The real reason there is so much hunger for Ryzen

[_mockingbird]

Intel has completely separate the mainstream platform (i.e. Intel Z270) from the enthusiast HEDT platform (i.e. Intel X99) in order to keep prices of the latter high.

Intel has limited the mainstream to quad-core while the enthusiast platform can have up to ten-cores.

The barrier to entry for the enthusiast platform as well as for switching platforms are very high.

For example, enthusiast platform motherboard (i.e. Intel X99) is also significantly more expensive the mainstream platform motherboard

Switching from the mainstream platform to enthusiast platform requires buying new motherboards and quad-channel memory as well as processors.

Had Intel released hex-core and octo-core processors for the mainstream platform, they could have become popular, but Intel didn't do this specifically to keep prices of hex-core and onto-core processors high.

As a result, there is been a lot of pending demand for hex-core and octo-core processors for the mainstream platform and this is precisely what AMD is offering.

Conversely there may not be as much demand for quad-core Ryzen processors because many people with quad-core Intel Core processors (Sandy Bridge and later) wouldn't consider quad-core Ryzen to be much of an upgrade or even a downgrade for those with quad-core (Intel Skylake or later)

 

[noko]

I like Intel's consumer high end stuff, even if it comes at a price. X299 should be rather nice and not short of anything meaning you will probably have to pay as well to get it. Intel Z270 platform to me lacks the cpu options that AMD now has on their X370 platform. I think AMD will definitely take advantage of that, at least until Intel fights back. Intel has no answer for an 8 core chip for less than $350 that runs on <$150 motherboards and with two sticks of ram at full performance.

 

[tangoseal]

Intel hasn't really innovated crap in the last few generations of CPU to be honest. A little IPC here and there, heavy marketing, huge prices all the time, and the masses buy it becuase there was no other option.

I sat on my 3930K (Sandy Bridge) which was a real innovation 6 years ago when they came out. I bought it day 1 when it hit the shelves, and even had to get the newer stepping due to first release issues. Finally I seen the reason to sell it and jump ship to AMD. Overclocked my processor and mobo and ram would demand over 500 watts of power while benching or heavy gaming. Throw in my 3 290xs at the time I was tripping 20 amp breakers in my panel. The days of massive power hungry 6 cores can be traded in for power effeceint 8 cores. Thanks AMD! And that is just one little reason out of many.

That is a ludicrous amount of power and energy. Not to mention that there was no true innovative reason for me to leave an already high performance 6 core for another 6 core that barely had more performance.

Then comes along AMD Zen with an 8/16 setup that supports DDR4 in which I can get a board processor and Ram still for less than one single 6900K. Rediculous I know.

Screw Intel right now. They haven't done anything for me as a user and a customer and a consumer as far as incentive to stay brand loyal.

Intel fan boys will argue and they are no different than Apple fan boys.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I don't mind the mainstream and HEDT separation, but it is f*cking annoying that HEDT is always 1 core generation behind,
unlike the good old Nehalem days when it came first.
There were solid, inexpensive X58 mobos like the EX58-UD3R, which at ~$150 (IIRC) weren't unreasonable for the features you got (lots of SATA, USB, PCI-E 16x, etc.)

 

[spine]

To be honest, I've never even considered buying Intel's 'high end' because I've never considered it high end. Less cores on the mainstream chips means greater frequency which is all that counts in 99.9% of games once you have 4 cores.

 

[Napoleon]

To be honest, I've never even considered buying Intel's 'high end' because I've never considered it high end. Less cores on the mainstream chips means greater frequency which is all that counts in 99.9% of games once you have 4 cores.

I hope ryzen doesn't clock the same for 4/6/8 cores, it would be a shame for the lesser cores to be held back unless all clocked high

 

[Pieter3dnow]

I hope ryzen doesn't clock the same for 4/6/8 cores, it would be a shame for the lesser cores to be held back unless all clocked high

You have some pretty weird expectations first time for AMD cpu on 14nm process and you are expecting them to compete on frequency. Look at how long it took Intel ?

