Intel Slashes Comet Lake CPU Pricing To Capitalize On AMD Ryzen 5000 Shortages
AMD relies solely on TSMC to manufacturer all its major product lines (Ryzen, EPYC, Radeon, etc.), and the fab is fully booked. It's not exactly easy for AMD to call up and ask TSMC to produce additional chips when it simply doesn't have the capacity to fulfill those demands. Throw in out-of-this-world demand for next-gen consoles like the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X -- which both use a Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 GPU -- and you can see why AMD is in a bind here.
Seeing a clear opportunity to kick AMD while it is down, Intel is making some moves on the pricing front to make its Comet Lake-S processors even more attractive. Given that Intel has multiple fabs around the globe pumping out chips, and its 14nm process node is beyond mature at this point, it is slashing prices on some of its more popular Comet Lake-S offerings.
Take the Core i7-10700KF, for example, which retails for $319.99. The processor has stayed around that price for the past few months, then stepped down to around $285 earlier this month. Then, yesterday, the price fell to a low $229 (as first noticed by Tom's Hardware). The Core i7-107000F (which has its integrated GPU disabled) is most closely matched with the Ryzen 5 5600X which retails for $299. The only problem is that you can't get one at that price anywhere these days.
If you want a bit more muscle in your rig, you could opt for the Core i9-10900KF, which is down from $499.99 to $449.99 at Newegg with free shipping. The 8-core/16-thread Ryzen 7 5800X, which again isn't readily available, has an MSRP of $449.
It will be interesting to see how 11th generation Rocket Lake-S pricing will stack up against Ryzen 5000 when the processors launch later this quarter. Intel is promising up to a 19 percent IPC uplift over Comet Lake-S, and early benchmarks show the flagship Core i9-11900K easily manhandling the best Ryzen 5000 processors in single-threaded performance.
