Yea - lack of competition is how Intel can put out new versions of last generation architecture  and charge this much.
 
I'm not feeling any pressure to move on from my Sandy Bridge i7k.
 
 

kitekrazy1
The price rarely drops on those. I doubt they expect high volume sales. The only real point for something like this is bragging rights. Those extra cores would be handy in rendering video.
 
I went away from AMD because of power consumption. This Intel behemoth uses 140 watts. For that kind of dough I'd rather buy an instrument.

As Jim says, they'd be even more handy if they ran a bit faster.

As for power consumption, I remember building a PC around a Pentium D "Presler" processor not long after they were introduced what, ten or so years ago. Quite an improvement on the original Pentium, but that cpu drew something in the region of 130 watts to run just two cores. Keeping that running even remotely quietly was quite a challenge, especially as parts for quiet computing weren't as available as they are now.

What persuaded me to move away from AMD-based PCs a good many years ago was that Intel, who up to that point had been second place in the flat-out speed and speed per buck stakes, started making processors that simply out-performed AMD for not much more money. Also Windows and a lot of software coders began to take advantage of features Intel had and AMD hadn't. I don't like that one manufacturer has an effective cpu and architecture monopoly but that's the world we find ourselves in, for the time being at least.

Jim Roseberry
At $1750, many folks will choose to avoid over-clocking.
At stock speed, you'll find that it's not an improvement over a 5820k running at 4.4GHz (which costs about $1400 less.   
 
As far as video rendering (for something like Cinema 4D):
You'd be better off building a second machine with another 5820k running at 4.4GHz... and using TeamRender.
You'd have 12 physical cores (24 processing threads) running at a much higher clock-speed.

You're correct about a small rendering farm being faster, of course. And with the added bonus that if one machine fails you've hopefully still got the others working and a replacement or additional computer would be (comparatively) quicker and cheaper to obtain/build.

Mind you, a certain "novelist" who specialises in conspiracy-thrillers did write one book that included a huge single computer with some improbable number like a million "hand soldered" pentium processors in it. For sheer power and bragging rights, follow that with your 10 core chip Intel :-)

Cost to performance ratio....if you actually do the "Math"...
I'll take AMD any day.

It's not that AMD CPU's aren't as powerful, it's the fact that 
99% of code is written, and optimized, for the Intel platform.

That is the primary area that gives them "The performance Edge".
AMD must "Mimic" the Intel platform internally and, therefore, 
suffers...it's not a "level" playing field...but AMD certainly does 
a good job...I'll put my system up against an i7 anyday...and,
as I said, probably paid 1/4 of what the i7 person paid...

To be fair with code being written for Intel, part of that is their excellent compiler. Intel has long had the best compiler out there. It generates extremely efficient code, beats out GCC, VC++, etc. AMD never had a compiler which meant they relied on the others to generate good code for their chips. They do now make their own compiler... kinda but it is just a mod of GCC more or less and doesn't do a particularly great job.
 
Software always seems to be AMD's real weak side. Great hardware isn't so great when there isn't the software to back it. You see it with their GPUs as well. For whatever reason they've always had problem with OpenGL on their stuff and it isn't because the hardware somehow can't handle it, it is the software that is the issue.
 
It's sad, because Intel and nVidia need some real competition, but AMD has been slipping badly. If they go under things will suck because then those two have nobody to compete with them and the pricing situation will get even worse.

cclarry
Cost to performance ratio....if you actually do the "Math"...
I'll take AMD any day.

It's not that AMD CPU's aren't as powerful, it's the fact that 
99% of code is written, and optimized, for the Intel platform.

That is the primary area that gives them "The performance Edge".
AMD must "Mimic" the Intel platform internally and, therefore, 
suffers...it's not a "level" playing field...but AMD certainly does 
a good job...I'll put my system up against an i7 anyday...and,
as I said, probably paid 1/4 of what the i7 person paid...

  In some situations that is not the case.  Those AMD FX9 series which clock up to 5ghz probably lose value. Those are 140 watts. Depending on what power glutten video card you put in you have to start looking at PSUs around 750W just to make sure you have some overhead. Any AMD processor around $250 I start looking at Intel.
  The FX 8 series are a great value and the overclock well and around $150.  I have a FX6300 that's a 6 core, uses 90 Watts and it was $100.  I haven't really messed with it as a DAW yet.
 
 
 
 

tlw
You're correct about a small rendering farm being faster, of course. And with the added bonus that if one machine fails you've hopefully still got the others working and a replacement or additional computer would be (comparatively) quicker and cheaper to obtain/build.

Another good thing about a "render farm" or even just a second "rendering machine":
If you've got the machine tied up using 100% CPU across all cores, it's hard to be productive doing anything else with that machine.   
First real render I did with Cinema 4D (and I'm just a novice with it) took over 24 hours (for 30 seconds).
Got to have a dedicated machine/s for that kind of work.