I'm starting to realize how pointless, upgrading your computer is. (gaming too)

[VirtualLarry]

Well, unless you do it for power-consumption reasons. Newer chips do draw less power, at least at idle.

But in terms of performance, unless you play games at hardcore settings, you really don't need a new computer. Even a Core2Quad is plenty of horsepower for basic things.

Granted, I think that having at least a basic quad-core, or a SB/IB dual-core w/HT is useful for desktop tasks. But anything beyond that is pure overkill.

Maybe I'll get rid of my desktops, for a nice lightweight Trinity or IB laptop. Still considering.

I've been giving away more computers lately. Mostly single-core older machines, but I donated a couple of AMD low-power dual-cores recently too.

Perhaps I'm just learning that I've been spending way too much on computers over the last few years, chasing something that I'm still not sure what, with my upgrades.

Thinking of selling my X6 @ 3.51, 16GB DDR3-1600, 240GB SATA 6G SSD, dual GTX460 1GB OC cards, etc., to a friend. It would cost $1500 to put this rig together today from Newegg (approx.).

What a waste of money. I've played Skyrim about once or twice on this rig, total. Not into PC gaming as much as I though.

I built a nice little mini-ITX box around an Asrock E-350 board (now I wish I had picked up the USB 3.0 version). Perfect little low-power (low-heat!) NEFbox. Fine for forums, even with a HD and not an SSD, and it can watch 1080P video too. Built-in HDMI output, DVI, VGA. eSATA too. Thinking of making that box my full-time rig, at least during the summertime.

I have been big into Distributed Computing, but as the summer gets closer, I have to stop doing that on my computer due to primarily heat reasons (and running the AC at full load isn't cheap on the power bill either).

 

[2is]

Different strokes for different folks. I do plenty of PC gaming, though admittedly I don't have as much time for it as I did in my younger years. I just went to a 3770k from a Q6600 and my BF3 experience is much much better. It also consumes less power and heats the room less.

But for basic things, yes a Core2Quad is more than enough. If it wasn't for the fact I do game, I would not have upgraded for quite sometime. Even for gaming it was quite good, which the exception of BF3

 

[Markfw]

Nothing like a 3930k at over 4 ghz....

Priceless

 

[OCGuy]

I would have to say it really matters what you do with it.

 

[postmortemIA]

fair criticism, and overclockers usually go into defense mode pretty quickly.

It is a hobby, and it should be treated as such.

As a programmer, I know how hard (sometimes impossible) is to write software that is going to run efficiently on multi core systems. Regardless how fast your CPU, most of time software either waits on user input or struggles with IO. My point is, if overclockers would write more software, they would see how pointless it is as well.

Surely, some do photo editing, video creation, and such, where CPU makes difference. Gaming as well. But for PC to feel fast, you just need an SSD and decent CPU.

 

[kami]

I would have to say it really matters what you do with it.

Yup. Try working with 30-50 megapixel files in Photoshop or editing and rendering high res video and 3D content with an outdated computer.

If you browse the web and play the occasional game then yes 5 year old hardware is going to do you just fine...

 

[Destiny]

It is a hobby...

I used to go out clubbing in Hollywood and Orange County every weekend and drop at least $500 and sometimes thousands if we get a table... (Which is why I didn't Build any new rigs between 2002 and 2010).

Now I'm a homebody and I don't do that anymore - so building a rig or upgrading here and there is ALOT cheaper...

When it comes down to building a rig and upgrading - it is up to the person with how much money they are willing to pay to make things faster or snappier!... An Intel ATOM or 8 year old PC can still do alot of stuff that Today's PCs can such as e-mail, spread sheets, streaming/watching 1080p, encoding, editing, gaming (Low Resolution)... it is just what you are willing to pay to do things in less time with upgrades/new rig...

When talking to my Co-Worker about me getting a GTX 680 and 2560x1440p monitor he made very condecending remarks saying why am I blowing money away - I just chuckled and laugh and told him its a hobby... he's still blowing money buying drinks for girls and gambling it away - having nothing to show for it after the night...:sneaky:

Remember... it's your money do whatever makes you happy...

 

[2is]

It is a hobby...

