Desktop CPU upgrades have now shifted to a 20 year cycle.

[Zodiark1593]

Yes I think to part of the major reason intel does not bother to invest in any decent desktop gaming CPU is because of the fact that 90% of Gamers play the games I called out, League of Legends, DOTA 2, CS GO, CS 1.6, Team Fortress 2, World of Warcraft. etc

And I am very very very certain intel has access to this information if I can find this info with google and some commonsense then I am sure Intel knows this aswell.

So to intel what is the point of spending countless cash to improve a CPU for less than 10% of Gamers? especially when majority of them even own a console and with all the shit ports we have been having on the PC more and more people who play console ports just flat out buy a console.

I laughed at how gamers with their GTX Titans and i7 were crying on how their rig could not run Batman Arkham Knight better than a low life PS4 console with a AMD Tablet CPU. When they realized how rocksteady fucked over PC Gamers many of them ended up buying the game on PS4 instead.

I firmly believe that intel has intelligent people working for them, and they know 90% of Gamers will be playing the games I pointed out so intel says here is what we won't waste time beefing up CPU power we will beef up integrated GPU power. Intel has been for a long time aiming for the "good enough" integrated GPU power that will run the popular PC games fine.

Intel follows the money, these people are successful because their management makes solid decisions. Remember how Sony bragged about the CELL CPU? and in reality all their bragging got backfired and their arse was washed by Microsoft with the 360? cause nobody knew how the hell to program for the CELL. So games lagged like ass on the PS3 to the point where Marvel vs Capcom 3 was banned on PS3 from EVO even though SONY sponsored the whole tournament scene.

So intel knows what PC gamers are playing, intel understands how free to play and microtransaction business operates. Intel is just that brilliant when it comes to making money. Having the best scientists is only HALF of it.

To really nail the entire spectrum that matters, Intel should legerage it's gpu tech and put out a workstation video card. Things like geometry thoroughput can be skimped on, but I want a massive compute array (1500+ excecution units). Coupled with decent OpenCL drivers, Intel can potentially kill off the workstation segment for it's competitors.

 

[Yuriman]

Just something to note, Dolphin Emulator is largely about optimization and tends to require high end hardware.

However as time goes by the same hardware works better as the devs optimize the emulator.

Also another thing to note current day intel cpu's are so powerful you need to cap and slow down the FPS in some Dolphin Games from playing too fast. The same games that would in the past run on the same CPU at 10 FPS.

Just pointing out how Emulators are a bad example for use as comparison because of their very nature. Also people who use these emulators are within a fraction maybe 2% of PC gamers if so much.

I am really talking about the 90% of PC Gamers who also happens to follow Valve, Blizzard and Riot.

I think the big optimization here is the ability to use AVX, but there are already examples (at least one example?) of games that use AVX instructions. The only thing really slowing adoption of AVX is Intel's refusal to include it with Pentiums and Celerons, but if you take into account the widening of AVX with each generation, IPC is still rising quite rapidly.

If anything, single-threaded performance requirements are probably going to rise more rapidly than before as newer generations of Intel CPUs trickle in and replace older CPUs without these instructions.

 

[Charmonium]

To really nail the entire spectrum that matters, Intel should legerage it's gpu tech and put out a workstation video card. Things like geometry thoroughput can be skimped on, but I want a massive compute array (1500+ excecution units). Coupled with decent OpenCL drivers, Intel can potentially kill off the workstation segment for it's competitors.

Isn't that what they're trying to do with their Knight's Landing co-processor?

 

[Unico]

I think the big optimization here is the ability to use AVX, but there are already examples (at least one example?) of games that use AVX instructions. The only thing really slowing adoption of AVX is Intel's refusal to include it with Pentiums and Celerons, but if you take into account the widening of AVX with each generation, IPC is still rising quite rapidly.

If anything, single-threaded performance requirements are probably going to rise more rapidly than before as newer generations of Intel CPUs trickle in and replace older CPUs without these instructions.

