[wmf]

Intel was selling 18-core chips for >$2,400 then when Threadripper came out Intel released the 18-core i9 for "only" $2,000, so that is something of a price drop.

Also, Intel's $350 8700K was cheaper at launch than AMD's $450 1800X even though the 8700K is faster in gaming.

[zaarn]

Keep in mind that AMD has an inherent advantage: the Zen architecture and Glue.

When AMD fabs a TR2 they have to find 4 good Ryzen dies which are fairly small and they make a lot of them since they are part of the entire lineup. Once they have 4 good dies, they get glued together.

If they wanted 64 cores they'd just have to look for 8 good Ryzen dies, halving their yield compared to 32.

On the Intel side they have to increase the silicon area and then hope that all 64 cores are capable of full core speed in the current setup.

Glueing CPUs together makes it cheap to scale at little cost.

[smueller1234]

Err, that's only partially true at best. If you have many dies, the cost (in money, in chip real estate and in performance drop) of the interconnect skyrockets.

[undersuit]

The interconnect cost also skyrockets on the cores themselves. Intel's moved to a mesh network on their newest cores: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11550/the-intel-skylakex-revi...

AMD's advantage of picking and choosing smaller parts still reigns supreme. If a Infinity Fabric component on the AMD die is defective enough to necessitate it is turned off the die is no longer able to participate in some of the more complex multi-die couplings. If the mesh component on an Intel die is defective the core(two actually because SKUs) has to be fused off and the part automatically bins as a lower SKU. As the mesh increases in complexity more and more of the design can be compromised.

[solomatov]

The top core i9 costs 2k$ on amazon. The top ryzen cost $799. So, they are cheaper than Xeon, but not cheaper than equivalent AMD's processor.

[loeg]

The grandparent comment is not claiming that $2k is under $800, but instead that Intel would be able to charge a higher price for the i9 if the TR was not on the market.

[glandium]

You should compare the top i9 with threadripper 1950X, which is more expensive, but still less expensive than an i9.

[examancer]

That's literally what the OP did. A 1950X is only $799 now, so less than half a top end i9.

[loeg]

That's extremely recent. It was more like $900 a day or two ago: https://camelcamelcamel.com/AMD-Threadripper-32-thread-Proce...

And it is still $960 on Newegg: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1681911...

[dragontamer]

I got my 1950x for $699 a few months ago. Its been $699 for a while at Microcenter.

The "price-competitive" i9-7900x is 10-cores for $799, and seems to be the best price-competitive comparison. Better single-thread, better at AVX512 tasks, but weaker in general purpose multithreading due to having fewer cores.

[sosuke]

Eh its just a matter of patience I guess. I got mine for $799 in December.

[yellowapple]

"And it is still $960 on Newegg"

As of 2018-06-11 18:27 PDT (when I clicked on that link) the current Newegg price is $799.99.