I give up being a CPU enthusiast.

[Arachnotronic]

Yup. The CPU world is just incredibly not exciting for the PC. Sure, in the mobile/ultramobile space, it's neat and all, but at the high end, it's become a clusterfunk. Intel with two lines of CPUs with the lower end stuff getting the better uArchs first, Bulldozer disappointing, ARM basically holding a knife to AMD/Intel's throats and basically killing the desktop market, etc.

All that's left for us enthusiasts is new, badass graphics cards. These are the only thing that the f*cking phones/tablets couldn't hope to catch up with anytime soon. Let's hope AMD/NVIDIA's 28nm round are exciting.

 

[Broheim]

Yup. The CPU world is just incredibly not exciting for the PC. Sure, in the mobile/ultramobile space, it's neat and all, but at the high end, it's become a clusterfunk. Intel with two lines of CPUs with the lower end stuff getting the better uArchs first, Bulldozer disappointing, ARM basically holding a knife to AMD/Intel's throats and basically killing the desktop market, etc.

All that's left for us enthusiasts is new, badass graphics cards. These are the only thing that the f*cking phones/tablets couldn't hope to catch up with anytime soon. Let's hope AMD/NVIDIA's 28nm round are exciting.

lolwat

 

[Arachnotronic]

Don't you see it happening? ARM stuff will become "good enough", and given its market penetration and killer apps in the phones/tablets/whatever, it will push upwards and become the dominant ISA, killing x86-64.

Intel did this to the early RISC chips by pushing upwards from a new, booming compute segment. ARM will do this to Intel.

 

[soccerballtux]

yes, I do see it happening

 

[IGemini]

The sky's changing. Too early to say it's falling.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Personally, it seems like this is just a post to start controversy. However, I will say that there has never been a time when more CPU performance was available for the money. I dont see how you can say that is not exciting. I will admit that the market is becoming somewhat mature, and progress is slowing down, but I would much prefer this situation to the old days when CPU performance required improvements with each generation just to perform basic tasks.

 

[SickBeast]

Welcome to the dark ages, OP. :thumbsup::thumbsup:

If you add enough graphics cards to your computer, you will exceed the limit of your electrical outlets.

I agree with you 100%. It sucks being a PC enthusiast these days.

Hopefully AMD and nVidia will have a good 28nm refresh.

Our graphics cards are quite powerful, but they are held back by the API and other inefficiencies.

I'm thinking about converting into a console gamer.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Why would you deliberately hamstring your graphics capabilities and input quality for a console? No, no. Being an overall PC enthusiast these days still rocks (look at the awesome motherboards, cheap RAM, killer graphics cards & multiple cards, etc.), but the CPU front is just getting...weird.

 

[tatertot]

Uh wasn't your first thread enough?

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2201984

Seems like the mods may need to step in.

 

[Idontcare]

Yup. The CPU world is just incredibly not exciting for the PC. Sure, in the mobile/ultramobile space, it's neat and all, but at the high end, it's become a clusterfunk. Intel with two lines of CPUs with the lower end stuff getting the better uArchs first, Bulldozer disappointing, ARM basically holding a knife to AMD/Intel's throats and basically killing the desktop market, etc.

All that's left for us enthusiasts is new, badass graphics cards. These are the only thing that the f*cking phones/tablets couldn't hope to catch up with anytime soon. Let's hope AMD/NVIDIA's 28nm round are exciting.

Consider the larger view, enthusiasts make up how much of the market? Maybe 5%?

That means the vast majority of people out there on this planet didn't think the PC market was ever exciting enough to become an enthusiast.

So its not entirely surprising or unexpected that a few people who were on the edge (possibly yourself included), folks who could be an enthusiast or could be a meh-thusiast depending on their mood and the year, will wander back over to the "not so enthusiastic" crowd in time.

Don't feel bad, 19 out of 20 people on the planet would agree with you, being a PC enthusiast is for the birds. I happen to be 1 of 20, I am enthusiastic about this stuff, but I don't expect it to become a mainstream hobby anytime soon.

It will always be a fringe hobby, like those dudes who buy metal detectors to look for lost coins in the park and so on.

