• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

The End of the Price Drops?

G

Grandcheapskate

Veteran Member
Joined
Oct 9, 2014
Messages
817
Location
New Jersey, USA
I built my latest machine in December of 2014. It wasn't the highest end machine, but pretty good as it used the AMD FX-6300 CPU and a 1 TB hard drive.

Recently I decided I might want to build two more and was surprised to see that all the parts I bought back in 2014 were still available. But the more amazing part was the prices were exactly the same for every part. Not one part was either less or more expensive than 18 months ago.

I found that extraordinary. Price drops have happened so quickly in the past that I would have expected the price of the CPU and hard drive (for example) to be much cheaper. We have seen this so much in the past.

So is the era of increasingly cheap technology slowing down or is this just an isolated case? Or is it a case where the technology (as it relates to CPUs, HDs, etc.) has reached a point where it is simply not progressing at the breakneck speed of the past?

I hear rumblings about how customer upgrading of the OS does not occur as quickly as in the past because the new features are simply not worth the expense, time and effort.

Thanks...Joe
 
The PC market is shrinking and the mobile market is growing.

OTOH, what more can the average user do with a PC purchased in 2016 than one in 2014?
 
People's brains are shrinking.

Despite what the news might say about the economy picking up, all I ever hear is layoff, layoff, layoff. Don't know about AMD, but from what I hear it almost sounds like Intel is taking swan dive out of a 63rd floor window, the few engineers they have left are from the sound of it being worked to the bone. You fire all your talent and of course you aren't going to improve your product, or even keep your current one running.
 
AMD's current desktop/server chip lineup is more than 4 years old with limited changes other some higher speed grades. They did cut prices several times out of necessity but they are operating at a tiny profit margin; there isn't much room to cut prices more. If Zen succeeds as a design, there might be cuts in pricing in 2018 since the cost per chip should be reduced.

Intel is cutting employees in some places while adding them in others. All makes no sense and there is no real plan to handle events now that advancing process technology has gotten harder again. Management was pampered by about a decade of surprisingly easy development of new nodes and resultant monster profits.
 
In that industry you need to build new fabs every few years or you go out of business. The amount of consolidation in the microchip industry over the last 15 years (not just the main chip makers but all of the suppliers and equipment manufactures) is insane.

On the PC side everything is included on the motherboard so there isn't an easy way to cut costs on building machines anymore. Cases can't get any cheaper unless they are made from cardboard. The only major times you see price drops are during the Christmas holidays when companies need to move tons of stuff to make a profit and get ready for the next years product line.

I find it kind of sad there are so many companies churning billions of dollars in product and yet don't make any money. There are only a few hard drive makers and memory makers around anymore.
 
krebizfan said:
AMD's current desktop/server chip lineup is more than 4 years old with limited changes other some higher speed grades. They did cut prices several times out of necessity but they are operating at a tiny profit margin; there isn't much room to cut prices more. If Zen succeeds as a design, there might be cuts in pricing in 2018 since the cost per chip should be reduced.
Click to expand...
Yea, that was a deliberate decision by AMD I think. They decided to focus on APUs instead.
 
yuhong said:
Yea, that was a deliberate decision by AMD I think. They decided to focus on APUs instead.
Click to expand...

Unlike the 'Bulldozer', AMD's 'ZEN' chip is destined to be a game changer. It looks like Microsoft and Sony are already onboard. Intel may have a hard sell with their $1000+ 6900's. Stay tuned.
 
Grandcheapskate said:
I built my latest machine in December of 2014. It wasn't the highest end machine, but pretty good as it used the AMD FX-6300 CPU and a 1 TB hard drive.

Recently I decided I might want to build two more and was surprised to see that all the parts I bought back in 2014 were still available. But the more amazing part was the prices were exactly the same for every part. Not one part was either less or more expensive than 18 months ago.

Thanks...Joe
Click to expand...

Could it be that the shop you bought your bits in 2014, is the same shop you bought the current bits 18 months on. and the simple reason is the shop has just not changed their price list and has what you got as old stock ?
 
inotarobot said:
Could it be that the shop you bought your bits in 2014, is the same shop you bought the current bits 18 months on. and the simple reason is the shop has just not changed their price list and has what you got as old stock ?
Click to expand...

Yes, it was the same shop. I was simply surprised that after 18 months the technology I purchased in 2014 was still at the same price today. I think we have all seen how the technology has increased over the years. Usually the older technology (especially CPUs, memory and hard drives) either decreases in price or the price of newer technology drops into the price range from when the old tech was new.

So for example, spending $50 for a hard drive may have gotten you 500gb last year but that same $50 would get you double that capacity today. But that doesn't seem to have happened over the past 18 months - at least not at the computer store I visit.

Just as an aside. When I went to buy the same MB as last year, there were no more new ones left (so the project came to a halt). There were some in the "clearance" section, but all of them were returns. The discounts offered on these "returns" was less than 10% of the cost of a new board. Why would anyone take the chance of paying more than 90% for a returned item (especially something like a MB)? Just to save a couple bucks (sometimes less than $10)?

