News Rumours point to an end for user-replaceable CPUs

You may not change the CPU without changing motherboards...
But how many of you have changed boards without changing CPU?


With so much being built onto boards these days, you are probably more likely to change your board before changing your processor. In the last 7 years I went through 2 processors, but several boards. O those, one had bad pci-e slots, another had bad memory slots. I also decided to go down to matx instead of ATX. At another point I wanted more ram, USB3 and Sata3, this is what prompted the cpu change.

And does no one remember the big capacitor disaster? I still see boards with bad caps on them.
And what is next? Non-replacable cooling systems?


Granted, unless Intel does something, their market share is going to drop to a mere fraction in the next decade anyhow, but this seems premature.

 

I've actually changed motherboards during the life of a cpu, once for higher Overclockability, one for more features (SLI and additional SATA ports) and also to go from ATX to MATX.

Also as others have said I have more often than not replaced motherboards before because they're simply broken (or I've broken them).

Point is one of the major selling points of the PC versus the laptop or tablet is the easy hardware upgrade path.

Sooner or later we're going to have to come to terms with a complete merger of smartphone/tablet and PC technologies and formats.....thats just evolution.

Intel shareholders have to consider the view that were Intel to make CPU's in 2014 BGA only would be less than popular amongst enthusiasts and business customers, at a time when it's got a "less than healthy market share" beyond the PC market (Tablets, smartphones etc...) and during this technological convergence of phones, tablets, consoles and PC's, the risk is that by doing so, you create an issue for users, and issues for Intel will be opportuinities to the competition.....there's a real risk that a decision such as this at a time when people are not ready to embrace it could prove (when we look back at it in 10years time) to be the undoing of Intel, possibly x86 and the ascension of ARM and re-emergence of AMD and VIA.

 

This is a totally anti-ECO moving! Showing profits from ARGHpple, only means how many Appletards are out there.

 

I'm not sure what to think of this move. On one hand; It'll mean much less in the way of hassle when building a system, buy motherboard, drop in Memory, heatsink, HDD, possibly GPU, connect, play.

On the other hand; I don't want to have to bin what could possibly be a high-clocking processor just because the motherboard is duff. I'd've lost my FX 8120 with my 990FX-UD3 when the second PCI-E 16x socket crapped out on me last year, rather than simply dropping it into a new motherboard and carrying on.

I wouldn't complain too loudly if the market remained open, but if prices suddenly shot higher for what would, arguably, be the cheaper solution; I'd be more than slightly miffed.

On a side note; Does this mean we're going to see a global emergence of people running into Xbox 360 RRoD-like problems, where the heat has caused the solder on the BGA to crack/otherwise loose contact.

 

Due to the role that a GPU and CPU play in a computer those things are hardly comparable.

 

Same here, you would still be able to upgrade the RAM and graphic, disks, soundcard, and whatever else.

I always intend to "future proof" myself but it just never happens. I bought the E6600 C2D Conroe when it was brand new and bought a posh motherboard with it. My intention was to last a few years and then move to some quad core in the same slot, but it never happened. The C2D lasted years without showing its age, especially with overclocking, and by the time it was really starting to age, everything had moved on like 5 whole generations anyway. So then I did the same thing again early last year with a 2500k, which again is lasting forever, especially seeing as it's OC'd to 4.8ghz on air.

I often upgrade RAM though, and graphics card and disks, and soundcard I did once.

 

I can't help wondering what OEMs think about this. Currently they'll practically throw motherboards at a problem, but it takes an act of Congress and at least 2 major deities to get them to send out a processor. If all of the CPU's are BGA, then they have to sent it out with every motherboard issue... even something as simple as a damaged RJ-45 or broken USB port.

 

This won't happen...or it will extend Haswell's life. As others pointed out, there will be mass rebellion if suddenly Asus and the like go from 10s of motherboards to 100s. ATM, Asus has 65 LGA1155 boards on Newegg. Now multiply that by even half the available IB procs and...Newegg doesn't have that much room to stock the product. Either that or they cut their offerings...losing them market share. The boutiques might be all right, since they tend to skew high-end. As long as there's a 3770-class and a...whatever number Intel stuck on the hex-core, highest-end proc, they'd get by.

Actually, it might help Dell and HP do what they refuse to do themselves - pare down their offerings. One thing people like about Apple, counterintuitively, is the lack of choice. For laptops, you've got 2 lines in three sizes each, give or take. Desktops, you've got what, two? (iMac, at least, leaving the MP aside.) Dell has something like 15-20 just slightly different desktops in the consumer line alone. Too much choice creates confusion, especially when you're talking about a product the average person barely understands to begin with. (Incidentally, Guinevere, you're slightly wrong - Mac Pros still have discrete processors, although I think Cook is full of it when he promised something 'big' come 2013.)

I won't believe until Intel speaks on it, though - too much speculation, but as I typed this out, it does seem more plausible...although I question Intel's motivation if it is true. But, it'd be better for Dell and HP, whose fortunes are falling rather quickly. At the same time, it would massively piss off Asus, Gigabyte, ECS, et al, who seem to be doing rather well. Not to mention every computer retailer on the planet.

Maybe this is the mis-step AMD fans have been waiting for?

 

don't believe it will happen changing a chip from BGA to LGA, I'm sure isn't the hardest engineering task in the world haha

 

There are PCIe expension card for that purpose ...

and about dying hardware ... I prefer to pay a small premium and get stuff with at least 3 years of warranty.

