Intel 8th Gen MASSIVE price hike?

[Scoob]

Hey all,


So, I was looking up a parts list for someone spec'ing up a new build and I was SHOCKED by the price increases on Intel's 8th Gen CPU's since I last checked.


Earlier this year, I was considering building an 8700k system and this CPU was up for £300 - £320. I noticed the price go up a bit, to about £340 - £350 during GBP's value drop vs. USD which is fairly normal and thought no more of it.


I didn't do a build in the end, my current one is working just fine for everything I do, so I thought I'd wait and see what the 9th Gen has to offer and compare that to the revised Ryzen lineup.



Anyway, imagine my shock when checking scan today, that same 8700k is going for £440 - over thirty percent more than the figure I'd saved from earlier in the year. GBP, while still a little weak, has recovered somewhat since those lows, so I was expecting to see the price a little cheaper.


I really thought there might be some bargains to be had with Intel's 9th Gen incoming (with eTailers wanting to start clearing current stock) as well as AMD being very competitive currently forcing them down a bit.


I'm aware of the reported capacity issues for 14nm so maybe Intel have just hugely bumped the price if they can't shift the numbers in an attempt to maintain profitability...but they actually have a competitor now!



Am I missing something here? I really thought that with the various factors involved, Intel's 8th Gen would be relatively cheap by now. Perhaps I'd originally looked at the 8700k during a "Sale" period without realising it lol.



Cheers,


Scoob.

 

[AlienALX]

Yes, you are missing something. Intel are having huge supply issues which will push up the price of their CPUs, and the price of RAM down apparently.

In other words? go with Ryzen. AMD are having no such issues.

 

[Scoob]

Yes, you are missing something. Intel are having huge supply issues which will push up the price of their CPUs, and the price of RAM down apparently.

In other words? go with Ryzen. AMD are having no such issues.

Yeah, that's what I was referring to when I mentioned the capacity issues for 14nm, I didn't fully expect it to start squeezing things severely until the 9th Gen launched though.


Personally, I'm fine at the moment, no real need to build a new system, which is why I was a little out of touch on pricing.


Oh, my sig is out of date, thought I'd updated it ages ago, but that's my old build.


Scoob.

 

[Dicehunter]

If I was buying now even with the 9900K coming out I'd get a 2700X from AMD, Damn good price, Epic performance and great for multitasking.

 

[Dawelio]

If I was buying now even with the 9900K coming out I'd get a 2700X from AMD, Damn good price, Epic performance and great for multitasking.

Yet not the best for gaming and high FPSs - which is what people are after, hence why people buy them over AMD’s offerings etc.

 

[Dicehunter]

Yet not the best for gaming and high FPSs - which is what people are after, hence why people buy them over AMD’s offerings etc.

Depends, 1080P is where CPU really matters, 1440P and higher not so much,

 

[Dawelio]

Depends, 1080P is where CPU really matters, 1440P and higher not so much,

Personally, from my own experience, I’d disagree on that. I’ve been on 1440p for a while now and I switched to an 8700K from an 1700X, and the perfomance difference were huge. All the settings were the same, if not even higher with the 8700K.

 

[Scoob]

Gaming will be the primary use for my next build for sure, hence why Intel still gets a look in. However, the case for an AMD system is very strong, and if Intel start playing silly whatsits with their pricing then...well, I'm going to get value for my spend.


Whatever I got next CPU-wise would be an improvement, but as my current system runs everything I want just fine, I've no need to upgrade at this time, so I'll just keep watching the prices when the 9900k is available. Part of me thought a 8700k build - once the 9900k has launched - might be a good value proposition, but that's looking rather unlikely at the moment.



If the 9900k were to edge it in performance overall for a slightly higher cost then I'd likely go that direction. If however it edges it at a substantially higher cost, I'll rethink.


I have the luxury of waiting for the product and the price to be perfect before I jump in, as my current quad-core i7 and 1070 combo are doing just fine. It's great to see a competitive AMD again, but I'd hoped Intel would be able to respond with at least price cuts at this time, but 14nm issues seem to have scuppered that.


It's an interesting time to be considering a new PC build from a technology perspective, with a strong AMD showing CPU-wise, Intel's 9th Gen on the horizon and nvidia's 20 series launch. However, the prices for the 20 series are quite staggering considering relative performance gains in traditional rasterised titles with ray tracing an deep learning equipped titles being a no show at this time. Plus it looks like Intel 9th Gen pricing will be hugely inflated based on what's happening with the current 8th Gen. So, times are good tech-wise, but not wallet friendly


I would like to build a new system soon, just cos stuff lol, but my current build has been performing so well for so long that I'd be foolish to jump prematurely.


As an aside: as I usually build fairly high-end systems, getting the best parts I can at the time, I find that the build lasts really really well. I'll usually see two, three or even four GPU upgrades before the CPU starts to feel a weak, but when I do finally upgrade, the jump feels huge. This next time for me I'll be moving from Quad Core with HT tech to 8c/16t, traditional SATA SSD's to M.2, DDR3 to DDR4, so quite a big step. Looking forward to it, but not hurrying towards it



Scoob.

 

[NeverBackDown]

If you plan on playing at 1440p or above Ryzen is much cheaper so makes more sense. 1080p however Intel are still kings.

 

[Dicehunter]

Personally, from my own experience, I’d disagree on that. I’ve been on 1440p for a while now and I switched to an 8700K from an 1700X, and the perfomance difference were huge. All the settings were the same, if not even higher with the 8700K.

The 2700X is pretty easy to get to 4.20GHz and I'm guessing you were running the 1700X at or near stock ?

