According to DigiTimes (via Kok-Hua Chia), it appears that AMD has no plans to raise the prices of its “mainstream” CPU and GPU products, namely its Ryzen 7000 and Radeon RX 7000 series.
While there’s no clear definition as to which SKUs this will affect, it’s possible that we could see midrange offerings mimic price points of previous generations, whilst the company’s best gaming CPU launches at a higher cost.
If accurate, this could spell trouble for Intel who recently confirmed plans to raise the prices of its current generation processors, which will impact upcoming Raptor Lake CPUs too. Higher prices could drive those looking to upgrade their gaming PC away from team blue’s offerings, and into the hands of AMD.
There may be some uncertainty about how much Intel is raising Raptor Lake prices with respect to Alder Lake prices. Intel has said they were going up, but not by how much. As for AMD? https://www.dexerto.com/tech/amd-ryzen-7000-details-1882416/… Since these are from an AMD slide, I think we can count on these prices. There may be added models later on, especially the 7800X3D. There are also some “rumors” of a 7600 (no X) early next year.
Ryzen 9 7950X For $699
Ryzen 9 7900X For $549
Ryzen 7 7700X For $399
Ryzen 5 7600X For $299
Note that the 7950X will have 16 cores and 32 threads. I expect it to outperform the 13900K on both multithreaded and single-threaded loads. But there is an important gotcha there. You will see benchmarks for both chips with high-end motherboards, all-in-one water coolers, and say 1000 watt power supplies. (Yes, for the graphics card you want to add, go for a 1200 to 1500 watt power supply.) AMD you will see, will encourage you to run the 7600X and 7700X CPUs at 65 watts and the 7900X and 7950X at somewhere around 120 watts. Can you get to well over 200 watts, and an excellent power supply can handle the transients? Sure. But running the CPU at below rated power, with 95% to 120% of rated clock speeds, is a much better choice for longevity.
I’m sure the Raptor Lake parts will have similar happy places, with serious overclocking requiring lots of work. Does anyone really need this level of performance? I feel funny asking that question, working on an R9 5900X system, but some performance testing aspects are much easier if you have a high-end system and can turn cores off and/or clock speeds down.