel doing it.

Its funny to see how AMD prices have increased over the generations.

Ryzen 1:

$499 got you a 8 Core monster when Zen 1 got released. $399 got you a slightly slower 8 Core monster. And this was with the backdrop of Intel 4 Core CPU's.

Today:

$799 gets you a 16 Core monster, with Zen 3. $550 gets you a 12 Core. $450 gets you a 8 core. $300 gets you a 6 Core. And this is with the backdrop of Intel 10 Core CPU's

Milk when Zen 1 came out was $2.49 per gallon

Milk when Zen 2 came out was $2.79 per gallon

Milk when Zen 3 comes out will be $2.99 per gallon.

Prices have gone up across the board in the past 3 years. The pandemic and Trump's economy war with China aren't helping matters either. Milk costs ~20% more now than it did when Zen 1 was released while Zen 3 costs ~12% more. If anything, milk prices show that AMD isn't gouging us enough.

I used your $450 and $399 8 core prices for AMD's ~12%.

[torsionbar28]

Its funny to see how AMD prices have increased over the generations.

Ryzen 1: $499 got you a 8 Core monster when Zen 1 got released.

Today: $450 gets you a 8 core.

What does anybody notice?
...
Maybe people can not see what is going on. While AMD does deliver on the technical parts, they have also been systematically increasing prices

Your own maths do not support your conclusion benjiro . You said it yourself: $450 for an 8-core today that significantly outperforms their own $499 8-core from 3 years ago. This is tremendous value, and represents a pricing *decrease* not an increase. Not only a moderate decrease in $$ per core, but a significant decrease in $$ per performance. This is even more impressive in light of the general increase in consumer prices due to inflation, pandemic, and also the long overdue economic decoupling from the communist china regime.

The fact that AMD is charging more for higher core counts that were previously unavailable is not part of the equation. And they're still priced same or less than similar performance intel parts. Not sure what point you were trying to make, but you missed the mark big time.

[pmorph]

Its called lack of competition.

Not really. Pricing is part of the competition.
A few years back AMD CPUs were basically out of the question for many use cases, you wouldn't even consider purchasing them regardless of the price.
Today Intel CPUs are still fine for most use cases, you will consider the pricing when you make the purchase decision.

[torsionbar28]

Not really. Pricing is part of the competition.
A few years back AMD CPUs were basically out of the question for many use cases, you wouldn't even consider purchasing them regardless of the price.
Today Intel CPUs are still fine for most use cases, you will consider the pricing when you make the purchase decision.

Huh? Which AMD CPU's were "out of the question" and when? I call BS. I assume you're talking Bulldozer era, where IPC was lower than expected? Bulldozer got several major supercomputer wins, they were popular for virtualization as core counts were much higher than the competition, and they provided solid value in the entry workstation space where the prices were better than Xeon E3. I'm still running some Opteron 4376 machines at home (typing this post from one of them!) as they are fine for many moderate desktop and server use cases, the 65w TDP is awesome they idle at 28 C peak at 42 C and the ECC memory makes it super reliable. At work, we still have a stack of Opteron 6300 series hypervisors. When we bought a rack full of them in 2014, it was over $100,000 cheaper than intel, and with higher core count than intel (Dell R815 vs R810).

Bulldozer were appealing to budget gamers too, as that was the era where a top tier 4-core i7 was $1000+. Even today, a Bulldozer CPU with a mid-grade gaming GPU can deliver 60 fps @ 1080p in most games, making them perfectly usable for many folks even in 2020.

The fact is, there is no such thing as "you wouldn't even consider purchasing them regardless of the price", and claiming there is brings your credibility into question. It's all about price/performance ratio. Very few consumers actually buy the $1000 halo product, they buy something in the middle. Many more buy whatever costs the least. When a $259 AMD chip performs on par with a $329 intel chip, the AMD chip is a better buy, regardless of who wins the absolute performance crown at the top end of the market.