Plus you have to factor in memory speed too, Both these things make a massive difference to Ryzens speed.

On average going by current benchmarks of an 8700K at 5GHz and a 2700X at 4.20GHz the 8700K is only 4% faster in general at 1440P which isn't really a lot especially when you consider the fact that the 8700K needs nearly an extra GHz to beat the 2700X by a mere 4%.

 

[Dark NighT]

The 2700X is pretty easy to get to 4.20GHz and I'm guessing you were running the 1700X at or near stock ?

Plus you have to factor in memory speed too, Both these things make a massive difference to Ryzens speed.

On average going by current benchmarks of an 8700K at 5GHz and a 2700X at 4.20GHz the 8700K is only 4% faster in general at 1440P which isn't really a lot especially when you consider the fact that the 8700K needs nearly an extra GHz to beat the 2700X by a mere 4%.

And this is why Amd is the clear winner, not only do you get a socket that has a future in it for the proper zen 2, it also is cheaper!

 

[Dawelio]

The 2700X is pretty easy to get to 4.20GHz and I'm guessing you were running the 1700X at or near stock ?

Plus you have to factor in memory speed too, Both these things make a massive difference to Ryzens speed.

On average going by current benchmarks of an 8700K at 5GHz and a 2700X at 4.20GHz the 8700K is only 4% faster in general at 1440P which isn't really a lot especially when you consider the fact that the 8700K needs nearly an extra GHz to beat the 2700X by a mere 4%.

And this is why Amd is the clear winner, not only do you get a socket that has a future in it for the proper zen 2, it also is cheaper!

Well by the sound of all of this, this is only based on the fact that if Ryzen is overclocked yes?... If’s not, it’s then run over by the 8700K. And not everyone is comfortable nor have the patient to overclock it to the wall.

 

[Dicehunter]

Well by the sound of all of this, this is only based on the fact that if Ryzen is overclocked yes?... If’s not, it’s then run over by the 8700K. And not everyone is comfortable nor have the patient to overclock it to the wall.

Well the comparison made was between a 5GHz 8700K which is a 300MHz overclock and the 2700X on all cores at stock runs at around 4.05GHz anyway so even if you don't overclock it would still be the same comparison i.e a 4.05GHz 2700X being 4% behind a 4.70GHz 8700K.

 

[Scoob]

This topic seems to be going off on an AMD vs. Intel tangent regarding performance, which is fine, but my main point was the inflated prices of the high-end 8th Gen Intel CPU's at the moment.


Interestingly, reading various articles published recently, many appear to be oblivious to these price rises, still quoting the old sub £350 prices for the likes of the 8700k when discussing the "leaked" and "inflated" prices reported for the 9900k and 9700k To be frank, if the $500 (USD) price tag leak of the 9900k turns out to be true, it makes it seem like a total bargain vs. the current 8700k pricing.


If Intel's pricing for the 9th Gen chips is comparable to the current 8th Gen prices with say a 30% mark up due to the extra Core count, then these are in no way going to seem competitive vs. AMD's offerings, even if they do perform better across the board.


As I mentioned, I'm not currently interested in building a new rig - well, I have no need to, not that I wouldn't lol - but was purely looking at the vastly inflated costs of a build from someone on another forum. However, if I was - let's ignore Intel's impending 9th Gen launch for the moment - AMD really do seem to be the smart choice, even for purely gaming use due to their MUCH more competitive pricing.


It's sorta funny really. We're at a point many of us have wished for over the years with AMD coming to market with a product good enough to, at minimum, worry Intel and at best totally embarrass them. The hope, from a consumer perspective, would be for Intel to lower their prices accordingly to present a viable option from both companies. If Intel are, as reported, really struggling with capacity for the 14nm (and however many + they're putting after that now) then they're in a bit of trouble.


That said, I eagerly await the official launch of the 9900k and am keen to see how it performs as well as what the actual price will be. I have the luxury of simply waiting until the hardware available meets my personal requirements from a performance and cost perspective before jumping in. So I'll simply wait and see. Got to say though, AMD are looking good currently and I've been 100% Intel since my old AMD Athlon 4200x2 was replaced by a Q6600.


Scoob.

 

[Bartacus]

Well the comparison made was between a 5GHz 8700K which is a 300MHz overclock and the 2700X on all cores at stock runs at around 4.05GHz anyway so even if you don't overclock it would still be the same comparison i.e a 4.05GHz 2700X being 4% behind a 4.70GHz 8700K.

The 2700X on X470 is so good at overclocking itself that I hesitate to even CALL it overclocking anymore. I can set ONE option in the BIOS, and the bloody thing will run at 4.35Ghz on all 8 cores if the CPU gets pushed, while running at 3200 CL14 on the memory, and it seems HAPPY to do it. LOVE this chip, and the new boost capabilities on X470!

 

[NeverBackDown]

The 2700X on X470 is so good at overclocking itself that I hesitate to even CALL it overclocking anymore. I can set ONE option in the BIOS, and the bloody thing will run at 4.35Ghz on all 8 cores if the CPU gets pushed, while running at 3200 CL14 on the memory, and it seems HAPPY to do it. LOVE this chip, and the new boost capabilities on X470!

You probably have a good chip. I'd push it for 4.4 and then you'll be in the top 1% of people who have it in the world pretty much^_^

 

[Bartacus]

You probably have a good chip. I'd push it for 4.4 and then you'll be in the top 1% of people who have it in the world pretty much^_^

It maxes out hard at 4.35 with the auto boost thingy, and I see no need to push it further. That was at level 4, but I backed it off to level 3 for daily driving. I almost feel guilty for never using all these cores. ^_^