PC Pain Persists in Q1 2023 Due to Excess Inventory and Poor Demand, According to IDC Tracker

[TheDeeGee]

And yet, prices remain high. Still rocking a 2600k here... No plans to change that any time soon.

If you're happy, you're happy i guess.

I found my 4770K struggling in 2021 and replaced it with a 11700.

 

[olymind1]

Most of my VGAs were ATI/AMD, except for TNT2 Vanta and GTX 460 786MB. So no, i'm not on the Nvidia's side, they tend to overprice their products, so when i look at those midrange cards' prices, i think thanks but no thanks.

At least on the CPU side we can find good products between 150 and 250€. Sadly MBs also got an 50% price bump at least. 16 GB ram is enough for now, but sooner or later 32 GB will be a must. I'm skipping the first gen DDR5 platforms, will look around when both 8000 series AMD and 14th gen Intel CPUs will be widely available in the midrange, for now the 5600 is enough for me. Maybe DDR5 will also got cheaper by then.

 

[john_]

At least on the CPU side we can find good products between 150 and 250€.

On the CPU side we can find good products even under or close to 100 euros. In Greece R5 5500 and R5 4600G sell for about 90 euros. They are both 6 cores 12 threads CPUs, more than good enough for everyday usage and even some gaming. Yes, both lack cache and in gaming are slower than 5600 for example, but they are more than enough. And while 4600G is just Zen 2, it does offer a Vega 7 for people on a budget. Even in the Intel side quad core i3-12100F is under 100 euros and i3-12100 with iGPU a little over 100. Adding LGA 1200 in the options, the 6 core i5-10400F is under 100 while the i5-10400 with iGPU at around 125 euros.

But in the CPU market duopoly works, because consumers don't avoid one brand's products, making the other brand feel confident to start increasing prices.

 

[Bomby569]

But in the CPU market duopoly works, because consumers don't avoid one brand's products, making the other brand feel confident to start increasing prices.

So what's your theory here? it's nothing personal against AMD because we do buy their CPU's, so why don't people buy AMD gpu's like they buy their cpu's?

I know the answer, they burned a lot of customers. And i don't mean in the far far away 2007, i mean very very recently, like a ongoing thing. Because on the other hand they burned a lot of people with the bulldozers and people love Ryzen, everybody forgot, nobody cares, because it works without issues.

Unless there is some conspiracy theory i'm unaware of.

 

[john_]

So what's your theory here? it's nothing personal against AMD because we do buy their CPU's, so why don't people buy AMD gpu's like they buy their cpu's?

I know the answer, they burned a lot of customers. And i don't mean in the far far away 2007, i mean very very recently, like a ongoing thing. Because on the other hand they burned a lot of people with the bulldozers and people love Ryzen, everybody forgot, nobody cares, because it works without issues.

Unless there is some conspiracy theory i'm unaware of.

You have the wrong answer there. Ryzen 1000 was also a CPU with IPC much lower than Intel's and a platform with a bunch of problems with instability and memory incompatibility. And every benchmark you will do in the AM4 platform, being LAN speeds, storage speeds, whatever, Intel would always be a little faster. If AMD had seen consumers avoiding the first Ryzen series and both consumers and tech attacking the AM4 platform with every excuse they could get, or just create, like what they did with RX 6000, where would the CPU market being today?
Ryzen didn't work without issues in the beginning as you are saying. You chose to remember your RDNA 1 problems and you chose to forget Ryzen 1000 and 300 series chipsets problems. It's a matter of choice and tech press and even other consumers can influence when someone forgets and when someone remembers.

