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Intel plans to make your motherboard and CPU a into single part.

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http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/11/like-it-or-not-nonreplaceable-cpus-may-be-the-future-of-desktops/

Well, this ought to simplify the system build threads. Too bad it also guts consumer choice as well.

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  • Andreas
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    Andreas polycounter lvl 11
    Well to be honest people end up buying new mobos when they buy new processors cause the new tech aint compatible anyway. As long as intel boards have great features this is good news. No risk with bent pins now.
  • EarthQuake
    Andreas wrote: »
    Well to be honest people end up buying new mobos when they buy new processors cause the new tech aint compatible anyway. As long as intel boards have great features this is good news. No risk with bent pins now.

    Yeah CPU upgrades are so rare, its almost always a poor economic choice when doing it. IE: upgrading to the 10-20% faster cpu that your mobo supports usually costs about the same as a brand new processor that may be 2-3x as fast.
  • JamesWild
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    JamesWild polycounter lvl 8
    If the soft/firmware upgrade unlockable CPUs ever become the norm, I imagine it is going to kill at least a couple of OEMs if prices don't go up. Pirates gonna pirate, and I can see CPU unlock cracks being very widely used amongst those who would previously have splashed out on higher end hardware. Which combined with a need for better cooling and power supply to support these features is going to shrink margins on lower end machines and deincentivise the higher end machines.

    I doubt OEMs make a lot of margin on a £260 laptop like mine, and if suddenly that's all people buy a large amount of income just went out the window. Even my laptop had some crippleware on it before I installed a new copy of Windows to clean off the junk, such as a touchpad driver that made the multitouch touchpad work like a single touch.

    I guess alternatively they could just disallow against the use of upgrades on hardware that can't comfortably support them, but Intel probably wouldn't be happy with that as it's "free cash" to them.
  • Geezus
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    Geezus mod
    EarthQuake wrote: »
    Yeah CPU upgrades are so rare, its almost always a poor economic choice when doing it. IE: upgrading to the 10-20% faster cpu that your mobo supports usually costs about the same as a brand new processor that may be 2-3x as fast.

    As someone who typically purchases future proofed (within reason) mobos, and who just upgraded their processor only... I have to disagree.

    So we're just stuck with Intel only mobos, if they go with this? They're essentially telling any builder "Hey, I hear AMD allows you to have choices... I mean, they're already at a cheaper price point than us for comparable chipsets."

    This is a terrible idea for consumers and a terrible business plan for Intel.
  • Kwramm
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    Kwramm interpolator
    might be a good idea for cheap consumer PCs - especially the all-in ones iMac style PCs. I don't see this coming for the high end or workstation market where the boards alone become quite expensive. Imagine sitting on a stock of motherboards with CPUs that nobody buys. In the high end market you're still more flexible as OEM when you can change the CPU I would think.
    Andreas wrote: »
    No risk with bent pins now.
    Your CPU must be quite old if it still has pins ;)
  • JamesWild
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    JamesWild polycounter lvl 8
    Kwramm wrote: »
    might be a good idea for cheap consumer PCs - especially the all-in ones iMac style PCs. I don't see this coming for the high end or workstation market where the boards alone become quite expensive. Imagine sitting on a stock of motherboards with CPUs that nobody buys. In the high end market you're still more flexible as OEM when you can change the CPU I would think.

    Your CPU must be quite old if it still has pins ;)

    AMD use pins across all of their current CPUs AFAIK. When I disassembled a dead laptop for parts a few years ago even that had a socketed CPU.
  • Andreas
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    Andreas polycounter lvl 11
    My mobo has pins Kwramm ;) also geezus everyone tries to buy future proof (duh?) but if Intel come out with the generation after the iBridges then my brand new mobo aint gonna use the new features. Thats what Joe is saying.
  • Kwramm
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    Kwramm interpolator
    Ah, you can see I'm living in the intel world. Haven't seen pins on CPUs in ages.

    Sockets in laptops are quite rare though - I know IBM socketed their Thinkpad CPUs however and a few people even upgraded their Thinkpads with newer Core CPUs. Became especially popular from Core to Core 2 chips which could run 64 bit software.

    I only upgraded CPUs in one PC which was a Dual Pentium II machine, which also took PIIIs. Otherwise I couldn't be bothered. Either the new CPUs were too fast and the mobo couldn't keep up with the bus frequence, or they used a newer RAM standard or USB 2 came out...there's almost always been a reason for me to upgrade everything together.

