Intel killing replaceable processors

[Rollo]

Overclocking is going way lads, known this for 2 years now, there is a huge move to mobile platforms. Very few kids want to get into overclocking now, its all tablets and smart phones..in fact I see a someone developing a socketed tablet that you plug a smart phone into soon and then we will all just want that. Monitors with smart phone socket will be the next thing so you drop your office machine in your pocket..4G will make virtual LANs much more desirable also.

I was visiting an elderly relative with no WiFi this weekend and I used this:

http://pinglio.com/2012/01/motorola-...apdock-review/

I'll be a pc gamer as long as it lasts, but the kids have a point on the mobile stuff. It's pretty handy.

[Buckeye]

At IDF 2012 at the OC lab that Charles gave a presentation and Intel showed us many new OC tools and how they work for Haswell desktop's and including laptops & IGP's I don't think OCing is going away, in fact the opposite imo.

Just because one line of CPU's will change sockets does not mean that all will.

[Tony]

It goes past Intel making a socketed cpu, you need to look at what profit the motherboard manufacturers are making from selling high end desktop motherboards, its not a lot if any, and eventually they will stop making that flagship board to help sell the others as it will just not be needed.

The start of this was Turbo mode, manufacturer driven overclocking, there is less need to have people tweak anymore so they will just slowly cut feature set to increase margin until those neutered boards also start feeling the squeeze.

Also take into account I know a lot of talented engineers, people who seriously drove overclocking forward, all are in the mobile segment now. There are those who prevail but I feel they have a limited life now.

of course workstation class systems will possibly retain some form for manual tweak and boost, watercooling is getting every more sophisticated now, server farms down to single workstation class computers are getting the full watercooling treatment and with this there will always be some tweakage allowed.

A few years back I asked one of the major players what % sales were enthusiast boards, it was over 60% at that time, 4 years later it was 5% as other products had risen and taken over...scary

See the bigger picture...its here for now so enjoy it, it will start to go away..or just get ever more expensive to do as the cheaper processors become embedded etc.

[Sparky]

Reminds me a bit of what some people want cars to turn into. You don't "need" a fun car, just an econobox. You don't "need" a fast PC, just a terminal. Well screw you guys who tell me this because I don't care if you think I don't "need" something, I WANT IT! lol

[STEvil]

They sure dont market it like its 5%.

[BeepBeep2]

It goes past Intel making a socketed cpu, you need to look at what profit the motherboard manufacturers are making from selling high end desktop motherboards, its not a lot if any, and eventually they will stop making that flagship board to help sell the others as it will just not be needed.

The start of this was Turbo mode, manufacturer driven overclocking, there is less need to have people tweak anymore so they will just slowly cut feature set to increase margin until those neutered boards also start feeling the squeeze.

Also take into account I know a lot of talented engineers, people who seriously drove overclocking forward, all are in the mobile segment now. There are those who prevail but I feel they have a limited life now.

of course workstation class systems will possibly retain some form for manual tweak and boost, watercooling is getting every more sophisticated now, server farms down to single workstation class computers are getting the full watercooling treatment and with this there will always be some tweakage allowed.

A few years back I asked one of the major players what % sales were enthusiast boards, it was over 60% at that time, 4 years later it was 5% as other products had risen and taken over...scary

See the bigger picture...its here for now so enjoy it, it will start to go away..or just get ever more expensive to do as the cheaper processors become embedded etc.

Your logic makes no sense.
Why would they stop making the flagship board if it was selling? A user buying 1 flagship board is not going to buy 3 low end ones instead, they're gonna buy one of the best option.

Also, they often use overclocking as marketing tools, showing off their muscles...if you don't have flagship boards like ASRock for the longest time, you lose out on exposure given to you often for free by LN2 overclockers.

[Buckeye]

They sure dont market it like its 5%.

So ture, seems like there are tons of good boards & CPU's/RAM etc still being sold. But I don't see the inside numbers that manufactures see.

