Good guy Intel. 🙃

By the time I can get my hands on Raptor Lake Next, I expect 2 more price jumps.

Get ready for Novalake launch

The reason why these parts were so hyped up, despite them not being anything new was the price. Now that value proposition is gone.

Not sure why they need to increase the MSRP. These two processors have been selling way above MSRP for the entire time since their launch in March.

Dr_b_The reason why these parts were so hyped up, despite them not being anything new was the price. Now that value proposition is gone.

That is because they offered considerable gain in performance, at least more than what people come to expect from a relatively minor refresh.

Just add £600 for the board and RAM with current insane prices... Bargain.

If critique is okay... :)

ArticleIntel quietly increased the recommended selling price of its recently launched Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus "Arrow Lake-S" desktop processors from their launch prices of $299.99 and $199.99, respectively. The 270K Plus now sees a significant 16% price increase, and comes with an MSRP of $349.99. Meanwhile, the Core Ultra 5 250K Plus, which received much praise in the media for its disruptive price, gets a 15% price increase, with an MSRP of $229.99.

That was a long and difficult-to-parse way to say:

SimplerIntel is increasing the price on two processors:
Core 270K+: $299.99 -> $349.99 (+17%)
Core 250K+: $199.99 -> $229.99 (+15%)

Dr_b_The reason why these parts were so hyped up, despite them not being anything new was the price. Now that value proposition is gone.

270/250kplus is still much cheaper than the 9950x and 9900x, with comparable st/mt performance, and there is no need to deal with cross-ccd latency, the igpu is better, idle power is lower, .

Intel......."I have become death, the destroyer of worlds" - J. R. Oppenhiemer

nagemeThat was a long and difficult-to-parse way to say:

Where's the poetry in that? The suspense, the punchline, the... clickbait in some cases?

tsurugi270/250kplus is still much cheaper than the 9950x and 9900x, with comparable st/mt performance, and there is no need to deal with cross-ccd latency, the igpu is better, idle power is lower, .

Don't be so pragmatic bro, you forgot about the all important "muh upgrade path".
That means extra platform tax. :rolleyes:
Also AM5 houses several X3D CPUs which are uncontested gaming champions.
Another platform tax right there. :rolleyes:

Still a very good bargain compared to what AMD offers for the same prices. Powerful multi-core, but unlike the prior gen Raptor Lake, power efficient as well. And the Z890 motherboards are a bargain as well.

Worth remembering the timeline here:

The Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950X launched in August 2024.

The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and Core Ultra 7 270K Plus launched in March 2026.

So Intel’s “Plus” chips are being compared against AMD parts that are roughly 19 months older. That does not make the Intel CPUs bad, but it does matter when talking about value, platform cost, and performance comparisons.

If a newer Intel refresh is only competitive with AMD’s older high-end Zen 5 parts after a price hike, that is useful context. Release timing matters.

Sol_BadguyWhere's the poetry in that? The suspense, the punchline, the... clickbait in some cases?

Don't be so pragmatic bro, you forgot about the all important "muh upgrade path".
That means extra platform tax. :rolleyes:
Also AM5 houses several X3D CPUs which are uncontested gaming champions.
Another platform tax right there. :rolleyes:

Platform tax means that whenever AMD releases a CPU, it triggers a corresponding obsessive-compulsive urge to buy and upgrade due to the AM5 platform already owned. This sounds very much like a tax because it is unavoidable.
In gaming, x3d tax refers to paying a massive amount of money for gaming performance gains that are unnoticeable outside of an osd display. In tests that only use averages to calculate gaming gaps, x3d can take up more than half the importance of the entire test solely by virtue of a cs ~Δ200 fps advantage, thereby leading all other cpus, but in reality this is unnoticeable on a 240hz monitor. Moreover, by oc the cpu, gaming performance can be made close to x3d, while x3d oc offers smaller gains.

