Unless you are thinking about an upgrade to an existing Intel platform, even with these price Intel won't get close to competing with AMD's current processors dollar for dollar. People who are minding their budget should still be buying AMD, Intel price cut or not.
As a direct comparison, you can cut the inflated price of the E7500, comparable it directly to the Athlon II X2 250 which will run neck and neck with that Intel offering and look here, its priced over 40% less.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3572&p=1
I didnt see many instances of neck and neck between the pheonom x2 250 and the E7500. Really, the 550 does come close in some instances but still gets edged out. The 550 costs 99 bucks and the 7500 costs 113. You pay an extra 13 dollars for a slightly faster processor. Makes sense to me.
In my testing my 2nd machine armed with an inexpensive, currently $79.99 Athlon II X2 250 gets multithreaded cinebench scores of 6900 (andan gets 400 points less somehow? hmmmm). Either way, that CPU costs 40% less, and at absolute worse is just a little off the E7500 performance wise. I'm talking about the less expensive Athlon II now, not the Phenom II X2, which is also a damn fine part for just a little more.
I am just saying, it may be a price cut, but when you compare it dollar for dollar in a fair value comparison you find that they are still catching up to AMD in that respect. If price were a driver in the value segment (where most users are positioned), then AMD is the clear winner.
Don't like my $79.99 dual core vs. the E7500 argument because you may be loosing 5% on a benchmark here and there (at a 40% cost savings). Okay, tell me how $113 for an E7500 is even an remotely better deal than an Phenom II triple core, 710, priced 13% less, but performing better. Performs better, costs less, that's AMD.
Here is where I am getting at. Intel has two niche differentiated products in its entire line. On the low end, you have Atom, a nice little energy efficent chip for users with low expectations for portable performance. Then you have the i7, more performance than 95%+ of the market demands, but its the fastest consumer desktop part, I can't debate that.
Point being, the mainstream market is everywhere in the middle. That's where the grand majority of computers are purchased, and if you make a hard value comparison at all products in that range, compared performance per dollar, AMD is absolutely handing Intel their ass, but nobody talks about it, because I guess offering the best mainstream consumer value isn't that sexy or something?
I did not leave out the core 2 so much, as I am saying, its totally non differentiated. In other-words, you name me a core 2 product, and I can name you a comparable AMD part that offers a better dollar for dollar value. In other-words, in the fattest most significant segment of the market, Intel 15% price cut or not, AMD is still beating Intel up dollar for dollar.
In conclusion, this announcement from Intel, does not do much to reposition them against the current market value leader, AMD.
That would be a great argument if you could go to the cpu store and say i want this much performance for this many dollars and they build you a proc to that specification, but you cant. CPU's are sold in price points and for the given price point Intel beats AMD in performance.
The e7500 beat the 250 from 8% to 30% on all the benches. If you think Anand is bias than thats another issue entirely, but i have trusted their reviews for as long as i can remember. The intel chip costs 30% more than the amd, and i'm not arguing that 80 dollars for a cpu isn't a bargin, but when it comes down to it your paying for what you get.
Not true MAGIC, all cliff is saying is this. Take your performance score, divide it by what you paid for the chip and AMD is going to come out with the higher number. That means that for each dollar you shelled out for the processor, you get a larger return on your investment by buying an AMD chip. Granted, if you want the absolute fastest possible chip on the market, you would buy an Intel i7 (and pay through the nose for it). What Cliff is saying though is that if you say "I want the best performance I can get for under 100$" you would want to buy an AMD chip. This is because if you take an AMD chip that is priced the same as an Intel chip and compare those two chips, the AMD will give you better performance at least in the midrange market.
How about we pit the AMD triple cores against the E7500 then? Where does that land us?
Okay, even better get, lets take your arguement that a "10% performance gap (sketchy at best)" is worth a 30-40% price premium. At $149 I know the Phenom II X4 920 knocks the snot out of the $113 E7500. Point being, we could counter argue all day long, but if you honestly analyze what this 15% price cut means for Intel, all it really means is they still have dollars to cut if they have any hope at catching up with AMD in terms of performance per dollar.
<cite class="ic-username"></cite>ardichoke understands where I am getting at.
How about we pit the AMD tripple cores against the E7500 then? Where does that land us?
