That's the thing, if this really compares with the 6900k, a $1000 CPU why on earth do you sell at $500, even at $800 you would still sell all you could make.
If the $500 price point is correct for the top chip and £350 for the next one down, which is only a couple of hundred MHz slower. Then there is a reason why AMD has chosen this price point.
Performance, cooling needed, motherboard cost, sales projections, pricing department insanity, Psst Scots home early, who knows.
Only AMD know why they will choose the prices they will, but if those leaked prices are correct, and the performance that good, then why so cheap, what's the catch.
Market share grab? AMD know they have lost a lot of confidence of their consumers over the years for inferior products.. Fiji showed them pricing a item high does not make it a premium item if the item itself is under par.
AMD need market share, they need to instil confidence in their consumers again, people are not going to gamble their cash on an expensive chip if theres no performance anyhow, and if it is there, theres still the nagging doubt in many peoples minds that the chip will probably fall short in one or multiple other areas.
AMD have gone on record with their whole RTG thing about being a revolution, despite Brexit those Polaris cards were priced cheaply for what they were, yeah they were a bit naff, but they were still cheap. And they have clawed back market share, if anything that has shown them they have willing consumers if they get their pricing right.
As i said previously, if the RyZen was magically a 6900k competitor and you priced it within £100 or so of the 6700k you effectively make 2 tiers of Intel chips irrelevant, like it or not that would be the case, you would not pay the extra for the 6900k as you could get the same for half the price, and you would be tempted to pay the extra £100 for the higher performance of the RyZen. Intel would have a lot of work to do, to keep market share at that point.
Its not like RyZen is going to be replaced next year either i would imagine, so might aswell come in hard with a groundbreaking price, really shake up the CPU market and see what Intel counter with, while their team are building up for the next tier etc.
But they could say well our stuffs as good as Intels now so were pricing it as such, they would get sales, off the back of it being a little cheaper, if the performance was the same, lower TDP, and some nice new fancy features etc, but not nearly as many as they would if they was ultra aggressive with pricing.
Id imagine people with 6900k setups would probably sell them and get RyZen setups if AMD priced them low enough, ive already seen people selling other high end Intel chips and even state the reason they are doing so is because they want to move to Zen, go check the MM here, theres a few for sale.
