Raptor Lake Analysis: Can AMD afford a Price War with Intel? (+ Zen 4 Sales Whispers)

0:00 Real Raptor Lake Pricing – “RCP” is not “MSRP”
2:20 Raptor Lake Performance Analysis
6:40 Intel Raptor Lake & Zen 4 Margins Leak
10:15 AMD Early Sales Whispers…
14:17 It’s early, but it does seem like AMD miscalculated here…
15:30 Is AMD likely to drop prices on Zen 4?
16:40 AMD doesn’t care about Desktop as much as Laptop & Server
19:32 Is a pricing war coming to DIY? Where would prices land?
20:45 RDNA 3 is going to be important for AMD this Fall…
21:40 Intel A770 Thoughts and the state of Tech Journalism

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2021 Video Intro by Tom & abstractrealism on the MLID Discord

LINKS!!!!!!:

[xlinnaeus]

Hope you're doing alright, Tom. I saw your tweet about being exhausted after Vet visits. Take it easy man. And thanks for still making content for us!

[peterkazmir]

The Zen 4 sales isn't surprising to me at all. A lot of people will be waiting for the Raptor Lake benchmarks to come out, and the AM5 mainstream motherboards aren't available yet. Let's talk about sales in late October.

[BC-pldf]

It’s pretty obvious why Zen 4 is selling like it is, mainstream motherboards aren’t out yet, only the top premium ones.

[DaystromDataConcepts]

It's hardly surprising that Zen 4 is selling so poorly right now. let's be clear, Zen 4 is not simply a new CPU, it's an entirely new platform, unlike Raptor Lake that is a CPU upgrade for existing, and lower cost, B660 boards and existing Z600 series board owners.

Further, in addition to an expensive new motherboard and DDR5 RAM, buyers have to now also factor in high powered cooling that could add another $60 - $150 to the equation.

Zen 3's appeal was that it was a slot in upgrade on the AM4 socket for a vast swathe of AMD users. If retailers thought Zen 4 would sell like hot cakes, they weren't being realistic.

[pqbyrqy]

Enthusiasts are waiting for 3d architecture, average consumers are waiting for b650 mobos and ddr5 price drops or just going with zen 3, which is now the best bang for buck where I live.

[bluetech]

I imagine part of the problem is simply the existence of the 5800X3D. It's a no-brainer slam dunk for any AM4 platform owner who is still on something like a Ryzen 3000 series CPU or even something like a 5600X (I'm on lowly 3400G and I'm certainly considering a 5800X3D once I decide which high-ish end GPU I want to buy). I just don't see how the majority of people could justify the massive expense to shift over to AM5 (new motherboard and new RAM).

[superneenjaa]

I think it's the motherboard price that's turning people off.
From the online discussions, people aren't disappointed with zen4, they either already have good enough systems or waiting for B650.

[lazer]

The ridiculous AM5 motherboard pricing (gouging) combined with more expensive DDR5 is a massive turnoff for most people I think.

Also a lot of people probably waiting on the 7800x3D.

[TrueThanny]

13:20 Zen 3 also had far less supply, due to wafer constraints. AMD had to launch Ryzen 5000 series, EPYC 7003 series, Radeon RX 6000 series, XBox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5 all at the same time with a fixed wafer allocation from TSMC.

I have no doubt that Zen 4 is selling much more poorly, but AMD is not in a wafer crunch. Their supply is going to be higher.

One big advantage Zen 3 had over Zen 4 was also the fact that many buyers were _only_ buying the processor. They already had a motherboard and RAM to use with it. Nobody already has either for Zen 4. _All_ the buyers of Zen 4 are complete (or nearly so) system builders. And a great many people who will want Zen 4 will want a cheaper motherboard, so they're waiting. Nobody had to wait with Zen 3 for the cheaper boards to be released, as they were all already on the market.

[RobBCactive]

Zen4: In BIOS, Platform Thermal Limit set to manual lets you select the temp ceiling you want. You can set the PPT and undervolt too.
Motherboard vendor prices and reviewers have scared people off with 95C, all the advice is to wait and see, which is sensible with the early adopter tax.

[MistyKathrine]

A 7600X is a 6 core, 12 thread processor for $300. It's not surprising it's not selling. For $300+ people expect more than 6 cores these days.

[PanduPoluan]

I think you hit the nail on the head. AMD is focusing on the server and laptop market right now. AM5, though, is still a good attempt at pushing the landscape towards DDR5 + PCIe 5, breaking the chicken-and-egg conundrum.

[ClassicalTechnology]

Can confirm on microcenter and zen 4, I was there around opening and my friend and I were the only ones to get a 7950x, didn’t see anyone at all for a long time. Very empty, literally no one there to buy, was shocking to see

[guycxz]

One note about the HUB chart at around 5:00 this is with zen4 using slower memory. They used 6000MT/s ddr5 for their zen 4 testing as this is what AMD officially supports, yet noted that all chips had no issue handling 6400MT/s with 3700UCLK and 3:2 UCLK:FCLK. Using faster memory did give AMD an additional boost in performance in HUB's testing. I believe they show 6400 MT/s results in their 7600X review.

[redeye]

Crazy how accurate your predictions are, nailed raptor lake performance and alchemist price. Even your speculations on Zen 4 sales is in line with what I’ve seen from other reports. Love this channel!

[christopherhouse]

No even kidding, the moment I saw the first benchmarks I pulled out the credit card and ordered a 5800X3D and another pair of memory sticks. That'll get me thru till Zen 6.

[darreno]

I'm not surprised Zen 4 sales started off slow. Like you said, it's a bad time to expect these to fly off the shelves when you have so many other options even within the same platform. The 5800X3D is probably the best example of this. You see slides from both companies with this chip right up at the top with the best. Then you have the high initial mainboard pricing.

I think once mainboard prices and ram drop, sales will start to pick up. I also agree that Raptor Lake could take a hit as well, especially when it was shown that it's not that much quicker than AL in gaming.

[bwcbiz]

I don't think we should be comparing zen 4 sales with zen 3 sales due to the COVID effect and the recession. It's probably better to compare with Zen 2, which also had its expensive motherboards at launch.
Edit: Using chiplets in laptop and Epyc will only work if those markets are healthier than DIY, which may not be a safe assumption.

[TheKazragore]

Between Tom and the two Steves, I feel pretty well served in terms of reliable and honest tech coverage this spring. I'm also hoping to get an A770, not necessarily because I need one, but because I can afford to put my money where my mouth is, and my mouth has been saying "we need a 3rd GPU vendor", so I'm going to do my little bit to support this, even if as an Aussie it may well be quite difficult to get my hands on one.

[jonathanmelton]

I showed up two hours before Micro Center was supposed to open to get in line and there was literally no one there. the door was opened and they said come on in. I walked in grabbed a 7700 X and an AM5 motherboard with 6 staff members accompany me lol
Eight hours later I came back just to see if the crowds had started to form after work, and there was literally no one there. I was absolutely flabbergasted.