 

[Bomby569]

You have the wrong answer there. Ryzen 1000 was also a CPU with IPC much lower than Intel's and a platform with a bunch of problems with instability and memory incompatibility. And every benchmark you will do in the AM4 platform, being LAN speeds, storage speeds, whatever, Intel would always be a little faster. If AMD had seen consumers avoiding the first Ryzen series and both consumers and tech attacking the AM4 platform with every excuse they could get, or just create, like what they did with RX 6000, where would the CPU market being today?
Ryzen didn't work without issues in the beginning as you are saying. You chose to remember your RDNA 1 problems and you chose to forget Ryzen 1000 and 300 series chipsets problems. It's a matter of choice and tech press and even other consumers can influence when someone forgets and when someone remembers.

that's very exaggerated, Ryzen 1000 worked, it had some issues at the very beggining and they were all solved pretty quickly, after a few months buy the right ram and forget about it. I didn't have to keep reinstalling older drivers or troubleshooting, or black screening, etc... RDNA1 two years later still had drivers issue that caused consistent problems, problems that still weren't solved, don't trust me go read the driver released know issues, it's all there for posterity.

a bit of a f you to have know issues, acknowledge them without fixing them, for years.

 

[john_]

that's very exaggerated, Ryzen 1000 worked, it had some issues at the very beggining and they were all solved pretty quickly, after a few months buy the right ram and forget about it. I didn't have to keep reinstalling older drivers or troubleshooting, or black screening, etc... RDNA1 two years later still had drivers issue that caused consistent problems, problems that still weren't solved, don't trust me go read the driver released know issues, it's all there for posterity.

a bit of a f you to have know issues, acknowledge them without fixing them, for years.

You see how you chose to understate Ryzen 1000 problems and ignore the lower IPC of that series against Intel CPUs. AMD didn't had equal or better IPC until 5000 series.
It's all about choice. We choose to ignore some stuff, or make them the most important things in the world.

 

[Daven]

And yet, prices remain high. Still rocking a 2600k here... No plans to change that any time soon.

The 2600k launched at $229. The 7700 launched at $229. According to the latest TPU processor review for the 7800x3d, the 7700 is about 2.5x faster than the 2600 averaged out over all the apps. That’s an extreme performance jump in the CPU space.

Memory and motherboards cost a difference of about $100-$200 total from memory and motherboards back when the 2600 was released. For most that difference alone after four years is not the problem and is more than worth the performance jump. Its that extra $100-$200 combined with more expensive GPUs that have made building a new computer almost $1000 more expensive today. Sure you get a big GPU performance jump as well but the average person’s buying power drops off as you approach that extra $1000.

Edit: Looking back at GPUs in the 2600k era, you could get a 2070 for $500. The 4070 is estimated to be double the performance for $100 more. So building a midrange computer with a 7700 and 4070 GPU is only going to cost up to $300 more than a 2018 computer build. Thats not too bad given 2.5x the CPU performance and 2.0x the GPU performance.

Edit2: OMG, from that same review, going from a 2600k to a 7700 doubles your frames at all resolutions except 4k where its only 75% higher! Of course this is under conditions where the GPU isn’t the bottleneck but still. That’s a big jump in gaming performance from just the CPU.

Edit3: looks like I confused the original posters 2600k with a 2600x. So nevermind. That person isn’t being serious. Above comparison was for Zen+ (2600X) to Zen 4 (7700).

 

[Bomby569]

You see how you chose to understate Ryzen 1000 problems and ignore the lower IPC of that series against Intel CPUs. AMD didn't had equal or better IPC until 5000 series.
It's all about choice. We choose to ignore some stuff, or make them the most important things in the world.

It was lower IPC for lower price ( a LOT less price), and other aspects made it a better price option like a longer lasting platform (AM4), i don't see any issue there. What am i missing?
For someone that wants to play a game or play Excel, IPC doesn't really matter, as long as it does what you want (stable frame rate, enough frame rate/performance for your use case) at the right price and it works, no bugs, no problems. It's just an arbitrary metric.

 

[john_]

the 7700 is about 2.5x faster than the 2600 averaged out over all the apps

2600k. Intel not AMD, Sandy Bridge LGA1155.

 

[Daven]

2600k. Intel not AMD, Sandy Bridge LGA1155.

Whoops. Thanks for pointing that out. I realize the original poster isn’t being serious thinking a Sandy Bridge processor is even remotely useful today.

