With AMD’s Ryzen CPUs making waves after its launch last week, Intel is scrambling to come up with a response. After nearly a decade in the lead, the tables may have finally turned with AMD perhaps taking the performance lead. In response, Intel has started to make moves to blunt the success of Ryzen, some of which are somewhat unexpected from the chip giant.
One of the more most visible signs of the panic within Intel is some calls being made to Ryzen reviewers. According to Charlie Demerjian from SemiAccurate, Intel is emailing reviewers to ask them to call before they write. This is a pretty normal strategy as companies want to give their response to their competitor’s product, usual in the form of price cuts, rebates or product launches.
The real surprise is that it is Intel doing this right now. Such PR emails are usually reserved for when a company feels threatened by their competitor because if they felt there was no competition, there would be no need for a response. This shows that Intel does view Ryzen as a threat. Intel may be trying the reframe the debate around CPU performance as well or get reviewers to include “boarder” picture of performance by including Intel favorable tests.
Moving on, there also appear to be other moves that Intel is rumoured to be undertaking against Ryzen. These are unconfirmed reports that Intel may be offering some rebates to big clients and urging big purchases before AMD Ryzen becomes available. In my opinion, it’s too soon to see if Intel has or will be resorting to old anti-competitive practices. Either way, it will be interesting to see what Intel’s full response will be once we get a couple of months of Ryzen in the market.
