AMD Zen Reportedly Delayed Until Early Next Year

[Krysto]

Jesus Christ AMD. WTF are you doing? And slow demand as the reason? What does that even mean? You know what KILLS market demand? Delaying your products. They f-king better not delay the mobility Zen-based chips as well.

[chithanh]

Except it is not at all clear that there is a delay. AMD did not announce a launch date yet.

[Passso]

N00000000000000! I need it! (no like seriously, I need an upgrade, I can't afford intel, I want zen!)

If you can't afford a 50$ Pentium + 35$ motherboard you'd better need nothing. Zen will not be cheaper.

[Hi-Angel]

Jesus Christ AMD. WTF are you doing? And slow demand as the reason? What does that even mean? You know what KILLS market demand? Delaying your products. They f-king better not delay the mobility Zen-based chips as well.

You didn't read the comments, did you?

[F1esDgSdUTYpm0iy]

AMD processors and motherboards for AMD processors are much cheaper than competing Intel parts because they're inferior.

Actually, no. It has more to do with AMD undercutting itself, going for the smallest possible margin. Simply because of necessity. Any profit margin larger than they're making now and they're going to end up at Intel level prices indeed and simply be outperformed.

Regarding performance, on the CPU end you're right, they're inferior. But, on the pure APU side, so with the complete absence of a discrete GPU... lol@Intel. Intel IGP? Nah, not happening here. Another important metric though, TDP, is something else AMD is playing the catchup game in. Sadly. Zen is supposed to work towards levelling out that playing field as well.

Another reason I'm looking forward to, apparently, Q1 2017.

[starshipeleven]

Actually, no. It has more to do with AMD undercutting itself, going for the smallest possible margin. Simply because of necessity. Any profit margin larger than they're making now and they're going to end up at Intel level prices indeed and simply be outperformed.

you are saying the same thing as him. AMD products are outperformed by Intel ones on raw CPU power (also there are some marketing things at work) so they have to sell cheaper.

Also, I really doubt they are going for the "smallest possible margin", but for the "whatever price can sell these chips to limit losses".

[F1esDgSdUTYpm0iy]

you are saying the same thing as him.

Both yes and no on that one. The end result is the same indeed, AMDs are cheaper, lesser performant alternatives to Intel. The reason why they're cheap has nothing to do with being lesser performant however. The two are not directly linked, only indirectly.

Being more expensive does not automatically mean more performant or vice versa.

[rabcor]

If you can't afford a 50$ Pentium + 35$ motherboard you'd better need nothing. Zen will not be cheaper.

I said upgrade; I have a pentium it's not very good for programming(compiling) and digital artwork which are the things I am trying to use it for. Also yes, zen will be cheaper, AMD have always priced their stuff not only cheaper than their rivals but also always at the very least fairly (at a performance per $ perspective). Intel are not doing this right now except for their lowest end products (i.e. the pentiums) and neither are Nvidia. Intel and Nvidia own their respective markets, and AMD hasn't actually been a threat to their monopolies until now. The one thing AMD can do to overtake intel's and nvidia's market shares is sell things with significantly better performance per dollar than their rivals are (this is something they have been doing, but with their CPUs only for specific use cases, and their GPUs were clearly less efficient on every level than Nvidia's until now with polaris which finally closes that gap considerably (they still do not seem on par with Nvidia, but they're very close; and heres to hoping Zen will have a similar story against Intel's lineup.).

Also, I hear AMD plans to keep the FX processor brand for Zen (I imagine Zen will be like FX 10000 or some shit) I hope they don't do this, it's a great opportunity to change the brand name to give potential customers the idea that they're not buying the old crap AMD used to make (the failed FX line...) I honestly think they should use to their advantage that the Zen name has gained much traction in media, hence they should probably just go from FX to ZEN (starting with a ZEN 1000 or 100 line) then have different brands of ZEN (baseline ZEN for desktop, ZEN-L (L for low power/efficiency over performance) for laptops or minicomputers (like Intel's U) and ZEN-S (Server Class) and ZEN-X (For Enthusiasts like Intel's E series (which used to be X)) or something along those lines.

So first generation enthusiast core could be like

Zen can be for AMD what intel's i series is to intel.

Anyhow lucky me, I figured out that my mother had an m-atx 2nd gen intel i series motherboard in her computer, which was just the missing link for me to use my old second gen i7 I'll just swap that out for my own second gen ATX motherboard and all is well that ends well, rite? Now I don't desperately need a cpu upgrade! woo!

[darkcoder]

Low demand my #%%!

There's always demand for good hardware. Look at NVidia GTX 1080 that went sold out hours after being launched.

What they should say is that there are holding it to lower current chips inventory.

But no one in their minds is gonna made a purchase of old obsolete stuff, when a big change is around the corner, unless is completely necessary.

[starshipeleven]

The reason why they're cheap has nothing to do with being lesser performant however.

I can concede a non-trivial amount of Intel marketing spam EVERY FUCKING WHERE playing a part on this especially for APUs, but the biggest issue came from their top-tier CPUs that were very meh back then, and were not updated since 2012.

Seriously, they had to price their top-tier CPUs like mid-tier or even worse to sell them at all.

APUs suffered mostly from lack of marketing tho, as in low-end area they are good enough CPU-wise even if they are 60% of a Pentium, while blowing away Intel iGPU any day.

And again they had to lower prices as their "weak" CPU part was getting them in trouble while lack of marketing was also not showing that you don't need 50% more CPU power in a low-end PC or a mediacenter, while a better GPU would have helped more.

For example I always get a few guys per month (forums and real life) that come asking "is this <mobo with crap Intel Baytrail or even worse a tablet Atom> good for a mediacenter?" And I always redirect them to fanless boards with A4-5000 SoCs instead (like say a QC5000-ITXPH), that are just plain fucking better on all that matters.