 

[john_]

It was lower IPC for lower price ( a LOT less price), and other aspects made it a better price option like a longer lasting platform (AM4), i don't see any issue there. What am i missing?
For someone that wants to play a game or play Excel, IPC doesn't really matter, as long as it does what you want (stable frame rate, enough frame rate/performance for your use case) at the right price and it works, no bugs, no problems. It's just an arbitrary metric.

You see how you keep proving my point? AM4's long lasting wasn't a given back then. Now that we do have the example of AM4, AM5 is considered overpriced. And IT IS, don't misinterpret this comment. But most people chose to ignore the fact that it is going to last 2-3 generations of CPUs. Why? Because of marketing. Intel is the one selling more cores today, so people see the AM5 platform as more expensive while housing less cores. Efficient cores? No, it's just cores.
Intel remained relevant in the CPU space even with a huge manufacturing deficit(14+++++++,10++>>>let's call it 7), because of that single thread performance. The reason why their CPUs hit 300W, to market higher IPC, higher performance in games. Yet when talking about CPUs you seem to ignore the impact of the CPU in getting the maximum framerate in games, or in Excel where Intel CPUs where ALWAYS faster, while you give no excuses to AMD's GPUs. Double standards?

 

[Bomby569]

You see how you keep proving my point? AM4's long lasting wasn't a given back then. Now that we do have the example of AM4, AM5 is considered overpriced. And IT IS, don't misinterpret this comment. But most people chose to ignore the fact that it is going to last 2-3 generations of CPUs. Why? Because of marketing. Intel is the one selling more cores today, so people see the AM5 platform as more expensive while housing less cores. Efficient cores? No, it's just cores.
Intel remained relevant in the CPU space even with a huge manufacturing deficit(14+++++++,10++>>>let's call it 7), because of that single thread performance. The reason why their CPUs hit 300W, to market higher IPC, higher performance in games. Yet when talking about CPUs you seem to ignore the impact of the CPU in getting the maximum framerate in games, or in Excel where Intel CPUs where ALWAYS faster, while you give no excuses to AMD's GPUs. Double standards?

AM3 lasted a long time and they promised AM4 would too. Facts.

AM5 was overpriced, a bad product overall, and sales showed it was a big mistake. A mistake they are doing all they can to remedy, cheaper boards, the new x3d. Not sure how they are doing now. If AMD think they can pull a Intel of the 00's they are dead wrong.

Most people couldn't care less about IPC, nodes, or even watts (unless it's absurd), all it matters is price vs performance. That's it.

 

[john_]

Whoops. Thanks for pointing that out. I realize the original poster isn’t being serious thinking a Sandy Bridge processor is even remotely useful today.

It is. My third system is an AM3+ with a quad core Athlon 645 unlocked to 6 core Thuban. And that CPU only costed me less than 15 euros many years ago. In any case the AM3+ system is fine with a SATA SSD and that ancient HD 5670. Yes, it can't playback HDR H265 at 4K, even with those 6 cores, but it can playback H265 at 1080p. Yes Bluestacks on the Thuban is much slower in some cases compared to the Ryzen 5500. I have installed it on both systems. Yes the AM3+ boots slower, but I don't really care. Yes if you put them next to each other, the performance difference is obvious, even on desktop. Yet those 6 cores DO offer smooth experience. And I bet the overclocked 2600K with a much higher IPC and 8 threads can offer even better experience.
The thing is that for typical usage, even a Core2Quad or a 6 core Thuban can be a very nice system today, offering smooth experience, with one condition. SSD, only SSD.

AM3 lasted a long time and they promised AM4 would too. Facts.

Facts? AM3 became AM3+ and you couldn't insert a Bulldozer on an AM3 (non plus) motherboard. Bulldozer also stopped seeing upgrades on the AM3+. Excavator and Steamroller never being used on AM3+, only FM2+.
Please. Throw me stuff about Intel. I do lack knowledge about Intel platforms. But spare me the inaccuracies about AMD platforms. And in any case AM3+ lasted as long as it lasted, because until AM4, AMD was with one foot on bankruptcy. AMD had nothing to replace it.