Intel raising prices again, while a board and RAM adds at minimum $500-600 to the cost of it not being a value regardless.
The intel fans can call it a tax all they want, but platform longevity is a nice thing to have with what prices are anymore, and the ARL refresh chips are much more recent than Zen 5 yet only come close in gaming. If Arrow Lake was what the "plus" version is then it would have better value, but not so much now on a dead socket and a higher platform cost than anyone who could've bought AM5 2 or 3 years ago.

I don't see how having a long-lived platform is a "tax."

I've owned plenty from both AMD and Intel over the years, so this isn't about brand loyalty.

A platform tax is the cost you're required to pay to adopt a platform—motherboard, memory, cooler compatibility, etc. Having a socket that lasts multiple CPU generations is the opposite of a tax because it gives you the option to upgrade without replacing everything.

Nobody is forcing an AM5 owner to buy every new CPU AMD releases. That's a choice. The benefit is that someone who bought a Ryzen 5 7600X today can, years later, potentially drop in a future 10800X3D (or whatever it's ultimately called) without buying a new motherboard.

By contrast, if a platform requires a new motherboard every generation or two, that is a platform tax because the additional cost is mandatory if you want to upgrade.

The 270K makes the 265k and 285K completely irrelevant :). Intel had to increase the price or those CPUs wouldn't ever sell again.

overclockedamdWorth remembering the timeline here:

The Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950X launched in August 2024.

The Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and Core Ultra 7 270K Plus launched in March 2026.

So Intel’s “Plus” chips are being compared against AMD parts that are roughly 19 months older. That does not make the Intel CPUs bad, but it does matter when talking about value, platform cost, and performance comparisons.

If a newer Intel refresh is only competitive with AMD’s older high-end Zen 5 parts after a price hike, that is useful context. Release timing matters.

The timeline is not that relevant.

The technology is the same. Okay okay some silicon tweaks were made. Without those the performance would be marginally lower. Again marginally.
The D2D, NGU and Ring clocks could have been increased from the beginning of Arrow Lake.
Thus the 250K and 270K without the silicon tweaks could have been made back in the beginning of 2025.
The only real difference is the price. That is the game changer, not the tech.

So this angle of "oh but these new shiny Intel CPUs are being compared to old dusty AMD and it's not fair", doesn't really hold. Yes those silicon tweaks do make them a bit more advanced than say 9850X3D vs 9800X3D but it's not like a completely different tech.

overclockedamdI don't see how having a long-lived platform is a "tax."

I've owned plenty from both AMD and Intel over the years, so this isn't about brand loyalty.

A platform tax is the cost you're required to pay to adopt a platform—motherboard, memory, cooler compatibility, etc. Having a socket that lasts multiple CPU generations is the opposite of a tax because it gives you the option to upgrade without replacing everything.

Nobody is forcing an AM5 owner to buy every new CPU AMD releases. That's a choice. The benefit is that someone who bought a Ryzen 5 7600X today can, years later, potentially drop in a future 10800X3D (or whatever it's ultimately called) without buying a new motherboard.

By contrast, if a platform requires a new motherboard every generation or two, that is a platform tax because the additional cost is mandatory if you want to upgrade.

It is a tax when you pay extra for platform longevity. And you do, isn't the 9900X more expensive than the 265K? And so on, 9700X vs 250K etc.
What is the explanation then? It's not for higher performance.

Yes you're not forced to upgrade but if you don't then how can you claim the upgrade path advantage? Just for the possibility? So some are willing to pay extra just for the possibility? Wow okay.
The whole schtick is not to change just the CPU and save money for the motherboard but to recover some of the money for the new CPU by selling the older one. That means you should sell it while it's still under warranty and not old enough so that it's no longer attractive for the used market. Otherwise you won't get much for it.
This is the actual schtick, the ones that yap about just changing the CPU are oversimplifying things and omitting a very important aspect.

Again if you pay extra for this upgrade path benefit then you better use it, otherwise it's wasted money for bragging rights.

tsurugiIn gaming, x3d tax refers to paying a massive amount of money for gaming performance gains that are unnoticeable outside of an osd display.

