The price of processors may be set to nose dive in 2020 as Intel is forced to play catchup with AMD. In an about turn of the past few years, Intel is reportedly set to bring down the prices of all its CPUs in order to remain cost competitive with AMD's existing Zen 2 Ryzen 3000 desktop CPUs, and its upcoming Ryzen 4000 Zen 3 desktop chips.
Traditionally, Intel has been able to charge effectively whatever it liked for its high-end CPUs, as there was little competition there. That's why just a couple of years ago the team blue HEDT CPUs, like its 18-core 7980XE, were $2,000 and today they're less than half that. But we may be set to see some big price reductions in the mainstream segments of the market too.
According to a DigiTimes report, PC Makers and OEMs have let slip the news that Intel will reduce prices on almost all its processors in the second half of 2020. In the first we'll see the launch of its 10th-generation Comet Lake desktop CPUs, which should push frequencies and core counts a little higher, as well as reintroduce hyperthreading to the whole lineup. But later in 2020, their prices could fall significantly.
What is still unknown, however, is whether other chips like future Cooper Lake and Ice lake-SP chips will also receive price cuts, bringing down the prices of laptops by a noticeable margin. That will only happen if AMD's Ryzen 4000 mobile CPUs prove as competitive as they are expected to be.
