We are spoiled by the Mhz

[krackato]

The only thing I worry about is that the progress will stop. Sooner or later, chips are going to be fast enough for video. Then what? And for the 95% of people who don't do video or 3d rendering, chips are already fast enough. If college freshman aren't buying 6ghz computers, then they're not increasing volume, increasing demand, increasing market size, etc. Therefore, there's less of a demand for those chips, meaning they're more expensive for me. Which sucks.

What we need is software. Software, software, software. Software that requires a 3ghz computer, that you just can't live without, that is so necessary that everyone and their grandmother will have to buy a 3ghz computer just to run it. Now, are any combinations of 1's and 0's even possible that meet all these criteria. I'm not so sure.

 

[erikiksaz]

we are left with chips at amazing speeds for incredible prices.

You said it yourself. Who cares if we need it. If you're shopping for a 12 pack of pepsi, and they have a deal for a 24 pack of pepsi, and it's REAAL cheap, would you not pick it up just because you didn't need the extra few cans? Same shyt here. So long as they're cheap, who cares if they're faster than we need.

edit-and just found out that people have some real uses besides for gaming

 

[kazeakuma]

Video editing is definitely a big drive for performance.
And video has nothing on 3D work. I like to render my stuff, waiting minutes for a frame is not fun. So yeah, the faster the better for me. I can't afford renderfarms to do it for me. More power to intel and amd for helping me out.

Also, if you think it will end at video think again. Complex voice recognition and AI algorithms so you can 'talk' to your pc freely is out of our reach for a while yet.

 

[PCMarine]

Don't forget we want faster computers for higher Folding@Home/SETI/etc, scores

 

[EXman]

Damn I Just upgraded from a GF3 ti200 to a TI4400 and still only get 6100 on my 3Dmark (1.4@1533mhz T-turd)

I guess everyone over 10K has 2.4ghz or more bah

I just want a 3ghz AMD chip to be compatible with my old XP-333-R mobo! well of course when it is reasonable. Say $100

 

[pm]

At home, I'm regularly doing several things at once. Usually something like video encoding while listening to either an MP3 or streaming audio (NPR on RealAudio) while surfing or playing a game. My computer usually is limping along while doing all of the above, I can pull it off but the game that I'm playing needs to be pretty simple.

At work I tend to spend the better part of most of my days waiting for my computer (or my farm of computers) to finish whatever I last told it to do. A hypothetical computer that was twice as fast would not enable me to get twice as much work done in a given day, but it would definitely improve how much I can done in a day by a sizeable amount.

I can understand that for most users, their computers are usually fast enough. For me, I occassionally weigh how annoyed I am over how slow my computers are versus how much money I would have to get my wife or boss to agree to to upgrade. Hyperthreading is definitely high on my "want" list.

 

[MCS]

And you're complaining about this? Sheeesh!

Of course I am not complaining, and I am very likely to keep upgrading myself.

I just wanted to read people's thoughts on the subject.

And I agree, if we take Unreal II, set the resolution to 1600x1200, maximum details, FSAA etc etc, we all know how it will run

A lot of gamers are quite happy with 1024x768 still though.

 

[kidjan]

My primary computer is a P2-400 (yes, 400 mhz).


I see no reason to upgrade - it compiles code fine, runs a web server in the backround (512 megs of ram helps there), browses the internet fine, does all office tasks I require it to do, plays DVD/MP3........I wouldn't shell out money for a new comp because I see no reason to. For gaming, I use a different computer, but even that's only an Athlon 1500+/geforce4 4200, and I haven't touched the thing in months. I use a geforce 2 MX (32 megs) as a video card. It actually plays quake and CS all right, as well as all my SNES roms.



I don't think this rapid progress is going to continue. Simply put, I don't think there's a big need for processors over 2 Ghz in the consumer market. Eventually, AMD and Intel are going to have to shift to a different strategy to reduce costs rather than just try to one-up one another, because consumers aren't going to continue to pay for these essentially pointless upgrades (let's be honest - the difference between 1.5 ghz and 3 ghz ain't that much - and people like me, still living in the sub-ghz world perfectly fine are living proof that consumers are no longer going to upgrade every year).

 

[tbates757]

Hey, even if we are spoiled, I'm not complaining!

 

[0roo0roo]

i'm totally waiting for slow ass comps to do decent voice recognition.

