Quote:
Originally Posted by
Outlawed 
SB-Es selling point isn't clock speed, although they are very good at that as well.
Let's be honest, if Ivy Bridge could overclock to 5.5 Ghz with the same ease that SB can overclock to 5 Ghz, or to 5.3 Ghz with the same ease as SB does 4.8 Ghz, that would mean around a 700 - 750 Mhz clockspeed deficit (factoring in the IPC improvements).
There is some market for consumer level workstations, but let's be honest, Intel regains the investment from the enthusiast sales.
Quad channel memory is nice, but Ivy Bridge has the same native DDR3 1600 memory controller with two channels, which is plenty for now. 16 lanes of PCIe 3.0 is also enough for now and there is the possibility of motherboards with a PLX chip. On top of that, Z77 has native USB 3.0.
Now tell me, who would buy an i7-3820 ? The entry level CPU that gets Intel to sell more X79 chipsets would no longer sell. The 3960X is already a niche market. And given the clockspeed deficit I mentioned, even the 3930K, with its additional power consumption and higher price, would be a hard sell.
In my opinion Intel timed the release of SB-e wrong and now they have a problem. With X58 that wasn't a problem. For more than a year it was the undisputed flagship, because it was launched first, and even when Intel launched the 1156 platform, the competing quad cores were on the same manufacturing process. 32nm on the 1156 platform was reserved for dual cores only, so as not to compete with Nehalem.
Edited by tpi2007 - 5/12/12 at 8:36pm
Where is that pic of the SB with the die torn off showing the solder, so I can point out the flux.