Okay, even better get, lets take your arguement that a "10% performance gap" is worth a 40% price premium. At $149 I know the Phenom II X4 920 knocks the snot out of the E7500. Point
You originally said that the 250 runs neck and neck with the e7500. I simply looked at the benches, calculated the margin that the e7500 beats the 250 by, calculated the price difference and the numbers aproximately match up. You get what you pay for.
Now, when the average person builds a computer they have a budget. They say i am goin got spend between 80 and 120 dollars on my cpu, and if they are unbias they go to a reveiw site such as Anand and say "WELL GOOD GOD DAMN" this processor is faster than this one, its in my budget, ill get this one. They dont calculate how many Sysmarks/dollar they get, they want the best they can buy at the price point.
In fact.... that 720 smokes the E8500 as well according to these performance marks and the E8500 lists at 190 on NewEgg right now Magic. Your point is invalid.
But if that budget is up to $120 he would be foolish to buy the E7500 when he could have the Phenom II X3 720 BE unlocked for $119.
I stand by my argument, the only two differentiated products Intel has are the Atom, and the i7, everything else falls into the much larger and more important mainstream battleground, and if you do a comparative anaysis dollar for dollar, after these price cuts, what it will tell you is that you were way overpaying for Intel yesterday, and now you still are overpaying but by a slighter slimmer margin.
All I am saying is this, Intel could cut price another 15% for each of these products, and AMD would still have comparable offerings beating them in the value comparison. Like Intel's new prices because you have an existing platform that you would like to upgrade, thank AMD for driving them there.
Want to build a new system in the mainstream market positioned with CPU's positioned anywhere under $175 or so, it only makes sense to start with AMD, even when you factor in Intel's lower prices.
ps....
<cite class="ic-username"></cite>ardichoke and I are both making the same arguments real time, its cool, and kinda creepy at the same time.... :*)
Now then... when we take the performance score and divide by the price we get this.
AMD: 4.866 points per dollar
Intel: 3.233 points per dollar
I think it's pretty clear which processor is the better value there. If you go down the list on that entire chart, what you will find is the same correlation. AMD may not have the fastest processor on the market... but when it comes to processing power per dollar argument, they take the cake.
Theres a little more realistic comparison for you seen as my argument is based on price points not points per dollar.
Intel Core i7 920 $265
1151.6 4.346 points per dollar
Pretty evenly matched in points per dollar, but i would still get the Intel because it performs better, and i would pay more for a better performing chip. And, i havent even touched on the actual performance/ dollar you would get from overclocking the chip.
Like Cliff said we would be able to go back and fourth on this forever because we both have different frames of mind. All that i would care about at the end of the day is if we each had 500 dollars to build a computer, you build amd and i build intel, whos would be better? I think i can build a better pc with an intel chip, and so do many others.
First off, where are you getting your Core i7 920 price? Because at NewEgg, which is where I was doing my calculations off of (IMO to keep it fair the calculations should be done from the same retailer) the Core i7 920 is 280.
Core i7 920 = 1151.60 / 280 = 4.113 points per dollar
That is still a 15.4% lower point per dollar rating than the Phenom II X4 955.
Microcenter has neither the i7 920 or the Phenom II 955 right now so it would be pretty hard to make a comparison. Like I said, if you can't compare both from the same reseller I'd consider the comparison tainted as different resellers have different markups. This is why I stuck with NewEgg for all comparisons.
Though, if you want to try and make the Mircocenter comparison, the Phenom II X3 720 is currently 119... you could try and extrapolate up to the 955 from there... but that would still be pretty questionable.
Right. So if you were going to buy a processor today, would you buy it for the cheapest price on the processor you wanted, or go to somewhere that had both processors?
If I wanted to buy a processor today I'd order it from NewEgg. This is mostly due to the fact that when I buy a new processor I'm usually also buying a new motherboard and memory. I know and trust NewEgg, they're not always the cheapest but they're usually close and I've found that spending hours shopping around for every part and paying for shipping from multiple sites tends to outweigh the slight money savings. Also, as I just pointed out, the lowest prices according to Google product search holds up the argument that myself and cliff were making.
I'm not trying to disparage Intel. They make good products (except their graphics chips, those suck). I'm just pointing out (and so is Cliff as far as I can tell) that even with the slight price drop, their mid-range processors still have a higher PPD than AMD.
