The AnandTech Podcast: Episode 22

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• Kevin G - Sunday, July 21, 2013 - link

  Duskin. My guess is that its name is Zoe.

• robE - Sunday, July 21, 2013 - link

  Dustin has to relax or something :D saying "Aaaaa, aaaaa" every couple of sec can be annoying :( that aside, nice talk...hope there will be more desktop talks :D

• JlHADJOE - Sunday, July 21, 2013 - link

  +1 that. Dustin sounded rather nervous, and aside from the aaahs and uhms was really eating some of his words. Should be better by the next podcast.

• Coup27 - Sunday, July 21, 2013 - link

  I actually thought the audio was quite bad on this one. Dustin's audio was substantially louder and more punchier than Anand's and as a result you had to set a volume where either Dustin was a little too loud or Anand a little too quiet. Compare that to episode 23 and Anand and Brian virtually sounded like they were sitting next to each other which was great. I do appreciate that you have different recording locations and probably different microphones, but I'm sure the audio could have been harmonised a bit better than this episode.
  
  Please take my criticism as constructive.

• Graham. - Sunday, July 21, 2013 - link

  Agreed. Listened in the car and when the volume was adjusted to Anand's voice, whenever Dustin talked it was piercingly loud. Adjusted to Dustin's voice I had to struggle to hear Anand. Was never a problem in previous podcasts, just this one. Nothing some minor mixing wouldn't fix.

• klagermkii - Sunday, July 21, 2013 - link

  I think the whole death-of-the-enthusiast market is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. I know over the past decade I've generally waited for things to get 2x-4x faster on the CPU front before I upgraded, and that meant pretty much every two to three years. When I go onto Bench now and compare my four year old Lynnfield with a current top of the line processor I'm looking at a 50% improvement. There's just no motivation to upgrade, and this is going to further reinforce the signs Intel are seeing that they don't need to worry about the desktop market. If you bought a PC two years ago there's absolutely no reason to upgrade, and when last did we see that?
  
  People can talk about how the chipsets have improved, and yes there are more SATA 6Gbps and USB 3 ports, but that's what we can sort out with PCI Express cards, not with rebuilding PCs.
  
  Anand mentioned how the desktop shows the future of the laptop, and the laptop shows the future of mobile devices. Well right now the desktop future appears to have stalled and we're really just waiting for the laptops to ram into the back of it. My rMBP is probably the closest I've been to a desktop CPU, with the same number of cores and not significantly lower clock speed, and it just makes it harder to justify putting money into the desktop when I can just throw it at the laptop.
  
  I fully support the direction that Intel has taken with focusing on power consumption. I just wish they could keep the laptop - desktop separation relevant by using that power budget. Take four of their $200 chips, create some kind of single-socket MCM and sell it for $1000 where they put four of their current CPUs onto one megapackage with 16 effective cores. I'd at least have a reason to upgrade with that.

• jebo - Sunday, July 21, 2013 - link

  Excellent podcast. Great discussion.

• amrkal - Monday, July 22, 2013 - link

  Love the podcast. Just one complaint: the audio quality leaves something to be desired. It's not bad per se, but it's also not as good as the audio quality found in shows in Dan Benjamin's 5by5 network. Check out Amplified, for example. Its audio is really crisp and would love to have the same on your podcast. Thank you.

• Sabresiberian - Monday, July 22, 2013 - link

  I'm not as disappointed with Haswell as some; for some reason I wasn't expecting more of an increase in performance where it matters to me (games), and I generally think of -E as being the overclocking enthusiast platform. There are of course issues with -E, but I think the main issues are being addressed in the Ivy Bridge-E version, and certainly will be in Haswell-E.
  
  That being said, I absolutely think it is important for Intel to hear that most enthusiasts are not happy with what they are doing. It isn't like AMD is totally dead and we can't go back to using their CPUs, and AMD could well catch up with them anyway, performance-wise. Intel needs to understand that while the lower end of desktop computing, the kind of person that really doesn't need much of any kind of computer anyway, is moving to mobile because it is cool and cheaper, the desktop is alive and well at the other end, and enthusiasts do drive desktop purchases in a larger way than what they spend their own money on.
  
  I'm not interested in smaller form factors, will buy something that uses less power but not if it won't do the same job, and really want more performance for driving the games I play at 120Hz across 3 2560x1440 (or better) displays. CPU performance of course isn't all that effects those things, but it does effect me, and more is better, still. Considering how much of the programming universe is still single-threaded, it also effects the user experience for pretty much everyone in one way or another.

• Krysto - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link

  "At some point" Microsoft might be worried about cannibalization? It was the whole reason why they didn't port WP8 to tablets, and instead went with a more crippled version of Windows 8 (Windows RT), so they can charge $90 to OEM's for it, instead of $10.
  
  But this has backfired anyway, because $90 licenses, and the more expensive hardware needed to pair with Windows RT, which makes such tablets very uncompetitive with Android tablets, and even iPads (which tend to have better specs at the same price, too - no "retina" in Surface RT? Really, Microsoft?).