Is Intel Planning To Kill Enthusiast PCs? 1009
OceanMan7 writes "According to a story by Charlie Demerjian, a long-time hardware journalist, Intel's next generation of x86 CPUs, Broadwell, will not come in a package having pins. Hence manufacturers will have to solder it onto motherboards. That will likely seriously wound the enthusiast PC market. If Intel doesn't change their plans, the future pasture for enthusiasts looks like it will go to ARM chips or something from offshore manufacturers."
Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as planned (Score:5, Insightful)
Been headed this way for while (Score:5, Insightful)
Between the increasing popularity of tablets and laptops, I suspect the days of building your own desktop PC have been numbered for a long time now.
Besides, how can you geeks be forced to upgrade your whole computer every few years if you keep stubbornly refusing to play ball by doing things one component at a time? Not to mention the fact that self-built PC's can't be locked down behind a software walled garden and saddled with god-knows-what mandatory crapware, spyware, advertisements, etc. Shit, I even hear some of you are installing other OS's besides Windows and OS X on some of those goddamn contraptions.
You geeks need to be taught to conform better, obviously.
I just can't live without a ZIF socket. (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF does sockets have to do with PC enthusiasm?
When was the last time you upgraded a CPU and didn't get a new motherboard? Never?
If a soldered on chip allows the bus to run faster, I for one am enthusiastic.
Re:AMD (Score:5, Insightful)
A plan when AMD goes out of business which should happen anyday now if rumors are true sadly.
Why should Intel care then? They have no competition anymore and can do whatever they want.
Re:I just can't live without a ZIF socket. (Score:5, Insightful)
When was the last time you upgraded a CPU and didn't get a new motherboard? Never?
Always. I have never owned a PC in which I have not upgraded the CPU at least once.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
Never mind enthusiasts. There's still a large market for business machines both on the desktop and in the server room. Any thing that makes those machines less standardized and less modular is leaving a lot of money on the table.
Even in the heyday of proprietary RISC systems, they didn't pull nonsense like that. If anything, they were more modular rather than less allowing for hot swapped components.
This is about more than just whether or not hard core gamers can replace their CPU.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've bult my own PCs for 20+ years, and I can't remeber ever really caring about moving the CPU from one motherboard to another. I shop for them as a matched pair, and assuming they work when I get them, I've alays replace both if problems developed later down the road (because a few years later, when you're on the far side of the failure "bathtub curve", you might as well replace both).
I don't see having to buy the CPU soldered to the motherboard as an impediment really - as long as I can swap out the heatsink and other components.
Re:I just can't live without a ZIF socket. (Score:3, Insightful)
even if true, enthusiast != pc market (Score:4, Insightful)
why this guy whines the PC would be dead by such a move? those that change CPU are a very very tiny niche and there is no money to be made pandering to them for any multi-billion dollar corporation. just a bunch of troublesome warranty voiders from Intel's point of view. The desktop PC is an appliance to most. soldering in the CPU cuts cost and makes for easier modular replacement with less troubleshooting if something goes wrong. I'm surprised its 2012 and this wasn't done a decade ago.
Re:I just can't live without a ZIF socket. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have to upgrade my machine to benefit from modular standardized parts. I benefit from that as soon as I buy a machine as I can mix and match the components that meet my requirements. I can get as little or as much of something as I want and I can mix that with anything else that suits my fancy.
Lack of modular parts means lack of choice when building or buying systems.
It's like being stuck at the Apple Store.
Re:intel is... (Score:2, Insightful)
4004 (Score:5, Insightful)
There are many CPUs that are only available as a PC board with several chips. I can envision a day when the whole motherboard is the unit of replacement.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention that ARM chips use a different instruction set, so .... you can't go from x86 to ARM. If you're going anywhere you're going to go AMD.
Whoever wrote the summary needs a quick dose of clue-by-four.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
What kind of "enthusiast" are they talking about? I've been building my own PCs for 25 years and only changed one CPU, and that's because the fan went out and fried it. And guess what? The only CPU to fit in its socket was the same type of CPU that fried.
I agree, this story is BS. It doesn't matter to me if the CPU is socketed or soldered, and in fact I'd prefer soldered (as long as it had a good fan), since besides heat, the enemy of electronics is corrosion and bad connections.