Retailers aside, what this article is about is suggested retail. And honestly, I don't want to turn this into an i7 vs. debate, because that is my point, its Intel's only real differentiated product on the high end.
This price cut is about mainstream performance, and even with it, Intel still looses in that market. Lets talk about mainstream cost dollar for dollar, and forget the i7 920 even exists for a moment. Also bear in mind, when your talking i7, your no longer talking about just the cost of a CPU upgrade, your talking about moving to a whole new build, so you have to talk chip, triple channel memory, so on so forth.
If you want to make a CPU to CPU comparison on existing platforms, and analyze what this 15% price cut really means, you have to look at mainstream offerings, the bread and butter chips, the bulk of the market, and see how it all adds up. My point being, Intel lowers price, and they are still a dollar for dollar performance looser when you are talking chips from about $175 down, where most people buy.
I believe Cliff covered this point Thrax... If you're in the market for a mid-range car you're not even looking at a Ferrari. Also, theres way more car makers and way more differentiation between cars than processors.
I'm just being a troll. I buy the architecture with the best performance, and that's the Core i7. Before that it was the Core 2 Duo, and before that it was the Athlon 64.
Whereas I don't see the value in spending that much for the top of the line when it's only going to be that good for a few months. I want to get good performance to dollar ratio and that usually means buying a not top of the line processor... then I make it last as long as I can and recycle it into computers for my family members afterwards or use it for test platforms, etc. Just two different ways of approaching technology. Not going to say either one is right overall... but I will say that the way I do it is right for me since I don't have a ton of disposable income to spend on my computers.
Thrax
🐌Austin, TX Icrontian
Comments
http://ark.intel.com/VTList.aspx
As a direct comparison, you can cut the inflated price of the E7500, comparable it directly to the Athlon II X2 250 which will run neck and neck with that Intel offering and look here, its priced over 40% less.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103681
I didnt see many instances of neck and neck between the pheonom x2 250 and the E7500. Really, the 550 does come close in some instances but still gets edged out. The 550 costs 99 bucks and the 7500 costs 113. You pay an extra 13 dollars for a slightly faster processor. Makes sense to me.
I don't see what you're getting at, Cliff.
I am just saying, it may be a price cut, but when you compare it dollar for dollar in a fair value comparison you find that they are still catching up to AMD in that respect. If price were a driver in the value segment (where most users are positioned), then AMD is the clear winner.
Don't like my $79.99 dual core vs. the E7500 argument because you may be loosing 5% on a benchmark here and there (at a 40% cost savings). Okay, tell me how $113 for an E7500 is even an remotely better deal than an Phenom II triple core, 710, priced 13% less, but performing better. Performs better, costs less, that's AMD.
Here is where I am getting at. Intel has two niche differentiated products in its entire line. On the low end, you have Atom, a nice little energy efficent chip for users with low expectations for portable performance. Then you have the i7, more performance than 95%+ of the market demands, but its the fastest consumer desktop part, I can't debate that.
Point being, the mainstream market is everywhere in the middle. That's where the grand majority of computers are purchased, and if you make a hard value comparison at all products in that range, compared performance per dollar, AMD is absolutely handing Intel their ass, but nobody talks about it, because I guess offering the best mainstream consumer value isn't that sexy or something?
In conclusion, this announcement from Intel, does not do much to reposition them against the current market value leader, AMD.
The e7500 beat the 250 from 8% to 30% on all the benches. If you think Anand is bias than thats another issue entirely, but i have trusted their reviews for as long as i can remember. The intel chip costs 30% more than the amd, and i'm not arguing that 80 dollars for a cpu isn't a bargin, but when it comes down to it your paying for what you get.
How about we pit the AMD triple cores against the E7500 then? Where does that land us?
Okay, even better get, lets take your arguement that a "10% performance gap (sketchy at best)" is worth a 30-40% price premium. At $149 I know the Phenom II X4 920 knocks the snot out of the $113 E7500. Point being, we could counter argue all day long, but if you honestly analyze what this 15% price cut means for Intel, all it really means is they still have dollars to cut if they have any hope at catching up with AMD in terms of performance per dollar.
<cite class="ic-username"></cite>ardichoke understands where I am getting at.
