Is AMD Clearing Stock in Anticipation for the 12nm Zen+ April Update? Prices are dropping.

Those are some pretty sweet deals.

I was kinda skeptical about what improvements Zen+ would offer over Zen beyond minor tweaks. This move by AMD makes me somewhat hopeful we'll see noticeable improvements and possibly OC potential.

 

Maybe, or it is possible that GPU prices are affecting PC component sales. I do not see any upgrades in the near future, the same goes to all my friends. GPU + RAM pricing will take down the numbers also for other components, especially CPUs. Maybe that is one of the reasons why Intel went for AMD iGPUs. I would say if they want to keep PC gaming growing they need to bundle CPU and GPU and keep the price reasonable. AMD has upper hand here. Do not expect any Intel + Nvidia combo sold together directly from manufacturer.

 

Unreasonable RAM prices are keeping me from upgrading. It's just silly.

Additionally, with more functionality moving to the CPU and motherboards doing less, motherboards are unreasonably-priced these days as well. How are they doing less than ever, but costing more than ever? But WOW! They sure do have lots of pretty lights now?!

Don't even get me started on the GPU prices...

 

Few days ago when i was checking hardware prices i spotted the same thing. Also in my opinion difference in price between 1700x and 1800x makes 1700x pointless and there is no reason to buy it. Also i've seen slight drops in price of ram by 10-30% and more ram options available at some stores but still far from 120-140 euros for 16GB 3000MHz which was before prices increase.

GPUs are still sick overpriced, for example radeon rx 580 8GB costs about 500 euros. It supposed to cost how much? 300 on release and with time getting cheaper? Unfortunately it went totally opposite and here (Poland) has never been available at recommended price.

 

I paid $400 for the Asus Striker Extreme back in 2007 - which is about $500 with inflation. My current X299 SLI board has 2 more USB ports than the striker, 4 extra DIMM slots, more/better VRMs, double the number of SATA connectors, U.2, Dual BIOS's, UEFI which is far superior to anything back then in terms of software, better looking in every way imaginable, better audio output, 2x M.2 and it has pretty lights and it cost half the striker did (Paid $220 for it,- arguably cheaper because the deal I got included a Corsair H75 but I won't subtract that out).

Motherboard pricing seems fine to me. GPU Pricing also seems fine if you ignore miner inflation. RAM pricing is unreasonable - I'll agree with that one.

 

gave up on upgrade atm prices are to high here in Denmark
best price atm Ryzen 1800X 328,91euros

 

Tell that to the retailers. Last time there was that 30% price decrease in manufacturing, every retailer here increased the price by 30%.

 

With the exception of things outside of higher quality and additional electrical connections you named (which I hope would get cheaper over time and do), better sound processing and dual BIOS may be notable and not that expensive. The electrical connections/interfaces (USB,DIMMS,PCIe, etc...) and circuit boards are likely cheaper than ever to produce since circuit boards are used in darned-near everything these days.
I agree a UEFI is a superior interface, but could be provided easily as well through 3rd parties (just like the BIOS has historically been - e.g. AMI).

 

From what i've gathered it will only be minor tweeks, Higher default ram, slight bump in clocks, maybe a bit of IPC improvement though that will likely come from the higher clocks. Beyond that though, very little differences

 

Faster ram speeds and tighter timings is what makes Ryzen tick. That is why I have pushed the timings and speed as far as I can and keep voltages within reason. 3600 is not going to be enough unless tighter timings can be achieved as well. The reviews are going to need to take that into consideration. Overall system performance and responsiveness is completely noticeable over 3200 and I am only at 3487 (best am able to achieve). CPU speed is not as important as how the ram is set.

 

Damn I really want to upgrade but DDR4 prices are killing me.

 

How exactly do you ignore miner inflation? There's no way to ignore it when you are paying your purchases. It's no different from the RAM price inflation. Demand is higher than supply.

 

I think he said that because of the what the GPUs MSRP is supposed to be. Yes, GPUs cost more then their MSRP right now, but their MSRP is not bad.

A little difference from say, ram, which i'm not even sure if they have MSRP anymore, they just go up and down, they are never "on sale" they just get cheaper then more expensive.

Correct me if i'm wrong about ram not having MSRP, but i haven't seen one.

 

same here, still stuck on ddr3 2133, cant justify it at those prices.

 

2x4gig strips of ddr4 seem quite reasonable atm compared to 2x8, recently picked up HyperX Fury DDR4 2400Mhz 8GB (2x4GB) for £80 (unused but tested) on ebay for my girlfriends Asus Z170 gaming pro rig, and got myself an i7 7700k for £210 although im not overly impressed with it having owned an i7 6700k(failed) and recently upgraded from an i5 6600k.

 

Yesterday, I saw on one shop one well priced Card which may be considered High End...
It was $1000 (Tax Included) Pro Duo (2x RX-580 with 2x 16GB GDDR5).
Anything below it till one overpriced RX-560 4G unavailable.

 

The only difference is who pockets all the money. The consumer will suffer the same in both cases. MSRP is pure hypocrisy if it's unavailable to most people. Personally I think it's a good thing miners need to pay outrageous amounts for the cards (so it's a good thing no store cares about the MSRP), but it's a pity gamers suffer on the side (so it's a bad thing no store cares about the MSRP).

 

Totally agree with you on the pricing, but as for the motherboards doing less these days I would have to totally disagree.

With so much more going on inside the motherboards these days it's just crazy. Not sure how you can say there is less going on with the mobo's today as compared to them three to four years ago.

Just the M.2 functionality alone is crazy to me with what they have achieved.

 

M.2 is using the PCIe bus which already exists. It's much faster than the SATA bus on the southbridge. At least from the Intel standpoint, what was once the entire north bridge functionality (was once part of the motherboard) is now on the CPU (memory controllers, PCIe controllers, integrated video, etc...). This all used to be on the motherboard (northbridge and further back individual chips for each).
Now, you can get additional PCIe functionality/lanes through an additional controller added to some extended boards, but most people don't need them.