I didn't mean it like that. That's X3D tax, something different.
What I meant was the AM5 platform carries an "additional tax" for having the best gaming CPUs made for it.
That's why the motherboards are rather expensive for what they really are, even though the DDR5 support is no longer novelty.
That's why despite the rehashing (600 to 800 series) they're still expensive, not my words this is what people talk.

overclockedamdI don't see how having a long-lived platform is a "tax."

I've owned plenty from both AMD and Intel over the years, so this isn't about brand loyalty.

A platform tax is the cost you're required to pay to adopt a platform—motherboard, memory, cooler compatibility, etc. Having a socket that lasts multiple CPU generations is the opposite of a tax because it gives you the option to upgrade without replacing everything.

Nobody is forcing an AM5 owner to buy every new CPU AMD releases. That's a choice. The benefit is that someone who bought a Ryzen 5 7600X today can, years later, potentially drop in a future 10800X3D (or whatever it's ultimately called) without buying a new motherboard.

By contrast, if a platform requires a new motherboard every generation or two, that is a platform tax because the additional cost is mandatory if you want to upgrade.

The tax is paid by any sucker that upgrades every generation or 2.

overclockedamdI don't see how having a long-lived platform is a "tax."

I've owned plenty from both AMD and Intel over the years, so this isn't about brand loyalty.

A platform tax is the cost you're required to pay to adopt a platform—motherboard, memory, cooler compatibility, etc. Having a socket that lasts multiple CPU generations is the opposite of a tax because it gives you the option to upgrade without replacing everything.

Nobody is forcing an AM5 owner to buy every new CPU AMD releases. That's a choice. The benefit is that someone who bought a Ryzen 5 7600X today can, years later, potentially drop in a future 10800X3D (or whatever it's ultimately called) without buying a new motherboard.

By contrast, if a platform requires a new motherboard every generation or two, that is a platform tax because the additional cost is mandatory if you want to upgrade.

Yet a lot of people on AMD platforms love the idea of being able to buy CPU generations back-to-back-to-back. If they were buying budget (just Ryzen 5), I wouldn't mind them, but those who promote this idea mostly are people upgrading from X3D to X3D and shelling €600 every year or every 2 year on average. Which kills the principle of being budget conscious.
AMD marketing on the CPU side is literally the same strategy as Nvidia's GPU marketing strategy: hold the performance crown and overhype the "budget" products. AMD doesn't beat Intel at anything in the Ryzen 5/i5 battle, but people will still happily shell the same amount of money for less performance than Intel, or €200-300 more just to be on par.

There where never MSRP to being the day they was release for intel annouced it for 199~299 then they increase like 20 moment they hit the selves, I mean for price they great value still but not for long

I think you're conflating two different things.

The people who buy every X3D generation are enthusiasts. They exist on both AMD and Intel. Some people buy every GPU generation too. That doesn't mean the platform is designed around that behavior.

The value of a long-lived socket isn't for someone who upgrades every year. It's for the person who doesn't. Someone who bought a 7600X in 2022/2023 can potentially drop in a much faster CPU years later without replacing the motherboard. That's the value proposition.

If someone chooses to buy a new X3D every generation, that's a personal purchasing decision—not a "platform tax."

As for Ryzen 5 vs. Core i5, that depends entirely on when you're comparing them. The 250K Plus and 270K Plus launched in March 2026—roughly 19 months after the Ryzen 9000 series. Intel priced them aggressively because they had to compete against products that had already been on the market for well over a year.

Using that pricing to argue AMD charges an "upgrade-path tax" doesn't follow. Intel's pricing reflects competition and market timing, not proof that AMD is charging extra simply because AM5 has a longer lifespan. If Intel launches Nova Lake later this year, I fully expect AMD to respond with price adjustments as well. That's how competition works.

It has nothing to do with the Arrow Lake refresh prices. Where I live, Intel has always been the same price as AMD on the CPU side for more performance but slightly more power hungry at full load, while Intel motherboards are much cheaper and more feature-rich. Doesn't help to get bashed by AMD enthusiasts for gaming on non-X3D.

