Why must the i5 be so expensive?

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ZodaEX

Supreme [H]ardness
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$180 dollars for Intel's lowest binned i5? Am I the only one who sees this as being very pricey? It couldn't possible cost that much more to produce over the i3. I mean you can get a Llano quad for $80 whats up with that?

/Endrant
 
ZodaEX said:
$180 dollars for Intel's lowest binned i5? Am I the only one who sees this as being very pricey? It couldn't possible cost that much more to produce over the i3. I mean you can get a Llano quad for $80 whats up with that?

/Endrant
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CPU performance. The Llano quads are slower in overall performance than even the slowest i3 (in most apps) based on the performance of the CPU itself (not the on-CPU GPU). Second, the i3 is only dual-core while almost all desktop i5s are true quad-core. The Intel pricing is to separate the CPUs in performance rank.
 
Considering the way it performs, the price is right. AMD is slow.
 
You do realize that the lowest binned i5 performs similar to the competitions highest end 8 core part.
 
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It's pretty cheap...back in the day $200 would only get you a cache-castrated Core 2 Quad, and even the i7 920 cost $279.
The price/performance is on par with AMD.
 
Is it really that bad? I remember paying around $200 for the i5-750 in '09...
 
Prices on everything are going up. HDDs have soared in price, the HD7000 and GTX600s went up in price...Prices are staying the same or going up in the various performance tiers because retailers see that they can do it...and people will still pay.
 
And I thought $174 for my X2 3000+ Venice single core I paid to pre-order from Monarch Computer (who remembers them?) was a good deal back in April '05. Damn these quad cores for starting about that price! Think about the return on investment you're getting from a performance standpoint...you're entering the territory of the fastest consumer level CPUs available on the planet.

Suck it up, buttercup. :p
 
I think what OP is complaining about is the lack of competition on pricing between AMD and Intel. The 2500K has been more or less the same price, $200, for 18 months now. Same with the 2600K. And IVB is a stinker for the average overclocker on this forum. So it feels like price/performance has stayed the same over 18 months.

Competition FTW!
 
I think what OP is complaining about is the lack of competition on pricing between AMD and Intel. The 2500K has been more or less the same price, $200, for 18 months now. Same with the 2600K.
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I believe there has been some competition recently. The main problem was when Bulldozer was released AMD priced it so that the FX 8150 was significantly more expensive than the closest competing product the i5 2500K going against its usual policy of offering more bang for the dollar. In the last few months that has changed the price of the FX has significantly gone down and we have seen a little downward price movement on the i5 2500K. AMD does not have any competing product above that level so I do not see the i7s moving that much well except for the crazy deals you get in Microcenter.
 
What competition are you referring to? All the prices I've seen for 2500K and 2600K are still at the $200 or $300 range. At least for the major retailers. Amazon has the 2600K for $290 right now but IMO that's hardly a price drop for an 18 month old CPU.
 
What competition are you referring to?
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The price of the i5 2500K and FX 8150 are for the last few months within a few $ of each other. On sale you can get both for just about $200. Although I now see the 8150 for $189 at newegg with the 2500K at $204.
 
DejaWiz said:
And I thought $174 for my X2 3000+ Venice single core I paid to pre-order from Monarch Computer (who remembers them?) was a good deal back in April '05. Damn these quad cores for starting about that price! Think about the return on investment you're getting from a performance standpoint...you're entering the territory of the fastest consumer level CPUs available on the planet.

Suck it up, buttercup. :p
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There is no such thing as an athlon x2 3000. And if you really did pay 174 dollars for a 3000+ at launch then I dont think you got a good deal at all. I paid 150 bucks for my 3000+ at launch and that was the most expensive cpu ive ever bought in my life.
 
The price is high because most people will be more than satisfied by a Pentium dual-core, or an i3. Only true gaming enthusiasts or content developers need faster processors.

You can still game pretty well on a dual-core platform if price is an issue. The Core i3 at 3.3 GHz is typically only %10 behind the i5 processors at stock speeds.

I guarantee you that even at the $80 pricepoint, the Intel offering will provide a better general use experience than the AMD option. The gaming performance of the AMD integrated graphics is better, but if you're buying a discrete GPU that difference is moot, and BOY does it cost you on CPU performance!

For comparison, the Pentium G640 is THE SAME SPEED as the Core i5 661 in games and single-threaded apps like web browsing. It falls behind %10-30 in heavily-multithreaded tests. See here:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/117?vs=405
 
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ZodaEX said:
There is no such thing as an athlon x2 3000. And if you really did pay 174 dollars for a 3000+ at launch then I dont think you got a good deal at all. I paid 150 bucks for my 3000+ at launch and that was the most expensive cpu ive ever bought in my life.
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Sorry, meant to type A64, not X2. My bad!
 
I would just be happy you don't need a massive cpu cache. The 3960x ain't cheep. Wish I could have gotten away with a i5.
 
Almost 6 years ago we launched the Intel® Core™ 2 Duo's; at that time I brought an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz for $237. This was a processor that could beat almost anything that had come before but it wasn't close to beating other processors in the Intel Core 2 Duo line up like the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 and the Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 and the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 would simply blow it out of the water.

With the Intel Core i5's you are really getting a close to the top of the line processor for less then I paid for an almost entry level Intel Core 2 Duo processor 6 years ago.
 
Seems like I paid over $500 for an X2 4400+ when they first came out. Amazing performance, but THAT was high priced. $180 for a very strong performing chip is not bad.
 
OP you are nuts. The i5s have great pricing.

If you want a cheap but decent cpu consider the G620 which I have seen at $56
 
The i5 CPU's offer a lot of bang / buck, even at these prices. Dare I say, that their bang / buck ratio surpasses almost anything else out there?

