How Intel Feels about PC Users

But is Intel's chart wrong? Do you see more people owning PC's or tablets in the future? Does Intel owe enthusiasts anything?
 
No, Intel stopped innovating in the consumer desktop market and PC users are smart enough to know that everything was essentially a rehash of the same design since the i5-2500K series. PC sales stagnated because there was literally zero reasons to upgrade the CPU. Meanwhile Nvidia and AMD gave us reasons to upgrade graphics cards and that market flourished. Now that AMD has a new design out that has reinvigorated the consumer market; guess what?

PC Shipments Grew for the First Time in Six Years

Now do you think it is a coincidence that the PC market grew for the first time in 6 years because consumers suddenly felt sorry for Intel and AMD or do you think it was because one of the companies finally put out new products that gave PC Gamers a reason to 6 year old upgrade machines?

A CPU is a LCU (Latency Compute Unit). A GPU is a TCU (Throughput Compute Unit) [1]. Upgrading a TCU is so simple as adding more cores, using the increase in density provided by a new process node. Upgrading TCUs is kind of trivial. Just wait to next node and add moar cores. This will work until foundries hit a shrink wall somewhere around 3nm or 2nm. Then TCUs upgrades will staganar as well, and consumers will have no reason to upgrade their GPUs.

Upgrading a LCU is something very complex and unrelated to GPUs. Siicon hit a frequency wall, so no longer massive MHz increases that can reduce latency in LCUs. No 10GHz CPUs are awaiting us. SS/OOOE microarchitecture hit an ILP wall, so no longer massive IPC gains that can reduce latency. No 16-wide CPUs are awaiting us. The only possible way to increase significantly performance in a LCU today is by adding moar cores. But Amdahl's law shows that the effect of adding moar cores gives diminishing returns due to most CPU-like algorithms being serial in essence. And for those algorithms that can be massively parallelized to run on hundred or thousand of threads, we have other processors than are more effective, such as GPUs and accelerators.

And about the link to PC shipments grow:

This was driven purely by the business market and the Windows 10 upgrade cycle, not consumers, many of whom have switched to smartphones for daily tasks. Analysts warn that the market will weaken again in two years.


NOTE:

[1] LCU and TCU is AMD own terminology. Check the HSA spec.
 
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A CPU is a LCU (Latency Compute Unit). A GPU is a TCU (Throughput Compute Unit) [1]. Upgrading a TCU is so simple as adding more cores, using the increase in density provided by a new process node. Upgrading TCUs is kind of trivial. Just wait to next node and add moar cores. This will work until foundries hit a shrink wall somewhere around 3nm or 2nm. Then TCUs upgrades will staganar as well, and consumers will have no reason to upgrade their GPUs.

Upgrading a LCU is something very complex and unrelated to GPUs. Siicon hit a frequency wall, so no longer massive MHz increases that can reduce latency in LCUs. No 10GHz CPUs are awaiting us. SS/OOOE microarchitecture hit an ILP wall, so no longer massive IPC gains that can reduce latency. No 16-wide CPUs are awaiting us. The only possible way to increase significantly performance in a LCU today is by adding moar cores. But Amdahl's law shows that the effect of adding moar cores gives diminishing returns due to most CPU-like algorithms being serial in essence. And for those algorithms that can be massively parallelized to run on hundred or thousand of threads, we have other processors than are more effective, such as GPUs and accelerators.

And about the link to PC shipments grow:




NOTE:

[1] LCU and TCU is AMD own terminology. Check the HSA spec.
Respond to my post with all the links showing how Valve and Steam are growing by millions of PC Gamers a month but Intel can't figure out how to sell a chip.
 
Their government had strictly banned them for years from what I understand. Seems that they lifted the ban on consoles in 2015. So the Chinese consumers are PC and mobile gamers in general. Also I would assume it is very hard to pirate online only games like PUBG.

