For desktops, sure. But the desktop form factor is dying.

Where it matters is mobile. Even if you have a dedicated graphics processor, it makes sense to have integrated and then to have it auto-switch as needed. This saves on electrical power, reduces heat, and may extend the life of your mobile devices (since heat is damaging).

Ultimately if your want to force-on dedicated 24/7 then normally you CAN, but integrated simply gives you more options if you wish to extend the battery life of your device significantly.

"Dying" is a pet peeve of mine. Usually it's not true.

The desktop form factor is declining significantly in popularity in the mainstream market in favor of laptops and mobile devices. The reason is obvious: laptops and mobiles are portable, and the average user (and even many pro users) do not need that much power in their local device.

It's still very popular in the gamer and professional workstation market, and likely will be for a long time. It's just hard to cram the processing power that gamers, hard-core developers, CAD and simulation users, etc. need into something as small as a laptop without creating what's comically referred to as a "ball burner" or "weenie roaster." I'm sure there's a female equivalent expression but it's even less polite. :P

Intel has many-core options for these machines, but they tend to lag a little behind. If you have deeper pockets and really want power you can always put a high-end GPU in a server board with 2-4 Xeons and put it in a tower case. Now you have a data center node with a 4K monitor on it.

>It's still very popular in the gamer and professional workstation market, and likely will be for a long time. It's just hard to cram the processing power that gamers, hard-core developers, CAD and simulation users, etc. need into something as small as a laptop without creating what's comically referred to as a "ball burner" or "weenie roaster."

Gaming is a niche market mostly for younger ages (people with "game rigs" drops rapidly after a certain age) and most hard-core developers use laptops -- the laptops you see in each and every dev conference are their main boxes, with or without external monitors.

As for CAD and simulation that's too niche to even mention. Of course some people will always have a need for a more powerful form factor. But if CAD users are part of the counter-argument for "it's not dying", then it very much is.

I'm not sure you're right, or at least as of late Supermicro has been selling X[9/10]SAE workstation motherboards, which will take a Xeon or consumer chip and ECC/non-ECC memory. No IPMI, lots of the sorts of slots we want, and onboard sound. The first X9SAE model, with which this message is being drafted, would appear to have been successful enough they repeated it in the next generation:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C216/X9S...

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C220/X10...

They didn't make such a class of boards in the '8' generation.

Not dead yet!

Throughout my career I have enjoyed a desktop as my primary workstation except for an unpleasant 6 month period where I had only a MacBook Pro. I wouldn't be so quick to assume that the laptop is also the primary workstation.

This highlights one of my pet peeves with the integrated versus discrete debate.

The reason why typical GPUS have high power consumption is because they are generally designed for the desktop market where they can.

But you can have low-power discrete GPUs also.

For that matter, there is no reason why you cannot have a low-power discrete GPU, and a high-power discrete GPU.

And again, it's a whole lot easier to dissipate heat being produced in multiple places than all in one hotspot.

Even for a new desktop I want a small, efficient and noiseless form factor.

See I'm not so sure about that. I like the idea of more integrated packages especially because it makes better quality graphics available to more users. This enables better experiences to more users who buy lower end machines.

And anyway, people who need more power know the difference between discrete and integrated chips.

I think this is about pushing the overall baseline experience of users up.

You're not crazy, and I kind of wish there was an option to not include the GPU as well. But the fact of the matter is, it's very difficult to have several very distinct manufacturing methods for this kind of silicon.

Intel has had a lot of problems shrinking the die size recently, so it must be cheaper to just give every processor a GPU that isn't used, than to produce several different dies.

I guess it's just because for most end user needs, the integrated GPU's are becoming powerful enough.

Intel has the Xeon/E/EX/EP lines for you.

.. and HEDT (ie. Haswell-E 6/8-core CPU's). Only problem is that the latest HEDT platform is always at least 1 generation behind what mainstream gets.

What you surrender in process node, you get back (in spades) in increased core count, PCIe lanes, and cache size.

At an absurd price compared to their desktop lines.

And also generally they come out a while after the equivalents with integrated graphics.

This generation is different, but the past 4 generations, the Xeon E3s have launched pretty much simultaneously with their i5/i7 siblings, with the 12x0 versions not having integrated graphics, and usually for a bit less than their equivalent with integrated graphics. You give up on overclockability, but if you're concerned about tdp, you're probably not going to be overclocking anyways.

> You give up on overclockability

So let's see. Xeons are what I want now. Except for absurd prices. And that they aren't available. And that they don't overclock. And... And...

As I said, I wish there was something that was actually vaguely what I wanted (a desktop processor that's <=4 cores, and focused on single-core CPU performance). The Xeon isn't it.

Also:

> if you're concerned about tdp, you're probably not going to be overclocking anyways.

In a desktop overclocking is a large chunk of the reason why one would be concerned about TDP!

> As I said, I wish there was something that was actually vaguely what I wanted (a desktop processor that's <=4 cores, and focused on single-core CPU performance). The Xeon isn't it.

What do you think about i3-4370 ? It seems this processor has very good single-thread performance and is quite affordable as well.

That's the processor I am looking at, as a matter of fact. That is, assuming that the next gen won't have anything better for my needs.

You can buy many models of Haswell and newer without the GPU component, such as k parts (sometimes?) omit it.

Unfortunately, they tend to be released after the other versions. And also, they seem to often be "other parts with the iGPU disabled".

I'm glad they include a passable gpu. My workstation is higher end (maxxed out memory, 6 storage devices, higher end i7, 3 monitors) and is mostly running developer tools, browsers, editors etc as well as some games (eg Civ V). The integrated GPU is all I need for that.

It has the advantage of being very quiet and lower power consumption. I did briefly try an Nvidia card while getting 3 monitors working which was far too noisy (whiny).

From what I can gather, Skylake really only has one major use case -> affordable HTPC.

Whaaaat? Laptops with integrated graphics are the vast, vast majority of personal computer sales. That's its major use case. The one that almost everyone with a laptop has.

Major bias here. That being said, among me and my peers I don't know of anyone who has a (non-apple) laptop without a dedicated graphics chip.

What about laptops, tablets, smartphones, and "internet of things" devices? It is definitely a mobile-first artitecture, no doubt about it, but you're selling it short.