    I think it more unpractical though to have mobo + CPU combined for shops that sell parts.

    Edit: forgot I also swapped my original Pentium for a replacement as it had the "Pentium bug"...anyone remember that? ;)
  • nick2730
    interesting idea but i dont know, i live to swap out cpus when new ones come out and use a board for a while. I imagine them jacking up the price alot too for both. I can see the advantages especially with building an architecture around what you know will be in.

    Good article, mainly interested in using 1 top tier cpu and locknig it down for lower models that way if you ever want to upgrade you just purchase the firmware and off you go. Interesting
  • oXYnary
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    oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
    This is counterproductive to having systems with longer life. Its environmentaly unsustainable. Throw away electronics like cell phones are part of the problem of planned obsolescence. At least with the current computer setup you had longer lives.

    And no EQ, its still cheaper to upgrade your cpu than buy a new system to support a newer chip layout. Also older chips are cheaper, not the same price. Aaaaand you then have the whole secondary market of used processors.

    The only thing that gets more expensive comparatively new, are older memory configs.

    Edit: Are you sure you all who are for or don't see the big deal aren't mac users? ;•)
  • JamesWild
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    JamesWild polycounter lvl 8
    oXYnary wrote: »
    Its environmentaly unsustainable.)

    Our entire economy, rooted in population growth and inflation, is environmentally unsustainable.
  • oXYnary
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    oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
    Andreas wrote: »
    My mobo has pins Kwramm ;) also geezus everyone tries to buy future proof (duh?) but if Intel come out with the generation after the iBridges then my brand new mobo aint gonna use the new features. Thats what Joe is saying.

    When was the last time you or anyone you know bent a mb socket pin? As it is the newer gens dont use straight up pins in the traditional sense.
    ::
    Fwiw I have upgraded laptops cpus.
  • oXYnary
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    oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
    JamesWild wrote: »
    Our entire economy, rooted in population growth and inflation, is environmentally unsustainable.

    And this helps how? Dont know if you have heard the latest but the more doomsayer scientists are coming up heads. The temperature is on track to rise 7 degrees F by 2100.
    OT, I know, but its really bumming me out. And trying to figure out why would anyone want to have kids where their future looks bleak. There is even a new study suggesting our kids life expectancy will be lower than ours.
  • GarageBay9
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    GarageBay9 polycounter lvl 13
    Kwramm wrote: »
    might be a good idea for cheap consumer PCs - especially the all-in ones iMac style PCs. I don't see this coming for the high end or workstation market where the boards alone become quite expensive. Imagine sitting on a stock of motherboards with CPUs that nobody buys. In the high end market you're still more flexible as OEM when you can change the CPU I would think.

    Your CPU must be quite old if it still has pins ;)

    I remember saying that to my friend the summer after I finished middle school and got a brand-spankin'-new PIII 500. Y'know, the Slot 1 CPUs.

    Man, everything old IS new again! :poly142:
  • EarthQuake
    oXYnary wrote: »
    And no EQ, its still cheaper to upgrade your cpu than buy a new system to support a newer chip layout. Also older chips are cheaper, not the same price. Aaaaand you then have the whole secondary market of used processors.

    Spending $200 on a new cpu to get a 10% boost in performance is simply not economical. Upgrading your ram/cpu/mobo for $400-500(and keeping the rest of your system) while getting a significant boost in performance makes a whole lot more sense.

    Unless of course you buy low end at the beginning of a product cycle and then upgrade 3-6 months down the road, but why would you do that in the first place?

    Even if the price of a new cpu/ram/mobo is higher than the cost of a new or used legacy cpu, that dosen't mean it presents a solid value. There is a big difference between value and straight cost.

    Anyway, I think this sort of thing is targeted more to the mainstream who buys a brand new computer every time they upgrade, not so much the hard core enthusiast who upgrades cpus and things like that. For the vast majority of people having abundance of choice with cpu/mobo combinations is something they doesn't even factor into the equation.
  • McGreed
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    McGreed polycounter lvl 15
    The problem is that we are suddenly stuck with whatever the dealer thinks is best for you, so even if you know that named1 motherboard is better the named2 motherboard with CPU1, you are screwed, because you can only have that one combination.

    Removing choice is always a bad thing, and this is really bad, imo.

