I dont buy that argument one bit, And I never will Yes phone have grown in power, and cause of that there battery life is pure trash, I dont buy them for anything other then to be cell phone, In terms of raw power they are not they same and will never be unless they come up with some huge break threw on batteries. Desktops are going no where
I don't think desktops will die out, there will always be a market for them. Gamers/HTPC users/office workers...whatever.
Are you kidding? Let's take laptops for a second: Ultrabooks: That's right, the average is 6.6 hours of straight internet browsing at the same processing power that you see on an average desktop (you know, the kind that most people buy from Dell). Now let's take powerhouse laptops (that can play games on high graphics) for example: That's 4.6 hours of straight internet browsing. So don't kid us about raw power being the limiting factor, because if you want "RAW POWER!!!" then you can plug in any of those laptops and play most games at a high level of detail and still push great FPS: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6351/the-new-razer-blade-thoroughly-reviewed/6 And just look at how long the iPhone 5 with its extremely high performing CPU can last, now just wait till Haswell and Cover Trail come along.
HTPC builders (i.e.- those using desktop components) are the niche of the niche market. And with the likes of Google TV, Apple TV, set top boxes and cheap Android units like the Mk808, this market has shrunk even further. Offices are all buying laptops these days, everyone I know that works at any major company told me that when their company are buying new equipment, they all get laptops, and sometimes in addition tablets. It's just that more efficient. All you have left are gamers, of which most are on consoles and mobile gaming. Desktop gaming is only a few tens of millions, and most don't use top end hardware to begin with. Just look at the Steam survey results, the top percentage of users just use the HD3000 iGPU: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey Now look at how many people have an enthusiast class GPU: Not even 2/3 of a percent. And look at the CPU results: So don't kid yourself that most people buy themselves "gaming systems", most just use whatever system they have on hand.
who cares how long you can browse on a gaming laptop? the question should be how long you can game on them not plugged into the wall
Let's say even two hours, that's two hours of gaming on the move longer than you would have been able to do with your desktop sitting in your room plugged into your wall. And like I said before, you can always plug it in... anywhere.
Not in my experience, I deal with several commercial clients that each have over 200 PC's and they all run desktops, we also deal with Universities and Technical Colleges that use desktops in their computer labs. I never said most people buy gaming systems - nothing of the sort. What I said was there will always be a market for desktops - please pay attention to what I write. I have never considered steam surveys to be representative of the enthusiast crowd....just look how many steam users are still running XP - says it all really. Take cellphones - which have been around for years, but you don't seriously think call centre employees speak to you on a cellphone do you? Same principle....
Don't know what's this argument about, didn't read, but here I'll have to cut you off. This just shows that many Steam users do use new hardware. Stats showing high numbers of Intel HD graphics mean that many users have new Sandy/Ivy CPUs. It does not, however, mean that they are using Intel HD IGP. Keep in mind that Steam detects only primary video card, which in this case is Intel HD. I'm pretty sure that most of these Sandy/Ivy users have mid or high-end current or older gen video cards, which are fit for gaming. As far as GTX 680 goes, anyone interested in hardware knows that it's a very overpriced card. GTX 670 offers same performance @ 100$ lower price tag. GTX 500 cards make up a fair amount of stats. Also, what about CPUs? High clock doesn't mean it's a gaming CPU FFS. Not everyone is an overclocker, you know...
I see what you are saying, but even so I disagree and am saying that the market is going to dry up further. Again, let's take your example, education. It used to be that schools used to order dozens to a hundred desktops every x amount of years for their labs and faculty staff. Now I'm just going to take my local education system for example. Every single student is going to be getting a tablet (probably an iPad) to replace every single textbook, [teacher given] notebook and regular computer facilities. Every single school will have open WIFI as well. Furthermore, except for some old desktops being used for the secretary, all the faculty will have Laptops and Tablets. Even in your example of a computer lab, that was 200 desktops for a University size order. Let's say they even put in five orders a year like that, that's still a measly 1,000 desktops. Now let's times that by even 50 Universities (I'm grossly exaggerating the number upwards just to show you how disproportionate the market is), it is still only 50,000 desktops for the entire University system; that's barely a footnote. And as I mentioned, most businesses that I know are all moving to mobile as it offers higher productivity (allows the worker to bring home the work to continue it) for a price no higher for the most part than a desktop. And that's just today in 2012, fast forward just two years and you can imagine the niche the desktop is becoming.
In regards to the CPU's, I just wanted to show how many people even go for the likes of an i5 2500k (and above) or AMD FX class of CPU, the answer is very few, even less when you count in the fact that the 3.3GHz class also includes some older Pentiums, etc. And this was just from Steam where there is an above average change of more powerful hardware being used. If I could get numbers from HP, Dell, etc, the numbers would be even bleaker.
Again, you can argue that all is fine with the desktop, etc. But you can't argue with the fact that the signs are on the wall about this shift amongst the major players [Intel - Haswell, Clover Trail, etc]. Hell, even Anand said so recently: Let's face it, no one wants to be tied down if they don't have to.
Wow, this is really bad news. I hope this doesn't ultimately become an Intel monopoly where they can rape us even more for their products than they already do.
I agree that mobile devices are becoming more and more popular. Hey my parents, friends all have laptops and/or Android phones or ipads etc..... Yeah I'd hate to even think what that would be like.
Exactly. I just offered to donate to my friend my $110 Z68 board that had a bad BIOS flash (all it needs is a simple $10 BIOS chip) if he wanted to build an ATX desktop but he instead chose to pay more and get a laptop. Hey, I hate the fact that my desktop is going to be a dying breed after all the work I put into it, but there is no point in living in denial.
using laptop is pain over desktop tbh. i'd hate to work with a damn laptop -.- meh.... desktop for work and gaming, laptop to take with me, tablet for smaller crap like reading manga at bed and stuff but really hmm sad to see amd doing so bad. hopefully they can recover >_>
Shame to you having this abomination of an avatar.A lot of great men lost their lives from those filth you are avataring. You are a kiddo or a little minion selling himself for pennies or just a bent mind having something "cool" to show to others. Maybe it is a joke for you,but I assure you it is not,speaking from my personal experience which I will not discuss.
Whenever they are unable to compete, they just say that they shifted their focus away from high-end. This is far from true. Their mid-range/low-end processors are large, expensive to build CPUs that should normally be the high-end models; they are labeled mainstream because they perform no better than that and they sell with little to no profit, or even at a loss. This is not an AMD strategy shift. It is just that they can't do better than that.