Just look at those Intel Bean Counters looking for new ways to segementate Intel’s already dizzying array of thoroughly segementated offerings. Look at the cost($$$$) of extra PCIe lanes from Intel, the cost($$$$) of RAID keys to enable features, and the extre costs($$$$) for each little smallest level of feature difference among those many many confusing, and intentionally designed that way, Intel Segementated Product offerings!

It’s Intel doing its Intel.Product.Segementator Best to take back with one hand what Intel was forced by AMD’s Zen competition to give to the users in the first place in the form of price decreases. And Intel will continue to fruther segement its numerous and growing larger and larger line of further and fruther segemented product offerings. So expect even more Linus Facepalms, sitting on that curb in the drizzle, wondering when Intel will ever cease its Madness!

*BUYING
*BUYING

It’s just Intel, trying to
It’s just Intel, trying to force a full upgrade to people, motherboard and CPU, trying to maintain it’s profit margins and it’s high revenues. So Coffee will not work on 200 series, Kaby will not work on 300, and if you want an 8 core model next year, you will need a motherboard with Z390 chipset also.

Another thing they are achieving with this, is to flood the market with cheap second hand Skylake and Kabylake motherboard+cpu combos. People who had a top 1151 configuration, can’t just move to a newer motherboard and keep their “good enough” CPU, or move to a new cpu and keep their hi end 200 series motherboard.

While this will hurt them a little, it will hurt AMD much more, because many are still loyal to Intel’s brand. I was reading posts from people who are angry about all this, saying how they will avoid Coffee Lake and get a cheap Kaby Lake this year and wait for Ice Lake next year. Angry with Intel, but at the same time loyal to the bone.

It’s probably easier to come out with “fresh” boards that can command higher prices and be guaranteed to work with 8000-series CPUs out of the box. (not needing an old Pentium to flash old stock Z270 etc.)

Intel is of course sacrificing some upgrade sales potential for those already on Z270, but I guess adding ~$40 of guaranteed revenue to every 8000-series CPU through the chipset is going to minimize some of the pain. ;}

Yeah, the Zen architecture

Yeah, the Zen architecture looks quite interesting, especially if you want a lot of PCIe lanes (and thus a target demographic for Threadripper).

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