[LiquidReactor]

Ahahaha....is Intel seriously thinking they are capable of taking on ARM chips with their x86 arch processors?! Anybody remember the last time Intel tried to compete in an area in which they cant exert their x86 arch dominance?!?

Larabee anyone?

[BeepBeep2]

Ahahaha....is Intel seriously thinking they are capable of taking on ARM chips with their x86 arch processors?! Anybody remember the last time Intel tried to compete in an area in which they cant exert their x86 arch dominance?!?

Larabee anyone?

Have you not seen the new Atom SoC's?

Also, you're talking about something completely unrelated to this topic.

[Iconyu]

It makes no sense, Intel would pretty much be killing mobo makers and destroying their upgrade paths. I still think it's more a separation of mobile and desktop rather than an outright slaying of desktops. Sure, it'll open some new options for OEM builders, but enthusiasts will switch to AMD even if it is slower.

@BeepBeep2 Broadwell on 14nm will probably be able to go straight up against ARM chips on power draw, putting the south bridge on die will allow Intel to better compete on price. Intel has seriously decided to attack this market, and ARM processors while great at what they do are not going to be able to face off directly against a chip with higher IPS than Ivybridge.

[phantomferrari]

im just wondering how over the next few years with intel shoving more and more into the cpu area how motherboard manufacturers are going to be able to differentiate themselves from one another.

[chinaguy]

I can think of the cost saving that would be made if Intel/AMD soldered more parts on the motherboard such as the CPUs and AGPs. Even my Sony Laptop has 4GB of ram fixed onto the motherboard with only one lot for expansion.

Save a few cents in not having to fix CPU mounts, PCI/e slots even a 64/128GB SSD could be included.

This would work for the like of DELL/HP/LENOVO who make ready to buy PCs. How many of the Joe Puplic open the Black Magic Box or even know how to add more memory!

[kromosto]

maybe enthusiast sales decreased in percentage of total sales of a company but in numbers sales are not decreased that much because it is not the people are less buying enthusiast products it is because new customers buys more non enthusiast products.

not in the near future maybe a long time later desktop market will shrink but will never shrink to workstation only situation or just hp or dell or etc.

[Tenknics]

As I said in the other thread about this...

Intel necessarily isn't killing off the enthusiast per say, they're just changing up their release cadence and probably changing tick-tock. Broadwell will just be a mobile only cpu (the soldered cpu you're all talking about), just like the original banias/centrino was. ..And we will continue to use Haswell-DT for a very long time..Instead of the usual 1 year..more like 2+..Do we really need a new desktop cpu every 12 months in this day and age?..We've already seen the gaps in release dates between the high-end sockets, 1366 and 2011, get longer. Now they're doing it with the desktop.

Also with that being said, I'm sure Ivy-E being so late fits in with this strat. We will probably have Ivy-E at the high-end, haswell-dt for mainstream desktop. And Broadwell for mobile+.

We've seen intel do this before, many times (merom, conroe, woodcrest) (penryn, wolfdale, yorfield) (bloomfield, lynnfield, clarksfield)... It was only recently we had SB/IB be the same up and down just with different blocks added/removed..The only difference now is the node and uarch's will be mixed at matched at each segment, rather than all being based on the same core.

If you look at that picture, (Ivy-E, Haswell, Broadwell) it doesn't seem that bad, its just we're getting less frequent updates to the non-mobile sector..

half full



p.s. I read desktop ivy-e is 6 cores max. super disappointed and a fricken tragedy that intel is doing this..

[zanzabar]

the desktop IB-e is 6 cores max, ib-e is supposed to go to 10 cores. it looks like we are only getting broken xeons again for the desktop. right now the SB is better than the SB-e for quads, i would bet that the current IB will be better than the IB-e quads.

i can see your point about not needing a new one, you do not need to buy a chip every 12 months, but if they do not put a new faster one out every 12 months then the only time there will be an upgrade is when amd puts out a good chip and that looks to be a very long way off if not never. and while i do like the idea of having my 3770k be the best of 1 gen back for the next 5-6 years it is depressing.