    I wouldn't be surprised if its some kind of dealing between microsoft and intel, so we can get our boxes consolized. :P
  • JamesWild
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    JamesWild polycounter lvl 8
    oXYnary wrote: »
    And trying to figure out why would anyone want to have kids where their future looks bleak.

    Also OT: I wouldn't say it looks bleak, just very different. A world without growth would be a completely different society. Population growth is already slowing down, just not enough, and the one-child-policy, while controversial, might be necessary soon.

    We might come out the other side a better species, we can hope.

    My point was (sorry for being vague) that I'm honestly not sure soldering a BGA IC to a motherboard is much worse than using a socket. You save a lot on building the socket and can install the IC as part of the pick and place process, probably saving energy. The number of people who actually recycle computers at this stage is absolutely minimal. I've known (idiots) who bin it the moment it becomes slow.

    EDIT: if you overthink it enough, saving money of any kind is actually detrimental to the economy as less money spent = less money in the economy. If I improve my product to require half as many components I just made half as much work for the producer of those components. To bring this on topic for games, tools that makes 3D artists' jobs easier are actually shrinking the 3D artist job market.
  • Overlord
    I don't like it one bit. It basically locks out every system builder from choosing what mobo they want to use with which CPU. It means to continue the number of options we have right now, companies like ASUS would have to have thousands of SKU's which is just not possible. So they'll just stick builders with features they don't want or force them to spend more because that feature you need comes with a higher tier CPU. Then there's the issue of motherboards breaking while the CPU is still in perfect shape. That's money down the shitter. With a socketed CPU you can choose what I/O features (e.g. SATA/SCSI/IDE), RAM speed/capacity, USB headers, integrated Ethernet, integrated audio, BIOS firmware features, solid capacitors, crossfire/SLI, etc., that you want. Solder the CPU to the board and you loose the ability to choose.

    Upgrading is only a tiny part of how fucked this plan is.
  • EarthQuake
    McGreed wrote: »
    The problem is that we are suddenly stuck with whatever the dealer thinks is best for you, so even if you know that named1 motherboard is better the named2 motherboard with CPU1, you are screwed, because you can only have that one combination.

    Removing choice is always a bad thing, and this is really bad, imo.

    I wouldn't be surprised if its some kind of dealing between microsoft and intel, so we can get our boxes consolized. :P

    This is already the case with consumer (dell etc) built computers. This isn't anything new. I don't think this will seriously effect the enthusiest market, this is for your mom, dad, grandma, who don't even know what a cpu is. Extreme modularity is total overkill for the vast percentage of computer users.

    I really can't see a situation where intel isn't offering what we're all used to for the advanced/enthusiast computer builder.

    We're going to see a shift in the mainstream to smaller, cheaper and more production line built computers, similar to what we're seeing in phones and tablets for the average user. Because this is all the average user really needs in a computer.
  • McGreed
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    McGreed polycounter lvl 15
    The difference is that you have the option to buy a prebuild machine, you don't have to. What I'm fear is that all Intel products is going this way, so you stuck with limited selection. If the soldered motherboards is just another option, then no problem, as long we get all the other options, but making it the only option is not the same as buying a Dell prebuild.
  • EarthQuake
    McGreed wrote: »
    The difference is that you have the option to buy a prebuild machine, you don't have to. What I'm fear is that all Intel products is going this way, so you stuck with limited selection. If the soldered motherboards is just another option, then no problem, as long we get all the other options, but making it the only option is not the same as buying a Dell prebuild.

    Yeah I really don't think that will be the case. I think we're going to continue to see smaller and less expensive computers that are cheaper to build and cost less money, to compete with tablets and similar devices. For a lot of people these days owning a large desktop computer is simply overkill.

    There will continue to be business and advanced users who need more than that though, the costs for this sort of thing will probably rise(or more accurately there will be a bigger gap between the mainstream and the enthusiast, as the consumer pcs get cheaper and the advanced stuff stays at the same prices or gets slightly more expensive).
  • JamesWild
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    JamesWild polycounter lvl 8
    Don't forget that while the cost of the very best may increase, the quality of the very worst is also increasing all the time. Even bargain basement laptops are good enough for most 3D artist tasks now, they all come with multicore, loads of RAM and programmable graphics cards. They might not be up to scratch for running a completed game, and baking might not be terribly quick, but it's not much slower and is only extending the duration of a tiny part of the workflow in most cases. Even things like screens are beginning to pick up a little now.
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 19
    I keep hearing rumblings about ARM being the future, so it may be the end of Intel & AMD being your only option since ARM licenses out their designs.
  • JamesWild
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    JamesWild polycounter lvl 8
    Current ARM processors are optimized towards mobile use and just can't stack up against X86 for single threaded operations. However: try underclocking your CPU and see how long it takes you to notice, I did this on my laptop to cut the heat and get back some battery life and was surprised that besides boot time I could not tell unless I brought it under about 800mHz or did something that multithreads well anyway like baking or rendering.

