No One Is Buying AMD Zen 4, Post Launch Update

foreign [Music] box the first video here from my new studio still working a little bit on the audio so hopefully it isn't too bad but yeah things are looking well a little different right now anyway today I wanted to do a quick recap slash analysis video on amd's zenfall launch and touch on a few other tidbits of news that have been happening lately that we just haven't had a heap of time to look at so AMD launched their new series of Zen 4 ryzen 7000 processors about a week and a half ago now hopefully you've all seen our reviews of the four models there are certainly a number of strengths to these new parts including the key one of performance they are quite powerful processors however AMD has faced a bit of a hurdle since their introduction and that is convincing people to actually buy them we've heard from multiple sources over the last few weeks that sales for zenful processors are weaker than expected even factoring in current market conditions so let's talk about that and why this may be occurring to start with AMD processors as a whole are still immensely popular and continue to outsell Intel equivalents quite substantially in the Enthusiast DIY Market of current sales AMD has around a 70 share with some variants depending on the source you look at or ask however the vast majority of these parts even in the days after amd's zenfall launch are for now older am4 processors one great source is Tech Epiphany over on Twitter who catalogs the sales volumes of CPUs from mind Factory and while the data is strong for AMD as a whole it's not great for am5 specifically in launch week 78 of AMD sales were for older am4 parts and in the week following so the week that's just gone really that increased to 94 percent while these figures for am5 are better than what Intel achieved for their older leg launch last year am5 sales are slow compared to the previous few set launches one retailer that we spoke to said that comparing 7000 series to 5000 series it feels like it will take them months to sell the volumes of send four chips they sold in just a few hours at the Zen 3 launch a course the retailers we've been told the ryzen 97950x is Comfortably the highest selling part followed by the 7700x with much weaker sales for the other two models one thing we heard is that the launch is top heavy in other words the buyers of am5 are largely interested in premium high-end builds rather than budget models this contrasts to a typical launch and typical CPU sales where budget and mainstream offerings are usually the most popular by a substantial margin words we heard to describe the launch include things like disappointing and slow of course another reliable indicator for CPU sales is the Amazon best-selling processes list and again we see a similar theme a Domination by AMD but unimpressive results for zenforce specifically the top selling zen4 part right now is the 7950x in 18th position behind the 5950x and several Intel Parts including the 12700 KF and 12900k no other Zen four part ranks in the top 30. for a period last week Microcenter were offering free ddr5 memory kits with the purchase of some zenforce CPUs so why are sales low and worse than expected well one key factor at the moment is of course the economic climate worldwide we're in a recession which is weakening demand for PC Hardware substantially one retailer we spoke to was Keen to stress that while zenforce CPU sales are weaker than expected even in the current climate the entire business right now was slower than normal for this time of year AMD was even filling the pinch before the launch of Zen IV they missed their revenue guidance for Q3 by 1 billion US Dollars which is a pretty huge number as client Revenue was down 40 percent year on year this was a standout number in their report given that data center sales and gaming sales were both up year on year and at worst flat compared to last quarter there just isn't strong demand for Consumer CPUs at the moment but that's not the entire story another key factor is simply the strength of the am4 platform and its longevity a significant portion of desktop PC owners have an am4 system after use of strong sales for Zen processors and many of these owners have built systems primarily with gaming in mind as we discussed in our sen4 reviews these new ryzen 7000 Parts don't present a strong value proposition to existing am4 owners the cost to switch platforms is very high and the level of performance on offer for gaming isn't all that different to the am4 compatible ryzen 7 5800x3d unless you wanted to Future proof your system for some reason there's really no compelling reason to buy Zen 4 over the 5800 X 3D that would be drop in compatible with any am4 motherboard you might already own this leads to a situation where zenfor is targeting a much smaller potential customer base than with previous end products Gamers would only consider Zen 4 if they were coming from an older platform largely Intel Platforms in that case or possibly first and second generation if they want to go you know super high end and ensure future proofing the other main target market is people building an entirely new system where you're not really thinking about what Hardware you have right now