I would say PubG and Fortnite are the exception to the rule. Furthermore, Steam games (which already is cheaper, just because China) are much cheaper than console games.

However, I am staying in a tier 1 city (Shanghai). The dynamics change dramatically once you leave to smaller cities. Probably simplest observation (purely anecdotal and a guestimate) is on the Shanghai subway, probably half of all phones are iPhones. Move to a tier 2 city (like Nanchang), and I observe that maybe 1 in 10 are iPhones. For people with less disposable income, every nickel and dime counts (which is why you have SKU's like a RX 470D or GTX 1060 5GB).
 
The onset of quality Indy games that do not require top end hardware, as well as Free to Play juggernauts like fortnite that run reasonable well on Mom's word processor is the reason for a decline in PC hardware sales. Release a few must have "Killer Apps" that require better hardware and you will see an increase in sales.

Look at GPU's. Cryptocurrency farming pushed prices and profits through the roof for GPU. All you need is something that requires a killer computer and that everyone wants to play.
 
I would say PubG and Fortnite are the exception to the rule. Furthermore, Steam games (which already is cheaper, just because China) are much cheaper than console games.

However, I am staying in a tier 1 city (Shanghai). The dynamics change dramatically once you leave to smaller cities. Probably simplest observation (purely anecdotal and a guestimate) is on the Shanghai subway, probably half of all phones are iPhones. Move to a tier 2 city (like Nanchang), and I observe that maybe 1 in 10 are iPhones. For people with less disposable income, every nickel and dime counts (which is why you have SKU's like a RX 470D or GTX 1060 5GB).
Yes, I agree with you. I'm just trying to show to others that China does buy games from Steam, they don't normally play on console, but they do like mobile gaming which is what you said in a nutshell. ;)

Now as far as everyone most owning an iPhone is probably due to Apple's App Store being allowed in China but Google Play is still banned. Google is pushing hard to get off the banned list though.
 
But is Intel's chart wrong? Do you see more people owning PC's or tablets in the future? Does Intel owe enthusiasts anything?
So pharmatics companies should only produce antidepressants and painkillers, because that's a bigger market? They don't owe anything to people with less common ailments.

Just because the so called cloud is getting more traction doesn't mean they can throw those under the bus who kept their pockets full for years.
 
Stupid consumers are the reason for everything becoming cloud centric. Soon all the services will be available only through a cloud to ensure that the big data has enough mining points to abuse the consumer.


Said it before, I'll say it again. America is a farm. It's people are the livestock, corporations own the farm, politicians are the overseers, and law enforcement provides the muscle.
 
Yes, I agree with you. I'm just trying to show to others that China does buy games from Steam, they don't normally play on console, but they do like mobile gaming which is what you said in a nutshell. ;)

Now as far as everyone most owning an iPhone is probably due to Apple's App Store being allowed in China but Google Play is still banned. Google is pushing hard to get off the banned list though.

You realize that in China, Android is like 90% marketshare?

No Android phone sold in China relies on Google services (including Play). Chinese OEM's developed their own software stack that totally replaces Google services.
 
So pharmatics companies should only produce antidepressants and painkillers, because that's a bigger market? They don't owe anything to people with less common ailments.

Just because the so called cloud is getting more traction doesn't mean they can throw those under the bus who kept their pockets full for years.

They don't owe anyone anything.
 
You realize that in China, Android is like 90% marketshare?

No Android phone sold in China relies on Google services (including Play). Chinese OEM's developed their own software stack that totally replaces Google services.
I don't know the percentage, but I'm quite sure that the government has their custom OS to run on the phones than generic Android. It is all Linux based anyway.
 
Can someone please give me a compelling reason why I should upgrade from my i7-4790k Devil's Canyon system? The system already has 32GB of memory, and a 1 TB and 256GB SSD drive. Only thing that I replaced recently was removing a 980 video card and putting in a 1080 video card, and replaced a DVD-ROM drive with a BluRay drive. Would I experience the same performance jump that I saw when I upgraded from a Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe processor?

