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AMD’s Ryzen has not brought the price wars we all wanted/needed

As much as AMD's Ryzen has seen the CPU underdog being thrust back into the race, how much of an impact has it really had on Intel's thus-far dominant Core i7 and Core i7 processors? Using Camelcamelcamel.com‘s Amazon pricetracking tool, we've measured the changes in the US and UK, and our findings are a bit disappointing, to say the least.

By far the introduction of Ryzen generated two currents of opinion: the first, a slightly fanboi-ish one, that AMD would dominate sales and performance and crush Intel thoroughly and, the second, that it would be a competitive product which would bring about cheaper Intel CPUs for those die-hard Intel fans who wouldn't make the leap of faith.

First, some things to consider before continuing to read:

  • Intel's Core i7 7700K and i5 7600K (i.e. Kaby Lake-S) are but a few months old, launched January 2017.
  • Intel's Core i7 6700K and i5 6600K (i.e. Skylake-S) have been on the market since August 2015.
  • Intel's Core i7 6900K and 6800K (i.e. Broadwell-E) have been around since May 2016.
  • Ryzen 7 SKUs were launched on February 22nd (Amazon pre-order).
  • Ryzen 5 is not included, as there are no metrics yet.
  • We realise not everyone buys off Amazon, and you might find different prices elsewhere. This comparison is to be used as a general reference in a public forum which many users buy from.
  • We looked back to the launch but also as far as the pricing engine would take us, to note seasonal price drops, if any.

In the US, we saw that Intel CPU price drops happened just a day or two before the Ryzen launch, possibly enough to make one hesitate from a Ryzen insta-purchase. The drop itself was only really felt on the Core i7 6700K, which fell around $25. The remainder of Intel's line-up (6600K, 6800K, 6900K, 7600K and 7700K) were afforded token drops as ‘high' as $10.

Today, you can see that some of these CPUs – the Core i7 7700K and Core i7 6700K – have increased ever so slightly in price since the Ryzen launch.

In the UK, Intel's CPUs were also afforded minor discounts on Amazon, happening a few days after Ryzen's actual launch, instead. The interesting part is that Ryzen prices have kept on dropping since launch, and more than a little bit. The Ryzen 1700 has dropped £25, Ryzen 1700X fell £30 and the Ryzen 1800X has dropped a little over £15, but still higher than their US counterparts.

So how much of an impact did Ryzen have? Well, a rather disappointing “much less than you'd expect”, it seems, if Amazon's numbers are anything to measure it by.

All in all, not what we expected, much less what consumers needed. Intel still seems bulletproof (or just too sure of itself) when it comes to pricing. Not even the 6800K and 6900K, the two CPUs which had the most share to lose to AMD's higher-end 1800X, broke a sweat.

Looking further back we can see that seasonal changes in pricing had a bigger impact on Intel's pricing structure than Ryzen's launch. A single Black Friday event, in late November 2016, had the Core i7 6700K going much cheaper than February 22nd 2017.

One notable trend of Intel's is a sharp increase in pricing in the week immediately after Christmas – likely a seasonal hike playing on consumers cashing in on all the extended family's Christmas money gifts, Amazon Gift cards or simply returning presents they got during Christmas in exchange for the real goodies.

Looking back at that historical (at least for AMD) date – February 22nd – we can see that Intel's line-up had some slight changes that were hardly noticeable for US consumers. For UK consumers all is not lost. We have benefitted from a slight downward trend of the Ryzen 7 pricing, but overall the effect on Intel has been negligible. It seems we're still in the doldrums when it comes to CPU pricing.

KitGuru Says: In both camps, consumers had pinned their hopes for more affordable CPUs following AMD's Ryzen launch. However, it seems that Intel's pricing structure has seen little impact so far. Hopefully this is something that starts to change with time. 

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34 comments

  1. Raphael Silva ✔️

    This is exactly what i said couple days ago, Intel isnt giving a damn about Ryzen so far and honestly it never cared, Intel always kept their prices, not huge discounts cause OMG they have something competitive.

  2. A better offer doesn’t scare Intel unless people start buying it. They should worry when itx motherboards toll out for am4.

  3. Saurabh Harwande

    Intel are fucking shit. They don’t give discount to us, they will pay other companies to use intel instead of AMD that is how they compete. They never gave a shit about the consumer and never will. They just want profits and that’s how they will be.

