IT seems to me a lot more enthusiast desktops are using xeon processors instead of cores, this being one of the reasons people are making the swap- you gain a lot of performance/$$ because loosing integrated graphics saves a fair amount of money. The average user still needs integrated graphics though, so I don't see the core ever going away. Who knows though, they might come out with some enthusiast grade core processors that don't have int graphics.

Hopefully said enthusiasts take the opportunity to now use ECC RAM! It's rather hostile that the consumer lines are fenced out from correctness-promoting technology.