- having nothing to show for it after the night...:sneaky:

Now THAT is a shame.

 

[tulx]

Well, unless you do it for power-consumption reasons. Newer chips do draw less power, at least at idle.

But in terms of performance, unless you play games at hardcore settings, you really don't need a new computer. Even a Core2Quad is plenty of horsepower for basic things.

Granted, I think that having at least a basic quad-core, or a SB/IB dual-core w/HT is useful for desktop tasks. But anything beyond that is pure overkill.

Maybe I'll get rid of my desktops, for a nice lightweight Trinity or IB laptop. Still considering.

I've been giving away more computers lately. Mostly single-core older machines, but I donated a couple of AMD low-power dual-cores recently too.

Perhaps I'm just learning that I've been spending way too much on computers over the last few years, chasing something that I'm still not sure what, with my upgrades.

Thinking of selling my X6 @ 3.51, 16GB DDR3-1600, 240GB SATA 6G SSD, dual GTX460 1GB OC cards, etc., to a friend. It would cost $1500 to put this rig together today from Newegg (approx.).

What a waste of money. I've played Skyrim about once or twice on this rig, total. Not into PC gaming as much as I though.

I built a nice little mini-ITX box around an Asrock E-350 board (now I wish I had picked up the USB 3.0 version). Perfect little low-power (low-heat!) NEFbox. Fine for forums, even with a HD and not an SSD, and it can watch 1080P video too. Built-in HDMI output, DVI, VGA. eSATA too. Thinking of making that box my full-time rig, at least during the summertime.

I have been big into Distributed Computing, but as the summer gets closer, I have to stop doing that on my computer due to primarily heat reasons (and running the AC at full load isn't cheap on the power bill either).

Congratulations - you just grew up. Sadly, I'm aftaid I'll keep doing this each time the courier delivers my new PC parts. It's a curse.
Right now I'm looking with fatherly pride at my newly installed gpu coolers I bought for my 5870ies because the heat became unmanagable after adding the second one for crossfire.
Sensible? Absolutely not. Fun? Absolutely!

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Congratulations - you just grew up. Sadly, I'm aftaid I'll keep doing this each time the courier delivers my new PC parts. It's a curse.
Right now I'm looking with fatherly pride at my newly installed gpu coolers I bought for my 5870ies because the heat became unmanagable after adding the second one for crossfire.
Sensible? Absolutely not. Fun? Absolutely!

This! Just don't start watercooling, that is a serious trap/problem.

 

[dma0991]

I do run a Core i5 3570K at stock most of the time now because I find no need for the extra horsepower that I could have from overclocking, partly due to the fact that my SSD just masks everything that is slow. But with the option to do so, I could just restart, load my OC profile @ 4.5GHz, boot and I'll be cruising at a faster speed in a matter of seconds. Certainly for daily use, I don't feel the 1GHz bump in speed like I do with my AMD Athlon 1.8GHz overclocked to 2.1GHz but that is entirely dependent on what the user wants to do and there are cases where a fully overclocked CPU has its merits.

Having done a WC rig for stock speed might seem pointless but I still do benefit from having lower temps and noise and would still consider doing so in the future till I'm too old to bother with the hassle of WC and switch back to air.

 

[RyanGreener]

Yeah I realize that the only benefit of the newer hardware is that laptops become much better....because they have always been behind the curve (literally, and figuratively)

 

[BrightCandle]

The last 5 years has brought less improvements in processor performance than the proceeding 5, where as if everything kept scaling we would be looking at exponential growth. We are far from having enough computation performance for all we might want to do with computers. The new CPUs aren't as worth while because they don't bring you 2x performance every 18 months. But that is not equal to us having enough performance.

I'd kind of like for games/3D worlds to be using Phong shading with Voxels for example, 3d worlds would be easier to build and look real. But its a technical problem with making transistors on silicon scale ever smaller. Always remember that the hardware comes first. There is no point writing software for a computer that doesn't exist as no one would buy it. Crysis was stolen a lot but its sales weren't great, no body could play the damn thing and yet it was not that far off from being playable. No one is going to write a phong light voxel engine with all the other whizz bangs because the hardware is too far off. With decreased performance scaling its looking unlikely we'll get there without a major advance, but don't think just because what we have is limited that its all we need - we haven't invented most of what will be the killer apps over the next 30 years yet.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

Pentium D with 1.5gb of RAM

It struggles with basic tasks.
Open 3 tabs of anything and it takes a couple of seconds to switch tabs. I even changed the amount of cache is used by the system using the HDD but it hasn't changed anything.

