Their hardware is multiple generations behind at this point, however. I wonder if they’re starting to reduce the price because it’s hard to justify paying so much for old hardware. They could just be targeting customers who don’t care as much about performance or efficiency as they do the software stack.
No it’s not. Normally if you’re buying server hardware you don’t start with a CPU that’s already 5 years old and last-generation RAM that isn’t even manufactured at scale any more.
CPUs have advanced a lot in recent years. The jump from Zen 3 to Zen 5 is very substantial.