 

[os2wiz]

To be honest, I've never even considered buying Intel's 'high end' because I've never considered it high end. Less cores on the mainstream chips means greater frequency which is all that counts in 99.9% of games once you have 4 cores.

Gaming only is a very one dimensional use of your computer. I actually do work on my computer.

 

[Napoleon]

You have some pretty weird expectations first time for AMD cpu on 14nm process and you are expecting them to compete on frequency. Look at how long it took Intel ?

That is not what I was suggesting, only that their max clocks should follow this order from greatest to least frequency: 4-core part >= 6-core part >= 8-core part

 

[Romeomium]

I hope ryzen doesn't clock the same for 4/6/8 cores, it would be a shame for the lesser cores to be held back unless all clocked high

Since Ryzen allows for per-core adjustment (including C0), I am hoping to see some interesting overclocks. Max OC 1-2 cores, while you downclock the other cores vs. all cores maxed should produce different results. AMD has made significant strides in voltage regulation and efficiency if the leaks are to be believed. This probably means less leakage across the chip, which would mean potentially lower clocks. Thursday can't come soon enough!!

 

[ole-m]

Gaming only is a very one dimensional use of your computer. I actually do work on my computer.

I'm starting to wonder if everyone plays as much as they say.
I play 3 hours a week or so, hence my reason for a 1700.

 

[Grimlaking]

9-15 hours a week here max.

 

[Riptide_NVN]

6 hours a week max. Sometimes more sometimes less. The majority of use is HTPC, web, email, etc.. Basic stuff.

And yeah more cores is pretty much overkill right now. Which is fine with me.

 

[Grimlaking]

With this new build I can start building some VM's to expirament more with other OS's like redhat and such that I really need to spend some Quality time on. If I can free up the cash I might build an 1700 base with 32 gig of ram and a basic BASIC video card and my old SSD drive just to tinker with an in house vmware/vsphere setup that I can more easily manage multiple VM's on.

Throw in a couple large SAS drives for good measure and put into a mirror... would be a nice little setup for some household vm goodness. Too bad the licensing would be 10 grand a damn year.

 

[JustReason]

9-15 hours a week here max.

35-60 per week. Hence why I feel I can give great experience advice in contrast to some here that post 24/7 about how well some hardware games.

 

[Bankie]

Gaming only is a very one dimensional use of your computer. I actually do work on my computer.

And the users that need more than 4 (or even 2) cores are even more of a minority than gamers. I think that this point is driven home by the fact that the only benchmarks we've gotten so far are on Cinebench; If you're a 3d modeler, do a lot of video encoding, or have a lot of VMs as mentioned above then Ryzen will likely be useful. But this is how it's been for a while; AMD has been pretty competitive with Intel in multi-core capable non-gaming applications with their previous CPUs. The mantra since Clawhammer or Bulldozer or whatever has always been: "The Win7/Win8/Win10 scheduler will bring out the power of the cores" or "When software can make use of more cores AMD's design will be vindicated". I think it's great that it looks like they've probably caught up in gaming but the fact is that right now you can buy an i5 and get top-tier gaming/general use performance for a lot less than the cheapest currently announced Ryzen.

 

[Schmave]

35-60 per week. Hence why I feel I can give great experience advice in contrast to some here that post 24/7 about how well some hardware games.

Holy crap, that's basically a full time job right there.

 

[JustReason]

And the users that need more than 4 (or even 2) cores are even more of a minority than gamers. I think that this point is driven home by the fact that the only benchmarks we've gotten so far are on Cinebench; If you're a 3d modeler, do a lot of video encoding, or have a lot of VMs as mentioned above then Ryzen will likely be useful. But this is how it's been for a while; AMD has been pretty competitive with Intel in multi-core capable non-gaming applications with their previous CPUs. The mantra since Clawhammer or Bulldozer or whatever has always been: "The Win7/Win8/Win10 scheduler will bring out the power of the cores" or "When software can make use of more cores AMD's design will be vindicated". I think it's great that it looks like they've probably caught up in gaming but the fact is that right now you can buy an i5 and get top-tier gaming/general use performance for a lot less than the currently announced cheapest Ryzen.

