I wish desktop mainboards would more widely adopt an approach similar to Optimus. I would be happy if my two 660s would turn off in Desktop mode, with the IGP taking over. I'd especially love to see that in the high end chipsets. Best between energy saving and performance without compromise in games.

Take a look at AMD zerocore. Although Optimus would be nice to have in desktops, there is the issue of having to have vendor specific drivers like is common with laptops.

You would pay more for a i5-i7 without IGP. Most cost is research cost, and new chips which are used only by a few users, become expensive.

Literally speaking, that is true - an i5 or an i7 without a GPU is often a Xeon and those are more expensive. Intel could probably drop the price of each of their processors by 20% and they'd still make more than enough money to cover these research costs. Honestly, I think what costs them more money is creating the factories to manufacture CPUs. As you continue to shrink fab sizes and increase your production count, it becomes harder to maintain an ideal clean-room, and a clean-room becomes more crucial. This becomes preposterously expensive. The only competition intel has right now is ARM in the low-power market and AMD's IGPs. People have low expectations of intel's IGPs and I don't think most people REALLY care if their phone or tablet runs on x86 - intel only THINKS they should be competing with ARM but they really don't have a need to. Most software still can't take advantage of an i7 from 2010. All this being said, in actuality, intel has very little competition and therefore aren't under much pressure to be doing any research.

Literally speaking, that is true - an i5 or an i7 without a GPU is often a Xeon and those are more expensive. Intel could probably drop the price of each of their processors by 20% and they'd still make more than enough money to cover these research costs. Honestly, I think what costs them more money is creating the factories to manufacture CPUs. As you continue to shrink fab sizes and increase your production count, it becomes harder to maintain an ideal clean-room, and a clean-room becomes more crucial. This becomes preposterously expensive. The only competition intel has right now is ARM in the low-power market and AMD's IGPs. People have low expectations of intel's IGPs and I don't think most people REALLY care if their phone or tablet runs on x86 - intel only THINKS they should be competing with ARM but they really don't have a need to. Most software still can't take advantage of an i7 from 2010. All this being said, in actuality, intel has very little competition and therefore aren't under much pressure to be doing any research.

Wait, why don't you think Intel should be competing with ARM? All projections show that mobile computing revenue is going to go way further than traditional. Intel needs to get it's processors running @ sub 2w if it want's to be competitive there at all. And it's not like Intel is just stopping, they increased R&D spending by 65% in 5 years. I mean I agree that Intel has very little competition on the desktop and it's probably why you see them focusing on iGP, I also agree that manufacturing is probably their biggest but I definitely think ARM is a very real problem for Intel -- and I don't think it's going to just be a mobile problem for long.

Wait, why don't you think Intel should be competing with ARM? All projections show that mobile computing revenue is going to go way further than traditional. Intel needs to get it's processors running @ sub 2w if it want's to be competitive there at all. And it's not like Intel is just stopping, they increased R&D spending by 65% in 5 years.

It's not that I think intel shouldn't be competing with ARM, I just don't think they really need to. Intel is trying way too hard to make x86 a 1-size-fits-all, and no architecture SHOULD be like that or else you end up sacrificing something important. I don't think ARM should ever enter the desktop market (well, maybe office PCs would be ok) because the architecture isn't suitable, assuming compatibility weren't a factor. In terms of performance-per-watt, an i7 is actually far superior to any ARM processor. But the more you simplify x86, the less power efficient it becomes. Intel doesn't NEED to dominate every market that involves a processor. We like them because of their raw performance. So far, every Intel CPU that attempted to get into highly mobile platforms has been a disappointment (though sometimes it is the software's fault). Atom, Quark, and Celeron are all names that many tech-savvy people cringe at. Anyway, it is going to take a lot more than getting a passively cooled sub-2W CPU for intel to compete with ARM. They need a price point people will agree with and they have to make sure that they don't sacrifice too much to reach such a low TDP. ARM has a lot of architectural advantages that make it NATURALLY power efficient, such as its highly limited instruction set and its strong ability to prevent leaky transistors when idle. Only Intel thinks Intel must compete with ARM. x86 doesn't HAVE to dominate every market.