[bartread]

> We are not average computer users.

Exactly.

The "average" computer user may not notice the difference, but servers running Intel processors are used by businesses, hospitals, government, the military, cloud providers, and on and on. Often these organisations are thrashing this infrastructure to within an inch of its life.

Until fairly recently I was consulting and, no exaggeration, one of my former clients: if their SQL Server host takes a 15%, never mind a 30%, performance hit, they're screwed.

I personally have just been the prime mover in the procurement of a server costing £25k with a 3 year support contract, pretty carefully specced according to performance. And you're telling me I should be OK with that machine taking a 30% performance hit below what we specced? No way.

EDIT: Sorry, original version of last sentence was a bit out of order - the tone of that release got under my skin a bit.