But games are already starting to use more than 4 cores now. Also keep in mind reviews ONLY BENCH THE GAME, nothing else is usually running. But more often then not most run more apps than just the game, I know I do alot of the time and 8 cores make a huge diff in smooth gameplay.

 

[JustReason]

Holy crap, that's basically a full time job right there.

because I love it. I don't watch TV, and this is how I unwind.

 

[rgMekanic]

I don't mind the mainstream and HEDT separation, but it is f*cking annoying that HEDT is always 1 core generation behind,
unlike the good old Nehalem days when it came first.
There were solid, inexpensive X58 mobos like the EX58-UD3R, which at ~$150 (IIRC) weren't unreasonable for the features you got (lots of SATA, USB, PCI-E 16x, etc.)

agreed, and it's 2 generations behind now...

 

[Bankie]

Only a handful of games are using more than 4 cores at the moment and even then you're usually talking about small gains. Most of the gamers I know don't have a lot of background tasks running regardless. Sure, if you're streaming or encoding a video in the background it's going to be a lot better but even an i5 is generally held back by the GPU and by the time that changes we're going to be on to the next big thing.

 

[Bandalo]

Intel engineers aren't stupid. And I'm sure Intel's marketing department isn't in there holding the engineers back. Designing at 10 and 14nm is damn hard, and getting more and more performance every generation, more cores with higher speed, and every extra CPU features is also damn hard.

It's nice that AMD is back in the game, but don't kid yourself. They managed to JUST catch up with Intel's last-gen CPUs after a long hard development cycle. Based on the current numbers, they're certainly going to win on price this generation. The question is what will Intel respond with, if anything. And what can AMD do from here? It's extremely unlikely that "Ryzen 2" is going to be the same huge leap that AMD just made from their last gen.

 

[TordanGow]

I like Intel's consumer high end stuff, even if it comes at a price. X299 should be rather nice and not short of anything meaning you will probably have to pay as well to get it. Intel Z270 platform to me lacks the cpu options that AMD now has on their X370 platform. I think AMD will definitely take advantage of that, at least until Intel fights back. Intel has no answer for an 8 core chip for less than $350 that runs on <$150 motherboards and with two sticks of ram at full performance.

This^

Plus Intel could have easily done so, and still made good margins, yet refused to bring down the price. AMD is offering theirs at a reasonable cost. Even if Intel chops prices to match to roughly comparable performance for the money I would still buy the AMD out of principle. I'd pay the same price for an AMD chip that performed slightly worse just to deprive the price gouging Intel of revenue.

With this new build I can start building some VM's to expirament more with other OS's like redhat and such that I really need to spend some Quality time on. If I can free up the cash I might build an 1700 base with 32 gig of ram and a basic BASIC video card and my old SSD drive just to tinker with an in house vmware/vsphere setup that I can more easily manage multiple VM's on.

Throw in a couple large SAS drives for good measure and put into a mirror... would be a nice little setup for some household vm goodness. Too bad the licensing would be 10 grand a damn year.

Minus the licensing cost you can do that now really cheap. Tere are free versions of ESXi or you can use XEN completely for free. I have a $30 MSI 1155 board, a used $45 i5-2400s, a cheap SSD, and an old 1TB spinner, used DDR3 RAM. Whole thing cost maybe $175. for testing purposes not in production you don't really need much in terms of resources. This runs 9 VMs including a 6 security camera system.

