Ryzen is gaining followers, Intel continues to work on its Core i9, and the market keeps moving. Those who want the latest and greatest on their desktops are living a dream, which could become reality for less money than they imagine. The latest leaks suggest that the Ryzen Threadripper processor with 16 cores and 32 threads could hit shelves at just 850 dollars, exactly half of what Intel asks for its i9-7960X. Everything else will depend on its performance.
This is the rumor control; here are the facts: Despite what some articles indicated last week, AMD has no plans to adjust prices on its Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 processors. Quickly speculation arose that Threadripper would cause a series of corrections in lower models, but Sunnyvale denied it, although it said that certain businesses could offer special prices on their own. One detail that AMD decided to keep secret about Threadripper is its price, however, it's not that hard to get a basic idea. If we take the Ryzen 7 1800X (8C/16T) at $499 and multiply it by two, we get 16 cores at just under a thousand dollars, which sounds very reasonable…
Still, the latest rounds of leaks point to the Ryzen Threadripper debuting at a price of 850 dollars. While we are obliged to sprinkle a little salt and pepper, the fact is it seems within AMD's possibilities. The Ryzen 7 1700X costs 400 dollars, so the company already has the means to deliver 16 cores at an average of 800 dollars (and even less if we consider the standard Ryzen 7 1700). Of course, that calculation is very simple and doesn't account for the complexities of the new platform (remember that Threadripper will not use AM4 socket), but even with a 10 or 20 percent margin of error, it will place a lot of pressure on Intel's Core i9. Its 16-core equivalent is worth 1,699 dollars, and for 850 you can't even access the ten-core option.
The rest forces us to wait. AMD is taking its time, and Intel needs to use every second to polish everything that is Core X, because despite its specifications, the feeling is that the Santa Clara giant rushed things. Another aspect impossible to ignore is the advantage Intel maintains over AMD in IPC, but at the end of the day we always return to the same comparison: If AMD manages to deliver 70-75 percent of the performance at half the cost, we have a fabulous fight ahead.
