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PC CPU Shipments See Steepest Decline in 30 Years
- kibwen 4y ago> McCarron shines a glimmer of light in the wake of this gloom, reminding us that overall processor revenue was still higher in 2022 than any year before the 2020s began. Suggests a correction precipitated by panic-buying during the supply chain chaos of the pandemic era. Too soon for doom and gloom for the PC market just yet. Mobile devices have been dominating PCs since long before 2020, and if revenues were still growing in the past decade then there's nothing to suggest that this moment is suddenly the inflection point where the whole thing will come tumbling down, even if you do believe that something like that is inevitable.
- Finnucane 4y agoYeah, everybody upgraded their WFH office setups in the prior two years, now no one needs a new pc. We’re going to be good for a while.
- giuliomagnifico 4y ago> excluding ARM These figures exclude ARM CPUs, another possibility is that lots of people are switching/buying ARM devices.
- coffeebeqn 4y agoIsn’t Apple high end computers the only ones? Maybe some Chromebooks
- giuliomagnifico 4y agoYes there aren’t many but they’re growing very fast: https://www.techspot.com/news/97571-arm-cpus-forecast-capture-quarter-laptop-market-2027.html https://www.techspot.com/news/97571-arm-cpus-forecast-captur...
- nordsieck 4y ago> Yeah, everybody upgraded their WFH office setups in the prior two years, now no one needs a new pc. We’re going to be good for a while. Also, it feels like phones have entered that "Core 2 Duo" PC stage where upgrades don't really matter as much any more. I know software support can still be an issue, but at least on the iPhone side, I don't feel like I need to upgrade before my phone loses OS support.
- bushbaba 4y agoHence apples shift into the services segment. Pushing Apple Music, Apple TV, iCloud, etc.
- dfghjjbhvg 4y agoand payments. visa and mastercards will not last another decade if hardware sales don't pick up soon.
- ThrowawayTestr 4y agoI upgraded from an S10 to an S22 and I can barely tell the difference.
- coffeebeqn 4y agoExactly it’s the same with laptops. If you know anything about decent specs and don’t buy something with a ridiculous bottleneck and do a fresh install you can find a 5+ year old laptop that is amazing for anything other than extreme workloads. I mean like rendering scenes - not VSCode and Slack or something
- ghaff 4y agoI use an Apple Silicon MacBook Pro for multimedia and some other things. But most of what I do on a 7+ year old MacBook and iMac does just fine. I suspect you also have something of a generational thing with many younger students not even using PCs.
- ricardobayes 4y agoGames also don't really require that good PC's these days, you can pretty much still play everything on a decent 3-4 year machine
- kurthr 4y agoI agree with the sentiment, but mobile devices have also seen a plunge in sales. Many in the industry expected 2B units/year, but it maxed out around 1.6B. The last few years have seen volatility, between 1.2-1.4B. Last year was the worst since 2016, and the next worst was 2020. Only Apple has been relatively flat, and probably only they and Samsung are very profitable. Most of the profitability in "PC" (GPU/CPU) has really been datacenter for 5 years. Again, Intel executed badly, but the decision to focus on datacenter was right.
- throwaway5959 4y agoNow all the cloud vendors are making their own chips. This had to have been obvious given how a small company in the UK could build the Raspberry Pi.
- gruez 4y ago>This had to have been obvious given how a small company in the UK could build the Raspberry Pi. According to wikipedia they use chips from Broadcom. I'm not sure how a small company being able to make SBCs using chips from a massive multinational is indicative of how easy it is for cloud vendors to "make their own chips".
- zinekeller 4y agoPreviously, you're correct, but no longer: https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/microcontrollers/rp2040.html https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/microcontrollers/r...
- bsder 4y agoUm, no, the Pico doesn't run Linux. If you want a Linux RPi, the chips are still Broadcom.
- throwaway5959 4y agoThe moment RPis were released it was obvious to me that eventually cloud providers/data centers would be using ARM chips due to Intel’s margins. At the scale of millions of chips it makes sense to save money on each chip.