 

[Grimlaking]

Only a handful of games are using more than 4 cores at the moment and even then you're usually talking about small gains. Most of the gamers I know don't have a lot of background tasks running regardless. Sure, if you're streaming or encoding a video in the background it's going to be a lot better but even an i5 is generally held back by the GPU and by the time that changes we're going to be on to the next big thing.

Maybe I don't fit the mold. But lets say I'm playing D3 or World of Warcraft (my two top games other than one or two newer AAA stand alone games.)

What I have running....
Skype
Discord
Steam
Uplay
Blizzard's UI thing.
Curse
App to monitor my UPS (not up but there and running.)
Browser with 1-2 tabs open (Chrome)

And that's just on average. I could have any number more things running. My second screen is all about other programs running.
Of course my WOW is loaded with addons aas well.

 

[bwang]

HEDT is a generation behind because the dies are Xeon derivatives, not because Intel intentionally holds back progress. It makes sense to wait for process maturity before moving fabs over to the larger dies, and enterprise lives on a 3/5 year refresh cycle.
There isn't a "mainstream" and "HEDT" platform; rather, there are the mobile (lower power, feature optimized) and server (high core count) platforms. The server platform will always have mediocre connectivity because servers traditionally gain connectivity through add-on cards, not through the chipset, and this has carried over to HEDT too (remember X79's pathetic SATA III and USB 3.0 situation?)

It looks like this time round HEDT will be based on the Skylake-EN platform; presumably six channels on desktop would have been cost-prohibitive board-wise and probably unnecessary on the lower core count SKU's (-EP needs the 6-channel memory to feed its 32 AVX-512-enabled cores).

It would be nice to see HEDT/server treated like a first-class citizen again; right now X99 boards and chips are these halo products that everyone compares performance against, but no one really owns due to high price, platform age, and poor overclocking. If you're into multisocket platforms, it's a similar situation to the -EX platform; fast, very, very expensive (even more per core than the 6950X), and full of caveats.

I think what everyone here really wants is for the LCC Xeon die to trickle down to the mobile-derived platform, but it's unclear whether that is possible without jumping through a bunch of hoops as the mobile chipsets run on a different set of interconnects and Z-series motherboards expect some sort of graphics unit inside the CPU. The expensive way (for Intel) would be to create a new chipset which pairs with the LCC Xeons but is updated on a one-year cycle so we can have our dozens of threads and nice features too.

 

[Bandalo]

Maybe I don't fit the mold. But lets say I'm playing D3 or World of Warcraft (my two top games other than one or two newer AAA stand alone games.)

What I have running....
Skype
Discord
Steam
Uplay
Blizzard's UI thing.
Curse
App to monitor my UPS (not up but there and running.)
Browser with 1-2 tabs open (Chrome)

And that's just on average. I could have any number more things running. My second screen is all about other programs running.
Of course my WOW is loaded with addons aas well.

None of the apps you listed are really consuming much in the way of CPU. Check your CPU usage by app/process when you're gaming and you'll see they're all VERY minor. Except maybe Chrome depending on WHAT you have open in those tabs.

 

[ZacharyS]

Eh, one thing I think that is greatly overshadowed by everyone saying for gaming you need less cores and stuff...

I honestly cannot remember the last time I simply "played a game" on my PC with absolutely nothing else running. On my machine I will have a game running, usually amazon/netflix on one screen and a couple discord bots/tools on the other screen.

My 2500k typically does fine if I'm "just playing a game", but I'm interested in the new processors because I'm tired of my PC running sluggish if I attempt to play a game and also have a high def stream going. Do I need 8 cores for this? Absolutely not, but with multi-core processors I don't even need my second PC to use as a server, as my main PC would be more than capable.

 

[ZacharyS]

None of the apps you listed are really consuming much in the way of CPU. Check your CPU usage by app/process when you're gaming and you'll see they're all VERY minor. Except maybe Chrome depending on WHAT you have open in those tabs.

