I think you guys should think about the future of the desktop market.
It's easy to see why Intel is dropping the ball here. Intel needs high margins because it needs to fund their bleeding edge tech. That said, with most of the consumer market moving to mobile, Intel will obviously focus their resources there. Instead of desktop, notebooks and servers Intel will go for mobile, notebooks and servers. Mainstream desktop is becoming an afterthought for Intel, a market where Intel doesn't even bother to field a good thermal solution. Cheap is the name of the game here. And the reason for that is not lack of competition, it's lack of returns. Intel doesn't feel compelled with ROI for the desktop markets.
The big elephant in the room isn't that Intel is cheaping on the IHS, but that Intel isn't designing, much less tuning their mainstream parts for desktop usage. Their mainstream parts are being tuned for mobile usage. Instead of investing money in develop a new fancy instruction to improve IPC or to make the core beefier, Intel is spending time and money in developing Cx sleeping states and other gimmicks to keep power under control. Instead of going for a clock speed uber alles process, they are going for a low leakage dense process. Once you have this kind of trend, other subjects like the cheap IHS become a non-issue, because whatever they field on the desktop it will be just an afterthought, a byproduct of their mobile designs.
And what about AMD? AMD doesn't need high margins. With forecast margins around 40%, why isn't AMD focusing all their resources on the desktop when Intel is dropping the ball? AMD doesn't appear to want this market for themselves, and the only explanation is that forecast returns for a high level premium mainstream desktop chip will be low, very low. Far lower than anything AMD can think of, and AMD pipeline isn't exactly a ROI star.
AMD strategy since Bulldozer reflects this reality. They designed two parts, one for mobile and other for servers. The leaky mobile parts become mainstream APU, and the defective/leaky junk silicon becomes FX chips. When an unprofitable company like AMD decides to leave a market on the backburner, why would a profitable company like Intel do the opposite?
It's easy to bash Intel for what they have been doing now, cheaping out the IHS, fuzzing off features. I'd be happier if they weren't doing this. But in the end, the real problem is that returns on the desktop market appear to be diminishing to the point that not even AMD finds desktop worth the investment. And there is no amount of features or better IHS that could make up for that.
You have been just reading too much of net reviews and rumors sir,
Desktop is and will remain for many years to come main platform for computing.
Desktops are everywhere, go to stores, offices, households, there are apparently 10 people in the room who work on desktops and one on laptop.
Laptops are good for students who study abroad, frequent travelers, or tablets if they want it even lighter and smaller, but honestly, everywhere I go laptops are held in the closet or on the bed at least, and everyone still owns and buy new desktops. I'd say there has been an increase in laptop and tablet sales respectively, but not a real decrease in desktop usage.
Intel and AMD are now focused on mobile hardware because they want to earn cash on that stuff too, they OWN and CONTROL the desktop market, without anyone else endangering it. But since the mobile phones and tablets mainly became more versatile rather than for calling and simple organization of work data they also want to compete with ARM, Samsung and their licensed manufacturers because they also can get a good market share, which is now in the boom, but I don't believe any of this stuff like desktop is dying or will get diminished in next few years, yeah we were told in 1970s that computers in 20 years will be higly intelligent devices used for real-time translation, health problem diagnostics and even providing own ideas in developing new technologies, today we are told that desktop gonna go soon, what? None of the future predictions are true and never be. It's 2013 and desktops are faster and hardware is more ergonomic but yet there is nothing that is going to replace them, so just the tablets and phones are not good for any desktop tasks beyond basic web browsing and listening to music. Laptops are better candidates in replacing desktops but still many people choose the desktops over because of ergonomy, increased durability and performance. Office applications, design suites, programming, any serious video and photo editing and more creative jobs are done on laptops only when it is only option, not to mention you can't do that on phones or tablets. It's not true that AMD or Intel skipped on desktop market, they LIVE from it, they don't live from selling atom netbooks and tablets. The desktop computers are however much more sophisticated and so they decided that they can manage to develop competing circuitry for mobile electronics with some more focus on the subject to gain in new emerging market because they know they can't lose on desktops as no one else is working in this field. If they skip on mobiles now, they lose step and will get taken over by others.
I don't strictly need Intel or AMD to release any competitive 2500K successor, but I don't agree with releasing new architecture for desktops when adjustments were done for mobile sector. I consider this as big turnoff from Intel, because IVB and Haswell are Sandy bridges customized for mobile makret, not new redesigned desktop CPUs, and they shouldn't be sold like that, that's all the problem right now here. I'd rather don't want to see any new arch in 4 years but when it comes it will bring huge IPC, Power and IGP improvements rather than rebadging same thing all over.