I think the impact of the "PC Enthusiast" market is overrated, and has been for over a decade. It's a niche market. Joe Q Public doesn't care about the fastest or greatest processors, they care about battery life and if it can play back videos. Of course, I'm always hoping that AMD will keep shaking things up. My fingers are crossed.
 
Can someone please give me a compelling reason why I should upgrade from my i7-4790k Devil's Canyon system? The system already has 32GB of memory, and a 1 TB and 256GB SSD drive. Only thing that I replaced recently was removing a 980 video card and putting in a 1080 video card, and replaced a DVD-ROM drive with a BluRay drive. Would I experience the same performance jump that I saw when I upgraded from a Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe processor?

I think the impact of the "PC Enthusiast" market is overrated, and has been for over a decade. It's a niche market. Joe Q Public doesn't care about the fastest or greatest processors, they care about battery life and if it can play back videos. Of course, I'm always hoping that AMD will keep shaking things up. My fingers are crossed.

Actually, you'd be amazed at some people just wanting something top tier, even if it serves little functional benefit. I remember there was a Reddit thread on PCMR where an smartass kid thought he was badass for berating a Best Buy employee for recommending an i7/GTX 980 system to his dad (who specifically asked for the best they had, even though he just used it to browse/light gaming). PCMR proceeded to say, technically he got what he asked for. They pointed out that the hypocrisy of the kid constantly showing off his dad's BMW despite the fact it functionally does the same thing as a Honda.

E6400 to i7-4790K is a 8 year delta. We are currently at the 4 year delta from the i7-4790K. And given overall diminishing returns, no. Unless you're doing serious productivity work, you won't notice much. The biggest productivity delta would probably the folks with X99 systems and upgrading to E5-Xeon 2699 v4's (22 cores).
 
Yes, it is legal to be an a-hole. Doesn't mean I'd want to be one.

You are not a good person. They are better people than you.

There are estimates that pharmaceutical companies have saved as much as 20 million lives since 2000. How many lives have you saved? Who are you to call them names?
 
This feeling led me to build my current system (which is not QUITE completed yet!). I chose a Ryzen 2700x and Vega 64 because I feel that while AMD IS aggressively pursuing the same markets as Intel on the server/workstation side, they are not neglecting the enthusiasts like us. There is no reason why Intel has to behave the way they have been lately. It's just being lazy. Sure, they throw us things like the "8086k", but it's still pretty obvious where their priorities are, and it ain't us.

Even though in some cases, AMD is outperformed by Intel, it's the little things (that sometimes aren't so little!) like soldered heat spreaders, open source support, and a willingness to engage and RESPOND to the community that sealed the deal. It was also heavily influenced by the maturity of the Zen platform, and how most of the kinks (like memory support) have been ironed out with Zen+ and X470.

Intel's latest tech (10nm) on the other hand, is a dumpster fire. While AMD continues to push the envelope, Intel is now struggling to just keep up! This I believe will become even more apparent next year.
 
Even a small market is tens of millions of pc users. I'm sure AMD would be happy to fulfill their needs.
 
So pharmatics companies should only produce antidepressants and painkillers, because that's a bigger market? They don't owe anything to people with less common ailments.

Just because the so called cloud is getting more traction doesn't mean they can throw those under the bus who kept their pockets full for years.

Whataboutism nonsense aside, how is Intel throwing anyone under the bus with that chart?
 
Can someone please give me a compelling reason why I should upgrade from my i7-4790k Devil's Canyon system? The system already has 32GB of memory, and a 1 TB and 256GB SSD drive. Only thing that I replaced recently was removing a 980 video card and putting in a 1080 video card, and replaced a DVD-ROM drive with a BluRay drive. Would I experience the same performance jump that I saw when I upgraded from a Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe processor?

