Author Topic: state of the PC world (Read 914 times)

The Nstuff · « **on:** August 27, 2009, 09:32:32 PM »

Just wondering what people's opinions are...

Is it me or is the PC industry kinda boring right now?

In the past, we've always had some competition between two rival companies which resulted in awesome new products, at great prices, and blinding speeds at which they leap frog each other.

It just seems we've been in a lull for a while. Possibly due to the recession where companies have less resources to attempt to out-do their competition?

AMD vs Intel. AMD/ATI vs Nvidia. Nvidia vs Intel. It's been a while since I've waited up until midnight waiting for the fresh review of a new CPU or Video Card, or motherboard chipset.

And even if something comes out that is twice as fast as the current generation... would we care? Even a $400 PC is fast enough to do most of what joe schoe wants to do. I don't think we've ever been able to say that. Sure there have been $400 PCs in the past (remember when AOL would subsidize PCs as long as you signed up for a year or two of service?), but they were limited to simple things like solitaire or word processing. Now a $400 PC is perfectly fine with simple photo and video editing tasks.

MS Windows and new games have usually been the driving force for needing faster hardware. But we now have Windows 7 that performs better than the prior version, Vista. Crysis Warhead came out and looked better than the original Crysis and ran better on the same hardware.

I'm running a $100 video card and there's nothing I can't play at full resolution with max settings.

Where do we go from here?

vincegun · « **Reply #1 on:** August 27, 2009, 11:02:33 PM »

Eh.

We've watched for years while budding pc tech has exploded left and right. We all know what's going to happen a year from now. Unless something NEW AND IMPROVED comes along, we can always guesstimate what kind of performance the next line of tech will bring.

Cpu!
Cpu w/math co-processor!
Gpu!
Gpu w/physics co-processor!
Smaller and smaller!
Faster and faster!

All the competition back in the day was new, so it was great. I loved the heyday of Quake3 when Nvidia brought out a driver release, that when used on an optimal system, gave a user a 50% increase in performance. That was crazy. Now... well, components are so beefy that you can run most games at near full detail on launch day (crysis excluded).

Way I see it, it's going to take a new form of media interaction to get people excited again. A company can revamp all the tech they want. They can shove 6 cpu cores AND a powerful gpu on a chip for all I care. The result is still going to be the same. Install a game, find rocket launcher and rocketjump to that great sniping location. Install the new OS that promises new things, but you end up customizing it so you do the same stuff that you've been doing for 2-3 years. Sure, it's fun and all, but it's all about presentation now instead of telling the same ol' story again and again and again.

Case in point, see Sony's and Microsoft's motion sensor gizmos that're being developed for the Ps3 and Xbox. THAT got me excited. THAT makes me want to spend 14 hours on the next BF or CoD game. THAT will make sniping through the windshield of some sort of attack helecopter that's not even rendered on-screen when the rotors are starting to spin up (true story!) truly heart-stopping. The idea of being able to actually "hold" the gun and "react" in a way that's superior to a mouse and keyboard makes me want to camp in line on release day like people did for Episode 1. ....I still remember the news clip showing some guy that had set up a makeshift "office" outside of the movie theater and did all his work and living from there.

So I dunno. Give us truly "new" that'll augment or replace our current ways and you'll see improvements or replacements that'll get everyone out of this.

Until then, we always have the promise of new games with no true LAN supp..... ah, crap.

Agent4054 · « **Reply #2 on:** August 28, 2009, 05:09:08 PM »

Or, you could read up on Tim Sweeny's latest industry prediction:

Quote

Epic Games founder and 3D engine architect Tim Sweeney has presented what he calls "The end of the GPU roadmap", where he essentially says that GPU as we know them are too limited, and predicts that by 2020 developers will switch to a more flexible massively parallel programming model where all fixed functionality (texture filtering, anti-aliasing, rasterization) have been replaced with a software implementation, backed by massive computing power. There's no denying that such a perspective is exciting for software engineers, and T. Sweeney commands a lot of respect

http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2009/08/tim_sweeney_the_end_of_the_gpu_roadmap.html

I Personally don't see that happening quickly if at all, but still an interesting read.

The Shoctor · « **Reply #3 on:** August 28, 2009, 10:51:40 PM »

TL;DR

zx2slow · « **Reply #4 on:** August 29, 2009, 11:02:16 AM »

CPUs have hit a wall, Intel is having issues marketing the core i5 vs i7, other than more cores/smaller cores theirs nothing interesting on the road maps. AMD caught up to core2, and is 12 months away from running with core i7. GPU's are quickly approaching a wall. The only driving force behind any innovation is gaming and video editing now, really anyone with a 7 year old original Pentium 4 @ 2.5GHz and a gig of ram can go online and edit documents like a champ, its gamers and people who encode/edit HD video that can use the extra power.

I'm a hardware nut and to be honest, I dont need to overclock anything anymore, that's just pure hobby at this point because at stock settings I can run everything I can think of at full blast. It was more fun when you actually got more value out of the hobby rather than growing the e-wang. The only thing that has me excited is the new low power stuff (Intel Atom). Integrate a ITX PC into all kinds of fun stuff like HTPC's etc, too bad the ION platform is expensive and Intel isn't playing nice with other vendors.

Back in the day where everyone had 486's running at 66MHz every consumer benefited from increased clock speed and performance, now only a few actually do, the market for the next big thing has shrunk and so has the desire to innovate beyond the point we are currently at. This occurred when hardware overtook the needs of software. AMD & Intel/AMD & NVidia are just in a pissing match where there are no real winners at the end of the day.

We need better software to need better hardware, to get better software we need something better to do. Until then enjoy your My Spacebook and webcam shows.

Dwg115 · « **Reply #5 on:** August 30, 2009, 09:47:11 AM »

well it's only a short time for ATI's 5870 to be released and Nvidia's GT300 so thats kinda exciting. other then that ummm im just trying to save for a corei7 975. Games seem pretty stagnant right now running ok on even my 8800gts.

Agent4054 · « **Reply #6 on:** August 30, 2009, 09:49:17 AM »

The new Rage screenshots look really impressive. I hope that engine pushes my card more. And we also have CryEngine 2 coming still.

nitro237 · « **Reply #7 on:** September 09, 2009, 01:07:13 AM »

seems like the industry has been focusing on software and os's lately. But usb 3.0 is on the way along with pci-e 3.0 all should be good improvements imo.

Author Topic: state of the PC world (Read 914 times)

The Nstuff

state of the PC world

vincegun

Re: state of the PC world

Agent4054

Re: state of the PC world

The Shoctor

Re: state of the PC world

zx2slow

Re: state of the PC world

Dwg115

Re: state of the PC world

Agent4054

Re: state of the PC world

nitro237

Re: state of the PC world