  4. Reviewers opinions of Ryzen 5 are overwhelming and thankfully most consumers read those over these sort of news stories. Intel can do nothing, even if they lower prices it still won’t be good enough.
    If you want twice as much horsepower for your money you buy Ryzen, if you think Intel will lower prices to compete you will be waiting a while.

    Amazon sales does not equal total sales.

  5. Ya i kept checking to buy Ryzen pc’s from Dell for our company and still can’t find any.

  6. They won’t start worrying until companies like Dell, Lenovo and HP make Ryzen pc’s for companies to buy.

  7. Until Intel sees sales drop, they won’t do anything when it comes to product prices. It is too soon to see significant changes in sales because HP, Lenovo, and Dell do not sell Ryzen based products in their mainstream lineups.

    AMD made the point that Ryzen would go out to the enthusiast and normal distribution channels FIRST, rather than letting the OEMs hold the products hostage, so the big question is when these OEMs will start to sell Ryzen based systems. It may be the obvious issues with the new AM4 platform where we see new BIOS versions come out monthly, if not more often, or a shortage of motherboards(you can’t even get a Crosshair VI hero from Newegg at this point). How long will it take for motherboards to be manufactured for the OEMs?

  8. AMD made the point that Ryzen would go out to the enthusiast and normal
    distribution channels FIRST, rather than letting the OEMs hold the
    products hostage, so the big question is when these OEMs will start to
    sell Ryzen based systems.

  9. yeah where I work (programming and some IT), we order everything from Dell. Our ‘Engineering’ PCs cost like $3000 and have a GeForce Quadro4000 in them and some decent Xeon. But a quadro 4000? that thing is weak as shit and I know our company is paying up the ass for them…or are they? Online the 4000 is expensive and a completely illogical purchase considering its age and power, but perhaps Nvidia gives some massive discount. Still, my PC at home with a 290X would probably do better in MOST workloads we do here. To add to it, my co-workers seem to think all i5s and i7s are the best, when in reality they have the 2C4T mobile i7s in their Thinkpads while I, the Co-Op, have the ‘old slow computer’ (Dell Optiplex 7010) with a i7-3770 256G 850Evo and 16Gb of DDR3. My pc kicks their laptop’s in performance, but since it’s a few years older they seem to think it’s undesirable: lucky for me I guess lol. Filthy Casuals haha

  10. Use that voice of yours at work. AMD deserve a voice with great products like these.
    You will get a nice bonus when you prove you are right.

  11. Within the next month.

  12. all this tells me is that i should support AMD and go ryzen when i finally upgrade from my 2500k.

  13. I bought into a 1700, at 3.8 ghz it doubles the single core performance of my 8320E at 4.4 ghz

  14. Well, the upcoming Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X chips show that Intel is not ignoring AMD. Because the Ryzen doesn’t quite beat Intel’s very best chips in single-core performance, it hasn’t quite forced Intel’s hand. But the fact that one can get an eight-core Ryzen for so much less than anything comparable from Intel is almost all the price war we need.

  15. “It seems we’re still in the doldrums when it comes to CPU pricing.” No we’re not, it’s called Ryzen,its cheaper and better in most scenarios???

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  17. Six months ago no one would believe a big return of AMD but they did it, AMD at last is offering a large scale of competition fulfill most of the dream of many fans, at least now we ca say “there is a choice”.

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  20. Seems like it must be impacting sales a little. I am seeing lots of customer reviews of Ryzen on Newegg for it being only about a month of sales.

  21. Saurabh Harwande

    Ya. Actually AMD is taking time to out the processors to the OEMs. Ryzen ready PCs should be coming out in a month or two I guess.

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  23. I personally don’t think that the tracking of prices in these amazon graphs mean a great deal as they are. If they were percentile changes the Intel price differences would be much greater than the comparable ripple in the AMD prices. The changes in units sold is not indicated so it is hard to see whether Intel has taken a hit and are just too stubborn to drop their prices or believe they can ride out the storm. I suspect Intel will have to think hard about their strategy in the coming months as percentage gains with new drivers, BIOS updates and software patches are showing Ryzen and Polaris to be under valued pieces of hardware. Bring on the war.

  24. Impatient much? AMD’s mainstream Ryzen processor JUST launched. Their budget R3 isn’t out yet. The fact that AMD can compete at the top will sell those higher end chips just fine. When the word of AMD’s decent performance in the i5 arena gets out people will move to the R5, give it time. Now, the real money to be had is in the i3 arena. Having a super fast high end chip is well and good and makes all of US happy, but if AMD can produce great performance for less on the i3’s turf AMD stands to make a lot more money. Most people don’t buy i5’s and i7’s, they buy lower end offerings.