- newsclues 4y agoSo you had a few factors. COVID/WFH Panic Purchasing for work and school at home. COVID Cash also put money into peoples hands to buy stuff, like computers. Crypto mining and GPU shortage was also a factor. As people were buying systems and parts for speculation. People were buying prebuilt computers to mine or simply get the GPU. Scalpers made everything worse, messing with parts in the supply chain. So there is the supply and demand factors, and the extra money for consumers and the speculation for crypto, and it was a perfect storm.
- q1w2 4y agoThis is why year-over-year numbers are not good to look at.
- V__ 4y ago> Most of the downturn in shipments is blamed on excess inventory shipping in prior quarters impacting current sales. This is in line with comments from Drew Prairie (AMD’s VP of communications): [1] > We are shipping below consumption because there is too much inventory in the channel and that partners want to carry lower levels of inventory based on the demand they are seeing [1] https://www.pcworld.com/article/1499957/amd-is-undershipping-chips-to-keep-cpu-gpu-prices-elevated.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/1499957/amd-is-undershipping...
- necessary 4y agoI don't know about anyone else but I've been patiently waiting for the Ryzen 9 7950X3D since the 5800X3D came out. The gaming performance on that chip was so good that it was competitive with more expensive chips at the time, despite being slower for productivity workloads. My 4790k is starting to show it's age when playing games like Rimworld and Elden Ring.
- shmerl 4y agoI'm waiting for benchmarks. So far I'm not convinced 7950X3D will be better than 7950X, especially since there is no way scheduler will be able tell whether some thread benefits from more cache or from higher clocks, unless someone develops a very sophisticated one with AI like training capabilities? I haven't seen any kind of efforts of that sort (I'm gaming on Linux).
- chucky_z 4y agoLook at 5800X vs 5800X3D.
- shmerl 4y agoPretty marginal benefits for many workloads. And it's not directly comparable, because 5800X3D provides more cache for all cores. 7950X3D provides more cache only for half the cores. That creates a weird hybrid CPU. Half the cores have higher clocks and less cache, and half the cores have lower clocks and more cache. Your threads will be scheduled all over the place pretty randomly. So I'm not yet convinced it's going to be better than stock 7950X with higher clocks across the board. Actual benchmarks will tell.
- schemescape 4y agoI’m surprised to see Rimworld and Elden Ring lumped together. I thought Rimworld was a nicer looking Dwarf Fortress. Is the simulation just extremely CPU-intensive?
- ozarker 4y ago
- classichasclass 4y agoInteresting in those tables that VIA isn't even a rounding error anymore.
- ramshanker 4y agoI am waiting for DDR5 prices to normalise. Simple.
- eertami 4y agoWith a 5800X3D, I'm waiting for DDR6 prices to normalise ;)
- downrightmike 4y agoGiven how many times the MFGs have been caught colluding to keep them high, good luck!
- jostmey 4y agoThe best chip production is going to smartphones. PC processors drain my battery and are slow compared to a GPU. So why would I spend money on a new PC or new PC processor?
- akmarinov 4y agoThem sweet FPS
- unpopularopp 4y agoGood luck playing Hogwarts Legacy on your smartphone.
- downrightmike 4y agoHL == ew
- CameronNemo 4y agoI assume you picked that game just to stir shit up.
- witheld 4y agoI can’t see myself needing a CPU upgrade for a long time. I used Ivy Bridge for a decade, and my Ryzen is far far more powerful. Right now the only compute upgrade I need is a GPU and I think that applies to a lot of people.
- zamadatix 4y agoThat era marked the lowest level of competition in CPU performance and it really showed in terms of how relatively lame an upgrade with the leader of the time (Intel) was. With AMD's products being competitive and ARM CPUs no longer being relegated to smartphone class performance there is real competition again. Given that and the historical tendency that software grows to use the available hardware I wouldn't bank on every CPU upgrade lasting as long as they did in that period. But damn if it hasn't been hard to get a good deal on a GPU these last couple of years...
- nickpeterson 4y agoIs AMD completely out of the arm chip game? I know they had interest a few years back but seemed to abandon it. I’d really like an option to buy an arm cpu and motherboard from someone who will support it. Basically something in between a rpi and a MacBook. 400-500 with upgradable ram, storage, and gpu.