 

[RussianSensation]

PC enthusiasts complain when their 2+ year old CPU doesn't need to be thrown out because it didn't become a paperweight like Pentium 3, Pentium 4 or Pentium D did. . I thought you'd be happy that your i7 860 still holds its own, even without overclocking. You can try overclocking to get some "fun" out of your system!! Get a nice aftermarket cooler and push that guy to 3.8-4.0ghz.

I say save your $$ and just upgrade when Haswell arrives. Frankly, if you purchased a Q6600 in summer of 2007 and had it overclocked to 3.4-3.5ghz, you could have easily bypassed Nehalem/Lynnfield and even Sandy Bridge generations. I don't think it's a bad thing that your i7 860 is still a very capable CPU, unless you like throwing $$$ away. In that case, just get a 2500k/2600k or Ivy for fun. That's what I did. I didn't upgrade my i7 860 because I needed more performance. I went with 2500k because I just wanted to play with new parts and it wasn't very expensive after selling my i7 860 + mobo + cooler + ram.

If you feel like throwing more $ at your system, get 2x GTX680s (or similar), get a blazing fast RAID SSD setup. There are plenty of things you can spend $$ on: 3x 30 inch monitors!

If you really can't live with yourself that your i7 860 isn't obsolete yet, you should donate it, and get a $1500 X79 system, with Asus Rampage IV Extreme, and $999 top of the line 6-core SB-E.

Welcome to the dark ages, OP. :thumbsup::thumbsup:

If you add enough graphics cards to your computer, you will exceed the limit of your electrical outlets.

I agree with you 100%. It sucks being a PC enthusiast these days.
(

Really?

1) Power supplies have now become fanless at Gold level (see Seasonic) and we are starting to see Platinum grade PSUs.

2) Cooling has never been more innovative. You have the option of getting at least 5-6 awesome air coolers (Noctua NH-D14, Silver Arrow, Archon, Havik 140, Megahalems, Venomous X), a great selection of budget air coolers (CM212+, Corsair A50/A70, Mugen 3, Zalman Performa), a great selection of water cooling systems (from H50 to H100).

3) Motherboards - are full fledged with PCIe 3.0, SATA 3.0, HDMI/DVI outs, decent onboard audio, X79 gives you the option of 8 DIMMs!!! (never before was this available in a consumer board).

4) Monitors - Now you can get 3x 30 inch monitors and run them off 1 videocard. Never before was this possible.

5) Videocards - We are within 6 months of seeing brand new 28nm generation launched from both NV and AMD, despite current consoles holding most games back. That's exciting since honestly NV and AMD didn't even need to release anything new beyond GTX580/HD6970 given the current landscape for graphics/console ports.

6) SSDs - Already pushing maximum 500-550 mb/s reads/writes of SATA3.0 interface. Soon, they'll have to move to SATA 3.0 extended to get even more performance. Prices continue to decline and storage space grows.

Honestly, it's one of the BEST times to be a PC enthusiast. Why? Because you don't have to spend $1000-2000 just to see those components become worthless in 3 years. That was certainly the case 5-10 years ago. How is that Athlon X2 4800+ doing? How is that 8800GTX doing? Not very fast are they?

We always go through these cycles where hardware is way ahead of software. Don't worry, when next generation of consoles launches in 2013-2014, a GTX580 SLI setup is going to become paperweight.

 

[Chiropteran]

Intel did this to the early RISC chips by pushing upwards from a new, booming compute segment. ARM will do this to Intel.

I don't see it. When intel was really pushing into the markets of the RISC cpus, they did it through lower prices and "good enough" performance. IIRC those were the days were a cheap RISC workstation was $10-20k, and a high end PC was $6k. That won't happen with ARM, because current intel or AMD based PCs are already very very cheap and there isn't enough room to compete on price alone. People might not need quad core high performance computers, but I see on a daily basis those people spending $800+ on a high end PC when a $400 value edition would be "good enough".

In summary, intel broke into RISC markets by offering savings of $4-15k on total system cost. ARM can't come close to that.

 

[exdeath]

Nothing in the PC is exciting when the mainstream is still reading and writing data at 1.5 MB/sec random access on "tape" like storage devices and you have to stare at progress bars and hourglasses for 45 minutes to install basic software...

WTB high density high speed non volatile RAM and eliminate HDDs and SATA ports.

CPUs and video cards don't even matter anymore. It's our primative data storage devices that are holding back the next computer revolution. The memory gap needs to be destroyed once and for all.

