AMD Ryzen and product introduction

Just some weeks ago I was considering if I should upgrade AMD's FX 4300 CPU I have on my home computer. After quick browsing I came to conclusion that no, there's no point, as even best-of-the-best in FX series isn't that much better. Very likely SSD as main disk would give bigger speed benefits, but that'd require full reinstall of OS - not really something I'm willing to do right now.

Why I mentioned this is new AMD's Ryzen line, which on first glance looks very interesting. Lots of oomph for low price and heat ratings look nice. Of course that upgrade would be even more costly, but I'll be following upcoming reviews with lots of interest - although that home PC is not due for that big upgrade, one of my work test PCs is ... shall we say, ancient at the moment, and is long overdue for upgrade (read: retire my workstation from development work, replacing the old one with that, and getting one workstation. And spending about a week reinstalling everything...).

But I'm still digressing the main topic I wanted to add here, one that is slightly more related to electronics development.

In one discussion thread I was someone complaining how AMD only published the high-end CPUs, and not the medium- or low-end ones. To me, that makes very clear business sense, and honestly, that is exactly what I'd do - and have done.

There is huge number of people who are actively looking to upgrade their computer as soon as possible, to get best performance possible for games or whatnot. Gamers especially want performance, they want it now and are willing to pay for it. They don't really need huge number of cores - 4 cores can easily be sufficient, so they'd go for medium end market if that is available. If not, they will grumble - but they also will get higher-end CPU instead, paying premium for it. And AMD knows this, oh, they know it so very well.

So AMD will wait a bit - maybe some six months after high-end Ryzen 7s reaches market - and then they release medium and possibly low end lines, cashing in with higher-end offerings in the mean time. After that people that were willing (and able) to wait a bit will get their cheaper CPUs.

CPU market is kinda special case, but the variation of this applies to other markets too. Do consider if this applies to your own niche market, too, and it might make sense to exploit peoples' impulsiveness.