What things can Intel, AMD, Nvidia and Microsoft do to make PC desktop better?

cbn

Lifer
Mar 27, 2009
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List any suggestions you have for Intel, AMD, Nvidia and Microsoftto to make PC desktop better.

Here are some changes I would like to see happen:

Update 8/30/2015: For Microsoft to address the various privacy concerns folks have about Windows 10 in the next update of the Operating System.

1.) For the BGA or low power SoC based boards (Kabini, Socket AM1, Braswell) I would like to see Microsoft offer Windows with Bing as a low cost option for the motherboard OEMs.

2.) Microsoft to offer a Multi-user Server OS for the home. (See post #149 for additional comments ----> http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37618162&postcount=149 )

3.) Intel to offer 2C/4T Skylake desktop Pentium in the $65 to $70 price range.

4.) Intel to offer high clocked consumer version of Xeon-D in 6C/12T and 8C/16T variants.

5.) AMD to offer 4C/8T Zen APU with small iGPU.

6.) Multi-user virtualization capability for iGPUs and more video cards.

7.) Microsoft to allow Windows phone (with Intel Broxton, etc) to dock to a larger screen use classic x86 desktop apps in the same way the Windows 8.1 tablets can do today. (ie, non Universal Apps).
 
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Phynaz

Lifer
Mar 13, 2006
10,140
819
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What's the financial motivation for the companies to give you these things?
 

turtile

Senior member
Aug 19, 2014
614
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Well, giving consumers a reason to buy a desktop PC in the first place would be a good place to start.

I mean, a laptop can do everything for regular users leaving desktops to only gamers and professionals.

They need to make desktops small and lightweight and give them the ability to be controlled by all electronic devices in the house and the other way around. If the desktop could simply become a DVR for 4-5 TVs, send all of your media back and forth for phones/tablets etc. it might make normal consumers want to buy one.
 

Phynaz

Lifer
Mar 13, 2006
10,140
819
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What's the financial motivation to get people to buy desktops?

The desktop PC is dead. Get used to it.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,226
9,990
126
If the desktop could simply become a DVR for 4-5 TVs, send all of your media back and forth for phones/tablets etc. it might make normal consumers want to buy one.

And then MS turns around and kills off Media Center in Win10.

It's almost like... MS doesn't want people to buy desktop PCs. Win10 is just a ruse, to get developers to write "Universal Apps", and then once they start appearing, MS is going to transition the majority installed base of Windows' users to a phone / tablet platform, to compete with Android, and leave traditional desktop users out to dry.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,226
9,990
126
Here are some changes I would like to see happen:

1.) For the BGA or low power SoC based boards (Kabini, Socket AM1, Braswell) I would like to see Microsoft offer Windows with Bing as a low cost option for the motherboard OEMs.
All very good suggestions, but this is potentially the most important. In order to combat SteamOS and the growing Linux gaming community, MS should offer OEM versions of Windows to consumers, bundled with the mobo, at a similar discount to what they offer branded OEMs.

Really, it would be the same thing, MS would be selling bulk OEM keys to mobo makers as well as branded whole-PC makers, and they would be locked to that particular brand and model of mobo. It just wouldn't come pre-installed on a PC.

Such an arrangement (for $50 or less, much less in developing countries), would combat the spread of Linux. Then again, we would be complaining on having to pay a "Windows Tax" on mobo purchases then, which might not be a good thing either.

I guess, it kind of depends on the size of the enthusiast DIY market versus the OEM pre-built market, whether that market is large enough to bother, and how much Linux is a threat to that market.

But seeing MS offer Win10 "for free" to Win7 / 8 / 8.1 users, makes me think that they might just consider something like this.
 

2is

Diamond Member
Apr 8, 2012
4,281
131
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Well, giving consumers a reason to buy a desktop PC in the first place would be a good place to start.

I mean, a laptop can do everything for regular users leaving desktops to only gamers and professionals.

They need to make desktops small and lightweight and give them the ability to be controlled by all electronic devices in the house and the other way around. If the desktop could simply become a DVR for 4-5 TVs, send all of your media back and forth for phones/tablets etc. it might make normal consumers want to buy one.

People aren't buying desktops not because they're too expensive, or they aren't powerful enough or because a more affordable home server doesn't exist.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,226
9,990
126
The desktop PC is dead. Get used to it.

