When you look back at first and even second generation Ryzen motherboards they have always been less expensive than their Intel counterparts. Well with X570 that is likely going to change. With X570 AMD is bringing PCI-Express 4.0 and they have built the X570 chipset completely in-house. So X570 motherboard pricing could be similar to Intel’s expensive Z390 motherboards.
Toms’s Hardware spoke with MSI CEO Charles Chiang at Computex 2019 and he said that AMD is changing its marketing strategy from being a value alternative to a premium brand.
“Lots of people ask me, what do you think about today’s AMD? I say today’s AMD is completely different company compared to two, three, five years ago,” Chiang said. “They have nice technology and they are there to put the higher spec with the reasonable pricing. But right now they say, “Hey Charles, lets push to marketing to the higher [end]. So let’s sell higher-pricing motherboards, higher-spec motherboards, and let’s see what will happen in the market. So I don’t think that AMD is the company that wants to sell low cost here, low cost there.”
That change in focus could make X570 motherboard pricing comparable to, or even higher than, many Intel Z390 motherboards. “I would like to say the price would be comparable, and even higher for some SKUs,” Chiang said. “But I can tell that if an X570 is compared to our Z390, if the specs are equal and everything, I don’t think we [are] going to price AMD lower. I don’t think that’s realistic because the cost of the motherboard [will] be higher, and maybe the pricing [of] the chipset [is] higher.”
“So, technology-wise the cost will be higher because of that. And then from the market strategy-wise, AMD also want to put that in higher segmentation. So, it’s a situation. You can really expect this motherboard pricing will [have] a lot of gap between the X470s and 570s,” Chiang said.
Chiang also said that X470 motherboards would remain in the market and could be the value alternative. When asked how long MSI plans to produce X470 motherboards, he responded “Will X470 stay in the market? It’s good question. It depends on the price gap. If the price gap [is] there, people still looking for reasonable pricing, they might go for X470.”
