How is intel dictating the game though? Ignoring the fact they already offer options that aren't available for any amd platform at the moment, what's unrealistic about increased options/performance costing more money? More sata connections, sli vs non sli, additional power phases - they're all tiered improvements. It's been this way with any product group. Back in the day of cassette tape stereos, dual cassette options were more expensive. A cd player vs one without was more expensive. Moving from a single cd to a multi disc changer was even more expensive yet. 7.1 sound systems cost more than 5.1 cost more than 2.1.
That's sort of like asking why I have to buy a car with the premium package to get all power options, the upgraded alloy wheels, power roof and larger engine. Should it be the only option? Just one motherboard that has all features at one price and a single board for 1151 from each manufacturer. No choice to opt for a lesser expensive board if someone doesn't need to overclock or doesn't need sli. Having to buy a $200-300 board just to run an i3 with integrated graphics and a single ssd.
If anything they give a huge amount of options to suit a wide variety of people's needs. Nothing is dictated. It's almost as if people are upset if they don't get the super omg ftw motherboard for the price of a budget board.
Amd is currently in a crunch as far as profits. They have one of two options having a product struggling to compete in the current market. Try and sell it for more money and make the cost/performance ratio so poor that nothing sells, or sell at least something and live with it. If zen does in fact compete, it won't be at the heavily discounted prices of fx hardware. It will correlate with the pricing of competing products and they'll (wisely) gather as much profit as they can to offset their current situation. They're not going to do that making pennies.
Being realistic, yes the z170 performance boards are a bit pricey. They're brand new and all new tech costs a premium. Amd is missing out on this since by the time they incorporate these features intel will have made them available for well over a year. Ddr4 is only available on intel boards. For awhile now on their enthusiast boards and now expanding to the mainstream platform. Intel is making ddr4 more obtainable despite being the only company of the two to have ddr4 at all. If people want m.2 or multiple m.2 drives, again intel is their only choice.
M.2 is also new and not widely in use, much less multiple m.2 drives. Ddr4 isn't as widely used at the moment and doesn't offer a huge performance gain being limited to dual channel in lga1151. Many of the premium features aren't common daily drivers for a lot of people so if they don't need these features they can save money either going am3+ or going lga1150. The cutting edge enthusiasts who would use all this new tech are going to pay for the option to be on the cutting edge like they always have. Just like the first 4k monitors were a premium, the first led lcd monitors and so on.
Did people trash Asus when they came out with one of the first 4k monitors at 60hz? It was priced at $3500, while acer has 4k monitors at $800 right now. That's a serious premium. So big of a difference that now people could pick up the acer and with the price difference afford an sli pc to play the games at 4k to go with it. For some reason when the first to come out with features is intel and it's selling at a premium because it's still brand new, people hate on them while having an understanding that any other newly released cutting edge tech is going to put a significant dent in the wallet.
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