Gadgetory

welcome back to hardware our box later this week we'll finally be able to publish our benchmarks intel's new 8 core cpus like the 9900 k so of course that's very exciting but before then I thought it might be a good idea to check out how CPU pricing has changed over the last few months to see what products are the best value right now and whether we'll continue to see changes throughout the rest of the year we haven't really had a good reason to make this sort of video yet we've done it for GPUs in the past with prices that were fluctuating all over the place but for a long time CPU prices have stayed fairly consistent Intel and AMD would launch their new products that are certain MSRP and then over time prices will drop slightly until the next generation is ready to go however right now this isn't quite what's happening at least on Intel site you've probably heard about Intel struggles with 14 nanometer manufacturing capacity in that they're basically maxed out in fact just recently Intel spoke about how they're investing money to increase 14 nanometer capacity and until that capacity spins up the company is prioritizing high-end higher margin products over some of the lower end products budget chipsets in particular rumored to have made way for other chips so with Intel struggling for capacity we're in a position where Intel can't supply the amount of processes they need this unbalances the supply demand equation causing prices to go up meanwhile on the AMD front everything seems to be going smoothly for them as far as most EPS are concerned no significant supply issues and that allows them to be more aggressive with pricing we start with Intel pricing though in this chart we have Intel's most popular CPUs ranging from the chorus of an 8700 k2 to the core i3 8100 and Pentium Gold G 5400 we also pricing data for these products launch MSRP July retail price at Newegg and current pricing as of October 15 or prices of course in u.s. dollars for current prices we've taken the lowest price for in stock products across a range of retailers including Amazon Newegg and several others before talking about changes in pricing three products here are much harder to find than the others the core i5 84 and to a lesser extent the core i3 8,100 are out of stock at reasonable prices at a fair few retailers the Pentium Gold G 5400 is more available but still appears to be teetering on the border of stock issues as surprising well as you can see back in July everything was looking pretty normal and all products were in stock Intel's mid-range and budget chips were usually available at the MSRP or slightly below and it was typical to find a $10 discount on chips like the 80 600 K and 8400 and the core i7 8700 K was the most heavily discounted selling for $30 under the MSRP at an attractive 350 dollars but since July prices have gone up for nearly every product in this lineup the one exception being the core i3 8350 K which I guess isn't a surprise considering that CPU is pre poor value as is some price hikes have been fairly small beaker 580 600 K and a core i3 8100 have only risen by $10 and in the case of the 80 600 K this only brings it back to an MSRP level but for the best products in the lineup the price increase is not exactly great news the core i7 8700 K has risen from three hundred and fifty dollars to three hundred and seventy-six dollars on Amazon which puts it back up around the launch price that's not terrible it's still slightly below the MSRP but it has completely reversed the downward trend in pricing up to July one of the larger hits though is to the core i5 8400 which is well known to be the best value product in Intel's 8th gen desktop lineup three months ago 8400 s were in plentiful stock at around 10 dollars lower than its $190 launch price today 8400 SR out of stock at many retails with the cheapest in stock CPU going for 220 dollars that's a 22% increase on July pricing and 16% on the MSRP and in this the G 5400 which used to sell for 75 dollars and now can't be found for less than a hundred and ten dollars a massive 47% increase that really hurts the value of this budget chip over on the AMD front though it's a completely different story not a single rise in CPU is selling for above the MSRP at the moment in fact the only chip that remains at the MSRP is the Rison 320 200g every other spew has fallen in price the recently released Athlon 200 genie is the only real concern here it's currently out of stock at most retailers and before when out of stock it was selling for about 5 dollars above its $55 MSRP the pricing trend for AMD CPUs is clear in July you're able to get a decent discount compared to the MSRP for most products and today that discount is even larger the Rison 520 600 X rise in seven 2700 and risin 7 2700 X are between nine and twelve percent cheaper than the MSRP s at the moment while the risin 520 600 has seen a huge twenty percent price drop unlike on the Intel side with the core i5 8400 AMD is very aggressively pricing their best value CPU at the moment the 2600 with a price tag of just a hundred and sixty dollars prices for eight core rising CPUs are very good as well the 2700 is currently available for around the same price as Intel six core six thread core i5 80 600 K so this is a very different market situation to when these products launched even flicking back to the launch of second gen rise and we had slightly cheaper Intel CPUs and full price rise and CPUs whereas today the value proposition has swung much more towards AMD's favor but how much in AMD's favor well let's take a look at some performance and value graphs to see where everything falls right now here we have data for blender running on Intel and AMD s higher-end processes this is data taken directly from our original Rison v 2600 review you'll see a mix of both stock and overclocked results here although we should note that neither the Intel nor AMD platforms received any specific memory timing or sub timing tweaks but of course if you interested in full performance breakdowns you can check out our previous coverage of these processes anyway in blender we had these stock 2700 X beating the 8700 K though Intel claws back the lead when overclocked though slightly meanwhile the 2,600 and 2,650 400 with these results it's no surprise to see AMD take a resounding