- dehrmann 4y agoGoogling "ARM ATX motherboard" has some results, but these are so uncommon, everything's going to be an uphill battle.
- opencl 4y agoAt least for now AMD doesn't have anything ARM. There are ARM systems available but nothing anywhere close to that price range. The Honeycomb LX2 is probably the closest thing to that currently, but it launched for $750 and has since gone up to around $920. Performance is not remotely competitive with x86 systems at that price point. There are some systems based on the Ampere Altra chips, but nobody sells the motherboards/CPUs on their own and a full system will run you at least ~$6000.
- tambre 4y agoAdlink sells an COM-HPC motherboard [0] and a corresponding Ampere Altra module [1]. [0] https://www.adlinktech.com/products/Computer_on_Modules/COM-HPC-Server-Carrier-and-Starter-Kit/COM-HPC_Server_Base?lang=en https://www.adlinktech.com/products/Computer_on_Modules/COM-... [1] https://www.adlinktech.com/Products/Computer_on_Modules/COM-HPC/COM-HPC_Ampere_Altra https://www.adlinktech.com/Products/Computer_on_Modules/COM-...
- unpopularopp 4y agoDid my part buying an i5-13600k. Going from an i7-7700 it was a pretty good jump
- bombcar 4y agoI’ve been so far out of it for so long I have no real way to interpret those numbers. 13600 is almost double 7700 so that’s obviously good but is i5 noticeably inferior to i7?
- unpopularopp 4y agoRecently, and especially with this gen, the line between i5 and i7 is coming down to the amount of cores itself not the single core peformance. Basically 14 Cores, 20 Threads @3.5GHz vs 16 Cores, 24 Threads @3.4GHz. What used to be the i7 was (like with the i7-7700) now occupied by the i9 line The value price of the 12600k is just much better
- mhh__ 4y agoWhich i7?
- wongarsu 4y ago7700 is 7th generation, 13600 is 13th generation, so they are about 6 years apart. The 600 and 700 tells you something about how they are positioned within their generation (bigger equals better). i5 vs i7 is a difficult topic. i7 generally has more hardware features enabled and has the higher end models. But unless you want specific features it's not so big of a deal. Looking up the numbers instead of reading them like tarot cards, I can tell you that the i7 7700 is a 8 core processor with a max turbo frequency of 4.20 GHz, and the i5 13600 is a 14 core with 6 cores that can do 5 GHz, and 8 efficiency cores capped at 3.7GHz. And both support VT-d, which is about the only feature I would care about :D
- Tsiklon 4y agoIntel’s naming convention on consumer parts is relatively easy to grok, as it’s been much more consistent for the last 12 years than their server/workstation parts. Breaking both down we have 3 things to take note of: i5/i7 - indicates relative performance or feature set within a given generation, bigger is generally better 13/7 - the generation of processor 600/700 - where Intel rates a given processor within a generation, this is consistent and doesn’t (to my knowledge) involve overlap between i3/5/7/9 - generally bigger is better. So i5-13600 is a thirteenth gen i5, type 600. i7-7700 is a seventh gen i7, type 700 Then you get the legion of letter suffixes determining other features, mobile SKUs etc.
- krisroadruck 4y agoJust built a new rig last week. This isn't at all surprising. Prices are so out of whack right now. $1000 used to be the ceiling for the highest end video cards (like a 1080 Ti), now $1000 is the floor. There are no good current gen (or even previous gen) cards available for under $1000. The 4080 is a horrible value and still regularly listed at $1200-$1400. The 4090 is overkill and sits around $1700-$2200. Even 2 year old tech 3080's are regularly selling for near a grand. AM5 motherboards are insanely priced. Want a 10Gb onboard NIC? Be prepared to shell out $1000 just for the motherboard. Add to all of that, this latest batch of CPUs are just stupid power hungry - like 240w+ under load (except for the non-x variants of AMD 7000 series, just released last month). It used to be you could buy a lot of computer for $2-3K, now that figure is closer to $5K. These prices, combined with the folks that just went through this pain 2 years ago during the pandemic and yeah you aren't going to see stuff flying off the shelves any time soon.
