Ryzen 7000 Pricing
The actual MSRP for the Ryzen 7000 lineup is as follows: Xtremmedia, an online Spain retailer has already put up the Ryzen 7000 CPUs for sale (Out Of Stock). Take a look at the pricing. The R5 7600X, for example, costs 70$ (€70) more than the actual MSRP. Similarly, the price difference only increases as we move higher up in the Zen4 family.
The Cause
Spain levies a 21% VAT (Value Added Tax) on every item sold (including electronics). Therefore, the actual pricing comes out to be as follows. (Considering a conversion rate of $1 = €1)
A Bang For the Buck?
The price without VAT is actually less than AMD’s initial MSRP. Although less than last-Gen, the pricing for Zen4 is indeed facing some controversy. The Ryzen 5 7600X featuring a 6 core / 12 thread count cannot be justified at $300 as per some. While this is not the ideal core count for the pricing, the CPU is packed with a ton of power, coming in at a whopping 30% faster than the R5 5600X (Single-core Geekbench).
Raptor Lake
Intel is also looking to increase the pricing for its CPUs by around 20%. Though, bear in mind that the i7-13700K, even after the price increase, may cost somewhere around ~$499, still less than AMD”s R9 7900X ($549). Does Intel have the silicon to outperform AMD, that’s a story for another day. However, initial results from Intel are promising and the budget chips can easily dethrone AMD if the synthetic results transfer over to real world performance.