Yep, in 2014 Intel's Haswell architecture was a banger. It was one of those occasional node+design intersections which yields a CPU with an unusually long usefu

Yep, in 2014 Intel's Haswell architecture was a banger. It was one of those occasional node+design intersections which yields a CPU with an unusually long useful lifespan due to a combination of Haswell being stronger than a typical gen and the many generations that followed being decidedly 'meh'. In fact, I still run a Haswell i5 in a well-optimized, slightly overclocked retro gaming system (with a more modern SSD and GFX card). About a year ago I looked into what practical benefits I'd gain if I upgraded the CPU and mobo to a more recent (but still used) spec from eBay. Using it mainly for retro game emulation and virtual pinball, I assessed single core performance and no CPU/mobo upgrade looked potentially compelling in real-world performance until at least 2020-ish - which is pretty crazy. Even then, one of the primary benefits would be access to NVME drives. It reminded me how much Intel under-performed and, more broadly, how the end of Moore's Law and Dennard Scaling combined around roughly 2010-ish to end the 30+ year 'Golden Era' of scaling that gave us computers which often roughly doubled performance across a broad range of applications which you could feel in everyday use - AND at >30% lower price - every three years or so. Nowadays 8% to 15% performance uplift across mainstream applications at the same price is considered good and people are delighted if the performance is >15% OR if the price for the same performance drops >15%. If a generation delivers both >15% performance AND >15% lower price it would be stop-the-presses newsworthy. Kind of sad how our far our expectations have fallen compared to 1995-2005 when >30% perf at <30% price was considered baseline and >50% at <50% price was good and ~double perf at around half price was "great deal, time to upgrade again boys!".