It would be interesting to "crunch the numbers", and see if home NAS devices are growing, at the same time Windows' desktops are shrinking. That might signal that MS made a serious misstep by dropping their "Windows Home Server" line of OS products, and that these NAS makers, with ever more powerful boxes and software features, are growing to fill the gap in demand, for centralized home storage, backup, and possibly media streaming / transcoding.
 

cbn

Lifer
Mar 27, 2009
12,968
221
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People aren't buying desktops not because they're too expensive, or they aren't powerful enough or because a more affordable home server doesn't exist.

People do buy lots of "desktops' (a stationary box filled with CPU and GPU in it), but these "desktops" are in the form of gaming consoles.

So lowering the price of the PC hardware is one way to shift interest away from consoles and back to PC. Unfortunately MS has conflict of interest and thus I think we will see a home server type arrangement instead.

Basically, this MS home server, would be like a souped up Xbox (with advanced non-gaming features) that could handle multi-users at a time (instead of one, like Xbox One)
 

2is

Diamond Member
Apr 8, 2012
4,281
131
106
People do buy lots of "desktops' (a stationary box filled with CPU and GPU in it), but these "desktops" are in the form of gaming consoles.

Erm... Well if you want to consider desktops and consoles one in the same (they aren't but if that's how you want to look at them) In that case there's no reason to do anything differently since those are already selling well.
 

cbn

Lifer
Mar 27, 2009
12,968
221
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Some info on the iGPU virtualization capability of the Broadwell E3 Xeon:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9339/xeon-e31200-v4-launch-only-with-gpu-integrated

Another use are virtual desktops that use PCI device passthrough to give the virtual machine (VM) full access to the GPU. That way of working is very attractive for an IT manager: it enables centralized management of graphical workstation in a secure datacenter.

But it is should be noted that this kind of virtualization technology comes with drawbacks. First of all, there is only one VM that gets access to the GPU: one VM literally owns the GPU (unlike NVIDIA's GRID technology). Secondly you add network latency, something that many graphical designers will not like as adds lag compared to the situation where they are working on a workstation with a beefy OpenGL card.

So right now, only one VM gets access to the GPU.

P.S. Regarding Network latency, I can't comment on performance using virtualization. However, my experience streaming Skyrim and Team Fortress 2 (using Steam) from another PC using Gigabit Ethernet has been excellent. This provided the PC being streamed to has H.264 decode.
 
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zir_blazer

Golden Member
Jun 6, 2013
1,159
400
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The statement made above applies to just plain boring VGA Passthrough which doesn't really need specific GPU support, since you're handing a PCI device to a VM. Even an ancient Voodoo worked with Passthrough (An user in this forum tried that).
Besides, Intel has been developing XenGT for quite some time, to allow full GPU virtualization with Haswell (And Broadwell) GPU. The project is going on for around 2 years, the main issue is that it is still a damn Preview. It should get more coverage if they tried to push their changes to the reelevant projects (Linux kernel, QEMU, and Xen), since it would be easier to deploy.
 

tynopik

Diamond Member
Aug 10, 2004
5,245
500
126
1. make the ui usable with just a touch screen, no keyboard or mouse
2. shrink it down to be much smaller
3. add a battery to make it usable on the go
4. add a cell radio
 

NTMBK

Lifer
Nov 14, 2011
10,208
4,940
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To me, the killer feature of a desktop is its user interface. A nice 24" monitor, a good quality keyboard and mouse, and good quality speakers. It blows a laptop out of the water on all 4 fronts. And you can sit comfortably at a proper desk, instead of hunched over a laptop. If I want to get things done, desktop wins hands down.

To be honest, people aren't buying desktops because their old ones still work just fine. For the average user, why replace anything with a Core 2 Duo or newer? It still runs Office, Facebook, and Youtube just fine. And they don't fall apart after 3 years like a laptop.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,226
9,990
126
To be honest, people aren't buying desktops because their old ones still work just fine. For the average user, why replace anything with a Core 2 Duo or newer? It still runs Office, Facebook, and Youtube just fine. And they don't fall apart after 3 years like a laptop.

Seems likely to be true. (I agree with the bolded too, at least for under $400 consumer laptops.)
 