[Tony]

what % of sales do you think industry wide go to enthusiasts now?

Thats a serious question btw

I remember asking Asus a ways back when they launched ROG ( I was at Asus in Taiwan at the time) how many boards they had made...total was 50, with plans for 200 more, out the original 50 40 went as review or samples to overclockers..they lost massively on it.

lets be honest, go back 5 years, processors needed overclocking, come forward to the launch of core and all the subsequent cpu's since, its getting that way its not longer needed...the speed we have now is just mind boggling.

I will answer my own question but go back to a figure I was told 5 years ago, 4%.

I think now its closer to 1% or may be even lower.

[kromosto]

what % of sales do you think industry wide go to enthusiasts now?

Thats a serious question btw

I remember asking Asus a ways back when they launched ROG ( I was at Asus in Taiwan at the time) how many boards they had made...total was 50, with plans for 200 more, out the original 50 40 went as review or samples to overclockers..they lost massively on it.

lets be honest, go back 5 years, processors needed overclocking, come forward to the launch of core and all the subsequent cpu's since, its getting that way its not longer needed...the speed we have now is just mind boggling.

I will answer my own question but go back to a figure I was told 5 years ago, 4%.

I think now its closer to 1% or may be even lower.

what are we thinking like enthusiasts? all the people who builds their own computer or people having very very top products?

[Kallenator]

Tony,
Most sense I have seen so far.


Gaming is really the only thing holding the desktop variant we use alive, we are the only ones who truly benefit from the ability upgrade at will. Be that RAM, CPU, Graphic card or other peripherals such as cooling or light-doodads.
And the reason for this in my eyes is price, if you can either by yourself or with the help of a friend manage to build a computer from "scratch", then you are going to get something far faster for the same price or something cheaper that is just as fast than from Dell, Alien-ware etc.

As overclockers and tinkerers we are no more than a minority of the niche that is high-end desktop gaming. And as such it will either become ridiculously expensive or die all together. And it sucks...
But hey, its not over yet

what are we thinking like enthusiasts? all the people who builds their own computer or people having very very top products?

The people that need high end computers don't really care if they have to install the CPU by them self or have it delivered pre-mounted. Same goes for most of the people who build their own. As long as it does not get more expensive***
People with the highest end of Intel hardware and/or AMD/Nvidia graphic card ain't a driving marked force anymore.

[Ket]

People are getting into a panic over nothing. Customisation will never die because while boards like ROG sell very, very few because of their stupidly high price for very little advantage (if any) over other boards there is a great mass of people who buy and build their own computer because they know they get far better value for money that way vs. a prebuilt. I have many friends who have never built a PC in their life, but they still buy the components they want and ask me to build the system - all because they want the best value/lifespan out of the system. On the latter of those points especially prebuilt systems fail hard, a year down the line and a cheap prebuilt system can look like it runs on coal. If anything all I see is the death of stupendously priced boards like the ROG series and the rise of boards such as the Asrock Extreme series which aim at a very similar level, but don't give a monkey about flashy packaging or all that fluff you get with boards such as the ROG that you have never used.

[kromosto]

The people that need high end computers don't really care if they have to install the CPU by them self or have it delivered pre-mounted. Same goes for most of the people who build their own. As long as it does not get more expensive***
People with the highest end of Intel hardware and/or AMD/Nvidia graphic card ain't a driving marked force anymore.

thank you for the answer on my badly asked question .

so if i am not wrong we are talking about the people who buy highest end vga, highest mobo and highest end cpu parts to build their pc. but i think this is understandable. prices of high end parts nearly increased for 50% in 10 years mostly last 5 years. compare 9700pro with 680gtx (dual gpus are unfair to compare) or highest end asus mobo to ic7-max3. lets talk about highest end mobos for example. while their prices increased their quality difference with the low and especially with the mid range is decreased. so why to buy a high end mobo while you can have nearly the same with half the price for most of the users?

decreasing of sales amounts of high end parts are not a surprise imo they are becoming prestige parts for companies. so again imo decreasing of their sales numbers doesn't mean much about somethings will be lost in the future.

