Intel has just killed AMD's Ryzen 7000 with very competitive Raptor Lake pricing

AMD launched its Ryzen 7000 series desktop processor lineup recently. While the performance of the new chips is in line with what AMD made us believe, the pricing is definitely on the higher side. The 16 core 32 thread (16C/32T) Ryzen 9 7950X, the 12C/24T Ryzen 9 7900X, the 8C/16T Ryzen 7 7700X and the 6C/12T Ryzen 5 7600X, are priced at $699, $549, $399 and $299 respectively.

While at a first glance, the prices don't seem too bad compared to last gen products, the total platform cost is actually pretty steep. This is because Zen 4 CPUs are only compatible with DDR5, which is still quite expensive compared to DDR4.

Meanwhile, Intel's 13th Gen Raptor Lake-S desktop CPUs will support DDR4 as well as DDR5 just like its predecessor Alder Lake did. Speaking of Raptor Lake, Intel, as expected, released the new lineup today at the Innovation 2022 event.

While the spec details had already leaked earlier, the pricing was still a mystery. A few hours ago, Newegg posted the retail prices of the SKUs and they appeared very competitive.

While those could certainly have been placeholder values, Intel itself has now confirmed that Raptor Lake is indeed more affordable overall. The 24 core 32 thread (24C/32T) Core i9-13900K, the 16C/24T i7-13700K, and the 14C/20T i5-13600K are priced at $589, $409, and $319 respectively. The F-series without the on-board graphics are slightly cheaper. Adding in the platform costs to the processor prices, we could have a situation where Intel CPUs could end up being the more affordable option, something which was incomprehensible a decade ago.

You can view the full specifications and pricing details in the image below:

Here's a performance demo of Raptor Lake put together by Intel:

The chips are slated to be available next month starting on October 20.

Source: Intel