    Your computer probably does this already.
  • Andreas
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    Andreas polycounter lvl 11
    Kwramm my pins are on the mobo, not the cpu ;) I am using intel too.
  • JohnnyRaptor
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    JohnnyRaptor polycounter lvl 15
    wonder when subscription based cloud performance machines will come out
  • Andreas
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    Andreas polycounter lvl 11
    oXYnary wrote: »
    When was the last time you or anyone you know bent a mb socket pin? As it is the newer gens dont use straight up pins in the traditional sense.
    ::
    Fwiw I have upgraded laptops cpus.

    I frequent pc building forums and it happens a lot. Either before the person even receives the unit, or after through human error.
  • EarthQuake
    Geezus wrote: »
    As someone who typically purchases future proofed (within reason) mobos, and who just upgraded their processor only... I have to disagree.
    oXYnary wrote: »
    And no EQ, its still cheaper to upgrade your cpu than buy a new system to support a newer chip layout. Also older chips are cheaper, not the same price.

    Ok for the extremely small % of users out there who actually do upgrade cpus, here is some raw math for you.

    I currently have a 775 Q6600 quad core intel cpu. If I want to upgrade that to something significantly faster that means I have to buy a Q9650. Cheapest price on that new is $275 on eBay. This gives me 147% of the performance of my Q6600.

    On the other hand I can buy an I7 3770 for just $25 more. Lets call it $500 total once you throw in a mobo and ram. This gives me 320% the performance, which is a significant upgrade.

    If we divide the performance increase by money spent we get these two numbers:
    Q9650 uprade = 0.53
    I7 + mobo/ram = 0.64

    I think most reasonable people would define value as performance for price, so the I7 is clearly a better value. Even if it is a higher initial cost, this is basic economics. If you go through life always buying the least expensive item in the short term, you will pay a lot more in the long term. Even though the Q9650 upgrade option is initially cheaper, the smaller performance increase means I'm going to have to upgrade much sooner, and I will spend more money doing so. Economics.

    This isn't a unique situation or anything either, this has been my experience for every computer I've built for myself or others in the last 15 years. Its rarely a good value to upgrade your cpu.

    q6600 - 2953
    q9650 - 4365
    i7 3770 - 9460
    http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

    Now, for the hippy social conscience aspects of all of this. Say you upgrade your cpu, what are you left with? A useless used cpu. You can sell it on ebay I guess.

    Uprade your ram/cpu/mobo and you can probably put together another complete system from spare parts(if you're the sort who does this you already have them). Which you can re-purpose as an htpc, server or other device.
    Or give to your spouse
    Or give to a lower income family member
    Or donate to charity

    This is what I typically do with older systems.
  • Target_Renegade
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    Target_Renegade polycounter lvl 11
    If Intel do go down the route (which I doubt) of having only CPU+Motherboard welds, then someone else will likely fill the gap left. Like what's been said, dell type setups will appeal to the same people as before, so I'm not sure what difference Intel hope to make apart from going down the route of proprietary MOBO/CPU solutions. Possibly making it cheaper and competing with companies that make motherboard/barebones bundles?

    I've been building my own PC(s) for the last 8 years-ish and I can safely say that I've only had 2 MOBOs in that time with no CPU upgrade, mainly because I can make the right choices in price/performance and gut the old system for basics. This might be what Intel fear the most, like Earthquake I run a Q6600 and have been for the past 5 years, can still run all of the latest games. It's only the HDD (SSD is next) GPU and RAM that are affecting anything at the moment.

    Still got 2 mobos in boxes and will probably upgrade to an i7 3770 this month, and resign my Q6600,RAM and mobo to my old PC stash which would make it 3 mobo, cpu,ram setups, although might see what it fetches on ebay because they are quality. Have thought about buying/building an arcade cabinet and having my latest setup as a standup retro button masher.
  • leilei
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    leilei polycounter lvl 14
    5 year AM2+ CPU upgrader here, doing fine in 2012.

