Well, let's just say that I'll be getting the 24 core Threadripper when it releases. AMD is really knocking it out of the park and is gaining a lot of market share. Confidence is up and so are stock prices.
Threadripper is now in it's own little bubble since it seems that Intel is abandoning HDET CPUs. So, it looks like they decided not to try and make a 28 core enthusiast level CPU. Instead the i9 is now the i7 and the i7 is now kind of an i5 with more cores since they will no longer have hyper threading. So, it seems that they're just giving that small niche to AMD and let's be honest, it's not a big money maker for Intel. We'll see how it works for AMD. At least their prices are more reasonable.
I think that price is where Intel is going to have to try and compete. The whole higher IPC and better single core performance arguments only matter to a small group of people. Most people are more concerned with price, to a point. Low cost and high performance is going to be more enticing to the masses. Still, desktop component sales are not a huge segment of the CPU market. Enterprise... servers, is. With the latest earnings and proof that market share is shifting, confidence is growing in AMD and Epyc might be a force to be reckoned with for the Xeon. If AMD undercuts Intel like they've been doing in the consumer market, all while offering a CPU that consumes less power and runs cooler, Intel might need to start worrying.
All of that coupled with the fact that they're having trouble with 10nm, the whole 28 core debacle, and the "firing" of Krzanich, Intel is not in a great position right now and it feels like they're scrambling to try to keep one step ahead in terms of performance, and really that mostly just in games. They've still been playing the game like they don't have any competition. I think the fact that Krzanich didn't see this coming, didn't react accordingly, as well as some other poor decisions like the misleading 28 core presentation and the failure of 10nm was why is he was told to step down. The relationship was merely an excuse to save face.
This coming from someone with like nine computers, all running Intel... for now.