I'm both surprised and disappointed that there is no reasonably priced 8 core with h/t available from Intel. Hoping for something affordable before switching over to 4k in the fall.

I'm both surprised and disappointed that there is no reasonably priced 8 core with h/t available from Intel.

Even before Broadwell:

The top octo-core Haswell-E chip, the Core i7 5960X, will come in at $999, in line with the way Intel have previously priced their Extreme Edition processors.

The other two Haswell-E chips are going to be missing those two extra cores . The $500 for i7 5930K.

I vividly remember the time when there was good reason to buy a new computer like every 2 years, because technology got so much better rapidly. Today, I'd not have to think as much about the cost of buying a new computer, and yet I see less and less reason to upgrade/replace even 5 year old machines. The last real "wow"-effect to me came not from CPUs, but from SSDs, now that all of my computers are equipped with SSDs, I wonder how long it will take until there's enough progress to be seen that it tickles me to buy a new computer.

Some useful slides

The transition to 14nm manufacturing technology took about a year longer than expected due to issues with defect densities. Intel admits that it has run into major problems with 14nm process technology and claims that going forward transitions could become even more difficult.

“The move from 20nm down to 14nm has gotten harder, it has taken us longer than we wanted to,” said Mr. Krzanich. “The technologies are harder, the defects actually what has become very difficult is the pattering itself the amount of interference patterns you have to engineer through to make an image now.”

http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/intel-transitions-to-thinner-manufacturing-technologies-will-get-harder/

Launch dates