    What AMD brings to the table is options. When it comes time to upgrade from their Haswell and Ivy Bridge systems (or earlier) people will look at Ryzen and see a chip that is somewhat futureproof. The days of 4 core/4 thread are numbered. Ryzen finally gives people a good chip with more cores and heaps of threads, in what was once 4 core no extra thread territory.

    Also, let’s not forget the next gen APUs that will spank Intel in graphics performance (as AMD has always done) and provide good CPU performance, thanks to Ryzen.

    AMD has turned up the heat, but it takes some time to boil water.

  25. Ryzen is a brand new platform and the wrinkles are still being worked out. Professional PCs need to be stable and reliable so I wouldn’t expect a Ryzen system for some time (probably a couple of months). Also, the motherboard shortage is still something of an issue for some vendors – I had to wait almost a month to build my Ryzen 7 system (it was well worth the wait though, as I now have a beast of a computing system).

    I’m a professional application developer and I would love to be able to use a Ryzen 7 for my work machine (currently using a Core i7 3770). I’m hoping they’ll make it into OEM channels later this year, perhaps when the entire Ryzen family is out (Ryzen 3/5/7, APUs, Naples).

  26. Yes, it was hoped that Ryzen would force Intel to lower their prices, but it isn’t really necessary in my opinion. Enthusiast and AMD fans don’t need prices for a 6900K to drop – they can just buy a Ryzen 7 instead (this is what I did, and it’s paid off handsomely). Of course it doesn’t help hardcore Intel fans, who will need to continue to put up with Intel’s high prices.

  27. Shit, just a bit north of a month has passed, and you already make such a statement? Guess I can scratch Kitguru from the list of anything remotely worth reading…

    One might think you could wait until R3 is out. Until ecosystem(motherboards, UEFI, RAM) is stabilized. Once Intel rolls out the rumored Skylake-X or at least Coffee Lake.

    Unless you really expected Intel to drop the ball by double digits right away? Intel is using a different strategy – FPS. Making people believe Intel’s gaming superiority makes it better. It sells. If people weren’t that stupid, maybe we would’ve seen price drops. But how smart, really, can Intel users be? I mean, consumer-grade…

  28. Probably because no one is buying Ryzen on Amazon. I know i sure as hell wouldnt. You would have to be pretty stupid or desperate.

  29. I dont have a problem with any company making profits. That is why they are in business to begin with. But Intel’s prices are hella over inflated. Just because they can. Just because a badge, a name. Some stupid people out there will continue to keep paying for them and Intel will oblige them. If they would stop over paying. The prices would come down pretty fast.

  30. Saurabh Harwande

    Lol ignorant people just go for brand names and shiny stuff. Any ways laptop have their purpose of portability. Even I own desktop as well as laptop. It serves me well when I have to do a presentations at some other place. Yea and also when I am bored to get out of bed and sit to use PC :P.

  31. Intel may not be at all unhappy about an AMD resurgence. There has been very little mainstream interest in CPUs the past few years. Intel will probably make a lot more money if there’s an exciting horse race between manufacturers than if it’s a matter of “I’ve already got a core CPU, tell me which phone is better, apple or samsung.” And why. And let me read about some tests. And argue about it with my buddy.

    And they’re really different, too. Intel still has significantly better single core performance, but it’s not overwhelming anymore. Meanwhile, AMD (at a given price) blows Intel out of the water and into the weeds on most multicore tasks. And once the APUs come out, there will be plenty to think about (and give a sh!t about) in another aspect of performance. If you give people something to think about and talk about, you’re going to make it a lot more likely that they’ll care enough to decide to buy something new.

    Now that there’s something interesting in CPUs again, something to run comparison tests against, something to write articles about, things may pick up a bit in the PC world. if AMD gets 20% of the market but Intel’s sales go up 50%, everybody’s happy.

  32. Looking at camel charts for ryzen @amazon today, 1700x, 1700, 1600 prices are now all about $10 lower each last four days, and 1800x price has dropped $30 (in US)

  33. Neither Dell nor any volume maker will use Ryzen until it incorporates an iGPU. The majority of consumer and corporate boxes do not have dedicated GPUs. AMD know how to do this. I’m sure it’s in their plans.

  34. Ya thats true, i hope their Ryzen APU’s are good