Re:AMD (Score:3, Insightful)
The article mentions that the CPUs will be sold attached to motherboards. Enthusiasts will be able to build PCs just fine, just not separate motherboard/CPU.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
I certainly agree with this. If the CPU/Mobo are a pair, it WILL make it a little bit more expensive to upgrade, but then again, that is what craigslist is for. Want a new processor, sell the old mobo/CPU pair for a good price and go ahead and upgrade. I only upgrade every couple of years. By the time I am ready for a new CPU, it already has a new socket associated with it.
This might hurt the guys who upgrade every 3 months. For the rest of us, not a big deal.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
While I have never upgraded one without upgrading the other, I do make a decision on which CPU/motherboard I buy.
What if I want a 4-core system, but the motherboard I want is only sold with more expensive 6-core CPUs? Or, vice-versa? Motherboard manufacturers are already selling to a bit of a niche market - will having to further reduce their selection by only pairing certain CPUs with certain motherboards push them over the edge into unprofitability?
Re:AMD (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but what if the motherboard you want only comes sold with a CPU you don't want, or vice-versa? This bundling will in practice reduce choice, as I doubt every combination will be offered.
Re:AMD (Score:3, Insightful)
So I have features on my $599 special that only your xeon or Icore7 extreme has like hardware virtualization. This is a phenomII and the 10% - 15% performance deduction was well worth the price for my 6 core. It still has a ton of mips and can handle everything I throw at it.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
My AMD systems from 2007 are Athlon64 and can still be upgraded to the latest PhenomII black editions fine after a bios update. So I do not know what you are talking about.
Both of you must be those Intel users I keep hearing about where different sockets and chipsets are made on purpose to limit compatiblity so you have to upgrade everything. Oh and boy Windows activation wont like that either. Better buy another copy of Windows for that board as well.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
Faster now then the 90s? Are you mad?
You can use a computer from 8 years ago today and still have something useful.That would be a very hot, but still useable P4. Check out the massive changes from 90 to 98. That would leave you using a 386 in world of P2s.
Re:I just can't live without a ZIF socket. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what everybody seems to be missing. You're giving up options when you start bundling and don't allow mix/match.
Suppose I'm building a cluster, and I just need REALLY fast CPUs with good memory/LAN benchmarks, and I could care less whether it even has a PCIe slot in it at all. However, all the fast CPUs get bundled with expensive motherboard with 14 slots, 6 SATA ports, and so on. Or, suppose I'm building a data acquisition box that needs 6 PCI slots but not much CPU - again I'm stuck buying the i7 or whatever since that got classed as a high-end board.
That is what frustrates me about things like cell phones - I can't pick the CPU/RAM/flash combo I want, but only what some marketer decided I should have. So, getting the extra 1GB of RAM isn't an option - at most you might get some choice with flash.
There are sockets for this package style (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:AMD (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:1, Insightful)
Why would you need to run x86 apps? Just recompile and go. That will do it for 90% of what everyone uses.
Ubuntu has an ARM branch and it uses many of the same applications, just recompiled for ARM.
Re:There are sockets for this package style (Score:4, Insightful)
All modern Intel and AMD CPUs don't have pins.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_grid_array [wikipedia.org]
Re:AMD (Score:2, Insightful)
My shop builds dozens of computers per year custom for our customers and I need specific motherboard-cpu combos.
And my shop gets in PCs by the hundreds every year that aren't going to suffer at all from this. Most other people here work in the same kind of shop as I do. Don't overestimate the importance of your "dozens" of computers per year thing. And hell, I haven't seen a homemade PC in years. No one is really going to care.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad title (Score:5, Insightful)
Should be: Is Intel Planning To Kill Enthusiast Intel PCs?
From TFA: "Unfortunately Intel doesn’t care about the enthusiast, and unsurprisingly they have moved on." Can I getta Like Duh? "Like, Duh!"
I woudn't expect enthusiasts, whatever the author means by that, to be much of a percentage overall, but this does seem to be a business opportunity for someone.
