If true Intel are essentially conceding the battle with AMD with their upcoming 14th generation Core Processors.
The Intel Corporations finances as of late have been dire to say the least, the development and release of ARC Alchemist resulted in the company taking a massive hit in its dwindling cash reserves, so much so that Intel have imposed pay cuts for executives and managers back during the first quarter of the year.
For those who actually look at Intel as an investment, Intel slashed their dividends from 37 cents per share (~6%) to a measly 12 cents (2%) so there’s not much incentive if any to actually buy and hold Intel shares in an inflated stock market.
You would imagine that Intel who are being pushed back up against the wall in the CPU market from AMD’s Ryzen that they would primarily focus on providing competitive products for compelling prices in the hopes that they would snatch back at least some of the market share they have been losing gradually in the mainstream desktop market space since the introduction of the Ryzen 5000 series.
Especially considering how the company is looking to recycle its 13th generation Core processors, dubbed Raptor Lake for another year as their next architectural advancement, Meteor Lake has been pushed back.
Previously it had been disclosed with MSI’s own internal NDA slide deck that Intel’s Raptor Lake-S Refresh would yield a measly 3% performance gain in single threaded applications according to MSI, with the only improvement being made to the eventual unlocked i7 SKU for containing an additional four E-cores compared to the last generation.
Raptor Lake has already lost the gaming performance crown to AMD’s Ryzen 7000 X3D parts, however compared to non X3D the Intel processors do at least hold a slight advantage over Ryzen, so long as your system is well equipped with very high speed DDR5 memory to properly feed Raptor Lake, without ~7000MHz memory kits at its disposal Raptor Lake and Zen 4 are essentially neck and neck in most scenarios.
As for actual pricing, Intel’s processor prices are typically higher than AMDs but are somewhat competitive until you go beyond the Core i7-13700K which can be found on Newegg for $365 while the Ryzen 7 7700X can be had for $349, while the top selling 7800X3D is just $399.
The i5-13600KF can be found for as low as $289.99 which goes up against the $248 Ryzen 5 7600X and $329 Ryzen 7 7700.
But there has never really been much incentive to actually buy a Core i9 part, with the 13900K being found for $556, which sits in-between the Ryzen 9 7900X3D and 7950X, however the real kicker comes with the outrageously garbage 13900KS for $729. AMD absolutely slaps this pile of shit silly with its priced to match $682 7950X3D which wins out across the board.
I had hoped that if Intel were basically kissing their chances of gaming supremacy goodbye with their upcoming 14th generation processors that they would focus on actually giving a fight towards AMD with lower and more competitive pricing, but of course lower prices would mean a good thing for consumers and we cannot have that because Intel CEO, Patrick Gelsinger might have a cocaine addicting that needs funding.
Intel Core 14th generation processors have already started appearing on online retail outfits which usually means we’re moments away from an official announcement and launch, the only kicker here is that according to momomo, Intel look to actually be increasing its pricing for its Raptor Lake Refresh by a startling amount.
While I may have just shown you various Intel and AMD processors available on Newegg, the comparisons made above are obviously in reference to Intel’s own MSRP or suggested retail prices, with Intel apparently looking to charge $695 for the upcoming Core i9-14900K which is an almost 16% price hike from the initial MSRP price tag of the previous i9-13900K which was “$599”.
For those desperate to save as much money as possible on their high-end CPU there’s the KF verity range of which Intel looks to be increasing its price between 13th and 14th generation SKUs by 13.84% on average with the i9-14900KF getting a $80 price bump, the 14700KF getting a $60 increase and the supposed budget friendly 14600KF getting a $40 increase.
Overall the average of the price increase looks to be 14.44%.
And yet the only difference between Raptor Lake-S and its upcoming refresh is merely clock speeds only, a couple hundred megahertz at best, MSI’s slides claim a 3% single core improvement and yet apparently Intel wants to tack on ~15% to their price tag?
Exactly what would be the point of buying Intel’s 14th generational wares if every single one of them ends up being more expensive at every single price segment than AMD Ryzen parts, runs far hotter and consumes damn near twice as much wattage from the wall?
They are hardly any faster than their predecessors of which at worst case performed on par with Zen 4 and seemingly bent over by Ryzen 7000 X3D wares, so either Intel are absolutely retarded or have simply disregarded consumers for being moronic sheeple, they know a decent amount of idiots on this planet will buy Intel Core processors as if it were a religion.
With such substantial price hikes for the same garbage it indicates that Intel don’t even have intentions of issuing discounts to 13th generation pricing, why would they? Because 13th generation processors are one in the same as their 14th generation brethren, the only difference being the slightly higher core frequency which apparently fetches big dollars according to Intel.
I can imagine that people will chock this up to “inflation”, especially considering how food prices among other things have shot up in price in recent times, and yet the grocer selling you the very same gallon of milk for 80 cents more are making record profits, so obviously Intel wants your money.
If these price hikes are in fact true then AMD essentially has a free vacation for around a year, considering how they already have the fastest gaming processors available on the market with their only competition going stagnate in terms of performance and increasing their prices? When Zen 5 comes around with yet another solid generational performance uplift you can rest assured that AMD will take advantage of these higher prices and gouge customers.