Going for cheap and upgrade a few parts 6month / 1 year later is not always the best move to save money. IMHO, unless you need it right away, it's better to wait 6 more month to save more money (1 less pint at the pub, less cigarettes, etc.) and buy something better that will last longer. Plus you will always resell your old hadware less than you paid it, and thus loose money, even if it is only 6 month old.

 

After thinking about it for a while I wouldn't be surprised if Broadwell was mobile only and Haswell was given a longer life cycle than usual. There is also the high end CPU line to consider. Broadwell-E perhaps. I would think that Intel would keep LGA for the high end workstation and server markets which is the sort of area us enthusiasts will be targeted with.

 

To all the people that say "Im going AMD"

Check this :
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/11/19/amd-kills-off-big-cores-kaveri-steamroller-and-excavator/

Looks like AMD is killing off the X86 line, so your stuck with Intel if you want a powerful X86 system.

Also you can be sure that you wont be able to overclock these, lets just hope they still have a PCI-E 16x slot.

Still the high end will still be there, i.e cut down Xeons for enthusiasts and workstations.

 

If intel were to do this I'd move to the much more adaptable AMD sockets. Besides AMD sockets are a dream to fit heat sinks to compared to the awful intel fittings.

From Semiaccurate.com seems accurate!

 

AMD killing off X86 ? No. AM3+ "highend" platform ? Probably yes. Will they kill FM2 ? No.

 

Time will tell, if they are right the current core is the last, I haven't seen any roadmaps from them but ill keep my eye out.

 

Do you think businesses like Intel make their decisions based on the number of units they sell and the classifications of their customers rather than the profit they make?

If you do then you're deluded my friend.

It's ALL about the bottom line. If you increase that without hurting future earnings then everything else is irrelevant. ( I don't like this BTW, but it's true )

I'm not saying that surface mounted CPUs will definitely increase the bottom line, but I'm confident there's more profit being made from devices with hard wired chips vs those that are user upgradable, and this could sway Intel's future direction.

 

AMD are not killing off the high end they just are not making it anymore, They have changed there targets to the low and mid range.

You will never see a AMD chip compete with Intels true high end the x79 systems.

As for the market comment.

All companies care about 1 thing and 1 thing only its called Profit. If you dont make Profit you can not survive even if you own 100% of said market if your loosing money doing so you will go out of business.

Apple for example owns less than 20% of the smartphone market but gets something like 80% of all profits, i think they will be delighted dont you?

Andriod owns around 75% but every company except samsung is loosing money.

HTC and its ilk are fighting a loosing battle they are fighting for survival in a market that samsung effectively dominates. samsung is basically getting 100% of all andriod profits on hardware sales.

Market share is irelivent if you dont make a profit.

This is the world we live in today.

 

Dude it says right in the article that you linked that AMD denied that they are killing off their x86 line.

 

Personally, this would be a bit of a kick in the nuts for me. I'm still using 775 and my current CPU has already seen one board replacement due to a failure. I'm even looking to upgrade to another 775 CPU (preferably quad-core, but they're rare as rocking horse poop), because I still think there's life in the old girl yet (I'm usually so far behind the current generation kit that most of you will think it's laughable). Losing the ability to drop a better chip into the current board would be a bit of a PITA.

I can see how this would make sense from a mass-market consumer point of view though. Increasingly computers are seen as appliances to get stuff done: web, emails, crappy games, wasting one's life on BookFace, etc. You only have to look at how far tablets/slates have come - in technology and sales - in the last few years to see what people really want out of a "computer". Even the average owner of a "traditional" desktop won't give a hoot what's inside the box or what to do when things go wrong; the bit-tech audience is sadly a very tiny part of the number of people who own a "traditional" computer. Moving to integrated CPUs and a more SoC/SBC-like approach makes sense from a commercial point of view: you can build smaller systems, rely less on third parties, potentially have lower power requirements and, more crucially, get vendor lock-in on upgrades, replacements or add-on parts.

In the grand scheme of things, the average consumer doesn't give a crap if he can upgrade his processor or not - he wants it to work out of the box, and if he wants better performance then he'll buy a whole new system.

Which in theory makes it a great time for some brave manufacturer out there to put their family jewels on the line and make a big push towards ARM-based desktop computing. As long as it's a modern/current ARM version, the software is already there: plenty of big name Linux distros have ARM variants. You might need to tidy/polish up the UI/UX here and there, but it's essentially ready to go. All we need is reasonably-priced hardware, and a manufacturer who is prepared to steer clear of Android and offer official Linux support (that means driver support). There is hardware out there but it's either: poorly supported in Linux, not supported at all in Linux, has low processing power, is very rare or seriously expensive. I'd love a Tegra 3 desktop board at a reasonable price which has good driver support. Yes, I've heard of the Kontron KTT30: no word on price or availability, only 900MHz and Kontron are not renowned for being cheap. I have also heard of the VIA APC8750 (not really that much better spec'ed than the Pi and only officially supports Android) and the ODRIOD-X (again, only official support seems to be for Android - are all features supported under Linux? Does it have accelerated X drivers? although this one at least warrants further investigation).

Of course mainstream ARM-based systems are pure pie in the sky: the only ARM support you'll get in Windows is Windows RT, and you'll only get Windows RT if you're a Microsoft partner producing Microsoft-certified hardware. Even then, WinRT is hopelessly crippled as a desktop OS. The only option for ARM systems is Linux, and if it doesn't have a little Windows or Apple logo somewhere then Mr Joe Public will steer clear.

 

Meh,I'll believe it when I see it. It'll probably end up as an OEM thing for dell and the likes.