Intel Plans to Discontinue Multiple CPUs, Incl. Core i5-3450
One of Intel's most popular platforms since the LGA 775 processors has now fully entered into its discontinuation phase, so let's bid farewell to Sandy Bridge.
Intel has announced the discontinuance of its highly popular Sandy Bridge processors. These processors are still among the best selling CPUs, even after the release of Ivy Bridge. They have been mainstays with overclockers and enthusiast builders since its initial release in January 2011. With Ivy Bridge in full swing and Haswell set for early 2013, Intel has started phasing out the Sandy Bridge processors.
Intel has released the schedule for the following processors: Celeron G440, Core i5-2310, i5-2320, i5-2400, i5-2400S, i5-2405S, i5-2500, i5-2500K, i5-2500S, i5-2500T, i7-2600, i7-2600K, i7-2600S and i7-2700K. In addition, Intel has announced the discontinuance of a processor that was just recently released, the Ivy Bridge Core i5-3450 processor.
| Forecasted Key Milestones: | Tray | Boxed |
|---|---|---|
| Product Discontinuance Program Support Begins: | 09/24/2012 | 09/24/2012 |
| Product Discontinuance Demand To Local Intel Rep.: | 12/28/2012 | Not Applicable |
| Finalize Discontinuance Assurance: | 01/25/2013 | Not Applicable |
| Last Corporate Assurance Product Critical Date: | 03/20/2013 | Not Applicable |
| Last Product Discontinuance Order Date: | 03/29/2013 | 03/29/2013 |
| Orders are Non-Cancelable and Non-Returnable After: | 03/29/2013 | 03/29/2013 |
| Last Product Discontinuance Shipment Date: | 09/27/2013 | While Supplies Last |
All the CPUs listed are set to be available for orders through 03/29/2013, and will continue to ship while supplies last (boxed versions) or until 09/27/2013 (tray versions).
Valve, save us!
Blizzard, EA , Activision, needs to die a horrible death. UBIsoft is doing ok, don't shun them.
Thanks for the complete lack of competition in the CPU segment from AMD, Intel can now go back to milking its customers.
An i5 at $400 with Ivy Bridge is a far inferior value to even AMD's CPUs without the core configuration and/or P state altering methods that with CPU/NB frequency overclocking, can bring any FX-81xx CPU up to par with the LGA 1155 i5s and i7s in single threaded performance. Intel isn't stupid and wouldn't do that, especially with CPU performance greater than current i5s making little impact on gaming. Even more so considering that even Phenom II and Bulldozer FX can get a steady ~60FPS in any game today even if they need overclocking to do it and they'll probably do the trick for years to come.
AMD also has laid the plans for great performance jumps with each improvement on Bulldozer just as Intel has done with Core 2 (which is still nearly identical in CPU arch to even Ivy Bridge and probably Haswell, gains are mostly in die shrinks, cache improvements, and die integration) and how AMD did with Athlon 64 up until Bulldozer was launched.
In fact, AMD has greater gains planned than Intel does and has made clear how they'll achieve them.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6201/amd-details-its-3rd-gen-steamroller-architecture
Intel will not raise prices ridiculously. They undoubtedly will rise to the challenge of a revitalized AMD and will probably make improvements in their plans to ensure that they get and stay ahead of AMD should AMD take the lead.
Intel would need to be in an extremely monopolist situation in which anti-trust laws would hammer Intel as they did in the past, except probably even more fiercely because Intel would be a re-peat offender and governments would love to fine Intel to get some money to waste. Intel is still fighting the EU over past fines to this day, so I highly doubt that Intel would risk more such problems, especially if AMD sues them and Intel has to pay AMD as well as paying fines to governments. Intel can be greedy (hey, they're a company, any other company would be out to get as much money as they reasonably can get too), but they're not stupid.
I can only guess that the yields on the silicon are good enough that pretty much all the chips coming out greatly exceed the 3450 specs.
So selling 3450 would just be a sales/marketting ploy to try to capture dead money, even though the product being sold is the same as a higher item.
Might as well at least tell the customers you are giving them the higher item and say "free upgrade" or something like that.
Lets hope their vast variety of CPUs cleans up a little, its a mess to pick an intel cpu and people asking 'hey should I get this or that or maybe that', and gets to be a little more cohesive
I am no AMD fanboy but AMD's namings and brandings of CPUs are actually pretty nice.
Its way more simple to understand AMD than Intel.
Intel gives you a quite a few locked processors within each family (i3, i5, i7) with the first number as their generation and ... honestly, I dont know that does the rest mean. Slight modifications on he multiplier of course, differences on the HD Graphics, but they have many more than AMD has. To my point of view, if you plan your performance gaps correctly, LESS IS MORE. AMD with the FX line has 4, 6 and 8 cores, but only 1 or 2 of each for every generation (currently only BD and PD) and they are all unlocked (locking or unlocking makes Intel some absolutely free earnings, with I find to be a not very ethical or competitive way to go)
Well whatever, probably more than one out there will hate (and call names and all that childish stuff) about the AMD/Intel stupid fanboyism, but bottomline, phasing out old hardware is always good, forces the consumer to remake their idea of 'NEW' every now and then, which drives consumption for newer developments.
Cheers c:
With AMD set to quit competing vs Intel for desktop processors, though, it makes sense that Intel would phase out some of its lower end options. Might as well just set the lowest quad to be the 3570k if AMD has no serious competing products in the market.
This isn't about the low-end market CPUs, just the upper mid-ranged and high-end markets, so how is it surprising?
Excluding the 3450, Intel is simply discontinuing older models. The 3450, as raytseng said, is probably just being dropped because it's a pretty lowly clocked model for this new line and Intel is probably not really getting many Ivy i5 dies that can't do better than the 3450. The chances of AMD having anything to do with this are slim to none.
Considering how much of a commodity computing power has become, this is highly unlikely. Even though AMD may be "far behind" Intel in per-core performance, AMD's chips are still vastly sufficient for most everyday tasks and gaming so if Intel wants to keep selling new CPUs, they have to keep their markup within sane margins.
Also, many people like myself do not feel like we are hurting for faster CPUs even with our venerable Core2Duo/Core2Quad CPUs. With today's Core i3/5/7, the number of people who can make-do with 5-7 years old CPUs is going to become much greater and Intel will have to make a good enough proposition to convince people like me to upgrade even though we do not need it.
Another obstacle to Intel jacking up prices the same way they did around Y2k is that lots of non-(PC-)gamers are doing an increasingly large chunk of their everyday computing on mobile devices. If Intel tried to make people cough up $300 for a low-end CPU, most of those people would give up on owning a PC and use the money for a more powerful smartphone or tablet.
While people may not have too many options for x86-based computing, they do have plenty of options to take their general computing needs elsewhere so Intel cannot afford to drive people away from x86 by turning excessively greedy.