Well, PCs performance has never been beaten by tablets and phones.
The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones
291–300 of 401 posts
Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why cook when you can eat chips and order pizza? Probably because it's better for you and because cooking has cultural significance that goes beyond simply replenishing calories. People who cheerfully proclaim that PCs are dead forger that PCs aren't just devices, they also attained a certain level of cultural significance. IF the death of PCs also means the death of PC culture (which involves things like game moddin…
You took the cooking analogy too far. Programming a hello world app isn't any better for you than writing the great american novel.
It is if the future of humans on Earth is predominated by computer programming skills, even if basic.
Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones
#293Well I did, used my last one for almost 8 years, got this one a few months ago, don't have to upgrade as often; I still have to upgrade. It's lighter, quieter, generally more powerful, more RAM, more disk space, better graphics. These are all the reasons I ever upgraded just not as often.
Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not like it's constrained to the web either. I had a bit of an epiphany about the state of desktop Windows a few years ago when for a hobby project I wrote a UI using only Win32 and C and no external dependencies. Maybe it took longer to write than it should have but I was really shocked at how the thing ran so much faster and smoother than just about any UI I was using on that machine. It dawned on me that all…
This is believable, but I'd like to dig a little deeper. Do you remember which Windows apps you were comparing yours against? And on what version of Windows?
This was Windows 7, I am pretty sure with dwm disabled, and it was comparing (albeit informally) against every Windows app I used at the time.
I know that some newer frameworks take advantage of GPU features (actually I used to work as a dev in the Windows org) but guess what, GDI is still faster.
Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
Particularly with GPUs. I wouldn't touch something like Nvidia's Titan unless I just had gobs of money lying around.
Well yeah, something like the Titan has no price / performance at all. Usually the best valuation is around $200, ie, an r7 270x or a 760. And if you want a premium card, 280x / 770 are both devouring modern titles. Anything past that is "I want the best there is right now, screw the cost".
Just picked up an r9 280x ERRRRRRRR... Asus CUII 7970 from Fry's for $279
Happily ran BF4 beta on High/Ultra 2x MSAA at 1080P.
Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones
#296A few things lead to this including the obvious tablet/mobile disruption. PC Gaming decline due to console gaming and mobile and Moore's law and processor speed.
I used to update for gaming and 3d almost entirely.
I also used to update more frequently for processor speed/memory that were major improvements.
If we were getting huge memory advances or processor speeds still there would be more reason to upgrade. Mobile is also somewhat of a reset and doing the same rise now.
Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the thing...most games are still not multi-threaded well, and single threaded performance hasn't gone up more than maybe 20-30%, they just tacked on more cores.
That's actually not true. Modern high end CPUs are multiple times faster than the CPUs from 2008. The architecture changed too, not just the frequency.
I have an i7 920, purchased in December 2008. Please point out which consumer processors (No $3000 xeons) have "multiple times" greater single threaded performance.
Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
~$1,000 sounds quite cheap for a gaming machine which can still run any modern game at highest settings. I remember I built mine at about the same time (2010) for $2500, top notch video card, fastest cpu, lots of ram, but its 2013 now and I can not say that it runs any modern game at highest settings.
2010? If you got an i5-2500K and a 580, you'd probably get a PC that came in around $1200-$1300. If you could reuse components like cases, hard drives, PSUs etc. you could easily get that in under $1000. That should still run 90% of modern games maxed out at 1080p, with the exceptions being pretty much just Metro 2033 and Planetside 2. If you're doing multi-monitor or >1080p resolutions, then you might need to get so…
Im running a 2500k at 4.3ish with a CM 912+ in push/pull and happily devour pretty much anything. I don't foresee a CPU upgrade anytime soon. I had a pair of 6950 (the older 1 gigs) and just put in a 7970 and another 4GB of RAM for less than 400 bucks and only did that because BF4 is a resource monster. Everything else was fine.
Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very true, but the vast majority of computer users aren't pushing the limits of their systems, and I think that's what the author is getting at. If you look at the market as a whole, the need for more powerful computers isn't nearly as big as it used to be.
And those users are overwhelmingly the ones that tablets suit just fine. That's the problem in this type of "PCs are fine, people just don't have to upgrade" argument. (And I've made it myself, before I really worked it through and took stock of just how far tablets have already come.) The use cases satisfied by an old PC could all be satisfied just as well by today's tablets. Yes, the software support for keyboards,…
I love the idea of device docks and I would very much like to see things go that way.
I think docks have some hurdles to jump in the consumer market, though. They're unsexy - I think most people associate them with boring enterprise computers and boring enterprise work, and they tend to be big and ugly. They're expensive too, considering that most people view them as nothing but plastic with a few connectors and wires inside.
If someone can figure out how to jump those hurdles, though, and make docks sexy to the consumer market, beige-box sales will plummet. Make them smaller, easier, cheaper. Make them less proprietary - at the very least, a Company XYZ consumer dock should be compatible with all/most of of Company XYZ's portable offerings. Make them wireless and automatic (OK, I realize this conflicts with "cheaper")! Let me drop my Win8 tablet on my desk and immediately have it display to my dual monitors and let me use it with my mouse, keyboard, printer, big external drive and wired network connection. Let me press a button and have it display to my TV or play to my big speakers. Have your cake and eat it too.
I mention Win8 specifically because the whole idea of it is that it's a tablet and a desktop OS in one. Why on earth is there no Microsoft-produced drop-in docking solution for the Surface so it can actually be both?! The consumer potential is crazy - got a crusty old desktop PC laying around? Toss it, keep the peripherals, buy a Surface+dock and you've got a new tablet/laptop and desktop. You can "dock" a Surface as-is with two cables (a micro HDMI and a USB hub with all your desktop peripherals wired in), but that leaves out wired network (maybe important), certain peripherals like speakers (maybe important), and power (critical), and even two cables is two too many.
Most people who say they need a PC don't need a beige box, they need a keyboard, mouse and monitors on a desk where they can work. The form factor of the box that the CPU, disk and memory come in doesn't matter when you're at the desk, so it might as well take the form of something you can take with you and use when you're not at the desk: a laptop, tablet or phone.
Re: The PC is not dead, we just don't need new ones
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would pay for a silent PC. I paid a lot for a quiet Apple PowerPC Mac pro back in the day and built a quiet PC but they are not silent and I have moved to a quieter place and I can hear them (yes the Mac runs Fedora now). I have some silent ARM machines but they don't quite cut it yet though maybe the new quad core one will.
There are passive coolers for i7s out there. You can even find passively cooled GPUs and PSUs. It's pretty cheap to build a silent pc.
It's tricky getting a passive GPU to actually work, mine has a tendency to overheat and halt the system rather than throttle down under load. It required a fair bit of tweaking to case fans and driver underclock settings to get it stable.