Hacker News Reader

HW engineer here. So it’s generally not true that you’re getting the same product at half the cost. Firstly, while all the HW may actually be the “same” it’s probably been binned for different specs. This means that the yield is lower for higher performing parts. 2nd is that for the same HW there may be additional FW and test time associated with that HW. Both of those items equate to higher cost.

View on HN

They are often intentionally mis-binned, though: it is quite common for there to be more high-specced parts than there is demand for, so they'd rather downgrade it to a cheaper variant than have it rot on a shelf. So if you're lucky, you end up with a product which significantly outperforms its official label.

There is something called yielded cost. The actual same part that yields to a higher bin costs more due to lower yield. So it’s very unusual to sell it for less. You see the same thing in TV monitors. The best displays, representing the best of the distribution sell for way more. What does happen is that you can get parts at the edge of the spec that are almost as good but whether you get one of those is purely random.

I believe anybody who's shopped for a desktop CPU in the past decade knows this. The difference is that a Ryzen 5600X costs 10-15% more than a regular 5600, not twice as much and then some.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com