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Are CPUs advancing faster than software requires?

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pantsaregood

Senior member
It is 2012. Windows 7 and Windows 8 will both run quite well on hardware that is, by technological standards, ancient.

A 2.66 GHz Pentium 4, Geforce FX5200, and 1.5 GB of RAM has no real trouble with the OS.

This is very different than what would be expected ten years ago. Trying to run Windows XP on a mid-range Pentium MMX based PC would be a nightmare.

In all honesty, the only thing holding older P4/Athlon 64 era CPUs from filling the needs of the average consumer is Adobe Flash. Flash can pretty easily crash many processors to a standstill.

Why, though? Why can hardware last so effectively now?
 
Microsoft finally figured out people didnt want to have to upgrade their CPu just to run a bloated turd of an OS. The mobile market also demanded it if they were going to have any marketshare in that space at all. Atom is essentially P4 at 2ghz so that became a performance cut off.

Theres really no reason your OS should demanding much performance from your hardware, it just lets you access resources and run apps.
 
Completely agree. Software is reaching a plateau. More and more consumer interactions are done thru a web browser and require less of computers. They even have the game Tera playable thru a web browser using java.
Even most games are holding back because game makers create games for 10 year old consoles.
It won't be until ps4 and Xbox 720 that real improvement in most games are seen
 
What OS did Microsoft produce that was bloated? 2000 and XP had a reputation for being lightweight. Vista wasn't really bloated, it was just misunderstood. Anything that can run Windows 7 can run Vista, given the two operating systems are very simple.
 
Don't worry they are going to get your money somehow.

What, you think they want to sell you one computer and that's it? You're done?

It's about the repeat sales, that's how the economy works. If the software doesn't *demand* higher cpu's 3-5 years from now, they will simply find some other reason to sell us faster cpu's.

They will write less optimized code. They will do things that we on the consumer end have no control over, because if you wan't to keep up with the Jones' (and it's human nature/unavoidable to want to keep up with the Jones') then guess what? Out comes the wallet.

This is an economy that we are a part of. It's not just about you buying something once and being done. They need to keep you coming back for more, and they will find a way to do that.

You think the government doesn't already know what processesors in 20 years will be capable of?

They could build it tommorow if they wanted too. But instead they are going to go through 20 generations of processors, and get you to pay for each one.

How the world works.

You think you can just buy something once?

You think your 1080p TV won't be eclipsed in resolution within the next 5-7 years?

Even if the games don't require higher end CPU's, it's real damn easy to "unoptimize" something to make some more $$$ for your buddies at Nvidia.
 
pantsaregood said:
What OS did Microsoft produce that was bloated? 2000 and XP had a reputation for being lightweight. Vista wasn't really bloated, it was just misunderstood. Anything that can run Windows 7 can run Vista, given the two operating systems are very simple.
Click to expand...

It sure felt bloated. I had two equally configured computers, on one XP and the other on Vista. Vista was noticeably slower.
 
Vista was released with awful driver support. That isn't Microsoft's fault. If you insist that Vista is bloated, then you must also dislike Windows 7. Windows 7 differs from Vista about as much as XP SP2 differs from SP1.

The poor understanding I speak of refers to memory use. NT 6.x uses superfetch to keep frequently used programs stored in RAM for faster access. NT 5.x just let RAM sit unused. People flipped at the idea that Vista was using 75% of their 2 GB of RAM when it appeared nothing was running.
 
pantsaregood said:
Vista was released with awful driver support. That isn't Microsoft's fault. If you insist that Vista is bloated, then you must also dislike Windows 7. Windows 7 differs from Vista about as much as XP SP2 differs from SP1.

The poor understanding I speak of refers to memory use. NT 6.x uses superfetch to keep frequently used programs stored in RAM for faster access. NT 5.x just let RAM sit unused. People flipped at the idea that Vista was using 75% of their 2 GB of RAM when it appeared nothing was running.
Click to expand...