As long as you have a computer that uses DDR3 you'll be fine IMHO

 

[tulx]

Pentium D with 1.5gb of RAM

It struggles with basic tasks.
Open 3 tabs of anything and it takes a couple of seconds to switch tabs. I even changed the amount of cache is used by the system using the HDD but it hasn't changed anything.

As long as you have a computer that uses DDR3 you'll be fine IMHO

I wouldn't say DDR3 is the beanchmark. I still own a Phenom I 9850 with 667 MHz DDR2 RAM and it can play any modern game, provided a good graphics card, which is all what game performace comes down to, really.
You'll never spot a difference between a FX-4100 and a 3570K in gaming if they both are paired with a 7970 or GTX 680.

 

[HexiumVII]

Thats what I though when i got a cheap 3.2GHz Core 2 Duo workstation for work. Ouch that thing felt like a dog compared to my i7 920 even at stock. I had to build a custom bruiser to get the speed i'm used to. The move to Ivy though, prob won't feel it.

 

[Soulkeeper]

I agree with the op

Upgrading is an obsession/disease in many ways ...

I just built the system in my rig and already want to buy new stuff, and even new stuff that isn't even released yet.

 

[mikeymikec]

Pentium D with 1.5gb of RAM

It struggles with basic tasks.
Open 3 tabs of anything and it takes a couple of seconds to switch tabs. I even changed the amount of cache is used by the system using the HDD but it hasn't changed anything.

There's something you must be doing wrong, or something wrong with the hardware. What is it running, Vista?

My wife has an Athlon XP (2500+) setup running Windows XP with 1.5GB RAM and a nvidia graphics card at it only crawls if she tries to do her "leave half a million Firefox tabs open for days on end" routine. She's just changed over to using Google Chrome because she says it runs Flash games better on her setup.

Back to the topic though, I whole-heartedly agree. My last setup was an Athlon XP setup that I used until 2010 and upgraded because I wanted to play StarCraft 2 optimally. In hindsight I wish I had waited for SB, but unless my finances improve massively I'll run this basic setup until it dies (apart from *necessary* HD/GPU/RAM upgrades).

 

[Lonbjerg]

Try ARMA II...it will teach you otherwise...

 

[guskline]

Well, unless you do it for power-consumption reasons. Newer chips do draw less power, at least at idle.

But in terms of performance, unless you play games at hardcore settings, you really don't need a new computer. Even a Core2Quad is plenty of horsepower for basic things.

Granted, I think that having at least a basic quad-core, or a SB/IB dual-core w/HT is useful for desktop tasks. But anything beyond that is pure overkill.

Maybe I'll get rid of my desktops, for a nice lightweight Trinity or IB laptop. Still considering.

I've been giving away more computers lately. Mostly single-core older machines, but I donated a couple of AMD low-power dual-cores recently too.

Perhaps I'm just learning that I've been spending way too much on computers over the last few years, chasing something that I'm still not sure what, with my upgrades.

Thinking of selling my X6 @ 3.51, 16GB DDR3-1600, 240GB SATA 6G SSD, dual GTX460 1GB OC cards, etc., to a friend. It would cost $1500 to put this rig together today from Newegg (approx.).

What a waste of money. I've played Skyrim about once or twice on this rig, total. Not into PC gaming as much as I though.

I built a nice little mini-ITX box around an Asrock E-350 board (now I wish I had picked up the USB 3.0 version). Perfect little low-power (low-heat!) NEFbox. Fine for forums, even with a HD and not an SSD, and it can watch 1080P video too. Built-in HDMI output, DVI, VGA. eSATA too. Thinking of making that box my full-time rig, at least during the summertime.

I have been big into Distributed Computing, but as the summer gets closer, I have to stop doing that on my computer due to primarily heat reasons (and running the AC at full load isn't cheap on the power bill either).