    The last time i've seen CPU soldering was the 386DX. Either way the whole "it doesn't matter much" comes from Intel's bad habit of rapid obsoleting their sockets in the past 12 years. Jumping sockets and slots rarely myself, I never liked that either, and it kept me on the AMD side for so long.

    This whole CPU integration would suck for troubleshooting and repair.
  • Snader
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    Snader polycounter lvl 15
    I think Intel only underclocks on laptop CPU's, but AMD does it for both lappies and deskies.

    Personally, I'm also worried about the repairing bit. Right now if I break a CPU, I can just buy that part. Having them merged forces me to spend $50-$100 extra.
  • arshlevon
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    arshlevon polycounter lvl 18
    This is a non issue as such a small percent of computer owners build their own machines. On a computer graphics forum of course your going to have enthusiasts, but your such a small demographic for a company of Intel's size to really care at all about. Its like wal-mart carrying boutique clothing, why would they? To think giant corporations should cater to fringe consumers is pretty far fetched and makes no sense. Also if everything is one cohesive engineered unit it's going to work better and be easier to support than some frankensteined abomination with parts from 40 different companies.
  • JamesWild
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    JamesWild polycounter lvl 8
    arshlevon wrote: »
    it's going to work better and be easier to support than some frankensteined abomination with parts from 40 different companies.

    I have to agree to a degree; I've built quite a few computers over the past few years using low-mid-end boards, and in retrospect they weren't fantastic. Mine has weird state bugs (needs tilting 30 degrees to boot sometimes, doesn't always hibernate/go to sleep, sound sometimes fails, wifi sometimes shuts off and the system starts lagging) and none of them had a layout that made any sense whatsoever. USB and audio headers below the graphics card? GREAT IDEA
  • Overlord
    arshlevon wrote: »
    This is a non issue as such a small percent of computer owners build their own machines. On a computer graphics forum of course your going to have enthusiasts, but your such a small demographic for a company of Intel's size to really care at all about. Its like wal-mart carrying boutique clothing, why would they? To think giant corporations should cater to fringe consumers is pretty far fetched and makes no sense. Also if everything is one cohesive engineered unit it's going to work better and be easier to support than some frankensteined abomination with parts from 40 different companies.

    If the majority of Intel's business isn't enthusiasts, why bother with high end CPU's? Just get rid of them all together. Clearly, that market segment doesn't matter enough to cater to since most people buy the Dell box that just does internet and school work. We don't need bleeding edge processors when the mainstream hardware does 99% of the work we need it to do, right?

    The morel likely scenario is, the enthusiast market is important and it does matter or they wouldn't bother with bleeding edge processors. These people aren't fringe. They are the people from IT industry, the games industry, the multimedia industry, VFX, hardware hobbyists, gamers, and so on. All of these people want custom, purpose-built computers that are configured to their specifications for their personal use.

    The gains in reliability to be had by soldering the CPU to the motherboard would be minimal. There is little difference in reliability between a socket and a direct solder connection. What would really make a difference is heavily homogenizing the hardware choices you have so that you only have to pick from a short list of thoroughly tested and "approved" hardware configurations. I'm sorry, I don't want to sacrifice choice for marginally increased reliability. I do not want to toss my perfectly usable $300 CPU because my $150 motherboard blew a bank of capacitors.

    "and be easier to support than some frankensteined abomination with parts from 40 different companies."

    You must be a Mac user.
  • JamesWild
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    JamesWild polycounter lvl 8
    They make high end CPUs largely because manufacturing silicon chips of this complexity and density isn't reliable enough. If a quad core CPU rolls off the production line with a dead core or two it's sold as a dual. If the cache has a defect, that area is disabled and it's sold as a lower end CPU. If it just doesn't run stably at high clocks, it's sold as a low clock component.

    They don't intentionally design bad CPUs, what would the point be? The materials cost between making a high end or a low end, low power CPU, is utterly negligable. Maybe they'd get more dies out of a platter if they made more simplified, smaller ones, but the cost of R&Ding that chip would probably negate the savings. And what would they do with the CPUs that didn't yield properly?

    If all CPUs were designed to be as powerful as the low end, it'd just become the new high end.