I think the impact of the "PC Enthusiast" market is overrated, and has been for over a decade. It's a niche market. Joe Q Public doesn't care about the fastest or greatest processors, they care about battery life and if it can play back videos. Of course, I'm always hoping that AMD will keep shaking things up. My fingers are crossed.


And this is the crux of the problem. Intel has such market saturation with powerful CPUs that run 90% of people's applications at enjoyable levels that there's no need for them to push the envelope much further on CPU speed, or even core count. Most desktop PCs for home users only get replaced every 5-7 years. For Enterprise users it's usually 3-4 years. We in the [H] community of course tend to upgrade much more often, but as ZLoth has stated, our market is very niche in the grand scheme of things as far as Intel is concerned.

What's more, cloud computing and other distributed computing technologies are making the end-user PC market less of a cash cow than it has been. People can do more with less powerful PCs because the actual processing is taken care of on a server somewhere instead of on the local PC. This delta will continue to grow as time goes on. Intel knows this, which is why they are making changes now to prepare for the future. Kyle's right. We PC enthusiasts just aren't a priority to Intel anymore. Their focus is shifting to the enterprise, which makes good business sense for them, but it sucks for those of us who love to use Intel's platforms and CPUs because of their tendency to be on the bleeding edge of the performance envelope. Then again, it certainly gives AMD an opportunity to pick up some market share, as long as they can continue to put out competitive products that evolve in meaningful ways.
 
Intel got lazy. Pretty simple.. My X58 powered $250 ( purchase price ) Dell Precision T3500 isn't that much slower than a Ryzen system. Getting an upgraded $80 X3680 and running an overclock at 4ghz will push it even closer to the throughput of something like a 2700X at a fraction of the cost, from a computer built 10 years ago
 
Why is anyone surprised that a Niche market is abandoned by a company that had a damn near monopoly (in terms of performance competition) for the last half decade?

Enthusiasts and gamers are not big money when it comes to CPU shipments, data center and cloud are the fat Sow these days.
 
Its hard to scam pc gamers that look at benchmarks and realize that the CPU that just came out is only 5% faster then the one they bought 2 years ago. If Intel was actually pushing innovation people would still be buying a chip every 1-2 years if they could get 10-15% improvement.
 
Most of the recent growth has been China. So whenever the Chinese gov doesn't get an appropriate cut (or if they want to boost a domestic rival), they can shut down Steam at will.

Edit: Steamcommunity is currently blocked in China, so basically all Steam hosted mods are blocked.

To get a more accurate picture, you need to have MoM results for at least the last 5 years. In case you missed it, the whole point of marketing slides is to paint a picture better than what's actually going on.



China does allow consoles. My hotel in Shanghai is next to an electronics mall. The entire 4th floor is consoles (Xbox, PS4, Nintendo). They are not very popular because you can't pirate games and they are expensive. Not enough console exclusives to warrant purchasing a console over a PC that is more general purpose. So only in affluent cities (Shanghai/Beijing), do they actually have any marketing presence.

No on knows the specifics of what AMD did (most likely just providing a mask), but the obvious reason is for money. Intel doesn't need the money bad enough to give away a Xeon mask. Furthermore, Intel owns its fabs (AMD does not anymore), so by licensing the mask, it loses margins (just due to scale) on the fab business as well.

You can get around a lot of it based on which VPN you run, but the latency is awful. Which is why we block servers by region whoot woot.
 
Funny. Computer shipments were up 7% from last year..... Maybe the metric is wrong. I heard it was after 6 years of shrink. But that is still a LOT of pc's being shipped.
 
Without the words to go along with the chart it's all a guess. Is it a reflection of sales/shares or company plan? Hasn't the gaming industry been pushing consoles? Let's face it the majority of PC enthusiasts aren't willing or can't afford to push the market (how many folks have jumped into VR)? How many sound cards are sold? That new CPU/GPU isn't giving me enough performance increase to justify the cost., etc. etc.
 
