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6600k price
- Thread starter nobbybonez
- Start date
Chips have got smaller and cheaper to make while prices have risen and performance has gone virtually nowhere. After the first month RRP prices went out of the window if anyone paid them at all.
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Buy.... or don't buy. It really is that simple.
100% agree you don't have to buy it
Soldato
- Joined
- 6 Feb 2010
- Posts
- 14,594
Intel has thrown their weight around and force board partners to lock down on BLK overclocking, that's why price has gone up again
So there's no need for retailer to sell at the more modest pricing as before
Of course, there's also the exchange rate factor as well as others already pointed out.
So there's no need for retailer to sell at the more modest pricing as before
Of course, there's also the exchange rate factor as well as others already pointed out.
Soldato
OcUK aren't competitive when it comes to CPU pricing. I'd be looking elsewhere.
I haven't compared, but I will say that OCuk have given me fantastic service consistently for years. Items arrive quickly, have always been correct, if I've had to call I've always got through quickly to someone who knew what they were talking about. They even called me up about an order once when I'd ordered parts for two different builds just to make sure I knew that this RAM wasn't compatible with this motherboard. They also sponsor this wonderful community which has been extremely helpful to me over the years. IF they are a fiver over some other competitor (like I say, I haven't checked), I'm honestly fine with that. We're not buying penny sweets here (if those still exist). When I spend £300+ on something, +/- 3% is worth it to me for assurance I'll be happy with it.
Well you can't make confident statements about profits unless you know how much R&D and infrastructure cost to get there. It doesn't matter if Skylake costs 80% of Haswell to produce per chip if you spent 1.6bn dollars just refurbishing your fabs to produce it. Not until you've paid all that upfront investment off first. I think you said something similar to the above in another thread as well so this has already been pointed out.
As to RRP, well if there's a supply shortage, that happens. People forget that the corollary of being able to make more per unit in a shortage is that you can't sell as many units as you like. A shortage is typically worse for a retailer due to this, rather than an opportunity to cash in. Price hikes just offset it a - typically small - amount.
The inflated price of the 6700k was due to stock shortages. Now that Intel yields at 14nm have improved and now that the chip has been out for a number of months I suspect supply is catching up with demand leading to a drop in prices. The top end skylake 'preminum' was quote substantial with the 6700k nearing £400 this obviously far outweighs the currency swings £/$ of late.
Hence the use of the word 'general' indicating most but not necessarily all
Loads of people on this forum are borderline obsessed with the die size of cpu's believing that this should be the sole or main guide to how expensive a CPU should be from Intel. In reality the cost of the wafer the CPU is produced from only represents a small portion of the total cost. Most of the cost of Intel cpu's is to recover the large sunken costs or research, development and the fabs needed to make the chips.
To illustrate my point... This article put the cost of a high end CPU wafer (300mm round wafer) at $5,000 in 2014
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimhandy/2014/04/30/why-are-chips-so-expensive/#28f03e4a7789
A skylake cpu is 122.4mm2
A 300mm wide wafer has a surface area of 70685mm2 (area = 'pie - 3.14159' * radius [150]squared)
So 577 odd skylake 4c dies could fit on that wafer.
Now as the wafer is round so some of the dies wont fit in their entirety and some will be lost due to defects. Lets assume an unrealistically high loss of 50% from these two factors that leaves 288 odd chips.
So in my example each chip costs $17.36 each from the cost of the space on the wafer alone. A 6700k had a launch 1ku price of $350 so about 5% of the bulk price for the CPU!
To expect Intel to be selling 6700k's cheap (at or less than about £200 by the time they reach our shores) because the die is a lot smaller than previous gens is therefore somewhat ridiculous (a 14nm cpu occupies about a quarter the space of a 32nm cpu of the same sort of design)
Now in reality the cpu's from such a wafer wont all be 6700k's, subject to a 'binning' process some will be 6700's some 6600's some 6400's etc which of course sell for less money. But then the overall loss of defective chips wont be anything like 50% so its not unreasonable to assume a far lower cost than $15-20 cost per chip from a 300mm wafer representing around 5% of the details value of those chips
I have already show that adjusted for inflation and the £/$ exchange rate that Intel's price for the 6700k is no more than the 2600k from years ago.....
The high price of skylake chips in the UK has been down to low supply and weakening £/$ exchange rates
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Not sure what point your trying to make? Anyone with half a clue knows that the 'material' costs of a cup of tea make up a tiny fraction of the cost of a cup of tea bought from a cafe etc as such you would not necessarily expect a relatively large positive or negative change in the material cost to have the same percentage wise change on the end price.
Much like my, analytical, examination of the material costs of part of a CPU suggests that the material costs make up a similarly small fraction of the end cost of a CPU and as such likewise expecting a change in the material costs to have a big effect on the end price is similarly misguided
Not as obsessed as some people trying to justify climbing chip prices, and argue them away it seems.
Skylake costs less to produce. Intel make a killing every month. People keep mentioning inflated desktop prices. We can all remember what we paid for our chips. Thats all we need to know.
It's a prime example of sheer ignorance that you are displaying there.
Yes, Skylake is cheaper for Intel to make than Haswell was.
Though you're forgetting a little something............
The total cost to research 14nm, develop it, build fabs (do you know how expensive fabs are?) goes into the many billions of dollars.
You're not just paying Intel for the raw material costs. You're paying for multi billion dollars of research that let them build such CPU's.
We're quite lucky that Intel is still charging the same for their 14nm CPU's.
Whenever I look at prices like this, for hardware and software I just think at the cost per year my 2600k over 5 years has cost me around £3.70 a month which isn't too bad as it gets used everyday and I think I get my moneys worth, I like others would love lower prices but have to take it as it is.
I have already shown that Intel has kept prices pretty much steady since at least the 2600k era, Intel are not the cause of the price rises! Inflation £/$ exchange rate and issues with yields at 14nm have causes the price difference in what we pay from the 2600k to the 6700k. Now you may try and blame Intel for the poor 14nm yields but there hardly the only company struggling to bring in ever successive smaller processes and so I think the 14nm issues are more attributable to physics then any lack of innovation or drive from Intel.
I have provided a reasoned, sourced post on how much money Intel could potentially save based on a smaller cpu die compared to previous gens and as you can see the material costs from the size of the die only make up a small fraction of the retail cost of the chip. (the exact cost to Intel is probably not in the public domain as its likely very commercially sensitive - I would welcome anyone who could add to or correct anything in my above posts from any referenced sources)
Intel make that in a month...
No they don't.
In 2014 for example, their net income was $11.7 billion. Their R&D was almost double that, $19.7 billion. (Source: https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-reports-record-full-year-revenue-of-55-9-billion-generates-net-income-of-11-7-billion-up-22-percent-year-over-year/)
This is just 2014, 14nm took several years to research and develop.
Note that the figures I quoted above are Intel's total - so obviously not all that R&D was 14nm development, but some of it was.
Point is Intel are spending tens of billions per year in research to be able to be the first to a given process node. The fact they haven't increased prices is good for all of us
Soldato
Always strange reading a thread like this where people argue with one another over something so silly.
I don't agree with it but Intel can charge what they want for their CPU's. Just like Nvidia can charge whatever they want for their GPU's. No competition means they run the show.
I'm not saying there isn't competition out there but we all know where our money is best spent..
I don't agree with it but Intel can charge what they want for their CPU's. Just like Nvidia can charge whatever they want for their GPU's. No competition means they run the show.
I'm not saying there isn't competition out there but we all know where our money is best spent..