Overclocking used to provide a more significant benefit, back when a PC was obsolete in 3 years, and every new program would only run on the latest hardware. If overclocking brought a 30% performance improvement, that would be the equivalent of saving several hundred dollars. ie you could wait one additional year before replacing the PC.
That argument no longer holds. PC's today can do every regular task demanded of them. My 6 year old dual-core PC is just as fast as my new IB build at everyday tasks - internet, Microsoft office etc. Overclocking brings diminishing returns now (who cares if Powerpoint slides open 1/100 second faster?)
AMD has realized this paradigm shift, and is switching from 'more speed' to 'more efficient'. Intel has gone this way with IB. Overclock enthusiasts have not made the paradigm shift, and thus you see the growing disconnect between their wishes and the new products being released.
Desktop PC's will probably soon be replaced by low-power mobile devices that are as just as fast. That's where the real push is now. CPU OC enthusiasts will become a small minority, since no 'must have' programs require more speed.
GPU's have not reached this stage yet. Games continue to be released that force modern GPU's to their knees, so overclocking definitely still helps there (an OC'd 7850 will easily beat a stock 7870, at $100 cheaper, and it makes a real difference in many games)
This is an enthusiast site. Try comparing that 6 year old computer to a new, high end computer in some serious workloads and see how poorly it stacks up. AMD didn't realize any shift, they simply failed to compete with Intel in performance for too long, so they are shifting their focus (I think it's a huge mistake because the modular architecture is great, AMD simply refuses to implement it properly for some ridiculous reason). Intel's Ivy Bridge is a tick in their tick-tock strategy and Haswell, the tock, will be a big performance leap over it. Ivy was only supposed to be a slightly improved CPU that uses less power so that Intel could get experience with the 22nm node before they make their next architecture on it. Intel isn't switching anywhere. Overcocking doesn't have any more diminishing returns than it did before, it's problem with Ivy is that Intel used poor quality thermal paste instead of fluxless solder. If not for that, Ivy would be far better than Sandy Bridge for overclocking. Heck, just using high quality paste instead of low quality paste would be enough to let Ivy beat Sandy by a little.
Desktops aren't getting replaced by laptops. Desktops have and probably always would have far greater performance for the money than a laptop and their maximum performance for a generation has and probably always will be higher than that of a laptop. Furthermore, the CPU and such are not what change performance of programs and files opening, the storage does that. Using an SSD versus a hard drive (or even a new SSD versus an old SSD) shows huge differences. As file size gets larger, storage performance will need to keep up in order to continue to provide adequate performance.
Faster hardware will always have huge benefits for high performance computing, a huge market and a big part of the enthusiasts. Content creation and editing has and always will need faster and faster machines to keep up. For many people, programs such as Photoshop are must have programs and I guarantee that they would not be able to do their job nearly as well on a low end machine as they would on a high end machine and as more performance heavy filters and larger files become part of the job, faster and faster hardware becomes necessary. You see those huge prices on high end hardware? Those are there because many people need that hardware in order to do what they do be it a hobby or a job.
For gaming, there are many high end gamers who constantly need faster hardware to keep playing games at the high settings that they like. You mention graphics as not reaching a state of being enough yet. Did you even consider the fact that faster and faster CPUs are needed for high end gaming? Nothing slower than a stock Sandy/Ivy i5 can handle even the middle of the high end graphics, let alone the upper high end graphics systems. This will only get worse as time goes on and more intensive games are released.
When it comes to regular people doing light things such as web browsing and watching video playback, then sure, better and better computers are not necessary nearly as often. However, even then, with GPU acceleration and other regular things coming about in web browsing and such, having a modern system is still always getting more and more important for many people. Try watching even 1080p video playback on a computer with a GMA 950 as it's GPU (a common on-board GPU made from 2005 to 2008 or thereabouts) and see how it goes.
Not fair for a consumer.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram