Intel Finally Unleashes Broadwell-E: Top End CPU Will Cost You $1723 USD

[johnc]

Get a pair of the E5-2670 Xeons off eBay for $50 apiece. 16 cores, 32 threads.

[bug77]

The price per value is going to be very high. It would be interesting how the top model compares performancewise to similarly priced Xeon E5v4: http://ark.intel.com/compare/91771,91766,91754,94456

The price/performance ratio is not something you care about when buying top-end. But even if you had a ton of disposable cash, there are better alternatives even if don't consider that you'd be pairing this with a chipset that is severely lacking. See: http://ark.intel.com/compare/81761,90591

[torsionbar28]

The old $999 price point was already obscene. The new asking price is... twice that.
And the product itself is truly useless. Intel already had their halo product, who's going to buy this? A few thousand users worldwide?
And the worst part is, if Intel can do this, then it means they don't feel any pressure from Zen

How do you figure? I came to exactly the opposite conclusion. Intel knows Zen is going to be a serious competitor and will drive down prices. Intel has already been taking advantage of the market situation for a couple years now, charging premium prices for marginal gains in performance, but this is really their last opportunity to gouge people, so they're going all out. Only a fool would buy an intel chip right now.

[starshipeleven]

And the worst part is, if Intel can do this, then it means they don't feel any pressure from Zen

I'd like to remind you that we were locked on quadcores (with HT) for something like a decade just for lulz because of Intel.

Now that AMD tries a new trick they decide to drop a 10-core beast on the table, just for the sake of it.

It's mostly a PR move to show muscle "look! we made a consumer 10 core CPU whil AMD still sucks!".

These things are completely pointless outside serverspace, and in serverspace too as they aren't xeons. Wank-grade hardware.

[pinguinpc]

I'd like to remind you that we were locked on quadcores (with HT) for something like a decade just for lulz because of Intel.

Correct sentence could be something like this:

were locked on quadcores (with HT) for lack of amd competitive cpus compared with intel cpus

Maybe with zen them change something of that but in this point intel can put higher prices (possible more higher in future if dont appear competition) like brodwell-e because them dont have any competition for now

Hopefully zen improve some of that maybe dont stay closer than performance / core / watts ratio compared with intel but if them offer minimum haswell performance / core / watts level ratio maybe in this case them can show acceptable cpu not in same level of intel but much better compared with actual amd cpus

[juno]

Intel has already been taking advantage of the market situation for a couple years now, charging premium prices for marginal gains in performance

Where?
Basically, AMD is out of competition on top since Intel has the Core-i based architecture (starting with Sandy Bridge). And this is actually the first time, they significantly rise prices for the higher-end consumer products.

Prices for top i7 products:
[Lynnfield: 583$]
SNB 332$
IVB 332$
HSW 339$
SKL 339$

And for the enthusiast i7-Extreme Series (big socket, quad channel RAM, >4C):
[WESTMERE (6C): 999$]
SNB-E (6C): 999$
IVB-E (6C): 999$
HSW-E (8C!): 999$
BDW-E (10C): 1.569$, 999$ (8C)
SKL-E: TBA

Now that AMD tries a new trick they decide to drop a 10-core beast on the table, just for the sake of it.

It's mostly a PR move to show muscle "look! we made a consumer 10 core CPU whil AMD still sucks!".

These things are completely pointless outside serverspace, and in serverspace too as they aren't xeons. Wank-grade hardware.

It's not pointless to have more cores...

It looks like one Zen "module" consists of 4C with HT and fast interconnects. The first released Summit Ridge CPU should feature two of those "modules". There are also bigger variants planned, however I'm not sure if on one die or as MCMs. We should see a 16C variant, maybe 32C for data center/servers/HPC. Maybe also 12C with 3*4C or just salvage from the 16C parts.
It's not impossible for AMD to bring CPUs with >8C for consumers. However, it doesn't really matter as this market is quite small. They could go with their 8C, selling as 8C and 6C, gaining market share where Intel does only sell their 4C CPUs. I think a 6C Sky/Kaby Lake on their small consumer socket would hurt AMD more than this 10C Broadwell-E.

[bug77]

How do you figure? I came to exactly the opposite conclusion. Intel knows Zen is going to be a serious competitor and will drive down prices. Intel has already been taking advantage of the market situation for a couple years now, charging premium prices for marginal gains in performance, but this is really their last opportunity to gouge people, so they're going all out. Only a fool would buy an intel chip right now.

Simple, really: "we don't have to move to capture market share, because there's no threat on the horizon". I've been waiting for years for AMD to bring another Athlon/XP/64 to the market, but I've grown accustomed to them failing to deliver each time they hold their cards close to their chest.
I wish Zen will be good, I know who worked on it, but I cannot ignore the past.

[juno]

Simple, really: "we don't have to move to capture market share, because there's no threat on the horizon"

Why would they even want to gain market share when they already have it all?

BTW: rumors have that Zen will be teased on Computex. Fuad from fudzilla speaks about working samples that might be demoed tonight.
As Bristol Ridge releases, at least we'll get some info about AM4 and maybe chipsets, too. They might tell something about Summit Ridge, if we're lucky.

[schmidtbag]

Wow what a bargain! Now I can afford that down payment on my yacht!


So, do these CPUs actually compete against anything? I figure maybe one of the SPARC or PPC processors might have some competition. But that doesn't quite make sense considering these are i7 parts.

[bug77]

Wow what a bargain! Now I can afford that down payment on my yacht!


So, do these CPUs actually compete against anything? I figure maybe one of the SPARC or PPC processors might have some competition. But that doesn't quite make sense considering these are i7 parts.

I guess these compete in separating fools from exceptional fools?
As usual, it's just so Intel can say "look at what we can do". Zen will have 8 cores, so Intel figured, "if AMD has something with 8 core, let us have something with more".
As noted above, these are both useless at home (where you don't need these many cores) and on the server (where you can have 3 top Skylake Xeons for the same $$$). They're still a noteworthy engineering feat, tho.