    See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning
  • Overlord
    JamesWild wrote: »
    They make high end CPUs largely because manufacturing silicon chips of this complexity and density isn't reliable enough. If a quad core CPU rolls off the production line with a dead core or two it's sold as a dual. If the cache has a defect, that area is disabled and it's sold as a lower end CPU. If it just doesn't run stably at high clocks, it's sold as a low clock component.

    They don't intentionally design bad CPUs, what would the point be? The materials cost between making a high end or a low end, low power CPU, is utterly negligable. Maybe they'd get more dies out of a platter if they made more simplified, smaller ones, but the cost of R&Ding that chip would probably negate the savings. And what would they do with the CPUs that didn't yield properly?

    If all CPUs were designed to be as powerful as the low end, it'd just become the new high end.

    See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning

    Actually, all CPU's would be homogenized to a one-size-fits-all design.
  • arshlevon
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    arshlevon polycounter lvl 18
    Overlord wrote: »

    You must be a Mac user.

    macs are made up from intel processers, nvidia cards and samsung displays, i fail to see your point.

    the enthusiast market is pretty dead, all those professions you mentioned make up less than 5% of the people in the world that use computers, that's a fringe market, what about all the waiters, and middle schoolers, and construction workers, and professional surfers, and smoothie makers, and grandmas, and zoologists, and breakdancers, and sea captains, and pedophiles, and pizza delivery guys, and proctologists, and civilwar reenactmenters, and sports commentators? they don't give a shit.

    the reason companies like intel and nvidia cater to the enthusiast market is so they can sell them a $100 piece of hardware for $1000 and they will spend it so they can have bigger E-penises than anyone on the internet, they rarely cost more to manufacture or contain more expensive materials. Maybe you personally do not want to spend more money when just your mobo dies, but intel certainly does.
  • Justin Meisse
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    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 19
    Overlord wrote: »
    If the majority of Intel's business isn't enthusiasts, why bother with high end CPU's? Just get rid of them all together. Clearly, that market segment doesn't matter enough to cater to since most people buy the Dell box that just does internet and school work. We don't need bleeding edge processors when the mainstream hardware does 99% of the work we need it to do, right?

    Every studio I've worked at or visited has been all Dell or HP.
  • Overlord
    arshlevon wrote: »
    macs are made up from intel processers, nvidia cards and samsung displays, i fail to see your point.

    the enthusiast market is pretty dead, all those professions you mentioned make up less than 5% of the people in the world that use computers, that's a fringe market, what about all the waiters, and middle schoolers, and construction workers, and professional surfers, and smoothie makers, and grandmas, and zoologists, and breakdancers, and sea captains, and pedophiles, and pizza delivery guys, and proctologists, and civilwar reenactmenters, and sports commentators? they don't give a shit.

    the reason companies like intel and nvidia cater to the enthusiast market is so they can sell them a $100 piece of hardware for $1000 and they will spend it so they can have bigger E-penises than anyone on the internet, they rarely cost more to manufacture or contain more expensive materials. Maybe you personally do not want to spend more money when just your mobo dies, but intel certainly does.

    Sure, whatever. You're right. I'm not going to argue with you over your opinion. Even if the enthusiast market is small, the builder market isn't. People are looking to build all sorts of custom configurations. They build HTPC's, ITX LAN boxes, NAS, home servers, you name it. Solder the CPU to the PCB and all that goes to hell. Goodbye choice.

    Macs have near-zero upgradeability and you can never build your own. They are the very picture of lack of choice, thus my point.

    @Justin

    I'm not talking about studio machines. I'm talking about personal machines. Am I mistaken that people in the game industry build their own PC at home? IT guys? Etc. Given the number of "Help me build my PC" threads that show up in GD, I just can't believe that you guys don't build your own machines.
  • EarthQuake
    Every studio I've worked at or visited has been all Dell or HP.

    Yeah, virtually all established businesses are buying pre-built systems, even if they're ordering them to spec. This includes game studios, film fx, etc. Custom built is a pain in the ass when you need support/service on a large scale. Even with a company large enough to have its own tech/IT department to service workstations on site they are going to support a limited number of machines.

    And again, established businesses aren't going to be upgrading cpus either, in virtually all cases they will purchase a new system entirely before upgrading a cpu.

