This truly baffles me too.
They already have 1 mainstream lineup, why break into the HEDT, making motherboards both physically and from a software perspective more complicated while breaking out of the mainstream lineup while adding just, and JUST TDP... It truly makes no sense, none!
Why tim (I want to know the real reason regardless I accepted it)??
One very simple answer to this that nobody seems to think. Warranty. Intel had absolutely no method of telling if their processors were overclocked to the extremes or not, to the points where the electronics can get hurt or lose significant life span. So they introduced TIM, a thermal interface here good enough for out of box Boost and small margins of overclocking, but not to the extreme limits of the CPU; only bound by cooler quality at that point.
So now anybody who wants to unlock their CPU performance to its true limits with overclocking as best as they can with a given cooler has to delid because the TIM is a bottleneck here in cooling otherwise, regardless of cooler quality and/or size.
Delid and the CPU is out of warranty, overclock it all you want, but if you kill it, Intel does not have to replace it. Unlike how they used to have to.
Prices could/should be more aggressive rather than arrogant.
That's just Intel for you. Trying to make the best they can from fanboys and the misinformed. Around me, there are very technical people compared to the general popularity who still think AMD is problematic and/or bad in performance compared to Intel. AMD has been in the game for just about what, 3 months? That is not a time enough to lure away the general popularity yet, it has been enough for the enthusiast market only, yet. Hence Intel can still play this card.
Not to mention, don't forget that AMD is still just a CPU manufacturer in this comparison. I am a researcher in visual cognition and some new technologies I have to use, for instance, run only on Intel. I also run some of the infrastructure of my department in the university and not a single AMD server exists for me to buy from Supermicro, HP, IBM or alike while my university doesn't allow me to use custom built PCs for these due to servicing and contracts.
So Intel still has these places to ensure that people will HAVE to pay them that 200$ premium on occasion.
Why JUST target the mainstream? I can understand their point.
On another word, I cannot wait for threadripper to retire my HEDT Intel and just have a mainstream Intel for those technologies I have to use for research.
I look so forward to a 32 thread PC where I can do all my gaming, virtualization, servers, mining etc. all in one place instead of 3 different computers.
