Is Intel too expensive?

[SiliconWars]

Intel isn't obligated to provide "free" performance via overclocking. That is offered out of good will or to match a competitor. That they offer it for $200 is quite fair as can be seen by all of the positive reviews and user response, and very few people complain about the product line. Their processors perform well and are energy efficient. We also have the option to choose AMD if we want cheap overclocking, although there are drawbacks such as efficiency and IPC.

Don't mistake being obligated to give free overclocking with what it really is - intel taking away the ability to overclock in order to charge more.

Slowly but surely the enthusiasts just sell themselves out to the intel dollar. I remember when the HT "tax" was frowned upon, then the "K" tax, then the dodgy TIM. What next?

Intel will screw you for every penny you can afford to give them, and most of you have forgotten it is happening - in fact too many of you make up excuses like you just did. You are getting less now for what you got a few years ago and that's a fact. Intel has you shepherded into believing you are getting a good deal because your memory of what you used to get isn't very good.

 

[Idontcare]

...which you don't need if you get a nice, power-efficient Intel CPU and don't OC the hell out of it like some kind of crazy person.

Do you mean the years old gross margins or the (very) recently cratered gross margins?

Intel cpu's are overpriced and have been for years. Die sizes get smaller, intel gets richer on the same prices. Their market segmentation is beyond a joke now and I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually end up segmenting to a single dollar.

It was just a passing observation. They consistently operate in the 55-65% GM range, something that would not be true if their products were over-priced or under-priced relative to their predecessor.

They may be over-priced right now, but within the context of this thread's premise that would require us to conclude that they have always been over-priced.

 

[Plimogz]

^ ouch.

 

[Idontcare]

Don't mistake being obligated to give free overclocking with what it really is - intel taking away the ability to overclock in order to charge more.

Slowly but surely the enthusiasts just sell themselves out to the intel dollar. I remember when the HT "tax" was frowned upon, then the "K" tax, then the dodgy TIM. What next?

Intel will screw you for every penny you can afford to give them, and most of you have forgotton it is happening - in fact too many of you make up excuses like you just did. You are getting less now for what you got a few years ago and that's a fact. Intel has you shepherded into believing you are getting a good deal because your memory of what you used to get isn't very good.

You do see the irony here, right?

i5 2500K || HD 6850 || 60 GB OCZ SSD || 5040x1050 LCD

 

[SiliconWars]

Yes I see the irony, in fact I was about to change it to include myself in it before your post.

Intel has ME caught in it as well, which is a good reason why I hate it so much. It was only another 10-15 bucks but I still paid for something that I didn't pay for with my Q6600, for example.

If you can't see this then I don't know what else to say. It's an extra tax because we'd all have bought the 2400 or 2300 instead and just overclocked it to the same 4.5 GHz or whatever. It really is that simple - Intel learned from all the i7 920 buyers that they had to do something else to squeeze more out of us.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Exactly, its all relative. In Nov 2006 I paid $1500 for the only quad-core x86 chip money could buy at the time.

Compared to that, today's hex-core chips are a bargain, even the top-end mobo's are less expensive.

Let's not mince words here. I wasn't talking about the "Extreme" CPUs. Those have nearly always been $1000+. So it doesn't make sense to use them as a reference point for comparison with mainstream CPUs. (Also, didn't Intel release the Q6600 non-extreme chips at the same time as those extremes? For something around $800?)

Intel's "K" chips carry a premium over their mainstream chips, just like (but not quite as bad as) the extreme line of chips.

If Intel would allow ALL of their chips to be overclocked, then they would present a much better value proposition for their users. But Intel, like any greedy corporation, envies the ability of the gov't to tax, and seeks to extract their own "tax" from every customer.

Verizon does it. Microsoft does it. So does Intel.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Do you mean the years old gross margins or the (very) recently cratered gross margins?

Actual gross margins on products are fine. Gross margins are down because Intel took excess capacity charges.

But I'm sure you have no problem rebutting the statement:

"AMD's gross margins cratered to 15% in the most recent quarter"

 

[mrmt]

Actual gross margins on products are fine. Gross margins are down because Intel took excess capacity charges.

The charge was for pre-production HSW wafers, not impairment. It will be reversed next quarters when the wafers are deemed production-worthy.

 

[SiliconWars]

I paid £130 for my Q6600 in early/mid 2008, and in early/mid 2012 I paid £158 for my i5 2500K (at distributor rates so even cheaper than retail). That is more than a year after initial release for both chips. Yes I still have the receipts if anyone doesn't believe me.

Now, I know that PC prices are dropping and continue to drop however the intel cpu's seem to be going up in price. Intel has this mastered - squeezing OEM's, squeezing consumers, getting more money out of it. I'm absolutely amazed they have got away with it for so long.

