So, do you remember the Kaby Lake-X processors that launched along side the Skylake-X parts back on June 19, 2017. These are (were) 14nm+ processors built into the LGA2066 socket as a part of the X299 chipset launch. They shipped as the Core i7-7740X (4-core, 8-thread) and Core i5-7640X (4-core, 4-thread) and at the time I had this to say about them:
These are very…interesting CPUs. They do not offer new features compared to the Core i7-7700K or Core i5-7600K, but run at barely higher clocks (100 MHz on the base on the 7740X for example). They don’t see more PCIe integration, they don’t have larger caches. They are basically the same Kaby Lake design we have come to know previously but in a new package and prepped for a new set of motherboards. Is that an advantage? It’s hard to know yet, but in general, the X299 motherboard market is going to be more expensive than the Z270 motherboard market, meaning you are going to pay more in total to own this CPU. Does the added TDP give us more thermal headroom for overclocking? Maybe the new heat spreader? I’m not sure and Intel hasn’t said yet. But what they have stated is that they wanted to offer the option to consumers that wanted the “absolute fastest gaming processor” with the best clock speeds at a reasonable price.
Even in June, the value and positioning of the Kaby Lake-X processor was a mystery. Well Intel has fixed all of that today by announced end-of-life for both of those processors.
Intel's language in the release is kind of interesting: "Market demand for the products listed in the "Products Affected/Intel Ordering Codes" tables below have shifted to other Intel products." Yeah, I bet it has.
These were parts without a real audience, and their creation was a consistent mystery to the enthusiast market Intel targeted. For many, it was a honest sign that Intel has lost track of what the PC market was asking for. At least the short lifespan of the pair indicates that Intel got the message loud and clear.
If you are so inclined, you can still pick up the 7740X and 7640X for a while longer. Here is the table of Kaby Lake-X's remaining life.
You can read the entire Intel document here if you'd like.
It always seemed like a
It always seemed like a marketing stunt, to say, hey we have value options to.
So the question Ihave is, when these chips don’t sell because of all the expensive-ness involved, how does Intel ever get rid of them?
I’ve never really looked into this topic, maybe a “male-bag” video question?
Somebody must have gotten
Somebody must have gotten some of the brown acid when they came up with this crap
Look for more consumer Intel
Look for more consumer Intel variants to get x86ed in the coming business Quarters as AMD’s Epyc server sales force Intel’s Bread and Butter server margins lower. Intel will be forced to look for ways to reduce fixed costs and any other costs with Intel’s lower margin consumer SKUs the first to get discontinued with more cuts on the way.
Intel will not touch any of its higher margin server SKUs at first but even there with those server margins having to be lowered to keep Epyc from taking even more server market share, Intel will have to continue to cut costs and margins or Epyc’s price/performance advantage will continue to gain market share.
Intel is a very high overhead business compared to AMD with AMD actually able earn 11 cents per share on just 36% gross margins currently. So Intel will be in serious trouble if its much needed high gross margins(63% currently) begin to slide into the 55% and lower range.
Wait for even more reduction of Intel’s really segemented consumer offerings that will need to be paired down in an effort for Intel to reduce its costs over the next several business quarters. It’s crunch time for Intel now that Epyc is in the server market doing actual server production workloads. Intel has a lot of very high fixed costs that will have to be reduced as Intel’s High margins take a slide and those expensive chip fabs eat billions in upkeep and R&D costs and that’s not something that AMD needs to worry about, or IBM/Nvidia and others who are fabless.
IBM and Nvidia via those OpenPower Power9s/Nvidia Volta SKUs will also be taking a share of the HPC market away from Intel on the high side, with AMD’s Epyc price/performance coming up from the bottom and combining to create a greater pressure on Intel’s high margin server business revenues.
The Fat will have to go on the Chipzilla and that will be a painfull process as things will have to be cut back to the dino-bone!