- nickstinemates 4y ago> Want a 10Gb onboard NIC? Just buy an Intel PCI-E 10g card. They're like $100. Slots on motherboards are meant to be used.
- Aardwolf 4y agoThere are hardly any slots on motherboards too now these days. One network card may fit next to the GPU. All kinds of limitations to nvme SSD speeds and GPU bus width may start applying just for doing that.
- paulmd 4y agoExactly, as long as GPUs keep swelling larger and larger, pcie cards just aren't going to be practical. It's crazy that X670E literally has multiple chipsets daisychained together ostensibly to increase expansion capability and yet there's less and less expansion available to end-users. And what there is, is almost entirely blocked by the GPU these days. I would love to see a board with tons of pcie slots attached to the chipset or PCIe switches, but, it wouldn't make the GPU go away for those users who want a discrete GPU. The only real viable solution I see is thunderbolt, move as much as possible out of the case and break that expansion out as external ports. And tbh the PCIe add-in-card form factor just isn't working for GPUs anymore, the GPU needs to become a standardized module that is connected separately (via riser if desired) and it probably needs a 48V rail. The GPU being 3-4x the TDP of the CPU but completely dimensionally unstandardized and running crazy currents at 12V is not sustainable.
- varelse 4y ago[dead]
- maigret 4y agoAre Raspberry Pi available again?
- gjsman-1000 4y agoStrongly recommend looking at used Dell OptiPlex Micros. I have 2 5060Ms, 35W Core i3 8th gen, 2 RAM slots (8GB commonly included), NVMe slot (256GB commonly included), SATA slot, RTC, for about $150. Considering Raspberry Pi prices and the absurdly greater performance, it was a no-brainer for me.
- dfghjjbhvg 4y agointeresting. migth be a good IoT+HTPC+wifiRouter replacer combo!
- superkuh 4y agoMost people are buying rpis because they can throw some boot image on it made for the rpi and have things just work. A regular computer, no matter how much better in performance, doesn't just work. For example: you can't just throw a Birdnet-Pi (https://birdnetpi.com/ https://birdnetpi.com/) image on a normal PC and run it. There is plain Birdnet but it doesn't have any of the automation or the web interface for use Birdnet-Pi does. Instead it's pages worth of complex multi-argument commands you'd have to customize and you'd have to port the web interface yourself. Since most people want rpis for little projects like this a normal PC massively increases the complexity.
- locustous 4y agoFor a price...
- graphe 4y agoThey always are. Why do you need them? Their high prices are probably because of Broadcom though, which is also why they made their own chip. It may never be cheap again.
- operatingthetan 4y ago
- LarryMullins 4y agoA CPU a few years old is still good enough. If you have a limited budget and want the most bang for your buck, then stick with your old CPU and get a new GPU instead.
- coffeebeqn 4y agoDepending on what you’re doing - unless you need to game with slightly better FPS there’s nothing a gaming PC/laptop from a few years ago can’t completely crush still
- LarryMullins 4y agoI was thinking more about playing with new AI toys. TBH a 10 year old CPU and GPU are still fine for most games, latest AAA releases perhaps notwithstanding.
- coffeebeqn 4y agoHmm yeah I figure it’s better to just rent a monster machine in the cloud for that. But I haven’t dipped into that much yet
- Our_Benefactors 4y agoIt’s not because then you’re trading graphical fidelity for input lag.
- Nullabillity 4y agoInput lag doesn't seem relevant for playing around with AI models for 5 minutes until you get bored.
- coffeebeqn 4y agoYeah just the “compilation” (sorry not a ML engineer term) would need meaningful resources. You can run a python repl and editor on a raspberry pi
- izacus 4y agoWe're in for a doomsaying "XXXX Shipments see YYY decline" articles after 2020 boom aren't we? Gotta have those clicks coming. This is all just reversion back to pre-2020 normal.
