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I'm a gamer in 2019 and I'm using an i5 2500k processor from 2011. It works well enough for the games I run. I might upgrade if I scrounge up $700 for cpu/mb/ra

I'm a gamer in 2019 and I'm using an i5 2500k processor from 2011. It works well enough for the games I run. I might upgrade if I scrounge up $700 for cpu/mb/ram. The point I'm making is that the processor doesn't matter much for gaming. An older computer can easily outperform a new computer if it has better components where it matters for gaming and casual use (SSD and GPU)

ffwd 7y ago
Yeah good point, I shouldn't have mentioned gaming. I guess what I'm looking for is the general desktop workstation situation 10-20 years down the line, rather than gaming specifically. A workstation for visual arts, music, streaming, linux, programming, whatever, and especially if there will be a point in the 2020s or 30s where you'll have long pauses between cpu releases if they don't improve as fast etc.
- xbmcuser 7y ago
  I think the 10-20 years down the line will see us move back to dumb terminals with servers over the internet. Microsoft has already moved to subscriptions for Windows and office i.e corporate use. And all the major companies are looking at game streaming i.e home use. Education is moving towards chromebooks i.e education. The rest of the uses for PC's like media consumption has already moved to smart devices and smart phone/tablets. So apart from enthusiasts with money to burn on PC's the actual use case for PC's will be gone hence the current form of PC's will be gone.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    Well, when you can put computing power on par with a whole cloud in a single box, which you can nowadays, the equation changes again. Cloud is limited by Amdahl scaling like everyone else, but distances and latencies between nodes are higher than in a single box. So instead you should think of time sharing like in the ancient days of supercomputers. Most tasks do not require neither massive parallelism of a cloud or cluster nor computational resources of a supercomputer. If it's the question of ownership or price... Why not make it free? (Ignore this junk, make libreoffice etc. better.) Just think of it as a PC that gets smaller. You cannot quite go super small unless you replace input and output devices. That will require more understanding of our own sensorium.
- qes 7y ago
  I'm a developer. I don't spare much expense on my work computer - for example, I sit in front of six QHD IPS panels. I also started on a 286 where you were woefully behind the times if your CPU was more than about a year old. I last upgraded my CPU when it was nearing 6 years old, and I could barely tell the difference. My current CPU is nearing 5 years old, and if it wasn't for some of the enticing stuff AMD's recently put out, a CPU update wouldn't even be on my mind at all yet - in fact I was surprised to recently notice it had been more than 4 years since I last bought a workstation CPU. I expect I'll buy 2 workstation CPU updates between now and 2030, 3 at most. and even that would take something special to drop in the early-to-middle of my normal timeline.
Causality1 7y ago
Yeah. My six year old 4670K is over half as fast as a brand new three hundred dollar CPU even without its significant overclock. It's hard to exaggerate how unimpressive the processor gains of the last five years have been.

ffwd 7y ago

Yeah good point, I shouldn't have mentioned gaming. I guess what I'm looking for is the general desktop workstation situation 10-20 years down the line, rather than gaming specifically. A workstation for visual arts, music, streaming, linux, programming, whatever, and especially if there will be a point in the 2020s or 30s where you'll have long pauses between cpu releases if they don't improve as fast etc.

xbmcuser 7y ago
I think the 10-20 years down the line will see us move back to dumb terminals with servers over the internet. Microsoft has already moved to subscriptions for Windows and office i.e corporate use. And all the major companies are looking at game streaming i.e home use. Education is moving towards chromebooks i.e education. The rest of the uses for PC's like media consumption has already moved to smart devices and smart phone/tablets. So apart from enthusiasts with money to burn on PC's the actual use case for PC's will be gone hence the current form of PC's will be gone.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  Well, when you can put computing power on par with a whole cloud in a single box, which you can nowadays, the equation changes again. Cloud is limited by Amdahl scaling like everyone else, but distances and latencies between nodes are higher than in a single box. So instead you should think of time sharing like in the ancient days of supercomputers. Most tasks do not require neither massive parallelism of a cloud or cluster nor computational resources of a supercomputer. If it's the question of ownership or price... Why not make it free? (Ignore this junk, make libreoffice etc. better.) Just think of it as a PC that gets smaller. You cannot quite go super small unless you replace input and output devices. That will require more understanding of our own sensorium.
qes 7y ago
I'm a developer. I don't spare much expense on my work computer - for example, I sit in front of six QHD IPS panels. I also started on a 286 where you were woefully behind the times if your CPU was more than about a year old. I last upgraded my CPU when it was nearing 6 years old, and I could barely tell the difference. My current CPU is nearing 5 years old, and if it wasn't for some of the enticing stuff AMD's recently put out, a CPU update wouldn't even be on my mind at all yet - in fact I was surprised to recently notice it had been more than 4 years since I last bought a workstation CPU. I expect I'll buy 2 workstation CPU updates between now and 2030, 3 at most. and even that would take something special to drop in the early-to-middle of my normal timeline.

Causality1 7y ago

Yeah. My six year old 4670K is over half as fast as a brand new three hundred dollar CPU even without its significant overclock. It's hard to exaggerate how unimpressive the processor gains of the last five years have been.