A technical question to which I didn't see the answer in TFA: Even chips that are intended to be soldered to the board (probably some variation of current surface mount techniques) can be mounted in (sometimes specialized) sockets. This raises the question, is something in Intel's business agreements requiring MB manufacturers to solder the chips to the board?
And finally, I don't see where this makes much difference to the rank and file. Computer components have gotten cheap enough that it's fairly common to put the fastest or near-fastest currently available proc in the board to start with, as upgrade protection. And then, when you need more grunt, you'll increasingly find that no new procs were ever developed for that chipset, so you need to upgrade the motherboard again anyway. Besides, other than gamers and specialized applications (photo and video manipulation for instance) most people have more resources than they can really use even with the cheapest currently available motherboard/cpu combo.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is just cheaper and more expedient to have a few spare ones and strip their parts.
Only once your office has reached a certain size. For many small businesses in tech fields, it doesn't work that way. Those small businesses are also more likely IME to be the ones getting a custom spec for each member of staff that takes into account their specific needs, as they won't qualify for volume purchasing deals. With a limited budget, it does make sense to spend a bit of time customising to make everyone as productive as possible with what you've got.
If this story is really true, it seems a very odd strategic move from Intel at a time when they're dominant in their markets. It's opening the door for people like gamers, geeks and small businesses to move to a competitor (AMD being the obvious candidate) in order to keep their flexibility, and the people I mentioned there are trend-setters for a very significant chunk of the desktop PC industry. And anyone who thinks desktop PCs are dead because everyone is using tablets, laptops, etc. these days just isn't paying attention.
I can only see this ending one of three ways: there's a huge deal with one or more major hardware manufacturers that we don't know about yet (for example to ship process/mobo combinations as a single unit but with significantly better price/performance as a baseline to make up for the loss of flexibility/upgradability), there's about to be an HP-esque sharp U-turn as soon as Otellini is out the door and his successor finds the plot again, or Intel are about to take a big hit with a resurgent AMD being the likely beneficiary.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention that ARM chips use a different instruction set, so .... you can't go from x86 to ARM. If you're going anywhere you're going to go AMD.
Whoever wrote the summary needs a quick dose of clue-by-four.
Yes, because tinkerers and enthusiasts are famous for their staunch reliance on a single architecture. I can picture them now, refusing to abandon Intel due to their reliance on Office 2007 and the native drivers for their Canon Pixma Pro.
It used to be that every other story on Slashdot was about how Linux would/could run on anything. And then I see comments like this and wonder how many of slashdot's users even remember back that far... Or were even alive then?
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only that but CPU sockets usually only work for one CPU family and aren't interchangeable. You can't but AMD's chip into Intels motherboards.
So at best you can normally replace to an equaviant CPU maybe a couple of clock cycles faster but that's it.
If your upgrading you have to replace both
This is it exactly. Hell, the last time I even considered this approach (replacing just the CPU) the cost of a compatible CPU (since they were long past their prime) was more than the cost of a new, faster cpu+mobo. I dropped $40 for some ram (4x of what was in the old rig) and I was on my way. Why anyone but a MHz/GHz chaser would want to replace just a CPU is beyond me (and it's beyond Intel, too; this move is totally understandable and probably was predictable by anyone who really pays attention to such things). I can totally see "Enthusiasts" not really giving a crap about this for the most part; the ones that used to buy CPU after CPU just to stay on top of things are far more likely to just spend their money on GPUs these days, since the CPU wars are all but over.
The problem isn't really the consumer... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem here is for the vendors, not the consumers. As a consumer, I, too have always purchased CPU/MB in a pair and I've never upgraded the CPU without upgrading the motherboard. A motherboard's meaningful market life is probably a year, while most upgrades occur at least 2 or 3 years apart. So that's moot.
But the problem is for smaller vendors. Once having been one myself, I'd usually keep a week's stock of motherboards on hand, and somewhat more CPUs on hand, confident that I could meet consumer demands simply by putting the appropriate CPU with the motherboard and hand them something useful.
By soldering CPUs directly to the main board, this modularity is compromised and the cost of delivering numerous options for CPU combos goes up considerably. Now, instead of 10 motherboards and 20 CPUs to offer up to 20 different CPU speeds, a vendor needs to increase inventory overhead in order to maintain a similar selection.