As long as they can command such prices (hint: until AMD offers something similar), they have no reason to lower prices.
 
IntelEnthusiast said:
Almost 6 years ago we launched the Intel® Core™ 2 Duo's; at that time I brought an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz for $237. This was a processor that could beat almost anything that had come before but it wasn't close to beating other processors in the Intel Core 2 Duo line up like the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 and the Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 and the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 would simply blow it out of the water.

With the Intel Core i5's you are really getting a close to the top of the line processor for less then I paid for an almost entry level Intel Core 2 Duo processor 6 years ago.
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YUUUUP. I was an early adopter of the E6600. Purchased June 2006 for ~$300. It's still in the comp I use right now! Waiting for Haswell. This E6600 will have served me for 7 years before I switch out, got good use out of it!
 
ZodaEX said:
$180 dollars for Intel's lowest binned i5? Am I the only one who sees this as being very pricey? It couldn't possible cost that much more to produce over the i3. I mean you can get a Llano quad for $80 whats up with that?

/Endrant
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Let's look at the Llano APUs, shall we?

You're thinking of the GPU side of Llano as being the meat and potatoes of Llano, and you'd be right - the GPU side is, after all, AMD HD6xxx. However, (and this is the problem Llano faces compared to anything in LGA1155), the CPU side of Llano underwhelms compared to as little as PentiumG620 - which is a cut-down i3; don't even try to compare the CPU side of Llano to full-size i3, let alone i5 (K or non-K).

And the embarrassing part is that Llano is priced higher than PentiumG, and costs nearly as much as i3.

The real competition for i5-K (either SB or IB) is the AMD FX-8150 BE - however, it still requires two AMD cores to keep up with one from Intel (further, note that the FX uses more power than any LGA1155 CPU).

If I were honestly considering a CPU like Llano, the i5-3450 (multi-locked IB) + any AMD HD7750 would beat it (CPU side *and* GPU side) for little more. (The HD7750 is basically a bus-powered and somewhat underclocked HD7770 - if it weren't that the HD7770 is within $30USD - if not less - of the retail price, it would be compelling on its own.)

The i5-K series (equivalent to the BE AMD CPU line) is a major bargain performance-wise - and especially compared to AMD's eight-core parts. The tradeoffs of choosing AMD CPUs have to be worth it - right now, they aren't.
 
When you can get far more CPU power than most people need for $200, they don't seem that expensive.
 
PGHammer said:
the CPU side of Llano underwhelms compared to as little as PentiumG620 - which is a cut-down i3; don't even try to compare the CPU side of Llano to full-size i3, let alone i5 (K or non-K).
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I don't buy that at all. It's not fair or true to straight out say Llano underwhelms compared to a Pentium G620.

This year I built myself a Pentium G850 Intel rig and benched it directly head to head with my sig computer in a long handbrake encode. The CPU I used against the G850 is in my sig and was one of the lowest binned Athlon II X4s produced and it's slower than any existing Llano quad. In a head to head race to encode the super mario brothers movie in handbrake at identical encode settings, my Athlon II X4 was about %30 faster at doing the same encode job. So your outright wrong to say it's underwhelming. It's faster doing the tasks I most commonly do. The Athlon and the Pentium were the same price but the Athlon was clearly faster in handbrake.
 
I just upgraded proc, mobo, and ram from Micocenter... core i5 3570k, Asus P8Z77-V LX, and 16 gig of DDR3 running at 1600 mhz.. all for $364 after $10 rebate..

Damn good deal, and a big upgrade from my Q6600. Mild overclock to 4.2 on the stock cooler.. no need try any higher at the moment.
 
I honestly can't really tell the difference in speed on the i3/i5/i7 platform vs AMD unless the AMD is running DDR2 or something.

Honestly in most cases if I was building a rig on a budget I'd buy a $100 AMD CPU and call it a day and put the money I would have spent on an Intel CPU towards a better graphics card. That's just me. Others can probably find a great deal somewhere and call it a day. Either way the consumer wins due to good market competition.
 
ZodaEX said:
$180 dollars for Intel's lowest binned i5? Am I the only one who sees this as being very pricey? It couldn't possible cost that much more to produce over the i3. I mean you can get a Llano quad for $80 whats up with that?

/Endrant
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You've been here almost 8 years and ask such questions? TI calculators can cost over $100. You're getting a deal. Spend more money, get more performance. This isn't a hard concept.
 
ZodaEX said:
In a head to head race to encode the super mario brothers movie in handbrake at identical encode settings, my Athlon II X4 was about %30 faster at doing the same encode job.
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Its still fairly underwhelming, because it takes *four* cores of AMD to be a bit faster than *two* cores of Intel. And with usual pricing, the Athlon (which I think was a $99 processor) would've been quite a bit more than the Pentium (a $60 processor).
Buy what suits your tasks best, but for gaming and such (which is the reason a lot of us have nice rigs), the Pentium will often do better.
 
Ever since AMD basically dropped out of the performance desktop market, Intel has felt little pressure to ramp up performance or drop prices.
 
$200 +/- $20 has always been intel's price for the lowest tier of intel'c enthusiast cpu's.

AMD kept their x2 prices at $300+ for what felt like forever. Why I never got one and just stuck out the P4 days until the conroes came out.
 
I just know that an IB i5 seems to be a much better deal than the i7, which offers HT and more cache near as I can tell, without a lot more performance.

If I had not had my heart set on one of the fastest processors under $400, the i7-3770, I would have gone with the unlocked ib i5. And if I had not had my heart set on the IB (for it's improved power consumption,) I would probably have gone with unlocked i5 SB ($100 cheaper ?)
 
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