Intel did know, they are a little concerned. Intel has too much market share, too much money, and too many CPUs. They are clearly concerned with the sudden announcement during these rumors about an unlocked i3 chip, possible i5 with HyperThreading (which is stupid), and two new SKUs for Kaby Lake this early. But nothing is stopping Intel from lower the price of older gen chips to compete over price even if AMD is faster than those chips.
To me the i3 -K chip is just totally pointless. It's designed for people with small budget that want to try out OC more than anything else. As such I'm really to old and lazy to be excited. Problem is: IMO I'm representing the market quite well in this regard.
There was a time when everyone was overclocking and AMD was the CPU brand of choice. Older forum users will remember processors like the Athlon XP 1700+. We were all fascinated by it's abilities. Back then you didn't just order a CPU - you looked for the best
series, because they had different OC characteristics. And it was way before large tower coolers or factory-bilt watercooling became so popular. People were actually making watercooling sets from things they got at a home improvement supply shop and they were leaking all the time.
Just think how much this whole market matured since then. Overclocking used to be an adventure that lured us all. Every page of PC part manuals told you that overclocking is pure evil and that you'll almost surely be killed if you try it. And now it's 2017: motherboards have auto overclocking modes doing everything for you, while efficient factory-built watercooling solutions are easier to get than a fresh croissant on Sunday.
I admit the current Intel offer isn't perfect, but is this cheap OC-friendly CPU what we actually need?
And since you don't know that Intel has been price hiking because they had no competition.....well that. AMD will not be losing any money at these prices. Intel has just been over charging for years.
Honestly, I don't see this. Intel is (clearly) overcharging for the LGA 2011 processors (the socket itself being just a way to suck more cash on "specialized" motherboards etc), but as far as I can remember the prices in "consumer" segment looked pretty much the same. Under $100 for a decent entry-level gaming/multimedia CPU and around $200-400 for something that will work well for the next 3-5 years. So I would say the pricing for everything for LGA 1151 seems right (or what I would expect). AMD has always been the cheaper company, so it's not like Intel will drop prices just because AMD offers the same for 10% less.
Truth be told, software requirements slowed down lately and Intel took advantage of that concentrating more on power efficiency. Let's remember the problems for AMD started not because they couldn't match Intel's most powerful CPUs, but because they totally lost the battle for notebooks.
And even now we don't see much information about Ryzen mobile versions. So what is AMD hoping to achieve other than maybe regaining a few % market share coming from high-end gaming desktops?