    So we're back to amateur builders/enthusiasts and custom builders, which is an extremely small segment of overall computer users.
    Overlord wrote: »
    Sure, whatever. You're right. I'm not going to argue with you over your opinion. Even if the enthusiast market is small, the builder market isn't. People are looking to build all sorts of custom configurations. They build HTPC's, ITX LAN boxes, NAS, home servers, you name it. Solder the CPU to the PCB and all that goes to hell. Goodbye choice.

    Honestly I think you're way over-reacting here. Goodbye choice? You act is if this means everyone will be forced to use ONE cpu and that is it, take it or leave it.

    Realistically more than anything this would simplify things for a lot of custom builders. If I'm building an htpc I want a simple low cost easy to use solution, cpu+mobo combination would be perfect.

    I think we're likely to see continued support for the very high end of the market with what you're used to in terms of CPU combinations, its just that its completely excessive for the low-mid range of computer hardware. Tech is to the point that your average I3 or I5 is way more power than your average user even needs or takes advantage of. Still we have dozens of slight variations of those cpus... to what end?

    Do you really need 40 different motherboards, all of which do basically the same function, for your budget cpu build that you use for web browsing? Sure you'll have more choice, but right now there is really an excessive amount of choice in PC hardware. Sure some nerds really love to spend months researching the best combination of hardware so they can brag about it on the internet, but your average computer user, and probably your average builder would benifit from things being a little more straight forward(even if the hardcore guys will never admit it).

    Though really I wouldn't worry about it, as long as there are people willing to pay 300% the price for 33% more performance, that high end market is still going to exist.
  • Andreas
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    Andreas polycounter lvl 11
    LOL at the people claiming the self-build market is dying. From what I see it has never been more popular. More and more people are doing it.
  • JamesWild
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    JamesWild polycounter lvl 8
    Andreas wrote: »
    more people are doing it.

    Got any statistics? If more people are building their own machines, who? Why?

    If we're going to throw around "everyone I know" I should add a web developer and a programmer I know bought off the shelf machines, partially because it has support and partially because it'd take more time researching and constructing than their time is worth.

    But I wouldn't normally bother mentioning it, because the people I know are a tiny, slightly eccentric segement of the population not indicative of large scale trends. None of my friends buy a new phone every two years either but that's generally what happens with contracts.
  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    There's still going to be an essential need for open and customizable hardware even if the majority of pc users go for prebuilt.

    I have a preference for a certain type of motherboard, and I have a preference for a certain type of CPU, and then there are those who don't want to fiddle around with any of that.

    Then there's the CPU+GPU compo that is quite realistically being a big choice for people who don't want to choose anything either, do you see yourself in a world where this will take over?




    Also, in other news: iPads and handheld computers were going to take over the PC as we already discussed ;)

    EarthQuake wrote: »
    Do you really need 40 different motherboards, all of which do basically the same function, for your budget cpu build that you use for web browsing? Sure you'll have more choice, but right now there is really an excessive amount of choice in PC hardware. Sure some nerds really love to spend months researching the best combination of hardware so they can brag about it on the internet, but your average computer user, and probably your average builder would benifit from things being a little more straight forward(even if the hardcore guys will never admit it).

    A ton of people would love easier builds, but in reality the diversity in different motherboards have come from competition and companies needing to outdo eachother or give people different choices for needs.

    It parallels the mac vs windows vs linux thing, on one end you're given the comfort and ease of use, the other end you're given extreme ability to customize and build exactly what you need.

    EarthQuake wrote: »
    Though really I wouldn't worry about it, as long as there are people willing to pay 300% the price for 33% more performance, that high end market is still going to exist.

    You could look at it the other way around though, there are a ton of pre-built systems with features and motherboard brands I don't really need, or the choice of CPU where many here might go for the best but I would go for something less.

    You're not at the bottom of some scale where everything above it is a waste of an expense, you're right in your personal middle on a scale where there is no bottom or top.
  • wasker
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    wasker polycounter lvl 7
    I think the custom built market probably isn't doing as well as some people in this thread says, which, for example, is probably why we see AMD layoff what was it? 30% of their workforce and Scythe shutting down their operations in the US despite making some of the best coolers out there at a very affordable price.

    http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/coolers/display/20121129135249_Cooler_Maker_Scythe_Shuts_Down_Operations.html

    I think, just theory crafting here, people want computers that you can just plugin in and everything works, without having to open them up or pick individual parts.
    They just cant be bothered anymore. Sure there's a few enthusiasts around but our market share is nothing compared to people who buy prebuilt hardware (most notably, macs / tablets). Desktop computers in general is a shrinking industry. Which makes me sad. :/
  • JamesWild
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    JamesWild polycounter lvl 8
    eld wrote: »
    There's still going to be an essential need for open and customizable hardware even if the majority of pc users go for prebuilt.

