Just looking at it from a realistic financial point of view, people have less disposable cash now in Europe plus an upgrade to Ryzen 7000 is a platform upgrade so costs considerably more than just replacing the CPU.
Its probably only seems weird if you have no money problems.
Lol, that's quite the assumption. More like it's only weird if you take your own financial situation and apply it to the world in general, rather than taking into consideration the worldwide nature of the PC components market and how people are spending more on components than ever before, while AMD arguably has the best reputation in the CPU space that it's ever had.
Many people dont upgrade every gen in the first place, but I think a few did it on AM4 as it was just a CPU replacement. So my prediction is this.
I'm a staunch supporter of the idea that upgrading every generation is
really friggin dumb, so there's that. Heck, the only reason why I myself went from Zen1 to Zen3 was that I could pay for the upgrade with project funding from my job - otherwise I'd still be rocking my old 1600X. For anyone who thinks upgrading every generation is a good idea, IMO they're already disqualifying themselves from any price/value perspective just by this incredible level of waste. You're right that it was easier and cheaper on AM4, but
very few people kept their motherboards across three or four generations, especially as 300-series boards had pretty poor support as time went on.
I think Ryzen 7000 will have the lowest sales on the AM5 platform, assuming it lasts 3 full gen's again, the 9000 will sell better, and 11000 maybe even better still. Also considering the budget boards come out later so by the time 9000 series is around, there will be bigger supply and lower priced boards available, DDR5 probably as well.
I think that depends entirely on the competitive situation. (Also, I find it rather strange that you're assuming they'll skip 8 and 10 naming for some reason, but that's another thing entirely.) If Zen4 beats Intel significantly, then it will sell well, period. Whether Zen5 and Zen6 (or whatever arch they are) sell well will similarly depend on their competitive positioning. You're right that the initial wave will be high end boards, but that's typically a ~6 month thing, and certainly not a "wait till next gen" thing. Heck, B550 was
ridiculously late, and still sold like hotcakes. DDR5 supply and pricing is definitely a challenge, but that's always the case when there's a new generation of memory, and is rather incidental to Zen4 in and of itself - they need to transition at some point, and at least they're waiting longer than Intel and should thus have better pricing and availability at launch.
As for Intel, thats why so many jumped on Ryzen 1st gen
It was a complete breath of fresh air, much cheaper CPUs and a promise the chipset will last longer, not to mention motherboards were still cheap then.
Of course AMDs last chip before Ryzen 1 was the horrible FX chip, but this time the predecessor is a much better chip (They now have same issue as Nvidia/Intel they competing against themselves own older gen). I have defenitly observed on Intel it was common to keep the CPU for 3-4 gens minimal because of platform upgrades, whilst on AM4 many people were upgrading at least twice during AM4s lifetime, so it changed habits. We will see, thats my prediction, if AMD release sales numbers then we know.
I think the number of people doing those intermittent CPU upgrades is
much lower than what you're making it out to be here. Yes, lots of people have gone from Zen1 to some newer Zen generation - typically 2 or 3 (hi!), but most of those either couldn't reuse their 300-series motherboard (at least for Zen3, until recently), or wanted the new I/O and better memory support of the newer motherboards and thus also upgraded the motherboard. Getting to keep your RAM is of course still a nice savings, but IMO you're overestimating the overall effect this has had on sales. Heck, PC DIY is in and of itself a
tiny niche, and within that, the vast majority of builders build a PC, use it for a few years, then build a new one, with smaller groups doing intermittent or more frequent upgrades.
You're entirely right that Zen1 got a huge boost for delivering a lot of things Intel had failed to deliver for
years, and Zen4 doesn't have that. But nothing AMD could do now would do that - they're evenly matched now. Now the challenge has shifted to competing on level ground, matching or beating them in performance and features. And to do that, they need a new platform. It sucks that this makes things more expensive, but if you're on an older platform and can't afford that, there is plenty of room to grow on AM4, or there's the option that's always there: saving up. Heck, before AM4, this was what you
had to do, as no Intel platform lasted more than two generations anyhow. And if you're on Zen1, + or 2, there's room to improve with Zen3, and if you're on Zen3 ... wait, save up, upgrade when you can afford it. That's just reality, and while living under late-stage capitalism leads to borderline poverty and massive precarity for nearly everyone, this is hardly a particularly direct consequence of that.