Joe
 
Chuck(G) said:
Interesting, because Broadcom is opening a new fab near here.

But it's the old story of "innovate or die"; and innovation in the electronics industry gets ever more expensive and difficult.
Click to expand...
After the buyout by Avago, the employee friendly policies are disappearing. The bean counters have taken over.
 
Kind of makes you nostalgic -- used to be fun to do upgrades because you knew the difference was going to be amazing. I remember excitedly putting in my 486 overdrive chip and watching as Warcraft went into turbo mode. I haven't bought a full, new PC in eons and I can't remember the last time I dipped in for even a video card. Part of that is I'm just not interested -- I think I gamed myself out back in the 90s. Part of it is I find vintage stuff just so much more interesting.

I've been kind of wondering what the future holds and I kind of think looking at Oculus that VR is probably the next and possibly final quantum leap. The future will probably be nothing that takes up desk space or even holding onto - just a device you wear on your head (or maybe implanted) and presto -- you're somewhere else. Your OS is like something out of Minority Report. Virtual reality becomes simply alternate reality. Bye-bye PCs, laptops and even TVs and cell phones.

So I'm kind of hopeful for hardware makers -- I think that opens up a whole new avenue for them. But the PC as we know it is probably doomed in the long run. It had a good ride. We are headed into the future our parents and grandparents were promised half a century ago. Provided we don't blow up the world completely before then. :)
 
On the other hand, older PCs can still yield a lot of use. I bought my last motherboard for $1.25--a Socket 939 AMD Opteron with 4GB memory. Works fine under Linux; resides in an old HP Vectra VL8 desktop case.

It's not my primary system, but still darned useful.
 
dorkbert said:
I can assure you people are running scared inside Broadcom.
Click to expand...

Broadcom announced yesterday that they're dropping plans to refurbish the old Hynix plant they bought and put it back up for sale. That should take a few years.

Oh well, a few million here, a few million there and, in the words of Ev Dirksenn, pretty soon you're talking real money.
 
Agent Orange said:
Unlike the 'Bulldozer', AMD's 'ZEN' chip is destined to be a game changer. It looks like Microsoft and Sony are already onboard. Intel may have a hard sell with their $1000+ 6900's. Stay tuned.
Click to expand...

Let's hope so, for AMD's sake. I'm waiting on a used HP Z420 workstation to come in this week to replace my attempt to switch over to a 16-core Bulldozer machine. Single-core performance is pretty bad and I can't seem to get my workload parallelized enough to take advantage of the 15 other cores that are mostly doing nothing. Great for large C compile jobs, though!

While new hardware prices may have stopped dropping, I'm still very happy with the prices on used/off-lease/decommissioned business workstation and server hardware. The HP Z420 workstation I purchased was around $200 shipped, about the cost of the CPU in it, and the CPU is an Intel Xeon E5-1660 which is supposed to outperform the i7 6700K. That $200 doesn't include RAM, display card, or hard disk, but I've already got those from my previous workstation. Not too bad in my mind!
 
glitch said:
Let's hope so, for AMD's sake. I'm waiting on a used HP Z420 workstation to come in this week to replace my attempt to switch over to a 16-core Bulldozer machine. Single-core performance is pretty bad and I can't seem to get my workload parallelized enough to take advantage of the 15 other cores that are mostly doing nothing. Great for large C compile jobs, though!

While new hardware prices may have stopped dropping, I'm still very happy with the prices on used/off-lease/decommissioned business workstation and server hardware. The HP Z420 workstation I purchased was around $200 shipped, about the cost of the CPU in it, and the CPU is an Intel Xeon E5-1660 which is supposed to outperform the i7 6700K. That $200 doesn't include RAM, display card, or hard disk, but I've already got those from my previous workstation. Not too bad in my mind!
Click to expand...

According to MAXPC, it looks like a 1st quarter release for the Zen. Even though I just built a huge Intel gaming rig, I'm kind of looking forward to it. I've always liked AMD, just seems that they've had a hard time keeping up. But I gotta tell ya, as fast as my new 6700K machine is, my old Gigabyte MA790FX-UDP5 with W10 and a 6 core AM3 chip can still play all of my games. As a matter of fact, just yesterday I installed two XFX Radeon HD 7970's in SLI on that 790 box and replaced the ancient 5950's. You won't step on your tongue looking at the benchmarks, but they're not that bad. I tried to sell those 7970's on Ebay and couldn't get a deal done. Bad timing, as the cheap AMD 400 series cards got in the way, so I'll just keep them.

P.S. Great job on your card projects.
 
I'm not allowed to tell you all I know about AMD but bulldozer
was a dog, even on the same process level.
I think ZEN will do reasonably well.
We made custom stuff for MS and Sony to give us breathing
room to work on ZEN and future stuff.
Our graphics are back in business and stinging Nvidia.
Apple just announced that their top of the line MAC has one
of our discrete graphics chips and is significantly faster
than previous versions. Apple has no loyalty. They use
what ever is fastest for the price.
Dwight
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top