and then of course there's the small Market of Premium Shoppers that must have the best hardware or are interested in a system that's primarily for productivity workloads in which case the 7950x is an excellent choice and I think that use case is reflected in current sales figures we then be only targeting high-end Shoppers it's not a huge surprise that Zen 4 hasn't captured the attention of buyers that would normally spend less than 200 on their CPU even without factoring in the am5 platform upgrade costs the ryzen 5 7600x for gamers doesn't really come close to tickling the interest of budget Builders it's worse value than the ryzen 5 5600x right now which can be had for less than 200 U.S and that's not even factoring in the 5600 nonex which is just 160 dollars put simply the ryzen 5 7600x is too expensive to be a typical mainstream ryzen 5 option and indeed pretty much the entire lineup is too expensive to consider for a typical gamer which again are most DIY PC builders the bigger issue than the price of the processes themselves and perhaps the second biggest factor to poor am5 sales outside of General economic conditions is the cost of the motherboards in my opinion the pricing for the x670 series which is currently the only type of am5 motherboard you can get it's it's pretty outrageous the cheapest board available and the only board below 250 dollars after factoring in rebates on NewEgg is the ASRock x670 EPG lightning and there are only four other boards priced below 300 U.S one from each main motherboard brand this is out of 23 boards listed on NewEgg in total just five priced below 300 the majority of motherboard sales and indeed pretty much all the top sellers on Amazon are boards priced below 200 U.S there isn't a single board right now in that price category for Zen four buyers which is a big barrier to buying into this platform this means the absolute cheapest am5 CPU plus motherboard combination costs 550 us not including ddr5 memory a very tough ask for someone with an existing gaming PC when the 5800 X 3D is priced at just 430 dollars to make matters worse the average asking price for an am5 motherboard on NewEgg is 500 and dollars with a median of four hundred and seventy dollars U.S that's crazy now I know there are a few whale motherboards in here for stupidly expensive builds for example the MSI Godlike and Asus Crosshair extreme but the obsession with motherboards above 450 is concerning Asus for example has seven boards priced at or above four hundred and fifty dollars compared to just four boards below that MSI have three above 450 and one below gigabyte two above and one below so only as rock has more boards in a lower price category than above a CPU launch requiring a new platform simply isn't going to be successful when the majority of the only available motherboards are that expensive b650 and b650e Boards can't arrive fast enough hopefully offering great options below 200 let's be honest the features of these boards will be more than sufficient for most buyers x670 does offer more i o connectivity including more pcie Lanes more USB ports and more cider ports however b650 in particular b650e still offers pcie 5.0 support and plenty of connectivity for the average user in many ways these x670 boards are designed as workstation almost hedt replacement boards that are overkill for most users so again I think if AMD wanted a better initial reception for am5 then they probably needed to make the B series available simultaneously with the X Series to cater for a wider variety of buyers with all that said what we've heard from board Partners is that am5 is simply an expensive platform and Intel will have the price Advantage for motherboards this generation even when talking about z790 options in fact z790 is available to pre-order or Newegg right now ahead of its October 20th launch and what we find in comparison to am5 is interesting of the 29 listed boards the average price is 323 dollars with a median of 290 dollars including 16 boards price below 300 and 11 below 250 although ASRock does dominate there with seven options Intel does have the advantage of offering a ddr4 platform so typically the cheaper Boards of ddr4 boards but even when directly comparing ddr5 options to am5 on five occasions I spotted an equivalent z790 board that was 30 cheaper or more typically for the more wallet-friendly models on another six occasions pricing was similar though five of these were priced above 450 for either option this doesn't fact factor in the availability of z690 either which is compatible with upcoming raptorlex CPUs there doesn't appear to be a good reason why x670 is more expensive at least that we could uncover both x670 and z790 have big vrms support PCI 5.0 and ddr5 plus heaps of Enthusiast grade features so there's no obvious extra that makes the am5 platform more costly new standards like PCI 5.0 do require better signaling which in turn is more costly to implement but that applies to both motherboard types and it seems on the AMD side they're just charging more aside from motherboards it's also hard to gauge how many prospective buyers are waiting to see how Intel's 13th gen CPUs perform before making a purchase this is the sensible move but of course not everyone chooses to