If you still have access to your old receipts, go have a look and see what you paid. I know I paid 20% more for what was basically the same chip 4 years later.

 

[Idontcare]

Let's not mince words here. I wasn't talking about the "Extreme" CPUs. Those have nearly always been $1000+. So it doesn't make sense to use them as a reference point for comparison with mainstream CPUs. (Also, didn't Intel release the Q6600 non-extreme chips at the same time as those extremes? For something around $800?)

Intel's "K" chips carry a premium over their mainstream chips, just like (but not quite as bad as) the extreme line of chips.

If Intel would allow ALL of their chips to be overclocked, then they would present a much better value proposition for their users. But Intel, like any greedy corporation, envies the ability of the gov't to tax, and seeks to extract their own "tax" from every customer.

Verizon does it. Microsoft does it. So does Intel.

I was providing a point of reference for frozentundra123456's post, not meant to be a point of reference to yours.

FWIW the Q6600 wasn't released until Jan 2007. If the year was 2006 and you wanted a quad-core x86 CPU you had no choice but to pay up for the QX6700.

That said, clearly I am off-topic, you really want this discussion to be about the price-performance of today's non-OC'ing chips and I can understand that. Losing the ability to OC does change the price/performance curve, no question.

 

[mrmt]

Do you have a problem with companies providing value for money?

Well, marketing leadership has its benefits and one of them is exactly charge more for your premium products. The fact you are bothered enough to the point of open a thread and complain about Intel pricing is a proof that the product is good, it's just the price that isn't as cheap as you wish, but you want to buy the product.

And yes, Intel strategy isn't to provide you with the best value for your money, but with pricing that will maximize profits (which ends up offering value to you, just not the best value). And they have the means to implement and maintain this strategy. It will not be 1000USD for a quad-core if AMD goes under tomorrow, but it won't be a bargain either.

If Intel cared about providing value for money, they would release a fairly-priced Octocore on Socket 1155, or possible 1150. But they want to charge a "Socket tax" on enthusiasts, above and beyond their actual production, R&D, mfg costs and a fair but decent profit.

Intel is having a hard time in fitting a 130W 6-core SKU in the same frequency levels of 4-core SKUs at 32nm. I doubt they could fit an 8-core SKUs on less than 150W TDP and without too much overclocking capacity. It would be nothing short of a fiasco if a high-priced 8-core SKU would yield less performance than a mainstream quadcore, even when both SKUs were overclocked.

Second point is, what games and trivial applications would benefit from more cores? I see those scenarios where 6-8 Intel cores are limited at best, not counting that you have to double the die size to get to this number of cores and correspondent cache size. When factoring the limited number of scenarios and the added cost, which by no means small, it is easy to see why Intel relegated 6-8 core chips out of the mainstream market.

 

[VirtualLarry]

FWIW the Q6600 wasn't released until Jan 2007. If the year was 2006 and you wanted a quad-core x86 CPU you had no choice but to pay up for the QX6700.

Hmm, so Intel didn't release the extreme and non-extreme at the same time?

That said, clearly I am off-topic, you really want this discussion to be about the price-performance of today's non-OC'ing chips and I can understand that. Losing the ability to OC does change the price/performance curve, no question.

I don't think it was so off-topic, only that my original premise had nothing to do with their "Extreme" lines of CPUs, which were and still are expensive.

Let's look at this another way. Back in the 775 days, Intel released both the enthusiast skus (the extreme chips) on the same socket at their more pedestrian mainstream CPUs.

Today, Intel possesses such market share, that they can even further segment their market, relegating their enthusiasts to purchase Socket 2011, which implies an even further tax, over and above the "Extreme" tax, for the mobo/chipset.

Edit: Let's take this thought further. What if Intel segments the motherboards, post-Haswell, for below i3, i3, and i5-i7? What if chipsets have limited CPU compatibility, such that Intel produces a single die, that is compatible with all CPUs, but then fuses them such that the mobo mfgs (who at that point are also CPU customers), have to pay a progressively higher tax for each level of chipset, to work with each level of CPU? IOW, Intel charging a "tax", on both the CPU and the chipset, separately, but the consumer being socked double on that arrangement.

Edit: Well, I guess that's not too far off from SB chipsets, in terms of having to pay for a higher-level chipset for taking advantage of the overclocking ability of the "K" CPUs. Only I envision the scenario to get worse with time, and eliminating the consumer choice that we have today with the ability to mix and match CPUs and chipsets, and instead, have to re-buy the entire platform, should you want to move up a CPU or a chipset.

