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Intel Reacts To AMD Ryzen Apparently Cutting Prices On Core i7 And i5 Processors (hothardware.com)
Less than a week after AMD announced the first line up of Ryzen processors, Intel is apparently fighting back by dropping the price of several of its processors. Rob Williams, writing for HotHardware: So, what we're seeing now are a bunch of Intel processors dropping in price, perhaps as a bit of a preemptive strike against AMD's chips shipping later this week -- though admittedly it's still a bit too early to tell. Over at Amazon, the prices have been slower to fall, but we'd highly recommend that you keep an eye on the following pages, if you are looking for a good deal this week. So far, at Micro Center we've seen the beefy six-core Intel Core i7-6850K (3.60GHz) drop from $700 to $550, and the i7-6800K (3.40GHz) drop down to $360, from $500. Also, some mid-range chips are receiving price cuts as well. Those include the i7-6700K, a 4.0GHz chip dropping from $400 to $260, and the i7-6600K, a 3.50GHz quad-core part dropping from $270 to $180. Even Intel's latest and greatest Kaby Lake-based i7-7700K has experienced a drop, from $380 to $299, with places like Amazon and NewEgg retailing for $349.
The centerpiece of this 'article' seems to focus on Microcenter, which ALWAYS has priced drops and sales like this going on.
Everybody take a deep breath and see where we're at this time next month.
Intel appears to edge out in single core performance, but by less than 5-10% depending on processor and we still haven't seen single core performance of Ryzen 5 or 3. Ryzen multi-core performance spanks Intel like a red-headed stepchild. Moreover, this is the first iteration of Ryzen, so performance gains probably have farther to go for things like IPC than Intel's current processors. Basically, unless you're planning on waiting for Coffee lake and believe there will be a greater improvement than another 3% IPC gain, Ryzen is as good or better than Intel's offerings especially with the lower TDP.