There is a difference between people buying for better performance, versus people buying an inferior product out of ignorance.
I doubt I am alone here tired of Your endless rants about Intel, we get it is personal etc.
But as owner of both 10900K and 3950x and soon 5950x, I realize that MOST ( as in 9X% ) of target desktop market don't really need 16 or 10 cores. 6 or 8 are plenty. Even on these forums not everyone is buying 5950X or 5900x, 5600X is fine. Just because fastest 16C exist does not mean everyone needs or can afford it.
Also just because 5600X exists, does not mean Intel is not selling a ton of 10400F, 10700 or even 10850K when pricing is right. Some of the deals for those CPUs were a steal considering inflated pricing of the market atm.
From a technical point of view, RKL is a step backwards... a step that I have not seen from any company in my entire 15+ years working in high-speed digital semiconductor design.
Wrong. C2D was "technical" step back in clock versus P4, yet it was irrelevant as C2D was faster. Bulldozer was just horrible pile of "technical" crap versus Phenom. Oracle 20nm chips were disaster.
Compared to those we expect RKL to advance in IPC while keeping clocks around the same. Power consumption will be ~Skylake bad, news at eleven?
If the chips will be priced right versus AMD (and SKL derivatives) and performance is near ZEN3 levels, the chips will fly from the shelves as long as they are available as they will provide viable alternative to 6-8C market.