 

[IlllI]

maybe arm will buy amd and then...nevermind. i dont think anything can save amd at this point

 

[Hulk]

Actually I think it's a great time for PC enthusiasts. There's a huge variety of PC components so you can really build a "custom" PC. And the components work a lot better and with less effort than 15 years ago. I built my latest 4GHz overclock, quad core, 33W at idle, 8GB RAM, fanless power supply, etc.. in about a hour (taking my time) and it fired up and worked perfectly the first time. No endless tweaking, figuring out why it won't come out of sleep mode, or is throwing this or that error at boot...

Loving these DIY PC times.

 

[SickBeast]

You know what, RussianSensation, you made a very nice post.

There are tons of incredible things we can buy these days for our computers.

The OP is correct though. The CPU market is stale and has stagnated. The CPU is the most critical component in many ways as well.

 

[tweakboy]

Intel will always have billion dollar market for business and consumer line. Businesses aren't going to change their Vista OSes or 7 ,,, any time soon. or even XP.

Just because tablets are out means nothing. Even the WIndows 8 tablet,,, its a OS but not a full OS like a desktop or laptop install OS. OSes will always shine, Windows 8 is coming out end of 2012 ,,,,,,,, its exciting times like that guy said. will continue to be exciting. thg gl,

 

[senseamp]

Intel is turning the PC business into the 1970s US auto business. They got the big CPU engines, but little else,and the answer for everything is more CPU horsepower.

 

[hasu]

Intel17, do you own ARM stocks?

 

[cbn]

ARM basically holding a knife to AMD/Intel's throats and basically killing the desktop market, etc.

I'm not so sure ARM is single-handedly killing the desktop market.

Intel has been doing a pretty good job of this already.....the proof is that the devices get smaller and smaller every year. Desktop---> Laptop--->Ultraportable laptop, etc.

Pretty soon: Phone plugged into a "lap dock".<----This will be the laptop of the future.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Intel17, do you own ARM stocks?

Negative. Nor do I plan to ever initiate a position in ARMH.

 

[cbn]

Don't you see it happening? ARM stuff will become "good enough", and given its market penetration and killer apps in the phones/tablets/whatever, it will push upwards and become the dominant ISA, killing x86-64.

Intel did this to the early RISC chips by pushing upwards from a new, booming compute segment. ARM will do this to Intel.

Surely Intel sees this coming!

So what does Intel have planned to counter ARM as they see their adversary using their very own strategy (undercutting at the lowest common denominator) against them?

Will Intel go straight to a new uarch or will they perfect 3D xtors to help some type of vertical integration strategy on the x86 server level?

My very humble guess:

1. Intel will put most of their resources into 3D xtors
2. After perfecting 3D xtors they will consider moving on to a new uarch

 

[sandorski]

The CPU side of the PC has been much less a factor than it was a decade ago. Making that part really quite dull to be excited about. At least compared to GPU's. I think, though, that you are just mistaking the newness and exciting rise of ARM as something more than it actually is.

ARM is so far behind AMD/Intel on the CPU side that it isn't funny. On the Graphics side it's even more lopsided between the Platforms. I think the 2 Platforms will eventually butt up to each other, but I think x86 has the advantage. Simply because it already exists on the Performance side that ARM ultimately aspires too and it has been cutting downwards towards the Power Usage advantages of ARM very aggressively.

Then there's the whole reason CPU enthusiasts even exist in the first place: The Open nature of the x86 Architecture. Would we really care much about the CPU, other than it just being a bullet point, if we couldn't pick/choose then Install it into a Motherboard? I highly doubt it. About all we'd know is that CPU X is > CPU Y, but we would likely have no tangible knowledge of what a CPU even is, it would just be some mysterious thing inside your Phone or a Box. We would far more likely just being APP fanboys, the thing we would have contact with the most.

 

[Magic Carpet]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teraflops_Research_Chip#Energy_efficiency

How can you be bored?

Go on a mission and steal it ;-p

Alternatively, you can pick up a faulty i5 and see if you can fix it ;-)

 

[cbn]

ARM is so far behind AMD/Intel on the CPU side that it isn't funny. On the Graphics side it's even more lopsided between the Platforms.

Isn't the graphics discrepancy supposed to change with the release of Nvidia Project Denver?

With that being said I almost wonder if Nvidia is a little too far ahead of the ARM game....too soon.