I agree that AVX is important, but for those upgrading AES-NI will become increasingly important. Granted the OS will do encryption on the fly, but the processor has a 2x+ advantage with AES-NI. Everything from https web sites to disk encryption will take advantage of this as we move forward.

As one small issue to consider, to future proof your system you really want to avoid any processor which does not support AVX2 and AES-NI. It appears that the Skylake Pentium processors support AES-NI but not AVX2. So it seems that Intel agrees that AES-NI is more basic. I'd recommend to avoid the new Pentiums and move up to at least the i3.

 

[Burpo]

For 90% of PC Gamers there will be no reason for upgrades for 20 years on each of the top played titles in the world.

I'm going to ask you again..

Dude, Where do you get your pot?

 

[2is]

I think Jason is trying to fool himself, because it doesn't look like he's fooling anyone else.

 

[MongGrel]

I'm going to ask you again..

Dude, Where do you get your pot?

:biggrin:

 

[escrow4]

Yes you are correct. So you can see I was shocked at how people came to this thread and cried "troll" without even reading and understanding what I was trying to say,.

Another reason these games are graphically inferior and requires low end hardware is for online population. If a game has millions of players online, it will attract Millions More because then things such as proper match making becomes a reality. No need to alter the algorithms and put you against players of way different levels. You can actually be placed against players of your same skill.

Therefore giving players what they want, people want a solid functioning game that has good gameplay, proper netcode and is fun and addictive. Also something to note Blizzard and Valve focuses on "artwork" rather than ubber realism

This is why no matter how old some of these games get they always seem to look great, a good artist is better than a architectural designer making real life stuff in Unreal Engine 4. Most prefer an art direction rather than realism, it gives video games the "magical feeling" it always was about.

These 20 year games and 20 year CPUs is regarding the 90% of PC Gamers. The thing though is the motherboard will die before you even get to 20 years but I was just drawing reference on how a CPU can last 20 years and play games for 20 years for 90% of PC Gamers. A 4790K i7 will last 20 years easy at this point we are in, tech is mature now to that point.

The huge issue is people compare 2015 tech to 1995 tech and they fail hard at doing so. Tech now, the stage it has reached and the yearly increase it gets, the games we play today, the microtransaction and free to play business model, the wide popularity of the internet today is nothing remotely close to what you would have had in the golden age of 1995.

What? Multiplayer rubbish isn't PC gaming. You want AAA titles all prettied up, you need grunt, and 20yrs is laughable. 20yrs ago Wolf3D was ageing nicely, now - why am I replaying to this? :whiste:

 

[Fjodor2001]

A lot of focus on upgrade cycles for gaming. What about upgrade cycles for most office / home PCs? Is it totally unrealistic to assume a 6700K will be just fine for those applications in around 20 years?

 

[myocardia]

This is why intel never bothered with discrete video cards.

Oops! I'm guessing it's only because of your age, though. I mean, I'm sure that both my daughter and my granddaughter also don't remember when Intel went into the discrete video card market... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel740 http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/1551/i740-8-mb.html

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

yeah except for the fact that I am absolutely 100% correct

http://www.statista.com/statistics/251222/most-played-pc-games/

If you understood the business model of free to play and microtransactions you would understand why we are in the age of decade(s) video games.

CS 1.6 was developed in 1999 and to this day has more online players right now than the latest Call of Duty. The so called best selling game.

http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

but hey maybe its the fact that you cannot accept the truth. You are just the 10% of gamers who go OMG GRAPHIXXXXXXXXX

A) This is a troll thread.

B) You are 100% incorrect. Way more people are playing Call of Duty online right now than CS. You conveniently excluded game consoles to make your entirely flawed assessment.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

I'm going to ask you again..

Dude, Where do you get your pot?

