TiggerIsn't mid range where most sales are though, there must be more of them and less of the enthusiasts that pay stupid money for the higher end stuff.

Chrispy_Absolutely. Even among forum users for a hardware enthusiast site like TPU, midrange CPUs outnumber high-end CPUs in the system specs (for those of us that put serious system specs in their sig, guilty as charged!)

TiggerAll of the EU and UK get bummed by tax, the US has it easy.

neatfeatguyTaxes suck all around, regardless of where you live.

Spoiler

In the US, depending on where you live you could have tax rates of all sorts of kind.

In MN, where I live, taxes can vary from county to county and town to town. In Minneapolis alone sales tax is 10%, but in Brooklyn Center (just west of Minneapolis) the sales tax is 7.53%, yet both cities reside in the same county (Hennepin).

Then you have gas tax. The US Government (Federal) takes $0.183 per gallon and depending on state, it can be anywhere from $0.0895 per gallon (Alaska) to $0.519952 per gallon (Washington)....this is just normal unleaded gas. Diesel generally has a different tax rate.

For me, in MN, between State and Federal income tax it'll come out to roughly 12.5% of my yearly earnings.

Then it also depends on State and city, for what your sales tax is on items. It can also vary by State as to what exactly is taxed, in MN for example, clothing does not have taxes on it, but Wisconsin (just about 45 minutes east of where I live in MN) does tax clothing. Sales tax on items varies a lot, city to city; In Minneapolis, the sales tax is 10%. However, one of the neighboring cities (Brooklyn Park, for example) that's connected to Minneapolis has a sales tax of 7.53%.

Don't forget property taxes - these can vary county to county or even city to city. Hennepin county (where Minneapolis is located) the average property tax on a household is around 1.25% of the home's value.

In all, I'd venture to guess that most US residents pay upwards 30-35% of their yearly earnings back to the Government bodies as taxes in some shape or form.
For me, personally, between Income tax and property tax - that comes out to around 20% of my yearly income that just goes straight back out to the Government.

All that aside, taxes suck. They suck because it's never enough for the hungry governments, always wanting to tax more, more, more! Even after they double/triple/quadruple dip on taxing of things, it's still never enough.

Chrispy_Either way, the i9 looks more pointless than ever for Alder Lake, paying a huge premium just to get four more Atom E-cores is bonkers. A high-end flagship desktop doesn't prioritise power-efficiency and paying even $200 for an extra quad-core atom bolted on is terrible value, even if it was something that you'd legitimately need or want in a desktop. At €200 for a quad-core Atom you're being mugged, near enough.

Nope, Alder Lake is all about taming power usage for mobile parts. Alder Lake-S is simply the inevitable desktop chip that shares the architecture and I would be surprised if much or indeed any software can truly exploit this big.LITTLE architecture before Alder Lake is superceded entirely by the next generation(s). Comparisons between the i9 and i7 are going to be very interesting when the launch reviews arrive.

OperandiAlder Lake and "big.LITTLE" isn't just about keeping power in check. The 'LITTLE' cores are more efficient in terms of performance per watt and die space than the 'big' cores so in situations where you have highly parallel workloads a bunch of the smaller cores will out perform the larger performance cores. Inversely where the workload isn't highly parallel using a few of the performance cores is going to provide the best performance.

Vayra86This effectively says its about keeping power in check ;)

Vayra86This effectively says its about keeping power in check ;) This is the only way Intel can get more performance out of their samey cores within the same power budget. Little enables that while being pseudo higher core count for the stuff that needs it. Let's face it, we've all been saying mainstream kinda caps out at 8 physical cores because more just doesn't bring the benefits and even 8 physical cores can royally exceed sensible TDPs.

Makavelilol with those super sonic atom cores you got there :p

Why_Me'21% cumulative tax' <--- that part of the article. That tax is crazy high.

kane nasIn addition to the high price, something else also changed...3.6 but now is 3.2ghz?

AusWolfInteresting... though I don't think it matters much. Intel hasn't been relying on base speeds for quite a while now.

TiggerAll of the EU and UK get bummed by tax, the US has it easy.

Vayra86The drop to base clock which in many high turbo clock CPUs has been substantial, is still going to be substantial. That certainly does matter because this is where Intel meets its TDP spec and makes the CPUs worse in sustained performance to cater to good marketing Ghz.

AusWolfPoint taken. Though personally, I tend to think of it more like a promised minimally achievable all-core clock under worst case scenarios, that with a proper motherboard and cooling (and a slight tweaking in BIOS), you'll never see in real-world usage. Kind of like the base clock on a modern GPU.

For example, my 11700 is specced as a 2.5 GHz base CPU. The only way I can see it running at that speed is by leaving PL values at default, and running Prime95 (even in Cinebench all-core, it does 2.8 GHz). Even then, it maxes out at 60 °C with a £40 Shadow Rock LP, so there's plenty of power headroom there even with this basic cooler.

Vayra86Its really not applicable to unlocked CPUs, which is where all bets are off when it comes to the cooling you then need to keep it performing as you want.

But for locked CPUs, the last ten-fifteen years we've seen Intel stretch the turbo at the expense of base clock, just to keep winning benchmarks, because the sustained performance isn't there like you say... 2.8 Ghz and we're singing praise because its 300 mhz above an abysmal 2.5? Come on. In 2013 the base was 3.4 Ghz or better.

We can explain this in various ways, its not all negative, of course Intel CPUs are pretty flexible on voltage and turbo which has long kept them the efficiency crown, but at the same time they've created a complete mist around what their clocks actually do and they're using it to market the turbo, not the base, while the latter is what most people will see a lot more of. The end sustained performance of last generations has been largely stagnant, which is the true story.

lasThats because most EU contries have free health care, among other things.

However most US prices are without tax because it depends on state, +10% on avg. on top of listing price, yes?

Why_Me

EmerilLIVEThis isn't accurate as there is also local sales tax. In GA total sales tax is typically 8%, in TN it is 10%.

On the EU list, obviously it excludes Switzerland as they are not a member. Their VAT/sales tax is only 7.7%.

Guwapo77As an American living in Germany, I must say you are correct. Then when we buy with the dollar in Germany, the dollar to euro conversion is rough 20% and then add the 19% VAT...it sucks! However, it is easier to buy computer parts here than in the states.

Kohl BaasYou think? We have 27% here...

TheEndIsNearI live near the Canadian border I love the exchange rate. Oh I don't get taxed. I'd say probably 40% of what I make goes towards some kind of tax, property tax is insane in upstate NY. I would take a flat tax or consumption tax over the screwing I take being in the middle class in the U.S. This post would be a couple pages long if I listed every tax i pay and sometimes twice even though it's supposedly illegal. My country whatever it is now is garbage and getting worse. And if the rest of world is worst than what this country has become I have 0 hope. Oh and that 40k is just Federal and State tax.

Chrispy_Absolutely. Even among forum users for a hardware enthusiast site like TPU, midrange CPUs outnumber high-end CPUs in the system specs (for those of us that put serious system specs in their sig, guilty as charged!)