Intel without attracting attention reduced the prices of fresh Xeon 6 processors – some dropped thousands of dollars

Intel without warning reduced the prices for the latest Xeon 6 Granite Rapids processors, presented four months ago. In some cases, they fell in price very significantly: for example, the flagship model lost $ 5340 and now costs $ 12,460, drew attention to the Tom’s Hardware resource.

Image Source: Intel

Intel Xeon 6 Granite Rapids processors turned out to be the most expensive in the history of the company, but now the manufacturer decided to sell them cheaper. There were no high -profile ads, but adjustments were reflected in the company’s database on its website, so these are official prices. Depending on the model, the cost reduction was from $ 1585 for the 96-core XEON 6975P to $ 5340 for the XEON 6980P line with 128 nuclei. Three of the five processors of the series became 30 % cheaper, and two more – by 13 % (6972p) and 20 % (6952p).

As a result, the 128-core Intel Xeon 6980p ($ 12,460), although it remained more expensive than the eldest in the AMD Epyc Genoa 9654 line ($ 11,805), but offered a more favorable price for the core-$ 97 for the first and $ 123 in the second; Direct 96-core competitors from Intel have become cheaper than AMD analogues and in absolute terms. At the same time, 64-core processors from AMD remained cheaper than competitors from Intel, because in this segment “blue” prices were not reduced.

The value of the core will help to make Intel Xeon 6 Granite Rapids chips more competitive for suppliers of cloud services that take several criteria: performance for socket, number of nuclei for sockets, productivity for watt and total cost of ownership (TCO). According to the latest, Intel desperately loses to the competitor: the 96-core AMD EPYC 9654 offers the base capacity of 360 W, and the 96-core Intel Xeon 6972P requires tremendous 500 watts.

Image source: Tomshardware.com

It should be noted that we are talking about the recommended price for customers (RCP), which are purchased in volume from 1000 units. Large manufacturers of servers, including Dell, HPE and Lenovo, as well as large cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, Meta✴ and Microsoft Azure purchase Intel processors in even larger quantities, and prices for such customers are formed at negotiations . Sometimes cloud providers purchase processors outside the official assortment – they have specifications adapted to customer requirements and are supplied in pre -specified volumes.

If Intel decided to significantly reduce the prices of the Xeon advanced processors, this may say that the company is not quite satisfied with sales, and now wants to increase them. Perhaps she also decided to stop or at least slow down the strengthening of AMD positions in the processor market for data processing centers. According to the results of the III quarter of 2024, the AMD share in this market amounted to 24.2 %, calculated in the Mercury Research, and for the Reds this is the highest indicator since the mid-2000s.