Let's get a few things in perspective. Lisa only announced 3 SKU's this morning, the 3700x, 3800x and the 3900x. Obviously there will be more SKU's added as time moves on, there could be more SKU's added in a few weeks time.
As for prices, the 3800x is aimed to compete with the 9900K. A 9900K is priced at £500 from our hosts and the 3800x is priced at $399 (£314). Tell me what is so underwhelming ?
What's underwhelming is you can buy a 8 core 16 thread CPU from AMD today for what ~£200 today. We're moving to 7nm, double the transistor density, 8 core/16 thread should be dropping in cost. 7nm costs more per mm^2, but we're still talking about a fairly significantly smaller amount of actual 7nm die and a much cheaper than it was then 14nm die. Frankly they could be, and should be imo offering the 12core chips at current 8 core pricing, and offering 16 core stuff at higher prices.
Going from a £200 2700 8core 16 thread chip to a £300 8 core 16 thread chip when the production cost is significantly lower is incredibly underwhelming and exceptionally disappointing.
I fully intend to upgrade to Zen and had waited for Zen 2, but I was hoping for a very reasonably priced 12 core as we currently have reasonably priced 8 cores. Going from very reasonably priced 8 cores to significantly more expensive 8 cores is not imo good, for a node drop.
This is a very 'intel' move, using a node for increasing margins over offering just drastically better performance. Cheaper chips per core = higher volume sales, stealing shedloads of market share and generally causing many people to switch.
Intel will drop prices to match AMD and now it will end up being 8 core 16 thread Intel vs AMD at about the same price. With Intel name recognition that isn't going to convince huge amounts of people to switch to AMD. Personally I think pricing is terrible and isn't built to take advantage of the next year. AMD should be dominating, absolutely slaying Intel the next year. Make everyone take them seriously, have Intel become the joke company offering half the cores at double the power and without any security and a year of that and Intel's name will have taken a huge hit.