 

[RaistlinZ]

No. CPU's were expensive back in the 90's. You can get a crazy amount of CPU horsepower these days for under $200.00. If you live near Microcenter you an buy an i5-3570k for $169.99. Very cheap.

 

[crashtech]

Part of the reason for drawing some of the conclusions VitualLarry does is because speed increases on a per-core level have slowed pretty dramatically over the past several years, and what we see now is more cores being added to make up for this fact. That's why I'm still running my pair of E5420s, the performance delta of an upgrade compared to the dollars just doesn't make sense. Seems like in the "old days," even a top line CPU was toast compared to its competition per dollar 3 or 4 years later, this seems to be less the case these days. But this observation is not limited to just one manufacturer.

 

[CHADBOGA]

Who doesn't want their processors to be cheaper?

Considering the strength of Intel's place in the market, I am shocked that one is able to buy a i5 3570K for such a modest amount.

It is the best value for money CPU that I have ever owned.

One shouldn't forget it wasn't that long ago that AMD were charging more for a 8150 Bulldozer, than Intel was for their i5 2500K.

 

[moonbogg]

$500 for my 3930k and I consider it well worth it. I rarely use the extra two cores, I just like them being there because its cool.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Part of the reason for drawing some of the conclusions VitualLarry does is because speed increases on a per-core level have slowed pretty dramatically over the past several years

I know that IPC has increased over the past few years, somewhat nicely too. But with the removal of overclocking capability at the low and mainstream ends, effective end-user final clock speed has decreased for the same money, faster than IPC has increased.

This is not true at the high end, which is why you will see everyone defending their 2500K CPUs. But what they are not saying, is that they had to pay an additional "overclocking tax" on BOTH the CPU as well as their motherboard chipset to get there. What they are not saying is that if the lower-end Intel SB quad-cores and chipsets were just as overclockable, that they would have purchased those lower-end items.

Thus, for what you are getting, those really are overpriced.

 

[fuzzymath10]

Don't mistake being obligated to give free overclocking with what it really is - intel taking away the ability to overclock in order to charge more.

Slowly but surely the enthusiasts just sell themselves out to the intel dollar. I remember when the HT "tax" was frowned upon, then the "K" tax, then the dodgy TIM. What next?

Intel will screw you for every penny you can afford to give them, and most of you have forgotten it is happening - in fact too many of you make up excuses like you just did. You are getting less now for what you got a few years ago and that's a fact. Intel has you shepherded into believing you are getting a good deal because your memory of what you used to get isn't very good.

Nobody is forcing us to buy Intel. If Intel was shoving slower, less efficient, and more expensive CPUs down our throats, I would refuse to buy them if something else more suited to my needs was offered. However, they are offering faster and/or more efficient processors, and manage to keep the prices at a level that keeps their sales steady. What is preventing you from voting with your wallet and buying a competitor's processor?

And speaking of memory, $200 in 2013 dollars is a VERY low price by historical standards for mid-high end performance. In 2002, my Pentium 4 1.8A (which was comparably positioned at the time), was $300, in 2002 dollars. In fact, the last time Intel offered an unlocked multiplier across most of its product range (i.e. exclude the EE period), you probably couldn't even get a mainstream CPU for $50-100.

If I want something and don't like the price, I have the choice to refuse to buy it, or wait until it gets discounted. CPUs are discretionary purchases.

 

[videogames101]

We've had the 2500k/3570k at sub $200 prices for so long I think we're getting spoiled. I've never been happier with CPU prices.

Those chips are monsters at that price point.

 

[el aye]

I think currently the prices are pretty fair, at least for the deals I was able to get in on ($215 for 3770k). It's the first Intel chip I've had since a P3 550MHz... that's pretty crazy. Most of the time I look to upgrade AMD was always the better price/performance, but I didn't find that the case this time around.

A big reason I went Intel was because of energy efficiency, which in the long run actually saves me another $20-30 a year versus the Phenom II X4 955BE + 4890 I was using. I suspect I will be keeping this CPU for the next 5+ years.

 

[hawtdawg]

Actually, the 2xxx/3xxx K series chips are one of the best values that I can ever remember Intel releasing.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Are Intel's ASP numbers for each year or quarter available publically?

 

[mrmt]

Are Intel's ASP numbers for each year or quarter available publically?

No, and Mercury Research numbers you can find around the web are heavily impacted by the datacenter business.

 

[jr26]

Looking back I think overall component pricing now isn't that bad and you certainly get more bang for your buck than say 10 years ago.

I saw microcenter mentioned above and if you are lucky enough to live by one they have had some amazing deals on Intel processor's and I'm sure they will continue that trend.


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[Arachnotronic]

Are Intel's ASP numbers for each year or quarter available publically?

ASPs down 6% in 2012 over 2011.