For the first time in 15 years i see nothing interesting on the horizon for PC!

[poohbear]

I've always looked forward to upgrading some part of my cpu, whether it was the CPU, GPU, RAM, HDD, Monitor, etc, over the past 15 years, but for the first time i don't see anything interesting in the horizon given my current system specs. I guess the PC industry has slowed to a crawl given its maturity.... i'm more interested in getting an ultra book based on Haswell or a new tablet or upgrading my smartphone than upgrading my PC.

The thing is there's nothing interesting or innovative coming out for PC in 2013 or heck even 2014! Haswell is mostly for the mobile/laptop market, and NVidia/AMD said they're not releasing their next gen vid cards until end of 2013 and even then they're not gonna be a huge leap in performance. I've had my 2500k Sandy bridge since summer 2011 and Haswell holds no interest for me at all. Infact, my 2500k still pretty much sits at the same price point even today!

Has the PC market really matured to a point where there's no need to upgrade anything for years? Is there anything interesting coming up that i've missed?

 

[Plimogz]

I totally agree with regards to the 2500K. I've had mine for over 2 years now and I only ever feel an urge to upgrade in order to play with the latest chips. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) neither my 790FX-based AMD board nor my P67-based Intel rig offer particularly interesting upgrade paths at this point.

Though I'll admit to being curious as to what is possible within the mini-ITX form-factor with either a fast AMD APU for a casual-gaming HTPC or -- way more upscale -- something combining Haswell and a card resembling the ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU Mini -- that thing is just sooooo cute.

Hopefully, AMD's rumored presence in both next-gen consoles will drive development of games which take advantage of more x86 cores and leverage GPU compute to enhance games in a way which will trickle up to high-performing PC's.

 

[Torn Mind]

Well, not all PCs, just the mainstream desktop market.
Desktops are no longer quite as desired as other means of computing by the typical user anymore. It's going to be a specialist's space, occupied by gamers, professionals, poor people with budget rigs, and "old people" who cling to it, i.e 30 year olds and older. The "middle end" is moving on.

In the past, instant messaging was the thing before texting, you needed top line CPUs to be even reasonably productive in Office, and lags were the norm. Now though? A laptop can do what most people want these days, and mobile is hot because they can do things in places and times not feasible with desktops. By Skymont, 1.6 Ghz processors might do what 2.6 Ghz is required to do right now.

 

[Deltaechoe]

I totally agree with regards to the 2500K. I've had mine for over 2 years now and I only ever feel an urge to upgrade in order to play with the latest chips. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) neither my 790FX-based AMD board nor my P67-based Intel rig offer particularly interesting upgrade paths at this point.

Though I'll admit to being curious as to what is possible within the mini-ITX form-factor with either a fast AMD APU for a casual-gaming HTPC or -- way more upscale -- something combining Haswell and a card resembling the ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU Mini -- that thing is just sooooo cute.

Hopefully, AMD's rumored presence in both next-gen consoles will drive development of games which take advantage of more x86 cores and leverage GPU compute to enhance games in a way which will trickle up to high-performing PC's.

I'm actually planning a mini-itx build, while expensive (around 2.3k) will still plop itself right into the high end side of things (look at the "Noisy Cricket" build). Mini-itx has come a long way as of late and can even rival many big high end enthusiast gaming systems, especially with the titan and the gtx 690 (prodigy can fit it) on the market

 

[akugami]

I recently upgraded from an Intel Q9550 built roughly 4 years ago to an Intel i7-3770k. Wonderful value considering how much mileage I got out of it, and I gave the build to my sister in law since it's still going strong.

I was still gaming and stuff on the Q9550, the 3770k should serve me for years to come. Barring a major boost in CPU performance (Pentium 4 to Core) or a drastic change in my computing needs, I see the 3770k being my primary CPU for the next few years. I'll probably be picking up a new graphics card when new GPU's get released at the end of year and that should set me up for a long while.

 

[poohbear]

Yea i guess its good for us as consumers...i dont intend on upgrading my CPU or even GPU for years to come! But as an enthusiast its kinda boring. Hopefully next gen consoles will shake things up on the PC end, lets see how demanding next gen games will be!

 

[RaistlinZ]

I had a similar thread about this a while back. The "need" to upgrade just isn't as prevalent as it was back in the day. The main reason I used to upgrade was because my PC would become laggy over time.

I think SSD's have changed the game quite a bit in that regard. Toss in an SSD into a computer 4-5 years old and it instantly becomes fast enough for most daily use. I don't feel the need to upgrade my CPU/Mobo for probably another 2 years.

 

[mfenn]

I had a similar thread about this a while back. The "need" to upgrade just isn't as prevalent as it was back in the day. The main reason I used to upgrade was because my PC would become laggy over time.

I dunno about that. There is a definite "need" to upgrade the CPU as long as a game like SimCity is limited to tiny cities because even new i7's can't keep up with the simulation demands of a large city.