Posted on 11/26/2012 8:54:15 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The most direct effect is that of Broadwell, the 14nm successor to next year’s Haswell CPU, will essentially shut out the enthusiast. Motherboards will still be available, but the CPUs that come with them will be soldered down. In addition to being a inventory management nightmare, OEMs won’t buy CPUs any more, the few remaining mobo vendors and ODMs will. As a side effect, it also cuts the enthusiast out of the picture for good, but more on that later.
Normally, you would expect Intel to tell the companies that are affected, the Asuses, Gigabytes, MSIs, and maybe Asrocks if they are still around, well ahead of time. This time Intel didn’t, and that should tell you a great deal about their intentions. At least a few key PC players found out from SemiAccurate a few months ago, and they were rather incredulous about the news. This state of mind has probably changed to a state a bit past peeved by now, their entire business is about to be gutted. Intel didn’t just do a bad job of messaging this one, they didn’t do any job of it.
(Excerpt) Read more at semiaccurate.com ...
Gamers on a tablet?
Probably multiple chips hosting multiple cores on the same card. In that case, Intel will seek to control their cooling behavior and ship it in an integrated 'cassette' like unit as they did with the Pentium '2'.
laptops
I’ll be migrating away from computers altogether as this happens. They want us to adhere to their own proprietary standards, they want us to put everything “in the cloud,” and they want us on mobile devices that can be tracked and kept to “moderate” electrical consumption. Well, not me.
I’ll likely build up one more heavy-hitting gaming rig with liquid cooling and ride on it until the next-next-gen of video games comes out that won’t run on the old stuff. My current gaming rig is still humming along and plays anything I throw at it.
It’s only a matter of time.
This, I fear, is just the beginning. The market wants to force us to mobile devices instead of giving us more power in a smaller (and cooler) desktop package. If the ASUSes and the Gigabytes of the world don’t rise up and perhaps work with AMD to continue the socketed processor lines, enthusiasts, as well as websites such as NewEgg and FrozenPC, will go extinct.
If this is true, and it just sounds like you won’t be able to build your own machine by buying a motherboard, it just means the gamer and enthusiast market goes to AMD.
This really makes little sense to me as Intel has no vested interest in selling the rest of a tower’s innards. They don’t make power supplies, graphics cards, sound cards, HD’s etc. I’m trying to make sense of this because as written it doesn’t make good business.
IF they ever come up with a decent keyboard on a laptop, I’ll buy one...but all I can find is those mushy, rubbery, “soft touch” keyboards.
After learning to type on an old Underwood Manual, and they typing for years on an IBM Selectric, I like a little travel, and a little “click” in my keyboard.
On the other hand, I can just see journalists and people in corporations, writers, etc., doing stories and reports on an I-Pad.
All I’ve used for years is a laptop and an external 24” flat panel display (easier on these old eyes). Haven’t owned a tower in years and don’t intend to.
Intel is going full bore for the Mobile market and ARM is gonna have a massive competitor,.
Motherboard makers are going to be wondering "What happened?"
Intel will have a reply shortly!
does this mean I will no longer be able to build my own tower from scratch?
If so, it really sucks.
Tablets are making huge inroads to the laptops former niche..............
It sounds to me like this is not so much “end of the desktop PC” as it is “end of the removable CPU”. Just another step in the evolution that has brought us from the days when a PC wouldn’t work without an array of cards plugged into ISA slots.
Higher integration of the CPU onto the mobo isn’t going to preclude someone from packaging it up as a desktop if they want to. It will just look a lot like a laptop inside a bigger case. Expansion is all going to be via USB and DisplayPort anyhow so I see this as a non-story, just as when they started integrating other bits and pieces of the traditional PC.
I played Evercrack on a laptop for years. Wasn’t so bad.
Just posted this:
AMD launches Opteron 6300 server processors ( Code Name Abu Dhabi )
Socket is G32 and G34 (Dual ).
Intel will be building the MoBo’s.
Oh, I’d love to use a laptop, but like I said, the keyboards suck.
I do a lot of writing, including a newspaper column (locally), plus all of my photoshop work, and I’m more comfortable in my office, alone, with a 1 TB hard drive, good keyboard/mouse, and a 24’ monitor.
For casual surfing I use my wife’s I-pad when not in my office.
I used towers for years so I could get enough speed and memory at reasonable cost.
But I went over to using a laptop on my desk quite a while ago, when they got enough speed and memory for what I do.
I also usually bought one level down from the fastest models, for cost reasons. But now I don’t even have to do that.
But I need a keyboard. No touch screen for me.
Which is fine - who really cares? I’m old enough to remember when Intel used to build a large share of motherboards in their OMO - OEM Manufacturing Operations division in Beaverton OR, which was headed back then by some upstart named Craig Barrett. So if they make the mobo it will be back to the future...
Counterpart in cubicle next to me has a clackety Clydesdale keyboard that needs to be put out of my misery.
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