Good. x86 baggage is such an insignificant die-cost, the loss of decades worth of backwards compatibility would suck.

Intel may end up with the better product... Just like AMD currently has the better price performance parts with the 7700XT and 7800XT, nVidia will still demolish them in sales.

It's the Apple effect... Android generally has the better product technically, but Apple still outsells any singular Android device, Samsung Galaxy included.

Brand can be everything.

Yeah, I'm still pissed that all my 32-bit iOS apps/games don't run anymore on newer iOS-devices.

They still run great on my iPad Air 1... but on borrowed time.

Don't be so happy yet. They way have stopped that now because it was coming only from them, but now that the x86 group is a thing and AMD and others are on board, Intel may try to bring that again as a global initiative.

While you're right that Nvidia's brand is powerful enough to still win some people, people in the mid and low end market tend to be more conscious about the money they're spending.

So yeah, Nvidia is the GPU brand, but if the B580/570 is close or on par in performance and much cheaper, the chance of them going the cheaper route is higher now that their drivers don't suck. And that possibility goes up even more with the B770/750, because those cards will likely be faster than the 5060, but will also have twice the VRAM and maybe even be the same price.

Low-end doesn't follow the same rules than high-end does.

The die cost is probably not the only cost though. There's probably research and development costs involved too, because any time you create anything do, someone has to make sure it supports all the legacy stuff too, and that the legacy stuff also works. And someone has to design how it fits into the big picture. There's probably documentation and other things involved too. It's probably not a terrible cost altogether, but it probably adds up, and I can see why Intel would like to get rid of all the legacy stuff.

They don't really go back and update the entire chip by hand anymore, they instead focus on a few libraries, which avoids most of that.
In AMD's case... They will update parts of the CCD but leave the large IoD chip the same.

However... If we go back 20 years ago when AMD extended the x86 ISA to x64, Fred Weber who is AMD's ex CTO claimed that the cost for x86 support was negligible, that the x86 decoder was less than 10% of the chip, that was with AMD's Hammer... And every time we got a transistor boost and a die-shrink, that actually decreases in percentage terms.

AMD Hammer was based on 130nm and had 106~ million transistors.
So x86 compatibility would have been around 10~ million transistors.

Current Ryzen chips have upwards of 16,630 million transistors. (CCD and IOD in the 9950X) - Not including the 3D cache which has about 5~ billion transistors.

And you start to see that x86 itself isn't the issue.

The issue starts to creep in when you wish to built tiny, ultra low-power cores like Intel Atom... Which are chips that are still around the 150~ million transistor mark.
I.E. Intels Quad Core Cheery Trail Z8750 is still 176~ million transistors.

And this is where another approach *could* be taken to cut the fat and reduce the baggage to compete with ARM, but for desktops, laptops and servers... It's a non-issue.

Radeon RX 8800 XT reference GPU design might have just been leaked by AMD

https://videocardz.com/newz/radeon-rx-8000-reference-gpu-might-have-just-been-leaked-by-amd

Take it with a grain of salt since it's obviously Ai Generated

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 16 GB GPU First To Launch In January 2025, Followed By Flagship RTX 5090 32 GB GPU

https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5080-16-gb-gpu-first-to-launch-in-january-2025-followed-by-flagship-rtx-5090-32-gb-gpu/

GeForce RTX 5090 gaming PC priced €1,200 higher than same-spec RTX 5080 system

https://videocardz.com/newz/geforce-rtx-5090-gaming-pc-priced-e1200-higher-than-same-spec-rtx-5080-system

Rumour and all that

MSI Claw 8/7 AI+ gaming handhelds with Core Ultra 200V set for January 15th US launch

https://videocardz.com/newz/msi-claw-8-7-ai-gaming-handhelds-with-core-ultra-200v-set-for-january-15th-us-lunch

Intel’s “Core Ultra 200S” CPUs Witnesses Significant Performance Improvement After New Optimizations, Memory & Overclocking Support Now In a Much Better State

https://wccftech.com/intels-core-ultra-200s-cpus-witnesses-significant-performance-improvement-after-new-optimizations/

Any recommendations for a Mesh WiFi system?

Some deals on Steam on games soon to be removed 

Boris and the Dark Survival - will be removed and replaced with Boris and the Dark Survival, owners of it will receive the upgrade for free
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1236990/Boris_and_the_Dark_Survival/

Sol Survivor - will be removed December 31
https://store.steampowered.com/app/45000/Sol_Survivor/

Retrovirus - will be removed December 31
https://store.steampowered.com/app/227800/Retrovirus/

Akari and the Abyss - will be removed after the Winter sale
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2275710/Akari_and_the_Abyss/