I agree, the apps he listed don't do much. But my 2500k gets very sluggish with a 1080p web stream going in chrome + playing a game at 1440p. Like, stuttering in the video and the game occurs regularly. VOIP programs and such I'm not worried about, but if I'm running a MMO, stream, plus simulations in the background the gains would certainly be appreciated.

 

[Grimlaking]

None of the apps you listed are really consuming much in the way of CPU. Check your CPU usage by app/process when you're gaming and you'll see they're all VERY minor. Except maybe Chrome depending on WHAT you have open in those tabs.

Yea that's not including watching netflix and other such things. I'm not CPU bound right now... with 8 logical cores. but if I was running just what I needed to do what I do I would be running an i5 with 8 gig of ram instead of an i7 with 16.

My i7 is an older 2k generation I believe if not previous to that. Not at home right now so can't confirm exact model. (Found my order history. I'm running on an 2700k currently. Time for a refresh!)

 

[Bandalo]

I agree, the apps he listed don't do much. But my 2500k gets very sluggish with a 1080p web stream going in chrome + playing a game at 1440p. Like, stuttering in the video and the game occurs regularly. VOIP programs and such I'm not worried about, but if I'm running a MMO, stream, plus simulations in the background the gains would certainly be appreciated.

Sure, if you're doing things like that WHILE gaming, then you need a bit more horsepower, and more cores and higher frequencies will help.

I don't think most users play that way, and typically only do one CPU-intensive task at a time, not because they can't do more, but because they, as the user, are only generally focused on one task at a time.

 

[zerogg]

Another thing AMD could do unlike intel is offer unlocked processors in 2 socket platform. That would be a pretty nice change from all the recent xeons being locked.

 

[Dan_D]

I think the real reasons enthusiasts are hungry for Ryzen are simple to understand.

There are basically two reasons for it. People want to support AMD to help drive competition. This includes shocking Intel out of apathy. Intel's one of the most influential and innovative companies around. They've done a lot in the server and mobile sectors while fuck all for the desktop and gamer.

Secondly, I see a lot of the Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge holdouts looking for an excuse to upgrade. They leave threads about each new Intel architecture, disappointed that the platform isn't good enough to justify an upgrade and the CPU performance increases are either minimal or not there at all. For years Intel has given us a modest IPC improvement while reducing clock speeds. TDP's have practically stayed the same at that. There hasn't been enough innovation for the CPU and motherboard to keep people excited about hardware, or even building and upgrading their PC's. There is plenty of blame to go around for this. AMD's sucked ass for awhile, software developers are fucking lazy and so on.

Those people on ancient platforms finally want a real reason to upgrade. Cores alone won't do it or everyone would be on HEDT systems. The pathetic IPC improvements aren't good enough as the current quad core CPUs don't offer much over Sandy Bridge. The platform alone isn't enough because M.2 is the biggest draw and few think its worth $600 plus the cost of storage to get it. When people buy new CPUs they expect more. Either more cores, or more raw performance. When they buy a new motherboard they want new features and all that but few people buy motherboards just to make a lateral move on CPU performance. You want to feel your upgrade and notice that it's there. If you don't instantly notice a performance upgrade you will feel like you've wasted your money.

Ryzen has an opportunity to fill a niche where AMD provides more cores at a relatively low cost with a less expensive and more modern platform. Its an upgrade people can get excited about for a lot of reasons. One big reason is that people want and have always wanted to support AMD. I think it's less about showing loyalty to AMD or hatred of Intel, but because Intel has done dick for the desktop platform since Sandy Bridge launched. Buying Ryzen guarantees Intel has to get off its ass and deliver products that don't seem so fucking lazy.

