The secondary features (PCIe, ECC) and tertiary features (chiplets) wouldn't have mattered if Intel had delivered 10nm in 2015.
It's a harsh truth, but nodes completely dominate the value equation. It's nearly impossible to punch up even a single node -- just look at consumer GPUs, where NVidia, the king of hustle, pulled out all the stops, all the power budget, packed all the extra features, and leaned harder than ever on all their incumbent advantage, and still they can barely punch up a single node. Note that even as they shopped around in the consumer space, NVidia still opted to pay the TSMC piper for their server offerings. The node makes the king.
It's a harsh truth, but nodes completely dominate the value equation. It's nearly impossible to punch up even a single node -- just look at consumer GPUs, where NVidia, the king of hustle, pulled out all the stops, all the power budget, packed all the extra features, and leaned harder than ever on all their incumbent advantage, and still they can barely punch up a single node. Note that even as they shopped around in the consumer space, NVidia still opted to pay the TSMC piper for their server offerings. The node makes the king.