- nathants 4y agoi recently built my first pc and moved my daily driver from being a thinkpad to a custom desktop. i was already sitting at a desk, so ergonomically it’s identical. now i can compile blender in 20 seconds and fly around with eevee. i can compile linux with custom lsm modules. dual ssd makes it easy to dual boot. reboot into windows and i can have a magical evening. 7950x, 4090, 990 pro. it would be great if these were cheaper, then more people could afford to use them. it’s also ok that they are overpriced. cest la vie. to anyone spending a majority of their life on a computer and making money, the cost of your primary computer doesn’t matter unless it’s ludicrous. the opportunity cost is far higher. what might you have learned had you tinkered with blender or a kernel when you were bored?
- reustle 4y ago> what might you have learned had you tinkered with blender or a kernel when you were bored? Pretty sure hardware speed is not the main thing holding people back from doing this. Apple silicone is also just getting too good.
- dv_dt 4y agopost the WFH investments, plus major tech companies laying off pushing a glut of used hw onto the market would seem to put a dent it cpu shipments.
- croes 4y agoPercentage compared to the previous year is a bad measure. A positive outlier in the last year leads to a negative one in the current.
- finphil 4y agoShipments are still high... but the "PC pandemic boom" might be over.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoThe ending of Moore’s law should result in a future where compute devices last a century like furniture does.
- kupfer 4y agoIf it comes to that, I expect manufacturers to design processors in a way that electromigration limits their lifetime.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoThe new lightbulb :) I wonder if it comes to that…
- NovaDudely 4y agoWindows 11 requires a minimum security set on their hardware limiting it to machines only a few years old. Planned obsolescence in hardware is already here...
- josephcsible 4y agoAnd remember it's not like it actually needs any of it. There's a few checks of the form "if(doesntHaveTpm2) refuseToWork();" in the code, but people have hacked around those and then everything worked fine still.
- mensetmanusman 4y agoWindows self-destructing because it needs new hardware to render ads in the start menu… ha
- than3 4y agoThe prices are simply too high for the marginal benefit they offer. Marginal costs outweigh the benefits so why would people buy? This is simple economics and they know this, but they still price fix because they must meet their minimum profits whatever that may be. Its a common problem with monopolies, as soon as the market place shrinks to only a few players, where the means of production has been concentrated, those people then start dictating prices and may collude without even needing some conspiratorial agreement. Many people also ignore the fact that Intel ME/AMT and the AMD equivalent features that cannot be disabled, are not documented, and are primary targets; are becoming more well known, and in general people don't want it. Businesses may find value in those features, but individuals find cost (i.e. their privacy, and greater future risks that are unquantifiable). They've broken their own market, and the rot will only get worse for them since its unlikely they will right the course. Many IT people wonder if there isn't some secret government mandate requiring these companies to embed management co-processors. It is clearly offering only minimal value to IT, and its seen as a cost for individuals that know about it. They really need to reconsider their actual market instead of the fairy magic kingdom type thinking they have been following.
- xen2xen1 4y agoYou're putting the fact that modern computers have AMT up with Covid, supply shortages, and Crypto crashes in terms of sales loss???...????? You really, really need to get out of whatever bubble you're in.
- anonym29 4y agoAMD ST (formerly PSP) and Intel CSME (formerly ME, not the same as AMT) are the only reason that I, and 3 close friends off the top of my head, are completely disinterested in buying any new x86 CPUs. All 4 of us work in big tech companies, have 6 figure take home pay even after expenses. I don't mind paying high prices due to shortages. Lockdowns were BS and I was continuing to eat out regularly at restaurants from September 2020 to present in a state with lax mask requirements. Only 1 of the 3 friends lost any money in crypto, and it was a very small amount compared to his annual income. Just because you and your social sphere don't fully appreciate the privacy implications of CSME and ST, which again, aren't the same as AMT, doesn't mean nobody else cares about them. Have you considered that it might be you who is in the bubble?
- andrewstuart 4y agoI wonder if Nvidia and AMD are partly to blame. They are artificially keeping GPU prices high, so people don't want to buy GPUs. And if they don't want to buy a GPU then they don't want the thing that the GPU goes in.
