I don't think anything is subsidised. Ryzen 3 3100 have been as low as $100 AUD. I would think AMD is still making a slight margin on that. That includes a cooler (not as good but still). Its also got two separate dies. Packaging a die doesn't cost as much as many think, we are talking a few dollars. Say $10 for a low end heatsink. AMD Athlon 300G retails about $85 delivered. AMD was making money on the 1600AF. The Ryzen 3100 has two ccx. the Ryzen 3300x has one ccx. AMD is very efficent at reusing their parts.
Ah, good info there. I guess that the 3100 CCX chips are just the garbage they needed a way to get rid of? Sort of surprised that they have that much garbage left if the yields are so high though. So we could, reasonably, say that it costs about USD50 to make a single two chiplet Zen 2 CPU. That is still a 100% mark-up on even the cheapest Zen 2 CPU on the market. No, I think that I was wrong in the idea of subsidisation now that I have more accurate numbers available. Amazing just what economies of scale get you these days.
Yeah, no surprise though really. Look at how much Intel charge for 14nm... The 14nm yields would have to be as good as they could be by now but they still charge a fortune for chips. AMD could probably drop the price but the question is why would they? They destroy Intel in everything, own the CPU market so they can charge what they want.
I'm not so sure that intel's 14nm yields are that good for how hard they are pushing these chips. They have gone from 4c 3.9ghz to 10c 5.3ghz on essentially the same process and can't keep the 10900k in stock. Agree on AMD's pricing though, they have the performance so it is time to charge accordingly. I am sure their shareholders would be asking questions if they have the performance crown but still feel the need to undercut their competitors.
Can you even get a 12 core consumer-level chip from intel? or a 16 core for that matter? 3950x doesn't cost much more than a 10900k, you can buy one today without a pre-order and it has 12 more threads AMD could by rights be charging a shit load more on the 12 and 16 core SKUs especially since every iteration has significantly boosted IPC and gaming performance.
I don't think AMD should drop their price. Taking that two CCD which costs you USD50 to manufacture you are selling for a minimum of USD500 so even presuming another USD50 for box, cooler, etc. the expected gross profit is still USD400 per unit. OEM's getting the 3900 and Pro 3900 will be paying different prices and the 3900XT is the same price. The 3950X sells for USD750. Looking at the Zen 3 line with: 5950X - USD800 5900X - USD550 5800X - USD450 5600X - USD300 Presuming the same chiplet configuration but with each being a single CCX now (?) then AMD making north of USD500 per unit shipped on the two chiplet CPU's which no longer come with a cooler. The other CPU SKU's will be the volume movers and still return a good gross figure. To me the interesting question is how long do you have to move CPU's to recover the cost of the R&D that has gone into it? I am sure that the math is not that hard to do because a lot of the details will be out there given AMD are traded publicly. It is much more exciting that watching some late night poker television thing watching the gambles they are taking.
The highest I am aware of is the 10 core 10900k Ryzen 5000 is literally perfect timing for AMD. Intel isn't just not going to compete, they haven't even adjusted their product stack to be able to. AMD isn't going to be dropping price. Not really. What they will want to do is get as many users onto AMD as possible sweeter deals.
I don't think they've done a 'deep dive' day the zen3 launch wasn't that level of detail. anandtech interview has some finer details probably as good as you'll get for now. https://www.anandtech.com/show/16176/amd-zen-3-an-anandtech-interview-with-cto-mark-papermaster On R&D costs AMD spent US$441m in Q2, however that's all of AMD with now 2 concurrent graphics architectures (RDNA and CDNA) etc. https://www.kitguru.net/channel/gen...h-and-development-investment-has-grown-by-18/
So if we do some quick extrapolation, AMD are spending between USD1.2B and USD1.6B per CY for R&D. If the USD50 gross profit for the 3100 goes entirely to the R&D budget then AMD will need to move between 24M and 32M processors to pay for the development. MAybe they are going for some kind of SuperPi record in terms of processors moved?
Don't forget they have the server market, laptops etc as well and they also have the consoles, that'll make them a shit ton of money.
Get the word out to all the intel fanbois to buy up big on 3100s, thus reducing AMDs potential profit margins, so intel wins in the end.
i wouldnt be surprised if amd take a small hit on the bottom end. it buys so much advertising.... and people tend to gravitate up. so the halo chip puts the brand name up in lights. the cheap chip gets the mum and dad buyers in (and they slide into the meaty middle price point) choo choo. someones all aboard but, well yes, most likely, but were still waiting on reviews and solid benchmarks from the non biased guys
As far as benchmarks go they have beaten Intel in basically everything but gaming for years now. Intel are still on an old node, stupidly power hungry and hot, have an obscene amount of security issues and cost a fortune. As far as I'm concerned AMD beat Intel with all of that alone and have beaten Intel since Zen 1. The fact Intel cant get off 14nm goes to show even though they are a bigger company, they have horrible designers.
you said they destroy intel in everything. but IPC is very important. perf/watt and cost is where AMD have had the advantage. now we expect they'll be on top with IPC too. intel still have raw frequency and a metric fuck ton of cash up their sleeves. the important thing they hold is the mind set of joe average, who still thinks pentium and core are the ducks nutz