 

[Daven]

It is. My third system is an AM3+ with a quad core Athlon 645 unlocked to 6 core Thuban. And that CPU only costed me less than 15 euros many years ago. In any case the AM3+ system is fine with a SATA SSD and that ancient HD 5670. Yes, it can't playback HDR H265 at 4K, even with those 6 cores, but it can playback H265 at 1080p. Yes Bluestacks on the Thuban is much slower in some cases compared to the Ryzen 5500. I have installed it on both systems. Yes the AM3+ boots slower, but I don't really care. Yes if you put them next to each other, the performance difference is obvious, even on desktop. Yet those 6 cores DO offer smooth experience. And I bet the overclocked 2600K with a much higher IPC and 8 threads can offer even better experience.
The thing is that for typical usage, even a Core2Quad or a 6 core Thuban can be a very nice system today, offering smooth experience, with one condition. SSD, only SSD.


Facts? AM3 became AM3+ and you couldn't insert a Bulldozer on an AM3 (non plus) motherboard. Bulldozer also stopped seeing upgrades on the AM3+. Excavator never used on AM3+, only FM2+.
Please. Throw me stuff about Intel. I do lack knowledge about Intel platforms. But spare me the inaccuracies about AMD platforms. And in any case AM3+ lasted as long as it lasted, because until AM4, AMD was with one foot on bankruptcy. AMD had nothing to replace it.

Referring to technology over ten years old isn’t a serious consideration in my book. As long as all parts function and you have electricity in the case of electronics then anything can still work and do something no matter how old. But in a conversation about upgrade and PC build costs, such old tech is irrelevant.

Case in point the Macintosh XL released in 1985 cost $4000. I’m sure some still turn on and do stuff. But $4000 in 1985 for such a machine makes all tech today look extremely cheap.

 

[Bomby569]

Facts? AM3 became AM3+ and you couldn't insert a Bulldozer on an AM3 (non plus) motherboard. Bulldozer also stopped seeing upgrades on the AM3+. Excavator and Steamroller never being used on AM3+, only FM2+.
Please. Throw me stuff about Intel. I do lack knowledge about Intel platforms. But spare me the inaccuracies about AMD platforms. And in any case AM3+ lasted as long as it lasted, because until AM4, AMD was with one foot on bankruptcy. AMD had nothing to replace it.

ok i was talking in general terms but if we have to be that specific and you know more then me about AMD, how long did AM3, AM3+ last? how many cpu's did they support? since you don't know about intel then i can make the comparison for you. In the end you'll just see that AMD has been supporting a lot more generations since AM3 then Intel.

 

[john_]

Referring to technology over ten years old isn’t a serious consideration in my book. As long as all parts function and you have electricity in the case of electronics then anything can still work and do something no matter how old. But in a conversation about upgrade and PC build costs, such old tech is irrelevant.

I didn't mention AM3+ as a valid option for today. I just said that it does the work nicely, even being that much old. 2010 tech can be used today to even try to play the latest AAA games and run Windows 11. 2000 tech couldn't be used in 2010, being extremely slow. What I mean is that things have changed and that's the reason why companies are widening the gap between new series of products, while asking for higher and higher prices. In the past we where getting a new series every year, with a considerable upgrade in speed because parts where slower than what we where asking. And overclocking was king. Today we have to wait for 2 years. If Nvidia doesn't see competition we might move to a 3 or even 4 years circle in GPUs. In CPUs things are also slowing down. While we get a new series every year, even if that series is a refresh, we see Intel putting a limit of 8 P cores as being enough and just offers more and more E cores. AMD will follow because it's not financially viable to try to sell P cores when Intel is selling much smaller and cheaper E cores. So even in CPUs we see that today we have more computational power than what we need today, meaning 2023 top hardware will be pretty much useful in 10 years from now, except if we have a performance revolution before then.

ok i was talking in general terms but if we have to be that specific and you know more then me about AMD, how long did AM3, AM3+ last? how many cpu's did they support? since you don't know about intel then i can make the comparison for you. In the end you'll just see that AMD has been supporting a lot more generations since AM3 then Intel.