You originally said that the 250 runs neck and neck with the e7500. I simply looked at the benches, calculated the margin that the e7500 beats the 250 by, calculated the price difference and the numbers aproximately match up. You get what you pay for.
Now, when the average person builds a computer they have a budget. They say i am goin got spend between 80 and 120 dollars on my cpu, and if they are unbias they go to a reveiw site such as Anand and say "WELL GOOD GOD DAMN" this processor is faster than this one, its in my budget, ill get this one. They dont calculate how many Sysmarks/dollar they get, they want the best they can buy at the price point.
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009-desktop-cpu-charts/Performance-Index,1407.html
In fact.... that 720 smokes the E8500 as well according to these performance marks and the E8500 lists at 190 on NewEgg right now Magic. Your point is invalid.
I stand by my argument, the only two differentiated products Intel has are the Atom, and the i7, everything else falls into the much larger and more important mainstream battleground, and if you do a comparative anaysis dollar for dollar, after these price cuts, what it will tell you is that you were way overpaying for Intel yesterday, and now you still are overpaying but by a slighter slimmer margin.
All I am saying is this, Intel could cut price another 15% for each of these products, and AMD would still have comparable offerings beating them in the value comparison. Like Intel's new prices because you have an existing platform that you would like to upgrade, thank AMD for driving them there.
Want to build a new system in the mainstream market positioned with CPU's positioned anywhere under $175 or so, it only makes sense to start with AMD, even when you factor in Intel's lower prices.
ps....
<cite class="ic-username"></cite>ardichoke and I are both making the same arguments real time, its cool, and kinda creepy at the same time.... :*)
AMD Phenom II X4 955 - 1046.17
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 - 1034.38
Now then, lets look at the prices for each on our favorite site, NewEgg.
AMD: $215 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103674)
Intel: $319.99 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115130)
Now then... when we take the performance score and divide by the price we get this.
AMD: 4.866 points per dollar
Intel: 3.233 points per dollar
I think it's pretty clear which processor is the better value there. If you go down the list on that entire chart, what you will find is the same correlation. AMD may not have the fastest processor on the market... but when it comes to processing power per dollar argument, they take the cake.
Intel Core i7 920 $265
1151.6 4.346 points per dollar
Pretty evenly matched in points per dollar, but i would still get the Intel because it performs better, and i would pay more for a better performing chip. And, i havent even touched on the actual performance/ dollar you would get from overclocking the chip.
Like Cliff said we would be able to go back and fourth on this forever because we both have different frames of mind. All that i would care about at the end of the day is if we each had 500 dollars to build a computer, you build amd and i build intel, whos would be better? I think i can build a better pc with an intel chip, and so do many others.
Core i7 920 = 1151.60 / 280 = 4.113 points per dollar
That is still a 15.4% lower point per dollar rating than the Phenom II X4 955.
Though, if you want to try and make the Mircocenter comparison, the Phenom II X3 720 is currently 119... you could try and extrapolate up to the 955 from there... but that would still be pretty questionable.
If you want to go lowest price... a quick google shopping search gives me this
Phenom II 955 : $199
i7 920: $249.99 (sorry, not including EBay in this comparison)
Which gives the following PPD:
Phenom: 5.25
i7: 4.606
I'm not trying to disparage Intel. They make good products (except their graphics chips, those suck). I'm just pointing out (and so is Cliff as far as I can tell) that even with the slight price drop, their mid-range processors still have a higher PPD than AMD.
Retailers aside, what this article is about is suggested retail. And honestly, I don't want to turn this into an i7 vs. debate, because that is my point, its Intel's only real differentiated product on the high end.
This price cut is about mainstream performance, and even with it, Intel still looses in that market. Lets talk about mainstream cost dollar for dollar, and forget the i7 920 even exists for a moment. Also bear in mind, when your talking i7, your no longer talking about just the cost of a CPU upgrade, your talking about moving to a whole new build, so you have to talk chip, triple channel memory, so on so forth.
If you want to make a CPU to CPU comparison on existing platforms, and analyze what this 15% price cut really means, you have to look at mainstream offerings, the bread and butter chips, the bulk of the market, and see how it all adds up. My point being, Intel lowers price, and they are still a dollar for dollar performance looser when you are talking chips from about $175 down, where most people buy.
Every time, I get a little admiration... and then I get sick of hearing the same "value" argument.