Intel Broadwell CPUs May Not Arrive on Desktop PCs – Haswell Refresh Planned For Q2 2014

Intel will release their latest Broadwell CPUs next year for mobile market and while there have been a few leaks which revealed that the chip may arrive on the desktop PC, its Fudzilla that has confirmed that the processor may not be available on the desktop platform.

Intel Broadwell CPUs May Not Arrive on Desktop PCs – Chipzilla Adopts Two-Year Desktop Upgrade Path

We know that Intel has planned two platforms for launch next year, the Haswell Refresh platform which would feature optimized Haswell cores and the Broadwell platform which would be available on mobile and probably the desktop market too. But the latest reports from Fudzilla reveal that the Broadwell CPUs would not arrive on desktop PCs since Intel is aiming for a two-year release cycle for new chips on the desktop platform. This means that rather than getting new CPUs and motherboards to upgrade each year, Intel would launch a new platform for desktop every two years including a refresh platform that would be an optimized and improved version of their new chips.

I do want to point out the 9-series power supply rating and configuration chart that was leaked a while ago by VR-Zone that mentioned the new chipset would support Broadwell and it doesn’t makes sense that why would Intel impose new power ratings in a upcoming chipset that is supposed to feature the same refreshed processor architecture (Haswell). This certainly needs to be cleared out since it doesn’t makes any sense to have both the Haswell refresh and Broadwell chips out on a new chipset at the same time.

While Intel’s switch to a two year roadmap may sound grim to the desktop enthusiasts, i think its a more sensible approach since looking at the performance gains we get through a year over year upgrade path aka TickTock which are starting to get less impressive each year, its better to wait out a few years before releasing a totally new platform. It is mentioned in Intel’s own charts that an average desktop PC is 4 years old meaning that it takes atleast 4 years before PC users upgrade to a new platform. Both the mainstream and high-end desktop platforms from Intel would see this two year upgrade path with both Skylake and Haswell-E available to users by 2015 and their successors in 2017.