win with today's CPU prices their entire lineup of risin 5 and risin 7 CPUs are better value than intel's competing options even the 2700 x is better value than the core i5 8400 Intel's value champion and even a 5.2 gigahertz overclock for the 80 600 K can't match the stock 2700 X 4 value that's all down to raisins highly competitive price and entails rising prices particularly for the 8400 in fact when we go back and look at July pricing the 8400 is immediately much more competitive in this workload it's not rising 5 2600 levels of value but it trades boy with other AMD processors though AMD can handily reclaim the lead when factoring in overclocking we also see a situation where the 2700 X is much closer to the 8700 K in terms of value compared to current prices where the 8700 K is non competitive looking at the budget end of the spectrum again it's a strong victory for AMD the Rison 320 200 G remains a fantastic value CPU for budget system builders destroying the core i3 8100 from a value perspective when stock and of course you can overclock it to extend the lead further the G 5400 is shocking value at its massively inflated 110 dollar price point but with the Athlon 200 GE mostly out of stock it'll be interesting to see how that conversation changes if the 200 GE returns with a higher price handbrake isn't as kind to AMD processors heat Intel's lineup outperforms there AMD counterparts especially when overclocked we're looking at value it's an interesting chart even going on today's pricing stock or overclocked the 8700 K is still the worst value CPU and gets handily beaten by the much cheaper 2700 X in terms of value the 80 600 K looks okay when overclocked but realistically it will be worse value than the risin 720 700 not seen in these charts which performs around the same as the 2700 X when overclocked but comes in at the same price as the slower 8600 K and then of course we have the horizon 520 600 which is by far the best value CPU of the lot right now with it's crazy a hundred and sixty dollar price tag looking back to July and things would be different the a 700 K is very competitive with either the 2700 X or 2700 the a 600 K and 8400 are both decent buyers and the 2600 isn't as much of a clear value winner today of course it's a very different story we all know that AMD CPUs are strong for productivity workloads how about for gaming well here we have battlefield 1 in a CPU limited situation running at 1080p medium settings with a gtx 1080i and we're specifically looking at the 1% lower results intel's entire line up beats even the fastest Reisen processor in this test and there's quite a large margin between the 2700 x and 8700 K when overclocked even with today's prices that heavily favored AMD Intel remains competitive from a price to performance perspective the 8700 K is only slightly worse value than the 2700 X and will lose by a larger margin to the 2700 of course an overclocked 8600 K is a pretty good match value wise compared to the 2700 other cheaper 2600 X while the 8400 even at its inflated price tag is competitive against the similarly priced 2600 X whether stock or overclocked however again the Rison 5 2600 is the standout value option beating every other CPU by a large margin three months ago it was a completely different story Intel's lineup was much better value for gaming particularly the Core i5 8400 but even the 8700 K was a standout by up against a mb's 8 core offerings Ami's aggressive price cuts have definitely evened up that race of course it's also important to note here that this gaming value discussion only applies in CPU limited scenarios like 1080p with a flagship GPU anyone playing at a higher resolution or with a slower GPU will see the value of intel's faster gaming cpu shrink and AMD retake a strong lead certainly if your GPU limited there's no reason to buy an 8700 K over the excellent value Rison 5 2600 just for gaming so looking across the lineup of CPUs you can currently buy it's not a great time to purchase an Intel CPU especially with AMD's aggressive price drops for their rice and line up there isin five 2600 is the best value CPU on the market right now by a fair margin though those that need something faster should also consider the Rison 7 2700 whether you're gaming or running productivity apps budget shoppers should be looking at the horizon 320 200 G or the Athlon 200 GE if you can find one in stock for a reasonable price I haven't even fair in platform costs if two things such as a motherboard cooler or memory which often swings things even more into Andy's favor for example you can comfortably overclock the Verizon 5 2600 on a budget p450 motherboard whereas Core i5 80 600 K buyers will have to fork out for a more expensive Z 370 board to access overclocking I think this is also a good precursor for what's to come with 9th gen Lee Core i5 9600 K Intel's new 6th core 6 third replacement for the 80 600 K is $20 more than 8,600 K right now and the 8600 K is already worse value than rising alternatives then we have the 8 quart 9700 K going for four hundred and ten dollars which is more than the 8700 K so you have to offer much higher performance to position itself as a value contender and then of course the 9900 K at five hundred and thirty dollars was hard to see how that competes with the three hundred dollar rise in 720 700 X unless again it's capable of monstrous performance so yeah it's not looking good for Intel at all they really don't have a single win when it comes to value right now and it'll take something crazy with ninth gen to have that change it's also bad news for consumers as AMD really doesn't have any incentive to further lower the cost of rice and processes they are standout value options right now so why make them cheaper a more competitive Intel lineup could have I guess forced further price cuts are a nice price battle between the two companies but we're just not going to get that right now that's it for this one don't forget to subscribe to catch our new 900k review when it goes live on Friday definitely stay tuned for that one also consider supporting us on patreon you'll get access to our discord chat where you can talk to you Steve and I whenever you like and you'll be able to watch our monthly live streams give this video a thumbs up if you liked it and I'll catch you in the next one