Intel Corp (INTC)

[Unkwn]

ou think the reason why Intel CPU performance has only improved incrementally as of late is because of lack of competition?

No, not only. It certainly is much harder now to improve CPU single core performance by architectural measures. Though, it's possible and multibillion company Intel could achieve more if they had to. Yes, AMD can't nearly keep up anymore, but that is also due to their much smaller size. They just can't spent the effort Intel can for improvements.

The performance increases are happening via more cores ...

Yeah, but that lunch has been eaten. On a desktop, you won't benefit from more than four cores in almost all standard tasks (other than transcoding or gaming stuff). So, single core performance matters, it actually matters a lot. Besides, Intel is capable of increasing the clock frequencies. They are approaching 5 GHz already with their highest end CPUs - they just charge you a lot for it.