After years of watching its PC CPU market share be chipped away by rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD 3.04%), Intel (INTC 1.28%) came out swinging in late 2021 and 2022. The company's Alder Lake chips, the first from the company with a mix of high-performance and efficiency cores, started to roll out in late 2021. These powerful, affordable chips generally beat AMD's Ryzen 5000 series chips in performance and value.
Intel built on this advantage last year with its Raptor Lake chips, which featured the same mixed-core architecture along with meaningful performance improvements. "Intel's 13th-Gen Raptor Lake processors deliver explosive generational performance increases that beat AMD's similarly priced Ryzen chips in gaming, single- and multi-threaded work at every price point," said reviewers at Tom's Hardware.
Those last-gen Alder Lake chips are still available, but they're about to get more expensive. Intel indicated last July that it would be raising some CPU prices toward the end of year to offset the cost inflation it was experiencing.
A historically weak PC market may have delayed those plans – global PC shipments tumbled nearly 20% year over year in the third quarter, prompting companies across the PC supply chain to reduce inventories. But as we enter 2023, Intel is now following through on those price increases.
Testing its pricing power
Intel has increased the recommended customer price on a wide variety of its Alder Lake processors by roughly 10%. The high-end i9-12900K, for example, is now listed at a range of $648 to $658, up $59 from previous pricing.
Oddly enough, this move puts Alder Lake prices above Raptor Lake prices in some cases, at least on paper. Intel's price range of the i9-13900K is currently $589 to $599 despite offering better performance than its predecessor.
These prices aren't necessarily what potential buyers of these chips are seeing at retail right now. On Amazon, the i9-12900K currently sells for a heavily discounted $409, while the i9-13900K is priced in line with Intel's listing at $599. It's possible that discounts were used on the Alder Lake chips to run down supplies, and now that the inventory situation has improved, Intel feels comfortable bumping up prices.
It seems likely that Intel will eventually push through price increases on its Raptor Lake chips as well, since it wouldn't make much sense to charge less for superior products.
How this changes things
While AMD hasn't announced any official price cuts, its last-gen Ryzen 5000 chips and current-gen Ryzen 7000 chips are selling at discounts that appear to be permanent. The big discounts for the Ryzen 5000 chips are likely an attempt to clear out excess inventory. AMD's client segment saw revenue tumble 40% year over year in the third quarter as the PC supply chain grappled with too much inventory.
The discounts for the Ryzen 7000 chips, on the other hand, are necessary for them to be competitive against Intel's Raptor Lake. At MSRP, Raptor Lake is the clear winner based on third-party reviews. Once you factor in more expensive motherboards and no support for cheaper DDR4 memory, AMD's latest Ryzen chips are at an even bigger disadvantage.
If Intel does boost prices for Raptor Lake chips, AMD's Ryzen 7000 chips would look more attractive, particularly at the current discounted prices. That could allow AMD to boost prices a bit itself, which would help margins. Although if Intel is feeling inflationary costs pressures, AMD is likely feeling them as well.
Intel's PC CPU lineup is the strongest it's been in years. While sluggish demand for PCs will continue to put pressure on the company's results, it's clearly confident enough in the value proposition of its chips to push some costs onto its customers.
