News Intel's margins fall on slowing demand

I'd say a combination the economic conditions and the longevity of their more recent platforms (1366 & SB 1155) is a major factor.

 

a q6600 is about 5-6 yrs old. its not bad and still has plenty power as the hand me down for another 5 yrs. amd equivelant same story. desktop cpus have a pretty long life now before they become too slow. i expect laptop sales keep things rosy-ish.

 

Precisely, there is no compelling reason to upgrade anymore, I will not generally get a boost from CPU I would be better attacking my gpu instead or purchasing an SSD.

Same for memory upgrades more size yes, speed not as much

 

Intel registered a 14% drop in profits and just over an 8% drop in desktop and laptop sales,and costs have increased by around 10% it seems:

http://www.slashgear.com/intel-q3-profits-fall-14-with-pc-demand-on-the-drop-16252253/

Increased revenues from their data centre operations have helped offset drops in other areas.

Intel even themselves predicted the drops ages ago:

http://newsroom.intel.com/community...07/intel-lowers-third-quarter-revenue-outlook

Revenue was predicted at $13.2 to $13.5 billion instead of the expected $13.8 to $14.8 billion earlier in the year. Hence,the actual revenue figures matched their revised predictions.

For the first time in a decade the desktop and laptop markets have contracted.

Looks like we need to welcome our new tablet overlords!!

 

my Q6600 is powerfull enough too. My only reasons for willing to upgrade it is : better efficiency, less heat, DDR3 + USB3 + SATA 3.0 support.

As mentioned, you get more when upgrading from an HDD to an SSD and upgrading your GPU (high end gpu tends to have longer life, so an upgrade every 3 years seams nice).

 

I'm still rocking my Q6600 and have yet to feel that I need to upgrade. Nothing really taxes my system. I love this CPU

 

I still have my qx6850, I am considering an upgrade though, as it is starting to show it's age

 

I too had an old q6600, but upgrading to a i5 3570k (4GHz ish OC) with 16GB RAM made a HUGE difference to my games. That upgrade (include a new motherboard obviously) clocked in at £300.

Not that a q6600 can't handle everything, the 3570k just handles it quicker and smoother. Even just in Windows, everything's much snappier with the IVB CPU. If you've been on the q6600 for more than a year or two, I wold definitely advise an upgrade at this point for the overall increased speed and of course: "better efficiency, less heat, DDR3 + USB3 + SATA 3.0 support."

If you *ever* do anything like compressing files (7-Zip/ WinRAR), video encoding (Handbrake), photo editing (Photoshop/Elements/Lightroom) or spreadsheets (Excel) that you will find big improvements in your workflows. Here's a q6600 vs 3770k comparison (3570k @4GHz is pretty much comparable, sometimes a little faster, sometimes a little slower than stock 3770k): http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/53?vs=551

 

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that in games, frame rates noticeably improved when upgrading the q6600 to a 3570k when running a GTX 570. And generally the minimum framerate was noticeably smoother.

 

i still rock a q6600. Run one in my ITX machine with a zotac 9300, 4GB of ram and a 550TI.

 

I would have upgraded a long time ago to Sandy Bridge E but, due to the price I have not upgraded because to get a performance boost from what I have now I would need to get the 3930K and to be honest, I just don't think it's worth the £800 it would cost me.

I would have gone for Ivy Bridge but thanks to the heat issue, Intel have caused me to avoid it and stick with my 2700K.

If they drop the prices abit then I think more people would upgrade from older hardware but because of the cost, they are not upgrading to newer stuff.

I built a pc the other week for a friend of a guy at work, and I ended up building it using AMD because I got the board, chip and ram for a total of £200 but a similar spec on Intel would have cost around £350 so it just made sense to use AMD instead.

 

I really need a new system. My now ancient Athlon II system is starting to bug me in lightroom and my 8800gts can't cope with anything bar decent console ports and valve games.

 

To be honest, I'm a little disapointed by Intel. Their CPU are nice, but their attitude is awful. I just bought an Atom D2700 based nettop for an uncle (internet and Ms Money use only) to discover that Intel provides graphic drivers for Windows 7 32 bit only ! No 64 bit support, no windows XP support, no Windows 8 support, no Linux support .... only Windows 7 32 bit ! And there will never be any support, they just abandonned the 64 bit support to focus on HD4000.

I was full AMD before bying the Q6600 .... my next CPU will be AMD for sure.

 

Anandtech have some more information on this:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6378/...kening-market-intel-to-idle-some-fab-capacity

It seems Intel has too much 22NM capacity ATM and is letting more than 50% of their fabs go idle.

I wonder if there are some bargains to be had in the next few months?? A number of retailers such as Amazon have had the Core i5 3570K for around £150,on and off for the last few weeks.

 

have you looked here

xp support is null and void anyway, windows 8 hasn't officially been released, and in most cases you can use win7 drivers anyway

 

First place I looked at : http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Sea...00+Series&ProdId=3468&LineId=3332&FamilyId=39

One and only one line : Windows 7 32 bit !

I know XP support reached its end, and it's understandable as it has lastest for an incredibly long time. But the futur owner already has a valid XP licence from the computer it is replacing.

 

The rise of smart phones and cloud computing doesn't help either. Between peoples uses changing

1. Consoles holding back games
2. Facebook doesn't require a power house. Heck everything is being offloaded to the GPU anyhow
3. Rise of phones and tables handling what PC's where strong at. Stuff like basic image editing can be done easily enough and uploaded.
4. Lack of AMD competition keeping prices high meaning intel doesn't have to push for a major upgrade.
5. Rise in cloud computing.
6. Slow development in other areas of the PC. USB3 might of brought a reason to upgrade but PCI-e 3 is meh atm. SSD's can be dropped into any computer.

 

I think the consoles holding back games is a huge factor. I was perfectly happy with my E6600 dual core conroe, it ran most stuff just fine. If it wasn't for Arma2, I probably would never have upgraded, but I went to a 2500k and that has served me well the past couple of years and I doubt I will need to upgrade it for some time.

As for work machines, where I work, most of them are still running Pentium 4's.

 

Bought 2 Q6600's 5-6 years ago.

and 2 i7 860's 3-4 years ago

i have absolutely no reason to get a new one.

(although will be buying a i5 based surface in jan