I love Windows 7. When I finally took that Vista machine and bumped it to Win7, everything was fast again. So... riddle me that. 🙂
 
No, it isn't. Windows 7 is more like a service pack than a new OS iteration. Explorer got some functionality upgrades, but the kernel is hardly different. The requirements for Vista, 7, and 8 are the same because the kernel hasn't undergone a major change.

Windows 2000 to XP was a more significant change than Vista to 7.

As for your Vista machine that magically became fast: Go put Vista SP2 with the feature pack on it. Use updated drivers. Observe that it runs just as well as 7. Bench it if you must.
 
The only problem I personally had with Vista was it's aggressive Superfetch that would hit my HDD and slow everything down while trying to fill all my RAM as quickly as possible. Windows 7's Superfetch was much easier on the storage subsystem and fills RAM at a slower rate.
 
TuxDave said:
I love Windows 7. When I finally took that Vista machine and bumped it to Win7, everything was fast again. So... riddle me that. 🙂
Click to expand...

Easy. Your OS was full of bloatware. Install a fresh copy of vista and it would be just as quick.
 
though W7 is ok. it certainly does seem to degrade over time. But ever since i used RT7lite and removed most everything not pertaining to games or web browsing, it certainly is far more consistant.
 
Yeah, Superfetch got a slight upgrade.

NT 6.x tends to cause booting from a hard drive to suck. You get to your desktop quickly, then have about 30 seconds of aggressive fetching from your hard drive. My 2500K rig even gets that delay.
 
Servers and "cloud" computers are where the hardware never catches up. I don't care how much processing power and memory I have, I can add a lot more data to compute against if given enough resources.
 
far more slower things in ones computer than the CPU. Best thing i ever did was move my OS boot drive to SSD. i turn off superfetch now, no difference noticed and i think its bad for ssd anyway
 
pantsaregood said:
As for your Vista machine that magically became fast: Go put Vista SP2 with the feature pack on it. Use updated drivers. Observe that it runs just as well as 7. Bench it if you must.
Click to expand...

Heh, if you asked me to do that about 2 years ago I might've been able to do that. Now that computer is an empty shell sitting in the corner of the room.

So I don't know what SP revision it was running, it used the latest drivers blah blah blah. All the basic idiot maintenance ideas were done to save the machine and it didn't help. What DID help was bumping the memory from 2GB to 4GB (or 3.5GB since I didn't have a 64-bit version of Vista). Then it became manageable but still slightly sluggish when compared to the XP machine with 2GB still.
 
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I feel like it's all these netbooks/ultrabooks and MS trying to enter tablets that cause MS trying to slim down and not increase sys requirements since these low power PCs still need to run W8.
 
Win8 is NT 6.2 Win7 is NT 6.1.

Hence why, wait for the real mccoy with NT 7.0.

Win8 is also downgraded in terms of functionality.

1.5GB aint fun if you work alittle and/or browse. So just because you can boot the OS, seems it runs ok. Its far from ok.

And I think you modify history. XP SP0 ran very well on a Pentium MMX.
 
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pantsaregood said:
Vista was released with awful driver support. That isn't Microsoft's fault. If you insist that Vista is bloated, then you must also dislike Windows 7. Windows 7 differs from Vista about as much as XP SP2 differs from SP1.

The poor understanding I speak of refers to memory use. NT 6.x uses superfetch to keep frequently used programs stored in RAM for faster access. NT 5.x just let RAM sit unused. People flipped at the idea that Vista was using 75% of their 2 GB of RAM when it appeared nothing was running.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you're misunderstanding why people hated vista. It certainly wasn't because free ram was at or near 0. 7 does the same thing but people love it.

Vista had nearly constant hard drive thrashing. Any excuse you assign to this phenomenon is irrelevant because it was and issue and killed performance.

What about shut down times when you did something like update your video driver? Why did it take 10+ minutes for windows to shut down/restart? I may not understand why it takes 10 minutes but I don't need to. I know that it did, I know that it shouldn't and I know it doesn't in 7.
 
Ignoring the off-topic discussion above...

No, CPUs are not advancing faster than software requires. Until every task that I'd ever want to run is completed in such a short amount of time that I cannot perceive it, a CPU will not be fast enough. Besides, HPC will always need faster processing power.
 
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