This is what happens when a company trounces a competitor then gets lazy with the "we're number 1, why try harder" philosophy. AMD stayed hungry, survived their missteps and became something to consider again. One could do an amazing case study on Intel's recent complacency as a cautionary tale for MBA candidates.

I hope they get their shit together as we well know, competition is great for innovation.
 
Intel got lazy. Pretty simple.. My X58 powered $250 ( purchase price ) Dell Precision T3500 isn't that much slower than a Ryzen system. Getting an upgraded $80 X3680 and running an overclock at 4ghz will push it even closer to the throughput of something like a 2700X at a fraction of the cost, from a computer built 10 years ago

ummm........ a 3680 is quite a bit slower than a stock 1700 let alone a 2700x. Running an overclock of 4Ghz will get closer to the 1700 in single core, but the 1700 has 2 extra cores and can also overclock like a beast.
I used to have a 1366 system, still decent even for today, but they don't hold a candle to Ryzen and the new Intel stuff.
Looks like the 3680 is the Xeon version of the 980x

I use a T7400 at work with the Xeon version of the Core 2 Quad (dual quad cores). Its about as fast as a Bulldozer 8 core.
Still great for getting work done and was bought 10 years ago. (upgraded to 32GB RAM and SSD of course)
 
ummm........ a 3680 is quite a bit slower than a stock 1700 let alone a 2700x. Running an overclock of 4Ghz will get closer to the 1700 in single core, but the 1700 has 2 extra cores and can also overclock like a beast.
I used to have a 1366 system, still decent even for today, but they don't hold a candle to Ryzen and the new Intel stuff.
Looks like the 3680 is the Xeon version of the 980x

I use a T7400 at work with the Xeon version of the Core 2 Quad (dual quad cores). Its about as fast as a Bulldozer 8 core.
Still great for getting work done and was bought 10 years ago. (upgraded to 32GB RAM and SSD of course)

Yeah, I meant 2600, to be a modern equivalent ( 6 core/ 12 thread and similar clocks ). Somehow it slipped my mind the 1700/2700 is the 8 core variant... For sure, it's about 30% slower on average but to buy new ram, new mobo and a processor, power supply and a case to house it, for $500-1k. That makes not much sense for 30%.

My next computer will either be a TR or an 8700/8086K because anything less doesn't make that much sense. But for now I'll run with what I got or put in a W3680 if I really feel like it
 
I have an OC'd 4670 and while I've added an SSD and a new GPU since it was purchased new there just isn't much of a reason to build a new one yet. I'm hoping a 6 core Zen 2 chip next year will be enough of a jump. I'll probbaly just upgrade to get M.2 and much faster DDR4 RAM. I'm sure some 3400 or higher models will be a nice upgrade over my 1600mhz ones.
 
I have an OC'd 4670 and while I've added an SSD and a new GPU since it was purchased new there just isn't much of a reason to build a new one yet. I'm hoping a 6 core Zen 2 chip next year will be enough of a jump. I'll probbaly just upgrade to get M.2 and much faster DDR4 RAM. I'm sure some 3400 or higher models will be a nice upgrade over my 1600mhz ones.

I've got a 4690K that I never even bothered to OC, because it's pretty much fast enough as it is. I too will pick up something with more cores and threads eventually. Just haven't felt the need lately. I'll probably wait until Volta GPUs are properly available, and grab a full setup at that point.
 
Went from Skylake to 2700x. I left AMD in the Sandy Bridge days with the hopes that they get their act back together, and with Zen being a real deal competetor I’m very happy to be back.
 
Whataboutism nonsense aside, how is Intel throwing anyone under the bus with that chart?
Well it's actually more of a self justification than anything else.

"AMD is taking the lead, but meh we don't even want PC enthusiasts, we're focusing on the cloud, that's it!"

I can explain a lot of things into that chart :p It might be nothing, or they might just be trying to calm their shareholders.
 
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