Please don't ignore the part where I say "AMD WAS ABOUT TO GO BANKRUPT AND HAD NOTHING ELSE TO OFFER". Please.

To answer your question AM3 was announced in February 9, 2009 and the first Bulldozer came out in October 12, 2011. So AM3 saw support for 2,5 years, considering Bulldozer couldn't be put on AM3 boards, with some rare exceptions that could get a BIOS update and offer some support for the first Bulldozer generation. AM3+ came out in mid 2011 and the Piledriver based Bulldozer came out in mid 2012. After that, NOTHING. So just ONE extra generation for the AM3+. FM2+ was luckier seeing also Steamroller in the form of Kaveri.

AM3+ motherboards come with their socket painted in black. AM3 (non plus) come with their socket in the typical white color.

 

[Sithaer]

Most people couldn't care less about IPC, nodes, or even watts (unless it's absurd), all it matters is price vs performance. That's it.

I did have a first gen Zen system I built back in 2018 may with a 1600x till 2022 february when I switched to gen 12 Intel. 'under my system specs'
Main reason for the switch was the IPC since I did and still do play games that rely heavier on single thread/IPC performance than core count and at the time AMD had nothing competent to offer in my budget range so I just sold my entire old zen platform and switched back to Intel. 'my mobo had no 5000 serie support at the time and the 5600x was way too expensive here in the first place'

For example Lost Ark's minimum frames nearly doubled with the 12100F compared to my 1600x and it smoothened the entire game out. 'this with the same GPU still cause that was upgraded later'

I did have some issues with my 1600x system mainly random blue screen of deaths if I tried to run XMP at 3200 MHz instead of 3000 so I did that.
But that was like a difference I couldn't notice anywhere anyway.

Sure if I had a crystal ball to see that we will get a cheaper non x 5600 and a proper bios update for my mobo then things might be different but honestly I don't regret my decision.
Its been working issue free for 1+ year now and is playing everything I play well while drawing less power too.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

What if there where 2 banana producers in the world and consumers where ignoring the one producer, because his bananas were a little thicker or a little longer or they didn't have the right shade of yellow, even though the taste was similar to the other producer's bananas? Would we ignore the taste and consider the other charachteristicks as an indication of a worst product?

Hey, what happens when that banana producer turns out to be making huge profits anyway, then it comes out that they were intentionally restricting supply of their bananas to increase prices? And their bananas had a 5% chance of containing bugs that the banana producer refused to believe was a problem until the media called them out?

Would you still feel bad for them?

There are many cases where AMD's products where doing the job as good or even better than Nvidia options at the same or higher prices. Now, if someone who uses his GPU purely for gaming, can't live without CUDA, Nvidia's streaming features and Optix support, what can I say? Buy Nvidia, no matter the price. It's AMD's fault.

It's AMD's fault because they HAVE. REPEATEDLY. DROPPED. THE. BALL.

rDNA downclocking, GCN black screens, single GPU stuttering, the list goes on. AMD's support is horrific compared to nvidia, and when you do that for years you gain a reputation. AMD only recently unf*%&$d their drivers in 2018, and finally achieved parity with nvidia in the 2020s. This is a brand that has been making GPUs since 2005. A brand that has committed to charging more for their products because they are a "preeemium" brand.

Well, guess what? AMD isnt your friend. If they want to charge premium prices, they must provide a premium product. If they dont, they will fail. They must either compete, or die. They chose to treat their customers like cattle, they can reap the loyalty that comes from that. They intentionally restricted RX 6000 series supply to keep prices up. the EXACT same thing nvidia does. Yet only nvidia gets flame for that. Interesting eh?

To add to the pile, they got drug through the media AGAIN. Why? Because when rDNA3 came out they stopped updating rDNA2. For 3 months. And people like you immediately began excusing the behavior of a company with a $5 billion R+D budget.

People are not going to pay a premium price for a second rate brand.

 

[kapone32]

You see how you chose to understate Ryzen 1000 problems and ignore the lower IPC of that series against Intel CPUs. AMD didn't had equal or better IPC until 5000 series.
It's all about choice. We choose to ignore some stuff, or make them the most important things in the world.

