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 ...
I played WoW on a laptop in the 2007-2008 timeframe too, and it wasn't bad either. But over the past 2-3 years my eyes have gotten a lot worse, and now laptops are pretty unusable. Mobile devices with those tiny little screens are out of the question - I hate them.
A nice big 24" or larger monitor is where it's at now - regardless of what kind of box it is - a laptop, mini tower, full tower, or a small potted/soldered/throwaway micro-box of the future. As long as I can plug in a big screen monitor to a DVI/HDMI port I'm happy.
Back in the 90's and early 2K's I upgraded [AMD] processors on a couple of motherboards - but no more. Now it's out with the old box & in with the new (now with Intel CPUs), and I don't open the box for anything more than upgrading graphics cards & power supplies to fuel them. Unsocketed motherboards are a don't care for me at this point. And I do wonder what AMD is going to do about this, and if it's a new opportunity for them. I haven't bought an AMD processor in 7 or 8 years now.
ive been using a 36” monitor for years, makes gaming a lot more fun
It is only about cpu upgrade. Only a very tiny amount of enthusiasts bother with cpu upgrade anymore anyway.
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