News Rumours point to an end for user-replaceable CPUs

this would make me go AMD

 

I can't remember the last time I upgraded the CPU with out having to change the motherboard...

Actually I can it was going from a Athlon 3200 to an Athlon x2 4000 or something like that; S939 era any way.

 

Intel changes the socket in every generation anyway.

 

They aren't, I can't say more, but there is a new socket coming

 

This would be a terrible move. Hopefully this is just the mobile market and not desktop.

 

well yea but this is silly somehow. how would this pan out? will intel only sell their cpu attached to their own motherboards? or will they continue selling to asus, gigabyte & co., but forcing them to solder the cpu on their boards? idk, it sounds weird.

if it were only for small systems, embedded systems, office systems - well, your average home user really. then i get it. those never change anything anyway, mostly. so if it were AMD, this might make sense. but as intel dominates the enthusiast-market, who frequently chance their hardware, i fail to see any logic in this.

 

I can see them doing it in conjunction with system builders but not on the retail front. It just doesn't make sense to alienate such a large portion of their market who spend a vast amount of money on upgrades or replacement CPUs and Motherboards due to burn outs caused from overclocking.

 

There's a broadwell roadmap that doesn't mention LGA packaging, but we don't know if it's complete or final.
There's a leak of the roadmap, but we don't know if it's genuine.
There's a translation of the leak, but we don't know if it's accurate.
There's other articles discussing the leak but lots of people talking about the rumour doesn't make said rumour any more accurate.

And even if it is? So what? The number of people on the planet who actually upgrade their computing devices by swapping out the CPUs is absolutely tiny compared to those who don't. As a percentage, very few people are going to be upset with this sort of evolution.

Even here on BT you'll find that many people will 'normally' follow a model of upgrading the MB + CPU together.

I for one have never upgraded the CPU without at the same time swapping out the mobo.

This doesn't mean that those of you with a tray full of CPUs and a cupboard full of mobos aren't going to be gutted though. It could be that your days of mix and match... sheesh even I'm buying into the rumour now.

 

Where's your data that serial upgraders and overclockers make up a large portion of intels market?

Take a look at this:



Apple only sell systems with embedded CPUs and they make more profit than Microsoft, Ebay, Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Amazon combined.

Go down a row and you'll see Apple make double the profit than almost the entire PC industry (The enthusiast market is much smaller than the OEM market)

When it comes to shipping chips in the markets where the profit sits, Intel is getting their butt kicked by ARM, but admittedly Intel make more profit on a desktop CPU than ARM makes on licensing their designs to the likes of Samsung / Apple.

If this is all true, I think Intel (like everyone) is trying to push it's business into the areas where they can make the most profit.

Compared to the rest of their market, Intel make comparatively little profit from selling CPUs to enthusiasts, and I would wager (gut feeling) that if they loose 100% of the profit from enthusiasts it would easily be offset by a tiny (low single digit) increase in profit from the OEM / Embedded market.

 

Doesn't matter to me as I always upgrade everything since the socket change with each new gen. The only matter would be with warranty. Hope this would come with at least 3 years warranty to compensate a possible cpu or mobo failure (after a year or two), and prevent a full change while only one component is dead.

Nowadays the only efficient upgrade, if you don't want to change you mobo, is to switch from i3 to i5/i7, i5 to i7(even i5 -> i7 is not that much as HT doesn't bring much perf) ... diff among same family of cpu is negligible (read diff between i3s, diff between i5s, etc ...).

If you do not have an LGA1155 mobo, you have to change everything, and even not all LGA1155 supports IB (some H61, H67, etc doesn't support them). Thank you Intel for the segmentation you created.

The unlocked "K" processor are for a niche market. People who buy each components are niche compared to ready-to-use computer. Desktop computer are disappearing from houses, being replaced by tablets and notepad. The last desktop user are mainly enthousiast (but we are a negligible portion of their customers) and offices (who buy dell / hp / etc desktop by thousands).

I won't be suprised if it was the reality.

PS : If Intel could reduce the number of chipsets available that could be awesome. This is ridiculous what they did with current gen, only confusing and bringing segmentation. Same with mobo makers with their LE, LX, V, V-LX mobos version, all priced the same ... it's only confusing.

 

FYI During the early 90s, most of the CPUs were soldered on the motherboards. There were few motherboards though that had an 386/40 soldered on, with additional slot next to it for mathematical co-processor or 486 CPU.
However all the 386 models coming with that setup were AMD ones, surprise surprise.