What?

Hey, what happens when that banana producer turns out to be making huge profits anyway, then it comes out that they were intentionally restricting supply of their bananas to increase prices? And their bananas had a 5% chance of containing bugs that the banana producer refused to believe was a problem until the media called them out?

Would you still feel bad for them?

It's AMD's fault because they HAVE. REPEATEDLY. DROPPED. THE. BALL.

rDNA downclocking, GCN black screens, single GPU stuttering, the list goes on. AMD's support is horrific compared to nvidia, and when you do that for years you gain a reputation. AMD only recently unf*%&$d their drivers in 2018, and finally achieved parity with nvidia in the 2020s. This is a brand that has been making GPUs since 2005. A brand that has committed to charging more for their products because they are a "preeemium" brand.

Well, guess what? AMD isnt your friend. If they want to charge premium prices, they must provide a premium product. If they dont, they will fail. They must either compete, or die. They chose to treat their customers like cattle, they can reap the loyalty that comes from that. They intentionally restricted RX 6000 series supply to keep prices up. the EXACT same thing nvidia does. Yet only nvidia gets flame for that. Interesting eh?

To add to the pile, they got drug through the media AGAIN. Why? Because when rDNA3 came out they stopped updating rDNA2. For 3 months. And people like you immediately began excusing the behavior of a company with a $5 billion R+D budget.

People are not going to pay a premium price for a second rate brand.

Wow

 

[john_]

Hey, what happens when that banana producer turns out to be making huge profits anyway, then it comes out that they were intentionally restricting supply of their bananas to increase prices? And their bananas had a 5% chance of containing bugs that the banana producer refused to believe was a problem until the media called them out?

Would you still feel bad for them?

It's AMD's fault because they HAVE. REPEATEDLY. DROPPED. THE. BALL.

rDNA downclocking, GCN black screens, single GPU stuttering, the list goes on. AMD's support is horrific compared to nvidia, and when you do that for years you gain a reputation. AMD only recently unf*%&$d their drivers in 2018, and finally achieved parity with nvidia in the 2020s. This is a brand that has been making GPUs since 2005. A brand that has committed to charging more for their products because they are a "preeemium" brand.

Well, guess what? AMD isnt your friend. If they want to charge premium prices, they must provide a premium product. If they dont, they will fail. They must either compete, or die. They chose to treat their customers like cattle, they can reap the loyalty that comes from that. They intentionally restricted RX 6000 series supply to keep prices up. the EXACT same thing nvidia does. Yet only nvidia gets flame for that. Interesting eh?

To add to the pile, they got drug through the media AGAIN. Why? Because when rDNA3 came out they stopped updating rDNA2. For 3 months. And people like you immediately began excusing the behavior of a company with a $5 billion R+D budget.

People are not going to pay a premium price for a second rate brand.

Sorry but I only see inaccuracies in your post about AMD and excuses about Nvidia.
How about a video. Let's enjoy AMD's inferior graphics

What?

What?

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Sorry but I only see inaccuracies in your post about AMD and excuses about Nvidia.
How about a video. Let's enjoy AMD's inferior graphics

Lisa su isnt going to send you a new GPU no matter how much you proclaim AMD to be perfect.

What?

What?

 

[john_]

Lisa su isnt going to send you a new GPU no matter how much you proclaim AMD to be perfect.

I am not interested in getting a new GPU any time soon, because I know that my next GPU will be ultra expensive and must be all around good enough to be useful for a few years at least. Waiting for AMD's 7700 cards, if they ever become a reality, or a drop of 4070 Ti's price at $500, where it belongs. Realistically, maybe nothing of those two will happen.
About the Lisa Su comment, it is very low quality and I will avoid dropping to that level. If I wanted to reply to that kind of comment, wccftech and videocardz are better places for this kind of "quality" talk.

What?

Are you kapone32?

PS Seriously, what Hardware Unboxed is showing in that video, should be investigated for both Nvidia and AMD 8GB cards. @W1zzard
Maybe ultra settings is not always ultra settings.