Since my Core i7 980X / X58 setup I've felt virtually no difference as I climbed up the chain. I made lots of excuses for why I did it but I still have my 3930K running on another machine and I can't tell the difference outside of gaming. If I slapped my Titan X's in there I doubt many people could tell the difference in most games. That's bullshit. We've had product stagnation because we've had no serious competition. Intel's had a free pass in the desktop arena, shoving server parts down our throats at a premium or re-purposed mobile parts while acting like they've done gamers a favor. Intel has even said shit about Skylake being designed for the gamer first etc. Yet there is little evidence of it besides a moderate improvement running DDR4 RAM in games compared to Haswell-E.

I get why the market's been the way it is and why Intel's priorities have been driven on the concept of performance per watt and not raw performance. I get why there has been little to no innovation on the platform side. However, I'm hoping that Ryzen is enough of a shot in the dark to propel Intel out of apathy at the very least. I don't think Ryzen is the upgrade I'm looking for over what I have now. That said, with the right motherboard I can see building a server out of it. In other words, I'll probably find some excuse to by Ryzen to do my part to ensure continued competition in this market. Otherwise we'll see nothing but 3% upgrades and features that don't do a lot for us for the next 10 years.

 

[zerogg]

Sure, if you're doing things like that WHILE gaming, then you need a bit more horsepower, and more cores and higher frequencies will help.

I don't think most users play that way, and typically only do one CPU-intensive task at a time, not because they can't do more, but because they, as the user, are only generally focused on one task at a time.

That's one of the biggest reasons I wanted more than 4 cores. Intel could have given us more cores instead of an igpu, not to mention decent tim...

 

[Bandalo]

That's one of the biggest reasons I wanted more than 4 cores. Intel could have given us more cores instead of an igpu, not to mention decent tim...

They did that, in the form of the X99 platform and HEDT chips. The fact is that 97% of the market doesn't NEED more than 4 cores. But they covered the remaining 3% with that platform, but it's a smaller market, so the price is higher.

The TIM itself is fine, as is the IHS mounting. It meets rated speed and will support pretty damn good overclocks as-is. Can you improve temps by remounting the IHS? Sure. But that's no reason to slam a CPU that runs that fast out of the box on a cheap air cooler.

 

[noko]

They did that, in the form of the X99 platform and HEDT chips. The fact is that 97% of the market doesn't NEED more than 4 cores. But they covered the remaining 3% with that platform, but it's a smaller market, so the price is higher.

The TIM itself is fine, as is the IHS mounting. It meets rated speed and will support pretty damn good overclocks as-is. Can you improve temps by remounting the IHS? Sure. But that's no reason to slam a CPU that runs that fast out of the box on a cheap air cooler.

I slam it because it makes the cooling system bigger than it needs to be and fans that will have to run faster and noisier. To me there is no excuse that Intel put shit material for the TIM that causes a >10c increase in temperature. For electrical components in general temperature kills, is this Intel way to ensure the cpu's won't last longer than 5 years if used a lot? I don't think this will matter that much but the increase cooling needed and noise from it is real and is totally unacceptable.

 

[tangoseal]

In addition to my prior comments heres to hoping that Ryzen performs stellar on VR.

I really want to go and buy my Oculus I returned long ago. I hope VR is strong on Zen. I know GPU matters more in the big picture but there is a lot of CPU involved in VR as well.

 

[Bandalo]

I slam it because it makes the cooling system bigger than it needs to be and fans that will have to run faster and noisier. To me there is no excuse that Intel put shit material for the TIM that causes a >10c increase in temperature. For electrical components in general temperature kills, is this Intel way to ensure the cpu's won't last longer than 5 years if used a lot? I don't think this will matter that much but the increase cooling needed and noise from it is real and is totally unacceptable.

Intel hasn't changed the warranty on their CPUs, and I've never heard them claim the newest CPUs need any additional cooling. It's very rare for any CPU, regardless of cooling solution, to fail before it becomes obsolete. Even if you run at high temps and high overclocks, the CPUs themselves are generally the last things to fail.