All Intel motherboards had no option for upgrade.

Shortly after that period, all motherboards had generic chipsets, that fit all AMD/INTEL/CYRIX processors on.
I still remember having one that fit on it, K5s, K6s, K6-2s, Cyrix and a Pentium 2. Overclocking them to their limits.

Few years afterwards, started coming out dedicated motherboards per CPU manufacturer.

 

I've said this elsewhere, and I'll say it again. Dell/HP etc. won't stand for this as it means either making a massive loss on every failed motherboard, or more hassle than it's worth to desolder/resolder CPUs.

Big box shifters will, I'm sure, prevent this.

 

My last motherboard went through THREE CPUs during its five year life. I'm a cheap tinkerer, which means that when I find a good deal that provides me with more power I will make a change. In this way I went from a 2.0GHz dual to a 3.8GHz quad all on the same board.
It is the same with motherboards; when I'm in a position to upgrade on the bleeding edge I will cheap out on the motherboard (within reason, I'm not going ECS or anything!) and put the money saved into a higher CPU or GPU, and then 12 months later or so I'll find a great deal on a high end board. That is what I did with the board above. I got a great deal on it.

I also like to "cascade" my old parts downwards. Every CPU upgrade has let me pass the replaced CPU to my alternate box, and the CPU from there has gone on to other machines built for family. Socket stability/long life meant that was a viable strategy.

But that is just upgrading, what about maintenance? With the CPU thermal protection today, you are far more likely to have a motherboard die on you. I've only had a couple of post-A64/post-Prescott CPUs fail in the thousands of systems that I have looked after.
Motherboards are FAR more likely to fail and require replacement because they have FAR more components that can fail, and motherboards are more susceptible to damage to the PCB or traces. Networking (LAN and WLAN)? USB? RAM? PCI/PCIe? Fan headers? SATA? They all can fail. I currently have a S1155 board that has a dead LAN port and flakey PCIe slots causing crashes and blue screens. I replaced the board and the expensive CPU is fine, which I was worried about because the PCIe controller is on the CPU now.
So in the future, in addition to replacing a faulty or fried motherboard, you have to also replace a perfectly functioning CPU as well? I bet that does wonders for Intel's Executive bonus time.

This news means I'll be going all AMD, all the time from now on. F**k Intel, but I'll take user upgradeable and sacrifice the 10% performance I won't be missing. There is nothing I do that 5fps more or 20 fewer seconds of work makes a difference to my life.

 

Probably do one package and put it in a module of some sort.

 

The board partners won't like it, and the system builders, as mentioned above, would break off relations with intel.

The thing is, now, you can balls up a CPU, and, at comparatively low expense, replace it, same as with a motherboard.

I see all of this stemming out from AMD moving out of the enthusiast market.

 

You aren't keeping a state secret, you know? Everyone knows that for Haswell there will be a new LGA1150 on desktops, and new BGAs for laptops.

If you had read the linked Semi-Accurate article, it says that Broadwell is BGA only and that Haswell LGA will continue through that generation. Sky Lake (the generation after Broadwell) will be LGA again, but says that this may or may not be the last. There likely will be a new LGA again anyway if this is the case.

@ Everyone saying "I always buy a new motherboard with a new CPU"...

I think that is because you have gotten used to Intel making past sockets incompatible when introducing a new CPU generation. You have forgotten what it is like to have the option of a drop-in upgrade.

 

This will end up killing the Motherboard market - other than OEM. Retail will dry up. Are MB manufacturers going to produce 10 versions of each MB? Are scan going to want to hold 10 times more lines?

The EU will react - we can all bitch about waste and criminal accounting - but I doubt they will be happy with all the waste laws they have bought in being turned upside down by a company like Intel.

 

I said this because I upgrade only every 5/6 years ... went from A64 3500+ with DDR1 and IDE drive to Q6600 with DDR2 and sata2 HDD .... so whole PC upgrade (even PSU).

Next upgrade will mean another full rig refresh. I'm not the kind of guy who waste money. I only change my rig when it's really to old to keep on with new softwares or OS (games are not an argument to throw 300€ into a new GPU every year or so) ... or a component that failed (happend with my LGA775 mobo, first time I had a component dying after a year).

 

It's not upgrading thats the biggest issue here, it's the initial purchase. Theres typically 5 choices of MB for each manufacturer on each socket, that would become 2 choices - low + high each with low + high cpus and a little overlap. Or AMD.
Intel is not going to watch the actual gaming market flow to AMD.