That's got to be some really amazing pot. In his defense, I love playing GTA5 on my 1995 era 486DX4/100 with VESA graphics. /sarcasm off

 

[TheELF]

I love playing GTA5 on my 1995 era 486DX4/100 with VESA graphics. /sarcasm off

Well to be fair he is talking about nowadays cpus in ~10 years,now that cpu speeds have stopped to grow that rapidly.
But still, assuming that people only play f2p is pretty much nonsense.

 

[ehume]

I say again. Pfah! Gamers! Do most people game. Or do most people do other things with their computers? For gamers, 20 years is too long. But for non-gamers? My 486 laptop ran Win95 like a striped ape. With the right software, today's hardware would still do mundane tasks 20 years from now, especially with the slower pace of improvements as we get to the top of the S-curve.

After all, 20-year-old jetliners are still carrying passengers.

 

[zink77]

The reality modern gaming is a wasteland for newbies, game quality has declined over the last 10-15 years and all games try to cater to the reflex-less masses. Games have been dumbed down hugely. You'd never see Quake 3 or Unreal 2004 levels of complexity in most modern games.

Talking about CS, world of warcraft and league of legends is talking about casual gamers, people who by definition aren't all that hardcore or really videogameplayers at all.

Publishers have been pushing out truckloads of console schlock for the last decade.

 

[TeknoBug]

90% of PC Gamers are still playing World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, League of Legends, DOTA 2 and Counter Strike 1.6/ CS GO, team fortress 2 etc. None of these games support more than 2 cores and runs on very old hardware. League of Legends alone claims a staggering 20 million online Players by itself. DOTA 2 another few million same for CS GO. World of Warcraft another 8 million remaining.

I 100% believe that, dedicated gamers don't jump from game to game that often, casual gamers are the ones big companies like EA are targeting because they'll buy a game and play it for a month then move onto the next game. WoW was developed with supporting 10+ year old computers at the time and can still do so, Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, and TF2 are even low end laptop friendly. Read up on Steam's hardware survey, a good fat portion of users are still on dual core (+48%) and almost no one upgraded to Windows 10.

But no PC will have a 20 year lifespan, unless it's a file server (or in my case, a shell server).

 

[2is]

I say again. Pfah! Gamers! Do most people game. Or do most people do other things with their computers? For gamers, 20 years is too long. But for non-gamers? My 486 laptop ran Win95 like a striped ape. With the right software, today's hardware would still do mundane tasks 20 years from now, especially with the slower pace of improvements as we get to the top of the S-curve.

After all, 20-year-old jetliners are still carrying passengers.

Non gamers isn't the topic though.

20 year CPUs is regarding the 90% of PC Gamers.

 

[TheELF]

20 year CPUs is regarding the 90% of PC Gamers.

He is going of of steam/raptr numbers only where 90% is the "filler" games people play every now and then inbetween the AAA titles.

 

[jsmith0000]

He is going of of steam/raptr numbers only where 90% is the "filler" games people play every now and then inbetween the AAA titles.

90% of PC gamers comprise of people who play the most popular PC Games.

The most popular PC games are made by only 3 companies, Valve, Blizzard and Riot.

these 3 companies create games once every 10 years and they create it for last gen hardware to capture massive audience.

The only reason a PC today can last 20 years is because of options available. An i7 can do 8 threads but the popular games are largely single or 2 threaded. And they double every generation so in theory if you stick to the 3 top companies a PC will in reality last 30 years and not 20.

The added bonus of windows 10 being the last windows that microsoft will ever make, Direct 3D today moving load from the CPU to the GPU only further extends the life of an i7. Remember years ago with each new Direct X version you needed a better more powerful PC? seems to be the reverse today. Infact today, DX 12 actually works faster on last gen hardware decreasing the need for newer hardware. As a matter of fact if we go as far back as GTX 400 series, Nvidia has promised DX 12 support.

I highly doubt we can compare today's world with the golden age of the 90's where hardware power doubled every year, today its a matter of 5% a year or something to that extent. Incase many of us forget, a haswell celeron can run over 90% of games out on the market currently. Especially indie games

Why are we ignoring all the indie titles that run on practically any low end hardware?

