Mason12 :
release the damn thing already
I think this is the crux of the issue. The price of an unlocked quad Core i7 is quite astronomical given the price of an almost-equivalent Skylake "Pentium" G4400.
Consider this. Take a single G4400 core, use four of those, and unlock the multiplier.
Intel is already playing a dangerous marketing game to keep the sales of the very best chips ticking (pun unintended) along.
Don't get me wrong, an 4.4 ghz and beyond quad or six core Core i7 with hyper threading is extremely beastly, but there are many risk factors at play. For example, if they didn't force-lock the multiplier Core i3 and even Pentium Skylakes can do lots at 2 cores, especially if pushed to 4ghz and above.
Consider this as well - many of our most demanding applications are finally moving to GPU as heralded years ago. Video editing, raytracing, 3D rendering (offline), 3D rendering (gaming), physics calculations, video encoding, video decoding, UI compositing, is all much better on a GPU and that's also where a lot of enthusiast dollars are going.
Intel made a notable effort in GPU but it's still quite far behind.
TL;DR Intel is in a pickle but AMD keeps missing the punches while Intel sits there wide open for the licking.
AndrewJacksonZA :
InvalidError :
DX12 is not a panacea. It won't miraculously enable DX12 games to go massively multi-threaded. Most of the burden is still on the programmers' laps and all DX12 does is loosen the API bottleneck.
Thank you! That's what I keep telling people, especially the AMD fan boys. DX12 & async compute and shading aren't magic wands that developers can wave over their games and Hey Presto! there are performance improvements. It takes the application of intelligence and skill to get results, and if companies aren't willing to do it properly there's a chance that it will turn out poorly (I'm looking at you, Hitman.)
Yes, Microsoft and AMD are helping game developers with DX12 and mGPU issues (I don't know about Nvidia, besides whatever proprietary stuff they're doing in their Gameworks black boxes. Are they helping devs who aren't using GW?) but it still requires effort.
Red vs Blue aside there is a lot of tumult in the PC gaming industry. As you point out the core problem is things like DX12 and Gameworks promising so much but always somehow stumbling at the finishing line, usually because of things like cheap outsourcing of console ports! And the DLC, that's just salt in the wound of how PC gamers are treated.
At this point playing a decent DX11 game that you feel gives you value-for-money is probably what most people strive for. Sure, the GPU driving that is important but at the end of the day the GPU is still hamstrung by game developer/publisher practices.
Overblown Steam reviews aside, "Wait for sale" is unsurprisingly common nowadays.