- qayxc 4y agoPCs sales aren't tied to GPU sales, though. Gamers switch GPUs way more often than CPUs (which makes sense, since CPUs often aren't the bottleneck). PCs have simply become fast enough over the past 10 years and there's been no "Windows Vista"-moment that forced users to migrate to new hardware en masse. A 5 year old system will simply feel pretty much the same to the average user as a brand spanking new one. There's only so many video editors and professional gamers/streamers who thirst after the latest hardware.
- HDThoreaun 4y agoI think enterprise upgrading less is a far bigger factor.
- anonym29 4y agoDear any disenchanted Intel or AMD employees or executives reading, I will buy a new CPU when you offer one without Intel (CS)ME / AMD Secure Technology (formerly PSP). Until then, I will never buy a new x86 processor ever again. Sincerely, - A larger chunk of your potential customers than you think
- alexklarjr 4y agoI think their processors are not including management engine, so you are safe to buy one. The management engine that included in chipsets can be switched off permanently. In general usage, it does not matter while you use third party controlled CAs, distro repositories and automatic updates, not speaking about microsoft, google, nvidia, valve, mozilla spyware that can do anything with your data anytime they (or US/EU government agencies) want.
- anonym29 4y ago>I think their processors are not including management engine, so you are safe to buy one. There are no new AMD or Intel processors that come without ST (formerly PSP) or CSME (formerly ME). >The management engine that included in chipsets can be switched off permanently. This is factually incorrect. me_cleaner cannot neutralize or disable modern CSME, there is no way to verify the HAP bit does anything at all, nor that the included TCP/IP stack on the Minix OS cannot accept remote commands to disable the HAP bit, if set. To our current knowledge, only the onboard GbE controller is accessible to CSME's TCP/IP stack, but we're working with extremely limited information. These are closed-source, hardened opaque-boxes that are deliberately designed to be inauditable and tamper-proof. Adding firmware support for other ethernet controllers or wireless cards would conceivably be trivial. >In general usage, it does not matter while you use third party controlled CAs, distro repositories and automatic updates, I compile from source. OS, drivers, browser - all of it. I don't care if you think this is "unrealistic for the average user", my objective is not to have the security model that the average user has. >not speaking about microsoft, google, nvidia, valve, mozilla spyware that can do anything with your data anytime they (or US/EU government agencies) want. I do not run Windows, I do not use chromium (or firefox) based browsers, I do not use a discrete GPU, I don't have anything remotely gaming related (like steam) installed. What I do have is a constitutional right to privacy that does not end where my CPU begins, and an unshakeable resolve wherein I refuse to voluntarily cede that right to privacy just because so many others do.
- api 4y agoPeople just bought a lot over the pandemic era for gaming and WFH so maybe this is just a temporary demand trough.
- Havoc 4y agoIt seems the software bloat has finally failed to keep up with the hardware. Outside of fairly niche uses (4K, actual heavy compute) even an older CPU is fine. Won't hold forever...but longer.
- pjmlp 4y agoMy 2009 computers still work, and do what is asked of them, so why bother. Same applies to smartphones.
- rldjbpin 4y agoi like how people now use $1k for the price of a top-end gpu now when not too long ago it used to be half that. if you are starting from zero today, then it seems very rough indeed. but for a vast majority, minus the bloated applications people can get away with today, most people are just fine with what they already got. in terms of gamers, i am amazed by one group excited by steam deck and happy to live with its limitations, while another group wants the bleeding edge and demanding 4080/4090 performance for much less. in a day and age where even cyberpunk can be played on integrated graphics, we still stress on having a graphics card. for ai or other "production" workloads, unless you're starting from scratch, things remain as they had in the past: you pay more to save time. i personally chose to skip tensor cores for my machine to save on costs, but it should not be holding me back when i really need to train a large model. i am not sure how many people would actually be using their hardware for long enough to justify the "10 month" rule on buying v/s renting. as far as the main topic is concerned, cpu has become way too good way too quickly. only a few years ago we just had minor bumps on 8 threads for the consumer space. fortunately bloat hasn't advanced as much.