so many things to reply to!
ahh! I wish I could just use my mind to do it all!
anywho..
you noticed? CPU speed DOESN'T matter to most people, but they get the latest and greatest anyway!
now you know why I'm mad about all the wasted CPU cycles not devoted to a distributed project! hehe.. RC5 all the way!
It may be true, gamers don't see a benefit (unless they run a game with no T&L at extremely low res) much anymore..
I saw a fairly large kick in OS speed when moving from my K6-2 400 to my Duron 750@866. that's partly becuase this new one has about 3 times the RAM, and a faster hard drive. I think the CPU does have a role still in how the OS runs.
becuase I have a 56k modem, I don't have to run a firewall, nor do I run a virus scan! it's all wasted CPU cycles, and I could REALLY feel the effect (when I was on my K6-2), so I never ran that stuff again!
as for
IDE RAID, the only reason why you really don't see much benefit from it, is because it is ACCESS TIMES that matter most when considering hard drives.
SCUBA those are dangerous words.. People will flame you for it! btw, I support that comment 100%, cause it's so damned logical..
so, now that CPU's are only really used for encoding and decoding sound and video files, as well as running basic OS tasks (and playing 'old' non-T&L games), what's next? well for encoding and decoding video files, that could soon be offloaded to the video card (using a DSP chip to reprogram it for new codecs!), and as for sound.. that WOULD have happened if the Aureal SQ3500 came out.. but oh well
so, what will CPU's be used for after that? the crap that people have running in their system tray! pure and simple, you just need RAM, and a fast enough CPU (as well as a hard drive capable of moving fast enough without using CPU time, so that you can, say, defrag, scan-disk, and run virus scan all at the same time! LOL)!
it's nice to be able to offload the CPU!
that way all the distributed projects get a nice boost!