18 months ago it was the 4770k...

[TurtleCrusher]

The gains in SSDs have slowed as well, video cards are seemingly slowing a bit, new ram is going to get relatively expensive...

I don't know about you guys but I'm not made of money. If the progress slows even more then those of us who went with budget rigs will be able to pinch that penny even longer. I only upgrade when there is software that doesn't run well and the replacement is affordable at the time for me. If it wasn't for NBA 2K15 being the next-gen consoles version (highly threaded, CPU hog), BF3/4 or Starcraft 2, I would never have upgraded from my old 3Ghz C2Q. For every other usage even a C2Q is still solid.

 

[jihe]

Some of us have clearly hit the wall as far as real world performance gains, I know I have.

Obviously you are not a folder.

 

[Ramses]

Some of us have clearly hit the wall as far as real world performance gains, I know I have.

Yup. I hit it with an FX lol...

 

[crashtech]

Obviously you are not a folder.

Long time ago, yes, but not now. I am talking about gains for more common uses.

 

[alcoholbob]

CPUs have been pretty stagnant for the last 5 years, and prognosis for process techs for the next 5 years are moving even less rosy. If you bought 4790K today it'll probably be still within 15% performance of the flagship quad-core Intel CPU in 2020.