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Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

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Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#21
post #8

I built a desktop PC almost exactly five years ago. - Intel Core i5 2500K, 3.3 GHz, quad-core (200 USD) - 8B (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz C9 (100 USD) - 120GB 2.5" SSD Intel X25-M G2 (200 USD) - GeForce GTX 460 1GB (200 USD) It's sad that a full five years later, CPU performance/USD has barely moved at all. RAM is half the cost now, SSDs a quarter the cost. Not sure about how GPUs have developed? (Edit: The GTX 960 which tod…

GPUs have developed a lot. I had a high-end card a couple of years ago, and now I can barely run Elite: Dangerous. For the upcoming VR headsets I would definitely need a new GPU. Apple doesn't even have a computer on offer that would be powerful enough for the VR headsets (Oculus/Vive). 8GB RAM is also the bare minimum.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#22
post #8

I built a desktop PC almost exactly five years ago. - Intel Core i5 2500K, 3.3 GHz, quad-core (200 USD) - 8B (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz C9 (100 USD) - 120GB 2.5" SSD Intel X25-M G2 (200 USD) - GeForce GTX 460 1GB (200 USD) It's sad that a full five years later, CPU performance/USD has barely moved at all. RAM is half the cost now, SSDs a quarter the cost. Not sure about how GPUs have developed? (Edit: The GTX 960 which tod…

GPUs are much better now since GTX 460 but that's all you'd need to upgrade in this computer (and some storage) if you wanted to play current AAA games in 1080p or even at 1440p.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#23

Yes there are things that are sad about it. A 5-year-old PC is probably not running a recent version of Windows, and has a higher likelihood of being compromised. And if a person wants a new computer but can't afford it, that is sad too. That said, it was an obviously stupid stat for Schiller to cite. But now we're going to be subjected to a long series of Apple-bashing articles that overreach in the opposite directi…

> A 5-year-old PC is probably not running a recent version of Windows

Windows 7 was released in 2009, and all official owners of Windows 7 were offered the Windows 10 upgrade. I'd be surprised if many PCs that are 5 years old aren't running one of these 2 OSs

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#25

As someone sitting at a nearly 5 year old Macbook Pro, I took the comment as an off hand throwaway. I understand not liking the comment, but this isn't news. A company thinks everyone should be using the latest of their products. Oh no.

There are two articles about this non-story on the first page of HN. What a joke

I think this may be a consequence of HackerNews not having a downvote option for stories. I like the fact that they don't and I wouldn't suggest making the change but it tends to allow stories that have a higher dislike to like ratio to rise because the number of people who have an opinion are very high. This does tend to prevent some filtering of storied I do think should stay up on the top. It would be an interesting experiment to add a downvote to stories button to see what happened, even if that button didn't actually affect where the stories showed in the list at first.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#27

If anything its a fairly strong statement on the ruggedness of the PC platform. I have a 2500k i5 in my old desktop. With a new-ish videocard I play all the newest AAA games at high quality. Its incredible how the x86 world really hasn't had any huge performance bumps and how a Q1 2011 CPU is still competitive. Also, there's the larger narrative of people buying tablets and putting off PC upgrades, so the PC ages. Do…

> I have a 2500k i5 in my old desktop.

> Its incredible how the x86 world really hasn't had any huge performance bumps and how a Q1 2011 CPU is still competitive.

Actually you can have twice as fast desktop CPU today than your 2500k, and not for some number crunching you'll maybe never need (even though it's the most important thing for others) but for such common tasks like compiling the code:

http://techreport.com/r.x/skylake/legacy1-qtbench.gif

Not bad at all for the times when the hardware speedups are getting harder.

But it's good that even the newest games don't expect only the latest CPU.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#28
post #8

I built a desktop PC almost exactly five years ago. - Intel Core i5 2500K, 3.3 GHz, quad-core (200 USD) - 8B (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz C9 (100 USD) - 120GB 2.5" SSD Intel X25-M G2 (200 USD) - GeForce GTX 460 1GB (200 USD) It's sad that a full five years later, CPU performance/USD has barely moved at all. RAM is half the cost now, SSDs a quarter the cost. Not sure about how GPUs have developed? (Edit: The GTX 960 which tod…

You represent the 5% of PC consumers.

The average person goes to Walmart/Bestbuy/BJ's/Staples and spends $475 on some shitbox laptop. The 25th percentile user (ie. millions of people) probably spent $275-325.

That average person who bought that average PC in 2011 has an aging HP/Dell/Asus laptop with a failing battery, $30 Celeron or AMD processor, 2GB memory, integrated graphics, a 500GB 5400rpm disk and integrated graphics.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#29

Actually, my main development tower is about nine years old. And in that time, I've upgraded the processor, doubled the memory, upgraded the hard drive to an SSD, switched the video card twice, upped the number of connected monitors from one to three, and upgraded the OS from 32-bit Vista to 64-bit Windows 10. It was pretty leading edge when I built it, and it's still pretty leading edge today. What's sad is the expe…

Once you replace the motherboard it'll be a true modern day Ship of Theseus
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