One of these days I'd like to hear the full story on this from Intel or more likely from some ex-employee.
When they started fully putting the iGPU on the CPU die with Sandybridge, that iGPU took about the same space as the CPU cores: They could have produced an 8 core CPU as the desktop standard, just like they could have produced an 4 core CPU for the laptops right there and then?
So why didn't they?
In the Xeon e3 space, where vPro wasn't enough remote control so vendors would always put ASpeed or similar ILO/RSA
solutions on them anyway, an iGPU was sometimes even considered a negative on a server, so selling desktop CHIP derived chips with ECC enabled but the iGPU fused off made sense there, especially if some of these could be harvested from failures in the GPU part.
But they sold these at perhaps $5 discount, if that.
That made $5 the official value of half the chips 'net' area (discounting I/O and PCIe etc. for now).
They other half they sold for $380.
Of course 8 cores on a desktop didn't provide tons of tangible benefits to most desktop users, nor did 8 threads on a laptop 15 years ago (yes, that has changed slightly).
But when they decided against continuing to double the cores in the desktop/laptop space, they also decided that the iGPU should not cost any money whatsoever (or only $5).
Again, why?
Where it becomes really odd are the Iris Plus and Pro chips in the GT3 and GT4 variants, especially because of the extra eDRAM (64 or 128MB), because again these sell at the very same official list price as their ordinary GT2 brethren.
Actually some of them (e.g. the i7-6785R) offered higher clocks than GT2 equivalents (e.g. i7-6700HQ) at identical prices and the extra advantages of being able to use the eDRAM as L4 cache, so quite a few people would have eagerly taken them for desktop builds (btw. the extra 20 Watt TDP are for the iGPU delta: The CPU core parts on both of these CPUs are 45Watts).
A GT3 with 48EU is quite literally twice the size of a GT2 iGPU with 24EU. On a 2 core die with GT3, the CPU part they sell for '$370' almost disappears next to the Iris 550 GPU they sell at '$5' tops.
On a GT4 72EU CPU with four cores the iGPU still takes vastly more space than the CPU and then there is the 128MB of eDRAM--quite a bit of engineering effort--but again they don't charge extra on official list prices.
And that story has continued to Kaby Lake, even if GT4 variants seem to have dropped off the map, because Apple doesn't seem to ask for them any more.
And that's the other issue, that puts this insanity into some perspective: They only way you can buy these CPUs is in an overpriced Mac.
Well, actually there is one other way: Intel NUCs.
But that's it. If you were an OEM NUC vendor, if you wanted to build motherboards for the enthusiast market, evidently Intel would refuse to sell these chips, official prices or not.
Again, I ask: Why?
Why did they fix this odd price at the price of not being able to sell these chips en masse in a cost effective manner?
Must be quite a story...