[Kallenator]

thank you for the answer on my badly asked question .

so if i am not wrong we are talking about the people who buy highest end vga, highest mobo and highest end cpu parts to build their pc. but i think this is understandable. prices of high end parts nearly increased for 50% in 10 years mostly last 5 years. compare 9700pro with 680gtx (dual gpus are unfair to compare) or highest end asus mobo to ic7-max3. lets talk about highest end mobos for example. while their prices increased their quality difference with the low and especially with the mid range is decreased. so why to buy a high end mobo while you can have nearly the same with half the price for most of the users?

decreasing of sales amounts of high end parts are not a surprise imo they are becoming prestige parts for companies. so again imo decreasing of their sales numbers doesn't mean much about somethings will be lost in the future.

Thank you

Have high-end hardware really gonna up that much in price, even with inflation?
For example, Radeon 9700 Pro, released in August 2002. Cost 400USD in the states, which is ~495 with inflation (2011).
Against, Nvidia GTX 680 (Vanilla) released March 2012. Cost 500USD.

There are more expensive versions, and even dual GPU like you mention, but I think it makes most amount of sense to compare Vanilla products.
On top of that, graphic cards have become far more advanced and beefier in every regard.

In my opinion considering these numbers I think graphic cards have become cheaper relative to how much we get.

Haven't checked with motherboards and CPU's. Might be different there like you say.


Radeon 9700 Pro review. Warning, memory lane, feeling of age imminent.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/970

***FFS, I have started to miss press CTRL-T lately... hitting R instead and thus refreshing the browser deleting my reply.

[safan80]

At IDF 2012 at the OC lab that Charles gave a presentation and Intel showed us many new OC tools and how they work for Haswell desktop's and including laptops & IGP's I don't think OCing is going away, in fact the opposite imo.

Just because one line of CPU's will change sockets does not mean that all will.

I sure wish I could oc my xeon e5s (sb-e) like I could oc my x5600s on my sr2. I even did so with registered memory and the problem in this case(sb-e) is not the motherboard (asus z9pe-d8 WS).


edit: Once arm 64bit hits workstation/server and and can run everything in an emulator/VM good bye x86!

[Santas]

dont see why this comes as a surprise not many people replace there cpus

[Tenknics]

This is just evolution...If you think about this simply...Do you think we'll have big boxs sitting next to us for the rest of our lives? I mean I'm on mine everyday, I shoot and edit video for a living. I also do a lot of work in after effects and most of the adobe suite..I love my powerful box...I've convinced myself I need my powerful box...But in a few years that power will be as big as a cellphone...And so on and so forth. This is just kinda step in that direction. Intel is adapting with the market. Their business is predicting the future. They design chips 3-5 years in advance, and intel is some of the best forward thinkers out there. If they're making a move they definitely are doing it for a reason. At least thats how I see it.

[mattkosem]

The people that need high end computers don't really care if they have to install the CPU by them self or have it delivered pre-mounted. Same goes for most of the people who build their own. As long as it does not get more expensive***
People with the highest end of Intel hardware and/or AMD/Nvidia graphic card ain't a driving marked force anymore.

^^ This. I couldn't care less if my cpu+mobo purchase involves two skus or one. Even if the chip is integrated into the mobo, an enthusiast cpu/mobo should still be able to accomodate a WB/pot and OC. I can OC the processors and, in some cases graphics cores, on my cell phones and tablets (which all obviously have integrated CPUs) just as easily, if not even moreso, than a desktop PC. True or false, I don't see this being an issue.

--Matt