Intel had a decent day yesterday. The chip firm announced it actually beat its earnings guidance, which means shareholders are a little better off than they expected. Though that’s only a drop of positivity for a select few in a bucket of mostly bad. Intel has had a rocky year, and while Lunar Lake was a surprising success, its desktop Arrow Lake chips are a bit of a damp squib.
What’s making matters worse is how increasingly affordable AMD’s current CPU lineup is right now.
Here are the prices for the Ryzen 9000-series over at Newegg:
For the sake of comparison, you can pick up Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K for $630 on Newegg. Well, you could, if it was in stock. Low stock around a chip launch is pretty normal, but reports suggest there’s very little Arrow Lake stock to go around. You can actually pick up the Core Ultra 5 245K for $319, at least.
I wouldn’t, though. The 245K doesn’t beat out the 9600X in our testing, and the AMD chip is 26% cheaper. There are also savings to be had in terms of your choice of motherboard. The most affordable Z890 motherboard for Arrow Lake on Newegg right now is $190, or $180 with a rebate. Whereas the most affordable AM5 motherboard for the 9000-series is $76. I don’t recommend buying the most basic board for a shiny new 9000-series chip but you could get something new and relatively decent for $115. That’s the sort of saving you can either put back in your pocket or to bump up to a better processor.
I won’t labor this point too much, as my colleague Jacob has already gone into greater depths of Intel’s pricing issue in his story on the AMD Ryzen 9 9800X3D, which will launch for $489 in the coming week. The main takeaway is simply, AMD’s prices are looking near-insurmountable for Intel right now. As such, PC gamers in need of a CPU upgrade should take note of these discounts. And also that new X3D chip, which might be the next best thing.
Out of those discounted, the chip we recommend for most PC gamers is the 9700X. As our Nick Evanson said in his review: “The $359 MSRP of the 9700X is spot-on for this kind of overall performance and it’s pleasingly lower than the last-gen 7700X’s launch price of $399.”
Now it’s $312, it’s even better.
It’s November, which means Black Friday is coming at the end of the month. We’re sure to see retailers dropping prices quicker than the Halloween decorations in the coming days and weeks. In fact, these AMD CPU discounts are a part of Newegg’s Black Friday sale. Head to our page for the best Black Friday PC gaming deals this year.