But lets be real which motherboard will last 20 or 30 years?

 

[CHADBOGA]

OP is spot on. (yet the usual suspects call bs and "troll".)

I agree on most points,

LOL

The OP was having a lend of you.

 

[harshbarj]

I'm not sure about 20 years, we will have to wait that long and see if it's true. But My main rig is now 6 years old, and outside of adding ram, replacing the HDD with and SSD and getting a new graphics card, I can see having this computer another 5+ years.

I also have a Core 2 Quad Q9550 which is now around 7-8 years old and it too is going strong playing the latest games with a newish video card , max ram(8gb), and an SSD.

I use to upgrade every year or two in the Thunderbird days. Now, outside of video cards, it's completely reasonable to expect a computer to lat 5-10 years.

I also manage to do a LOT on my old 1GHz Pentium III coppermine. Not the latest games, but web browsing, youtube, and all my old games which no longer work on new hardware.

 

[dark zero]

Oops! I'm guessing it's only because of your age, though. I mean, I'm sure that both my daughter and my granddaughter also don't remember when Intel went into the discrete video card market... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel740 http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/1551/i740-8-mb.html

And I don't be surprised if Intel comes back once Pascal and Artic Islands left them behind with a brutal disadvantage.

 

[jsmith0000]

LOL

The OP was having a lend of you.

Highly doubt it since the OP provided actual statistical evidence on everything while people like you spew nasty anal feces instead and expect us to believe you based on your "belief"

Many of you here on this thread have yet to actually read and understand what the OP wrote, you read the thread title and came to comment.

 

[jsmith0000]

I'm not sure about 20 years, we will have to wait that long and see if it's true. But My main rig is now 6 years old, and outside of adding ram, replacing the HDD with and SSD and getting a new graphics card, I can see having this computer another 5+ years.

I also have a Core 2 Quad Q9550 which is now around 7-8 years old and it too is going strong playing the latest games with a newish video card , max ram(8gb), and an SSD.

I use to upgrade every year or two in the Thunderbird days. Now, outside of video cards, it's completely reasonable to expect a computer to lat 5-10 years.

I also manage to do a LOT on my old 1GHz Pentium III coppermine. Not the latest games, but web browsing, youtube, and all my old games which no longer work on new hardware.

Yup just imagine your 8 year old Q9550 is still going strong on the latest games. And i am very certain based on current projections it will last another 7 years again before it becomes minimum.

And we have not yet even begun to talk about the fact that 90% of gamers are playing games that still run on single threads. Games designed each with a 10 to 15 year life span.

CS 1.6 and Starcraft 1, 15 and 17 years old respectively are 2 of the most active online games currently.

And just imagine, back then we didn't have all these options of having future proof hardware like core i7 etc. Back then was old single core CPU. And was the golden age of PC hardware.

I don't believe for a second that an i7 will last 20 years, but I believe 100% what the OP is talking about in that an i7 will last the 90% of PC Gamers 20 years simply because Valve, Blizzard and Riot are easy to predict. Incase many missed it, 90% of PC Gamers play the same game everyday because of its monetary online capability, the ability to earn ingame currency that translates into real world currency.

when you have as much invested in a League of Legends account it further cements you into the same game. Its incredibly infinite variables involved in its gameplay also keeps it fresh this is why MOBA players never get bored of the same game even after more than 10 years.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

I say again. Pfah! Gamers! Do most people game. Or do most people do other things with their computers? For gamers, 20 years is too long. But for non-gamers? My 486 laptop ran Win95 like a striped ape. With the right software, today's hardware would still do mundane tasks 20 years from now, especially with the slower pace of improvements as we get to the top of the S-curve.

After all, 20-year-old jetliners are still carrying passengers.

I also find it highly unlikely that there won't be an additional extension of x86 within 20 years -- to take us to 128 bit CPU's.

http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/archive/legacy-cpu-gpu-tools/128-bit-sse5-instruction-set/