Consumer hardware folks often think about performance envelopes and product lifetime. "We can run this $gadget at $somany GHz and most of them will fail at 4 y

Consumer hardware folks often think about performance envelopes and product lifetime. "We can run this $gadget at $somany GHz and most of them will fail at 4 years, or we can get to 5 years if we reduce the number of gigglehertzes." (Imagine software people gnashing teeth here, but they always do, so ignore them). Then it might turn out that the models were conservative, so the hardware folks could say "Every machine gets an additional 50 gigglehertzes" (note that nobody tells the consumer about that lifetime projection, though). It's not just silicon, of course. It's the nature of hardware to die: Electrolytic caps go dry, or coils buzz themselves open, or electromigration murders a metal run on a chip, or fans seize, or thermal cycling cracks some solder. Memento mori, don't expect your grandchildren to play on your current generation game console.