AMD Quietly Slashes Prices of FX-9000 Family Microprocessors Again

From X-bit Labs: Advanced Micro Devices has once again cut prices of its top-of-the-range AMD FX-9000-series microprocessors. While in the U.S. AMD continues to sell its FX-9370 and FX-9590 to system integrators only, in Europe the latest central processing units from the company are available in retail in box and tray versions. At present, pricing of those products is comparable to that of Intel Core i7 in LGA1155 or LGA1150 form-factors.

Geizhals.at, one of the most popular price search engines in Europe, lists a number of stores that sell eight-core AMD FX-9370 (4.40GHz clock-rate, 4.7GHz maximum Turbo Core speed, 16MB cache, 220W TDP) microprocessor for €200 - €270 ($270 - $365). The same price search engine indicates that eight-core AMD FX-9590 microprocessor (4.70GHz clock-rate, 5.0GHz maximum Turbo Core speed, 16MB cache, 220W TDP) for €270 - €300 ($365 - $405). Tray versions of Intel Core i7-4770K microprocessor currently starts at €285 ($385) in Europe.

Just a month ago AMD FX-9590 only available in the UK for around £299 ($466.79). Nowadays the high-performance AMD chips aimed at enthusiasts are available in all European countries and at relatively low price. As a result, the AMD FX-9000 central processing units are no longer positioned as competitors for Intel’s high-end desktop (HEDT) platform based on Intel Core i7-4800/4900-sequence “Ivy Bridge-E” chips.

AMD FX-9590 microprocessor based on Vishera design is only 17.5% faster compared to the FX-8350, the top-of-the-range chip available for end-users today. Meanwhile, it costs dramatically higher than a "typical" eight-core AMD FX offering.

AMD’s current retail top-of-the-range eight-core FX-8350 microprocessor is clocked at 4.0GHz and in terms of performance is usually behind Intel Core i7-3770K and Core i7-4770K (4 cores with HT, LGA1155) as well as Core i7-3970X (6 cores with HT, LGA2011). While in video games its performance can easily be improved by overclocking, in applications where performance difference equals or exceeds 50%, a 17.5% clock-speed boost will hardly help much. Therefore, positioning AMD FX-9590 against Core i7 Extreme series hardly made any sense and it was generally more logical for AMD to compete against Core i7-4770K, not against Extreme family of products from its mighty rival.

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