It could be a niche for AMD to fill, but enthusiasts aren't a big market, however if half the people around on forums switched to AMD rigs and liked them, an increased user base, increased sales and increased market share is still good. As always, having all the enthusiasts on board with a particular company tends to migrate out, everyone who asks them to fix a PC, if they prefer AMD, recommend AMD. AMD still suck in retail presense though. People need a new comp, even if you tell them to get AMD, they go on the Dell website and find almost only Intel stuff.
Sound like Intel are going back to non BGA the gen after Broadwell... but potentially only temporarily, it all sounds very odd.
I do wonder if they are going BGA because they are expecting some serious issues with packaging, either due to the way they are putting new chips together, maybe with stacking and want more control over it.
Though there is obviously a potential financial gain if they just start shipping Intel made mobo's with chips fused on and also force more full system sales rather than someone getting a cheap dual core chip, then years later getting a quad core version rather than new everything for a higher price.
AMD/Intel and the games industry need to get together and blow off MS. They need to ditch X86, together come up with a new, streamlined set of instructions, reduce the bloat and waste and wasteful high power usage. Get a new OS, probably Linux based, with a gaming API that game dev's will all agree to jump on instantly.
One of the biggest problems with windows its its immense bloat, painfully old code, supporting ridiculously old hardware, and x86, it all prevents moving fowards quickly. ARM has the biggest advantage of new OS, slimline OS's using them, not ridiculously old software/eco systems to support and being highly efficient. Desktops are currently so much more powerful, but with insanely bloated OS and MS/Intel not really PUSHING the industry forward, you still get companies pushing out software with slow ass x87 code, which should long since be dead. Fact is, software companies could and should all move with the times, and are doing so in terms of tablets and arm with no problem, if x86 was killed off, the software industry would move on, if Intel/AMD even MS moved on with new stuff, everyone would support whatever was new, because they'd have to.