That's a different argument.

We started with the claim that AM5's longevity is a "platform tax" and that AMD CPUs cost more because of it.

Now you're talking about regional pricing and motherboard availability where you live. Regional pricing absolutely varies, but that doesn't demonstrate AMD is charging an upgrade-path premium.

If Intel is the better value in your market, that's great—buy Intel. But that doesn't establish that socket longevity is a tax or that AMD's CPU pricing is caused by its longer platform support.

"More feature-rich" compared to what? That's a broad claim. Motherboard features vary far more by model and price point than by Intel vs. AMD. Compare a $250 Z890 to a $250 X870 and let's look at PCIe lanes, M.2 slots, USB4/Thunderbolt, networking, audio, and expansion. Blanket statements like "Intel boards are more feature-rich" don't really hold without specifying the boards being compared.

overclockedamdI don't see how having a long-lived platform is a "tax."

I've owned plenty from both AMD and Intel over the years, so this isn't about brand loyalty.

A platform tax is the cost you're required to pay to adopt a platform—motherboard, memory, cooler compatibility, etc. Having a socket that lasts multiple CPU generations is the opposite of a tax because it gives you the option to upgrade without replacing everything.

Nobody is forcing an AM5 owner to buy every new CPU AMD releases. That's a choice. The benefit is that someone who bought a Ryzen 5 7600X today can, years later, potentially drop in a future 10800X3D (or whatever it's ultimately called) without buying a new motherboard.

By contrast, if a platform requires a new motherboard every generation or two, that is a platform tax because the additional cost is mandatory if you want to upgrade.

In theory, you are completely correct. Being able to upgrade without needing a new motherboard sounds awesome. In reality, it isn't, cause the CPUs you want to upgrade to might end up being super expensive. Take someone that actually has a 7600x / 7700x. He can upgrade to a 9950x / 9950x3d without changing his mobo, but he is still going to pay 500 - 600€ for that chip when competitors have similar performance at 300. So it's a double edged sword.

Anyways, even after the price hike these 2 Intel chips are still the thing to buy currently.

The german media wrote it more blunt. 50 Dollar Extra per cpu sounds worse as the friendly 17% price increase( i am well aware of the % is different for each different base price!)

The trend everything price goes up continues. When will amd follow with price increases on those cheap 7000 entry cpus?

tsurugi270/250kplus is still much cheaper than the 9950x and 9900x, with comparable st/mt performance, and there is no need to deal with cross-ccd latency, the igpu is better, idle power is lower, .

People tend to forget, mixed cpu cores introduce problems, not every software can run on multiple cores, not many software can on a lot of cores, intel does not have higher cpu instructions, intel lacks avx512, dead platform for intel, intel problematic oxidation issue which prevent me also from buying intel 15Th and 16th and 17th gen core processors, intel changing avx10.x instruction set spec after a few months, ....
When you run old software like w10, w7 wiht old binaries it will not matter. those many cores will run fine.

I doubt everyone grasp the concept of cpu instructions, where a binary comes from, what cache does, what a kernel does etc. those articles are hardly written on tech sites and people are lazy to just learn it from the linux kernel, note i said kernel and not linux operating system.

how software is executed can also be learnt from the linux operating system when using basic system tools.

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it depends on how long you will use your computer. 2 years? intel 250k and 270k are cheaper and better.
at some point those higher cpu instruction will be used, but intel plays the delay game with not implemeting avx512. intel defined than changed avx10.x. so they can offer a cpu which uses less watts because they can not exeucte avx512 or any worse similar instructions like arm9a or avx10.2 (both are worse with less functionality)

I personally believe, it is time to make microslop windows binaries with higher cpu instructions introduced with ryzen 7000 / 9000. I do not get why those software project are such lazy to set a different march setting on their software. they could also label the binaries am5, whatever else they think it fit.