The TIM itself isn't the problem, the problem is mounting of the IHS and the size of the gap between the IHS and the die. Reducing that gap and closing the manufacturing tolerances would cost money for no real gain. Yes, you COULD make it 10C cooler, but if it operates well within the required temps and frequencies, WHY would Intel do it? It's nice for the competitive overclockers and those obsessed with temps, but FUNCTIONALLY, dropping the die temp by 10C has no significant impact on performance, power or longevity.

Think of it like a car manufacturer...sure they COULD replace your stock air filter with a nice foam/oil model that would be technically a better product. But it wouldn't increase fuel efficiency, engine life, or horsepower, and would just cost more money. So why would they do it?

 

[ZodaEX]

I slam it because it makes the cooling system bigger than it needs to be and fans that will have to run faster and noisier. To me there is no excuse that Intel put shit material for the TIM that causes a >10c increase in temperature. For electrical components in general temperature kills, is this Intel way to ensure the cpu's won't last longer than 5 years if used a lot? I don't think this will matter that much but the increase cooling needed and noise from it is real and is totally unacceptable.

Oh there is an excuse. It's just not one that you'd like. Doesn't mean there isn't one just because you personally don't know what it is.

 

[Dan_D]

Intel hasn't changed the warranty on their CPUs, and I've never heard them claim the newest CPUs need any additional cooling. It's very rare for any CPU, regardless of cooling solution, to fail before it becomes obsolete. Even if you run at high temps and high overclocks, the CPUs themselves are generally the last things to fail.

The TIM itself isn't the problem, the problem is mounting of the IHS and the size of the gap between the IHS and the die. Reducing that gap and closing the manufacturing tolerances would cost money for no real gain. Yes, you COULD make it 10C cooler, but if it operates well within the required temps and frequencies, WHY would Intel do it? It's nice for the competitive overclockers and those obsessed with temps, but FUNCTIONALLY, dropping the die temp by 10C has no significant impact on performance, power or longevity.

Think of it like a car manufacturer...sure they COULD replace your stock air filter with a nice foam/oil model that would be technically a better product. But it wouldn't increase fuel efficiency, engine life, or horsepower, and would just cost more money. So why would they do it?

Oh there is an excuse. It's just not one that you'd like. Doesn't mean there isn't one just because you personally don't know what it is.

Bingo. Intel only allows overclocking because a certain niche of its customers want to do it. However, Intel only guarantees these CPUs to run at advertised speeds and the cheaper TIM allows for this with the standard cooling methods available today. When you are making millions of processors via a certain manufacturing process every bit counts. Intel has a duty to please it's shareholders and nothing makes them happier than profits. Intel can achieve it's goals without worrying about the sub-1% of buyers who have nothing better to do than bitch about the cheap TIM. Ultimately it's a investment vs. reward scenario and Intel calculated (correctly) that the less expensive TIM would get the job done and the few that will bitch about it won't negatively impact their profits. In fact, most of those people will still buy these CPUs because they have no choice.

 

[Archaea]

Maybe I don't fit the mold. But lets say I'm playing D3 or World of Warcraft (my two top games other than one or two newer AAA stand alone games.)

What I have running....
Skype
Discord
Steam
Uplay
Blizzard's UI thing.
Curse
App to monitor my UPS (not up but there and running.)
Browser with 1-2 tabs open (Chrome)

And that's just on average. I could have any number more things running. My second screen is all about other programs running.
Of course my WOW is loaded with addons aas well.

and your CPU is still only at 40% utilization.....

I'm surprised by the amount of interest in Ryzen frankly.

Games won't utilize 6-8 cores until next gen console stuff.

I've yet to see a game that comes anywhere near maxing out my CPU with my I7-4770K overclocked to 4.5Ghz.

I think it's cool AMD is competitive again --- but I think a lot of you guys are truly upgrading your system for minimal gains at this precise junction. (if you have newer than say a 2nd gen I7 quad core - and it's overclocked to say 4Ghz or greater --- The benchmarks all show you aren't really gaining anything at all for gaming performance with this upgrade.)