    I have a preference for a certain type of motherboard, and I have a preference for a certain type of CPU,

    Can you explain why you think it's essential and you think you have to have specific components?
  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    JamesWild wrote: »
    Can you explain why you think it's essential and you think you have to have specific components?

    Why do we have different processor speeds for example, shouldn't the fastest be the best for everyone?
  • JamesWild
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    JamesWild polycounter lvl 8
    What happens if you don't have those specific components? It still runs the same software, and I'd frankly be amazed if you could tell there was a difference outside of benchmarks and maybe baking/rendering.

    It's far from the end of the world.

    You don't lose a whole lot to be honest, and if it means better, less buggy PC games because they've got less configurations to target, heck that's a plus!
  • eld
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    eld polycounter lvl 18
    JamesWild wrote: »
    What happens if you don't have those specific components? It still runs the same software, and I'd frankly be amazed if you could tell there was a difference outside of benchmarks and maybe baking/rendering.

    It's far from the end of the world.

    Some want cheaper components, others want motherboard built to handle cooling better, others want over-clocking features, some might want something like a dual-bios.

    Many don't want to make the choice, but in the end they'll just pay someone else to do that choice for them, be it HP, dell or apple.

    It's the choice that's good for everyone, even if they don't want to make it, everyone wins from it anyway.
    JamesWild wrote: »
    You don't lose a whole lot to be honest, and if it means better, less buggy PC games because they've got less configurations to target, heck that's a plus!

    That's the least of compatibility problems, most which revolve around cpu + gpu configurations, the only solution there is still to make console games.
  • Overlord
    To be painfully honest, what Intel is trying to do isn't going to do a lick of good for the consumer. Soldering a CPU vs a socket isn't going to improve compatibility and reliability in any significant amount. What it will do is give them the power to control their customers, thus the market, and squeeze more money out of them. The bottom line is, that this is good for Intel, not for us. Intel only does what's good for Intel. As a corporation, their function is to externalize. Externalizing costs to their customers is icing on the cake.

    The trade-offs just aren't equitable, but it's pretty damn nice for Intel.
  • oXYnary
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    oXYnary polycounter lvl 18
    EarthQuake wrote: »
    Ok for the extremely small % of users out there who actually do upgrade cpus, here is some raw math for you.

    I currently have a 775 Q6600 quad core intel cpu. If I want to upgrade that to something significantly faster that means I have to buy a Q9650. Cheapest price on that new is $275 on eBay. This gives me 147% of the performance of my Q6600.

    On the other hand I can buy an I7 3770 for just $25 more. Lets call it $500 total once you throw in a mobo and ram. This gives me 320% the performance, which is a significant upgrade.

    If we divide the performance increase by money spent we get these two numbers:
    Q9650 uprade = 0.53
    I7 + mobo/ram = 0.64

    I think most reasonable people would define value as performance for price, so the I7 is clearly a better value. Even if it is a higher initial cost, this is basic economics. If you go through life always buying the least expensive item in the short term, you will pay a lot more in the long term. Even though the Q9650 upgrade option is initially cheaper, the smaller performance increase means I'm going to have to upgrade much sooner, and I will spend more money doing so. Economics.

    This isn't a unique situation or anything either, this has been my experience for every computer I've built for myself or others in the last 15 years. Its rarely a good value to upgrade your cpu.

    q6600 - 2953
    q9650 - 4365
    i7 3770 - 9460
    http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

    You're correct. But I would attribute this more than anything as someone said.. intel depreciating socket systems quickly. I wish my older cpus would be that overpriced.


    Now, for the hippy social conscience aspects of all of this. Say you upgrade your cpu, what are you left with? A useless used cpu. You can sell it on ebay I guess.

    There is nothing dirty nor wrong about having a social conscience.

    What to do? Recycle it if it cannot be used for any other purpose. It does have hazardous materials in both the creation and destruction. But recycling 1 part every few years versus an entire motherboard + cpu in the same time period is night and day.
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