US retailers are selling the Genoa-based, 4th Generation AMD EPYC 9654 processor for as little as $3,898.80 (that’s about £3,070, AU$5,900), a saving of nearly 67 percent, down from its suggested retail price of $11,805 (£9,200, AU$17,700) and less than half its sticker price when I first started to track it almost a year ago. I asked AMD why such a big drop in pricing in less than 15 months and will update this article should I get an answer.
Starmicro and a flurry of smaller online retailers are competing on price for the CPU otherwise known as 100-000000789. Like AMD’s most powerful CPU, the Threadripper Pro 7995WX, it has 96 cores, is based on the Zen 4 architecture, has 192 threads, support for DDR5 and 384 MB L3 cache. The only major differences are the slightly higher TDP, a lower base clock and boost clock as well as more memory channels. Obviously, the elephant in the room is the price tag of the 7995WX, just a whisker under $10,000 (about £7,100, AU$15,200) from the likes of B&H Photo or Newegg.
