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Platform costs are completely out of control.
- Thread starter dook43
- Start date
How do you know that this cost increase is just on AMD boards?
I hate to burst your bubble but you will find things just as pricey on the Intel side. The ASUS ROG STRIX Z790-E motherboard is $500. The ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 APEX is $699.99. The ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Extreme is $1,099.99 before tax. Unlike the video cards, ASUS' STRIX models are the low end of the ROG family. That ROG STRIX Z790-E motherboard is mid-range, nothing more.
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Randall Stephens
[H]ard|Gawd
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You do you
Stay away from ASUS with a ten foot pole for AM5. They dropped the ball hard. Look at the $200 ASUS Prime vs Gigabyte Aorus Elite AX. The prime looks like a $50 board and performs like one too with CPU throttling, suboptimal timings even with EXPO, BIOS being borked causing issues with X3D chips (for the whole lineup) and generally terrible looks and feature set. I have no idea what they were thinking but i've never seen something like this in the past several generations. Oh and Gigabyte posts in 23 seconds whereas ASUS takes close to a minute.
I never actually hated on any motherboard manufacturer but ASUS managed to join that list this round. I'd seriously forget ASUS and just get an Aorus Elite, or master or anything in between. They are also pretty reasonable by now.
atp1916
[H]ard|DCoTM x1
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Yup. It's all insanely over the side of the ship at the moment.
Not sure when the "Z" or "X" stuff on Intel/AMD stuff respectively all the sudden became the equivalent of old-school Intel X series HEDT wallet space, but here we are.
Got a hunch it's the RnD costs of PCIe 5.0 / DDR5 that Intel/AMD/Nvidia have elected to pass on to the consumer.
Around the time the Intel Z590 and AMD X570 boards came out.
It's crazy how people think AMD is the high cost platform. Take a board with feature x, y, z on AMD and compare it to the same board with feature x, y, z on Intel - similar price. I'll give you that Intel allows you to use DDR4 so that is good, I guess. But DDR5 is so much cheaper now and better long term so I feel that is becoming moot.
In the past there was a cost increase on Intel motherboards. That has not been the case since AMD's X570 chipset came out. PCI-Express Gen 4.0 signaling, the updated VRM's and the very expensive chipsets all brought the cost up above Intel's then current Z490 motherboards. Z590 boards then came out and cost about the same as AMD's Z570 and so on. Today, the platform cost is rather similar. DDR5 costs have come down to a point where the memory type you choose isn't really a big deal in terms of total system cost. Of course, the highest end boards are all DDR5, but there are price points where DDR4 and DDR5 boards overlap. Also, you can get Z690 boards which can use 13th generation CPU's with a BIOS flash and those boards are significantly cheaper than their Z790 counterparts right now.
The difference isn't so big that I would say Intel is the friendlier option budget wise. You are still paying well more than you had to three or four years ago on both sides of the fence. The ranges offered from Intel and AMD are probably closer than they ever have been.
drutman
Limp Gawd
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1. Peeps demanding more features and sub 10 nm manufact. processes drive up cost.
2. Inflation drives up cost.
3. Budget boards/parts do not make much profit anymore.
4. AMD cannot sells its products deep discounted from Intel anymore their manufact. costs are high like Intel's are. The days of AMD GPUs competing at half the MSRP as NVIDIA's offerings are over. For example my old XFX 390X was 300 USD and NVIDIA's 1080 was 799 at time of purchase in 2013 I believe.
2. Inflation drives up cost.
3. Budget boards/parts do not make much profit anymore.
4. AMD cannot sells its products deep discounted from Intel anymore their manufact. costs are high like Intel's are. The days of AMD GPUs competing at half the MSRP as NVIDIA's offerings are over. For example my old XFX 390X was 300 USD and NVIDIA's 1080 was 799 at time of purchase in 2013 I believe.
bigdogchris
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5. AMD boards have a longer life span so they are collecting their revenue now. If they forced a new board every 2 generations they could get away with lower margins.
Can you explain. I didn't think that AMD gets any revenue when someone like ASUS or MSI sells an AMD-based motherboard.
AMD/Intel sells the chipset components and Nvidia sells their GPU packages and RAM as a bundle to AIB makers.
Motherboards these days are even more complicated than the SR-2 was in 2010 and that was 600 dollars.
bigdogchris
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Why is it only AMD that's concerned about long term revenue loss of AM5 boards? The board manufacturers have something to lose as well.
kirbyrj
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Who do you think supplies them with chipsets to make the motherboards?