Over the years, Intel has undoubtedly taken control of the entire PC desktop market. They offer specialized platforms to both mainstream and enthusiast consumers. Earlier this year, Intel released their 200-series platform for mainstream consumers and it turned out to be a modest jump in terms of performance and features, something that we have come to expect from Intel during recent years.

While mainstream desktop buyers got their platform cycle refresh earlier this year, enthusiasts are receiving the update in the second quarter. In 2014, Intel released X99 and it was a big leap in terms of features compared to X79. It was the first platform to feature support for DDR4 memory, something that mainstream consumers would get a whole year later. It was also the first platform that pushed the core count on Intel processors from 6 to 10. While expensive, the competitors had no answer to Intel’s enthusiast platform which gave Intel another market to take control over.