BSim500

Golden Member
Jun 5, 2013
1,480
216
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The desktop may be "dead" from a publisher's "damn, people have figured out their year's old 'good enough' software and light to moderate productivity needs doesn't radically change upon each new hardware & OS upgrade and the era of mass annual Windows / Office upgrades are over" POV, but it sure isn't for the many non dumbed down users. People haven't stopped using desktops, they just don't upgrade as often so desktop usage is often under-represented in new desktop / software sales. More people have offloaded light usage (Youtube, etc) onto tablet's, but then you get silly hysterical overreactions of "the desktop is dead" articles as predictable as "the death of PC gaming" churned out annually since 1992 getting in the way of common sense...

Microsoft still haven't figured out just because people own mobile devices doesn't mean they also want their desktop PC's to be 24-32" immobile tablet's... Or that Apple & Google have made a success of mobile tablet based "app stores" directly from mobility being a core requirement and the mobile centric UI being a side effect of that requirement, not just "If we give every desktop app a a mobile UI makeover then stuff them in a store hub it will have exactly the same success". They simply don't seem to grasp mobile apps premium comes from being mobile, not simply having a certain design style which coincides with small screen sizes. Or that ergonomics / expected application core functionality of an 4-8" screen aren't the same as a 24-32" screen even within the same UI design style. Their thinking really is all over the place with this stuff. In fact, trying to explain what was wrong to the Windows 8 UI design team was like giving a drunk a Kindle, telling him "it's something to do with books", then watching him trying to use it as a physical bookmark for a paperback...
 
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Sequences

Member
Nov 27, 2012
124
0
76
It's almost like... MS doesn't want people to buy desktop PCs. Win10 is just a ruse, to get developers to write "Universal Apps", and then once they start appearing, MS is going to transition the majority installed base of Windows' users to a phone / tablet platform, to compete with Android, and leave traditional desktop users out to dry.

Go read about what MS has done recently. I don't think their multi-billion dollar writedown of Nokia section and their personnel cuts from mobile is bringing confidence to that department.

You want better environment, it is up to the other software developers, not just the HW providers.
 

ShintaiDK

Lifer
Apr 22, 2012
20,378
145
106
The desktop is just a dead dinosaur.

And even if you look on sales, think about every time a NUC or similar sells. Its counted as a desktop even tho it contains a mobile U chip.
 

mrmt

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2012
3,974
0
76
Ditching Metro would be a good start. I enjoy working on the Mac, but I can't stand the goddamn Metro interface, even with a touch screen.
 

JustMe21

Senior member
Sep 8, 2011
324
49
91
Windows with Bing with motherboards for $10 extra would be nice to have. If Desktops had more mobile type options, such as InstantGo and Nvidia's Optimus technology and a GPU socket on a small ITX form factor, that would appeal to people. Also, pack it all into a case roughly the size of a console.
 

know of fence

Senior member
May 28, 2009
555
2
71
Frame-sync for intel, and a standard interface for 4K that can do more than 60Hz.

We are basically approaching the VR singularity, when this happens even the stupid appearance counscious people with their tablets, touch screens and num-pad-less chicklet keyboards, are going to realize that their overpriced aluminum junk is found lacking. Well at least after like 3 upgrades to the newer model, the thought may occur that buying slow mobile hardware is kind of irrational. Hey, that's what it took for me :biggrin:.

Eventually we are going to see 14nm stuff available for everyone, the current stagnation is due to the complete lack of process progress when it comes to graphics (4th year of 28nm GCN) and the 3rd disappointing generation in a row of Intel CPUs that can barely outperform their predecessor.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,226
9,990
126
The desktop is just a dead dinosaur.
So much so, that many of us use one every day.
And even if you look on sales, think about every time a NUC or similar sells. Its counted as a desktop even tho it contains a mobile U chip.
And why shouldn't it? It may be smaller than ATX, but it's still a desktop.
 

cytg111

Lifer
Mar 17, 2008
23,043
12,712
136
3D, VR, Augmented Reality, holographics and AI. All very good reasons to have a powerhouse in the house.
 

StrangerGuy

Diamond Member
May 9, 2004
8,443
124
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Nothing really, especially not when the PC industry is one dysfunctional family with tons of conflicts of interest within itself. Just ask how long it took Intel to natively support USB3, for starters.