What just happened? It seems Intel is continuing to feel the pressure from AMD and is responding with more cuts. Team Blue has announced that it is reducing the price of its F-series and KF-series CPUs, which have their integrated UHD graphics disabled, by up to 20 percent.
Back in January, Intel confirmed earlier rumors when it released the F/KF variants of its 9th-generation processor lineup. The disabled UHD graphics allow for increased yields---Intel can still sell the chips if there are issues with the graphics, but the cores are okay.
While the unlocked KF and locked F models sounded like a good idea, eyebrows were raised when Intel priced them the same as CPUs that do have integrated graphics, though many retailers sold them at a slight discount.
Now, Intel is making those reductions official; prices have fallen by 5 percent to 20 percent. You can see all the changes below.
- Core i9-9900KF--- $463, down 5 percent from $488
- Core i9-9700KF--- $349, down 7 percent from $374
- Core i7-9700F--- $298, down 8 percent from $323
- Core i5-9600KF--- $237, down 10 percent from $262
- Core i5-9500F--- $167, down 13 percent from $192
- Core i5-9400F--- $157, down 14 percent from $182
- Core i3-9350KF--- $148, down 14 percent from $173
- Core i3-9100F--- $97, down 20 percent from $122
While there are some benefits to having Intel CPUs with integrated graphics, such as QuickSync and when troubleshooting, most PC owners who want to play games use a discrete graphics card.
It's thought that Intel introduced the price cut as another way to battle AMD in the CPU market. Last week saw Chipzilla unveil details on its Cascade Lake-X line of high-end desktop (HEDT) processors, which had its prices slashed by half as the company looks to compete with the upcoming Threadripper 3 and Ryzen 3950X, both of which are based on the 7nm process node.