No, not the end of the world, but it may well result in an increase in the desirability of AMD inventory.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, I've built PCs for ages and never upgraded a CPU, despite planning to.
The thing I can see this effecting, though, is diversity of price.
Right now you can spend $75-$350 on a motherboard, and $75-1000 on a processor. There are X motherboards, and Y compatible processors, for X * Y price/feature/etc points.
When USB3 came out is when I upgraded, so I got a low-to-mid spec motherboard (only cared about USB3, don't need dual video card capability etc) and then a mid-high spec processor (fastest i5 that wasn't the enthousiast factory unlocked ones).
With this change I won't have that choice. It'll be buy one of two models of this motherboard with processor A and B. OEMs won't make hundreds of combinations, and vendor's wouldn't stock them if they did.
Solder it onto a card with pins (Score:2, Insightful)
Problem solved.
Realize that the PC industry is dying a horrible death then the "enthusiast" crowd probably represents the least significant portion of Intel's market. I don't think Intel is worried about that bottom line when the bottom has been falling out of their market for years.
Having said that there is absolutely no reason for Intel or a 3rd party to build component boards or system-on-a-chip type solutions with soldered CPU's so that enthusiasts can still build a mostly empty shoebox full of wires and 70's era plastic connectors and have the smug sense of accomplishment that their $2000 box of hand-picked components will perform better then the $500 box of the same components sold by Dell or HP.
Also enthusiasts should realize that state-of-the-art these days is something that fits into a 3mm thin package, not a box with 20 cubic feet of hot air and dust.
Bad News for Repair Shops (Score:5, Insightful)
I will use, as an example, a recent proc-swap I did for a friend on his older Dell 1545:
Labor is about $30/hr.
Intel Core 2 Duo T4200 = ~$30, installed in an hour.
Inspiron 1545 motherboard = ~ $200 (used), installed in about 2 hours.
So, a $60 job now becomes a $300 job, enough to make most of my customers, with their older machines, say, "Fuck that, I'll just go to Wal-Marx and buy a new one for 100 bucks more!"
Thanks for doing your part to destroy small business, Intel.
I hope you fuckers rot.
Re:There are sockets for this package style (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
If in "90% of what everyone uses" you define "everyone" as "the few percent of desktop x86 enthusiasts who only run Linux".
But even notwithstanding that, unless you can point out an *ARM* platform with 6-8 3GHz 64 bit cores that supports 16GB+ RAM *and* a socketed motherboard for the CPU, it's irrelevant to his post, anyway.
Re:Betteridge's Law of Headlines (Score:5, Insightful)
HEADLINE: "Can any headline which ends in a question mark be answered by the word no?"
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem is not the upgrading.
The real problem will be getting what you want in the first place.
Life is good now. I can get exactly what I want. I do not have t over buy my CPU because I want RAID and dual gigabit NICs.
I can get a decent CPU and put money into a board that will give me good OC capabilities.
Once this becomes the norm you know and I know the number of choices is going to go WAY down.
You will have the Super Expensive, Top CPU and what MB they thick is best, a kinda nice duo, a normal can do almost everything in a not annoying way and a low power cost saving set.
Fuck that noise.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
So far the most interesting argument I have seen against their new approach is that no manufacturer will want to make dozens of motherboard SKUs to support the ridiculous range of chips Intel always introduces to cover all price points, features, etc. You may not change the CPU, but you probably had to decide between a bunch of different models.
Not the point of the article, though (which is BS, I agree). But if Intel wants mobo manufacturers to sell boards with the chip soldered on, they better consolidate their offering a bit. According to this [wikipedia.org], Intel has released over 50 desktop models based on Sandy Bridge in the last 18 months.