do so and I would imagine some buyers jumped on the 5800 X 3D after seeing sn4 results if they already had an am4 motherboard for those that are waiting when Intel announced Raptor Lake last week they claimed a 15 gain in single thread applications and a 41 gain in multi-thread performance compared to their previous older Lake processors this this comes with an increase in frequency up to 5.8 gigahertz with the core I9 13900k and 6 gigahertz on the way with a future processor plus more cash and more e-cores across the line the top model has 24 cores 8p and 16e so double the equals while the cry 7 and Cry 5 models go from 4 to 8 ecors pricing at least for these K models should be a little more expensive than some of amd's lineup with the core i5 13600 KF tray price starting at 294 dollars so the retail price probably is going to be a tad above 300 so competing with the 7600x they're 12 700 KF should come in around 400 and the flagship core I9 should end up around 600 so that would slot in between the 7900x and 7950x of particular interest to people waiting to decide what CPU to go with the Intel's gaming performance claims while these are first party benchmarks that should be taken with a grain of salt Intel are claiming a modest gaming performance uplift over the 12900k which is is already quite competitive with sen4 Intel did show this rather bizarre chart with misleading lines instead of bars for Amy's fastest chip the 5800x 3D but either way Intel is suggesting the 13900k will come on top mostly we'll have to wait and see how that plays out in real world benchmarks but certainly there is a good reason to wait on buying Zen 4 until we see those results in a few weeks time I guess the question at the end of the day is whether AMD had a successful zenfall launch or a poor launcher maybe something in between it appears A and B strategy was to aim for the high end considering their high zenfor prices and x670 only motherboard availability and considering sales of older ryzen 5000 parts are still exceptionally strong I don't think AMD would be annoyed too much they are continuing to dominate Intel but zenforce sales are also appearing to be weaker than expected and some of the decisions AMD made to specifically focus on the high-end Market would have contributed to that especially in addition to a performance picture that's only compelling for a small subset of the overall DIY Market if zenfor is to be successful it's clear that motherboard pricing needs to improve very few people are going to want to jump into an all-new platform while spending over 300 on a motherboard am5 desperately needs sub 200 options so I'm glad b650 is coming shortly and not many months after launch like has been the case with some previous releases ddr5 pricing is still higher than ddr4 but in my opinion that's not as significant of an issue as the motherboards which frankly is an easy fix I also think we just need to see more affordable Zen 4 options it's something we've mentioned in both the reviews of Zen 4 and Zen 3 that having the cheapest option at 300 us is not ideal I think it's less ideal now when AMD needs to convince buyers to transition over to am5 for the future of their CPU series the way to do that is with a great value proposition that makes people think hard about whether to go for the 5800x 3D or jump over to Zen 4. right now that decision is very easy in favor of zen3v cache or budget Zen 3 Parts we're not going to see this sort of value equation that the platform needs until a 7600 non-x type part launches at around 200 U.S at this point we probably sound like broken records as we talked at length about the need for a 200 option back with ryzen 5000 and that launch as well anyway that's it for this sort of post-launch look at Zen 4 and how things are tracking at least the positive this year compared to when Zen 3 first launched is that it's pretty easy to buy zenfor processor right now they're pretty much in stock everywhere so you're not gonna have to worry about wondering when they're going to come back in stock I know we send three it took several months I think quite a way into 2021 until those processes were widely available but this generation if you really do want a Zen four part uh then you can go and buy now but I probably would still wait until until 13th gen is revealed fully well in terms of performance at least we now have the you know the announcement but in terms of reviews and all that sort of thing and then of course waiting until those B series boards are available anyway that's it for this one if you do appreciate our analysis videos and that sort of thing please do consider subscribing to the channel and also supporting us on patreon and float plan links to those are in the description below you'll get access to things like our Discord Community which I think said a lot of fun discussing all the latest launches because it's a big release period at the moment lots to talk about lots to chat with you guys about so yeah it's a great place to being anyway thanks for watching and I'll catch you in the next one [Music] [Music]

Channel: Hardware Unboxed

Views: 335,521

Keywords: hardware unboxed

Id: GNypS8DgFoY

Length: 15min 54sec (954 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 08 2022