Virtual larry: Sounds like the computer doldrums have hit you. Been there done that. My suggestion? Snag a SB I2500k and MB or Ivy bridge instead of your AMD and tell me if you don't notice a difference.

 

[Arzachel]

The last 5 years has brought less improvements in processor performance than the proceeding 5, where as if everything kept scaling we would be looking at exponential growth. We are far from having enough computation performance for all we might want to do with computers. The new CPUs aren't as worth while because they don't bring you 2x performance every 18 months. But that is not equal to us having enough performance.

Not really. 5 years ago, the speed of your CPU affected how responsive most everyday tasks felt. The performance has kept up, it's just that the software hasn't. There just aren't any apps that most people use on a daily basis that perform noticably better with more CPU power. Unless you compress files or encode videos 24/7, you're not going to feel much difference.

Try ARMA II...it will teach you otherwise...

That's more due to how inefficient the engine is in ARMA 2, the engine they're using for ARMA 3 looks and performs better.

 

[Fjodor2001]

So Gates's law is broken?

The speed of software halves every 18 months... no longer true?

 

[Lonbjerg]

Not really. 5 years ago, the speed of your CPU affected how responsive most everyday tasks felt. The performance has kept up, it's just that the software hasn't. There just aren't any apps that most people use on a daily basis that perform noticably better with more CPU power. Unless you compress files or encode videos 24/7, you're not going to feel much difference.



That's more due to how inefficient the engine is in ARMA 2, the engine they're using for ARMA 3 looks and performs better.

I love when people jump in and display zero knowlegde og the topic.
If you had borther to spend any time with ARMA you woud know that the real CPU "killer" in ARMA II is the A.I.

That also is way better and way more tatical than most other FPS...wanna be mil-sims.

Come back when you understand the engine..and not just parrot some random FUD form the internet and I'll take your "arguments" seriously.

http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,687620/ArmA-2-tested-Benchmarks-with-18-CPUs/Practice/

Blamning poor code for "the sandbox" is so way of target that it hurts.

 

[Charlie98]

It's a hobby with at least a pratical application, unlike many hobbies.

I still use my 7 year old Dell laptop with a single-core PentM and it works very well for what it is. I tried to justify a newer one but, really, once you get past the welcome screen, it was just about as fast as anything else I'm likely to have.

My desktop has to have a certain amount reliability and speed to it; I suppose I could have done better than my current $1300 +/- (shhh! Don't tell my wife! ) build, but I wanted a computer to play MW on and, let's face it, building a computer with good components was FUN!!! ...sort of like building a Chevy 327 for the old Nova setting in the garage.

I've been through my share of hobbies... model trains, skydiving, coins and stamps, car stereos, music, cars and trucks, and there is always guns and motorcycles... and I suppose computers are one as well, but I know I won't be going to BestBuy to buy the junk HP on sale because I need a new computer... I know enough now to keep what I have running, or build something better, and that's a worthy endeavor. Knowledge is power.

Everyone has to have at least one vice, Larry...

 

[exar333]

This is a semi-troll thread to start with. Posting about how 'pointless it is' to upgrade in a CPU forum is a little silly. Many here upgrade and tinker as a hobby because they enjoy it. Others really use new features, more cores, and more mhz for either their jobs or functional gain (VMs, gaming, encoding, etc). In many ways, I think the last 5 years have been a huge step forward compared to the previous 5. From 2002-2007 all we did was go from AXP-A64-A64X2; that wasn't a HUGE step up in performance in either Mhz (about 2ghz to 3ghz) or cores (1 to 2). Conroe was really the big 'event' happening in this time period, and it seemed bigger than it would have been because Intel was so crappy for a while there before.

Since 2007, we have moved from 2 cores running between 2-2.5ghz (standard) to 4 cores running at almost double that speed. We have added HT back into the mix, 6-core options are available, and memory options are extremely cheap for 16GB+ for those that need it. You can get a MB + CPU for <$300 that will net you 4.4ghz+ with a $25 HSF. You couldn't do that 5 years ago without a cooler 2-4x the cost, and a MB costing $50 more (in many cases).

I agree with others that software has struggled to keep up somewhat, but for those that need the horsepower, more advances will always be welcome.