Re:AMD (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason why you haven't "seen a homemade PC in years" is because most people who build them are knowledgeable enough, and thanks to internet have enough advice on maintenance and fixing to never have to bring their PC to you.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm More concerned... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm more concerned about this trend to solder RAM onto boards (Apple, I'm looking at you here.) -- RAM goes bad over time -- a shockingly short time. (google the papers (by google) about RAM failure rates, and what they do after 18 months). After a couple of years error rates go up -- way up. (ECC would very definitely be your friend here, but intel only makes it available on xeon series chips (the circuitry is there but fused off in consumer grade chips) )
My experience has been that after 24 months, you should just toss the ram dimms in the trash and start with new ones -- and you might as well max out the ram at that point. Otherwise the machine starts getting flaky as soft and uncorrected errors happen with increasing frequency.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:4, Insightful)
On the AMD side the sockets have stayed compatible for quite some time over the generations, and I can say that I've upgraded CPU's many, many times. Usually the server side has gotten to inherit CPU's from faster desktops, leading to multiple upgrades as servers then inherit eachother. Old socket AM2 boards that started out running cheap sempron CPU's end up running dualcore X2 chips.
You could, of course, move the whole MB instead or recommission a machine, but frankly there's a lot more specificity of purpose in the MB than in the CPU leading to bad fits and significant price differences to get something that will work well for any purpose. A whole lot of flexibility would be lost.
Re:AMD (Score:5, Insightful)
From my varied experience of assembling machines, the motherboard has always been the most important choice around which everything else is based.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you need to run x86 apps? Just recompile and go.
Please tell me where I can obtain the source for Photoshop and MS Office so that I can recompile them.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:3, Insightful)
What you mean is, "you can't go closed source Intel apps".
In other words, pretty much everything the average user does on their PC with the possible exception of the web browser.
well what if the motherboard fails.. (Score:5, Insightful)
In 20+ years you never had a motherboard fail 1 or two years after your bought it? hell i had one fail at 5 or 6 months! so then I have to desolder the chip? uh no thanks..
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
...there is nothing stopping the motherboard makers from soldering their own socket to the board, then soldering the chip to a carrier PCB that plugs into the new socket.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or a smart one.
Think about it for a few moments. AMD's in serious trouble. Without help, they run the real risk of going bankrupt. And without AMD, Intel's the "last one left" (other than minor bit players like Via and NatSemi). Which means the EU and US government will be seriously looking at Intel for possible anti-trust. And they've been found guilty before. Last thing Intel would want is to be forced to make several decisions to avoid issues like opening up the spec of their processors and such to compeitors, and forced licensing of patents to everyone and everyone (they aren't FRAND yet).
Plus having to ensure that every move they make won't be found to be anti-trust (think the compiler fiasco - they may be forced to ensure that everyone who makes a compatible chip gets the optimizations). As well, any business decisions they make will get scrutinized - if they want to acquire a company for some technology, for example.
By forcing the enthusiasts (who make up a tiny percent of the market) to AMD, it gives AMD the much needed injection they need, without giving up much of the market (Intel's sales to Dell, HP, Apple, etc. are far greater).
Desktop PCs aren't dying, but they're not exactly being replaced in huge quantities - even laptop sales are affected by smartphones and tablets. Businesses will buy desktop PCs (though they're increasingly buying laptops), but they're never upgraded so Intel is fine with that. The other buyer of desktops would be enthusiasts, who are likely to pay more and buy top tier stuff. And even then AMD isn't getting a lot - the high end AMD processors are always in short supply.
And hell, by giving AMD the entusiast market, they can point to all the negative Intel sentiment saying "these people have vowed not to buy Intel and they're buying our competitor's products, so we're not a monopoly".
Of course, the practical reason is sockets suck - impedance matching problems, bad connections (your PC depends on the working of nearly 1200 pieces of metal pressing against 1200 other pieces of metal. If one of those is slightly oxidized or doesn't exert enough pressure, your PC can crash), and plenty more other things. Solder joints are far more reliable.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
Came-on. Everybody do replace their entire servers already, nearly nobody upgrades.
Besides, Intel changes the sockets of their chips every generation anyway.
Re:Even if this was true... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't believe soldered CPUs are a problem for businesses. We simply do not upgrade CPU on our boxes ever. We buy appropriate spec for workload - if need more CPU, split task onto multiple boxes.
The box is retired after 3-5 years, and the CPU/RAM/board/etc. is all replaced as a unit. I'm sure we're not alone.
Generally CPU upgrades suck anyhow. Bus speed increases, RAM speed increases, etc. all conspire against you. By the time the new CPU is out that gives a significant benefit, you'll get just as much or more benefit from upgrading the board anyway.