 

[Shalmanese]

Originally posted by: krackato


What we need is software. Software, software, software. Software that requires a 3ghz computer, that you just can't live without, that is so necessary that everyone and their grandmother will have to buy a 3ghz computer just to run it. Now, are any combinations of 1's and 0's even possible that meet all these criteria. I'm not so sure.

Its called Windows

 

[ScrewFace]

You're right on the mark, Shalmanese! With Microshaft's upcoming 'Longhorn' O.S. (coming in 2005) you'll probaly need a 5GHz Pentium4 or AMD 5000+ Hammer and 2GB of PC2400 RDRAM or QDR600-SDRAM just to run it!

 

[AnMig]

I Think the TERMINATOR had a 50 ghz processor, so once we get to 50ghz it will end since the machines will take over the world.


Putting a cap on technology is not very productive. If they buid it people will find a use for it.

 

[Mallow]

umm... I haven't played a sim game in a while but why on earth would it require > 2.0ghz CPU?!? What am I missing?

 

[giocopiano]

Have you tried playing the latest games without a patch first? The faster computers get, the less virtues the programming shows. Try IK-2 without a patch, or MS CFS 2003. Writing efficiently is not a priority anymore, only to ship something that kind-of-hangs-together by a release date scheduled by someone in a shiny suit.

 

[techietam]

Originally posted by: vegetation
Not for me. I want to play Sim City 4 at a decent speed and I cannot do that with a 2.8GHz setup. I want a faster system and I'll pay for it! Also, Sim City designers even stated they had to withhold a lot of game factors because current processors are just too slow. I'll savor the day when Sim City 5 comes out optimized for 10GHz processors!

The result - we are left with chips at amazing speeds for incredible prices. More power than we REALLY need. I mean, I can appreciate what it means to upgrade to the latest and greatest, but do any of us really NEED chips running at 2Ghz or more? Why would somebody upgrade from 2.5Ghz to 3.0Ghz? Because they can!

Sim City 4 is out??? Man.... I haven't even seen any screen shots...

 

[LeeTJ]

Originally posted by: dullard
I tend to disagree with most of what you said.

1) Moore's law so far has held pretty well. This was true before AMD was a real competitor and it was also true after AMD was a real competitor. Thus there is no noticible change in the speed that processors were released. None. So if Intel did not change their pace of releasing new chips, then your first point is a bit rediculous. Yes eventually Moore's law will fail - but so far it is working quite well.
2) Prices were the highest ever when AMD had the best competing product ($1299 was the price of AMD's top chip when it clearly was faster than Intel's top chip). So if as you say competition caused the price drops, why did prices go up when AMD did their best? Instead prices didn't start dropping until the economy crashed. Since then the economy is slowly doing better and prices have slowly risen.
3) AMD has had 18 new product annoucements in the last 45 months (I didn't bother counting back any further). That is just a bit faster than one new chip per quarter. As far as I know Intel has almost always been about one new chip per quarter as well. That is a bit slower than your 1 per month estimate. You are right about chipsets and RAM though.
4) It will all end when people feel they don't need any more speed and stop buying new computers. A ton of people (and businesses) bought computers right before the Y2K thing. Top CPU's were about 750 MHz then and reasonably priced CPUs were at 600 MHz. 600 MHz is plenty for most uses - office applications and internet. No wonder after Y2k there was the first computer sales slump ever. These people and businesses are still pretty happy with their ~600 MHz computers. You are right that these people don't NEED 2 GHz or faster chips. But there are other people in the world as well: extreme gamers, scientists solving problems, businesses running servers, workers running CAD, etc who all NEED far more than even 3 GHz can offer. So for these people we need ~10 GHz chips. After that I think most of them won't need much faster for quite a while (unless some spectacular new use is developed).

Note: I'm not doing an AMD biased thread even though I mentioned their name a lot (it just is much easier to find the relavant AMD info online).

I think you missed his point. Although Moores Law has held up, what has changed is the FUNCTIONALITY of computers. you can do stuff w/ a 1 ghz cpu now that would never have been dreamed of w/ a 100 mhz cpu. The point is, there was significantly MORE reasons to upgrade to the latest and greatest 3 yrs ago than there is today. the difference between a 166 Pentium and a 66 486 were SIGNFICANT. Much more so than an upgrade from a 1 ghz PIII to the 3.06 PIV (well, mb that's a bit extreme, but you get my point).

We are spoiled by the MHZ.

 

[MCS]

I think you missed his point. Although Moores Law has held up, what has changed is the FUNCTIONALITY of computers. you can do stuff w/ a 1 ghz cpu now that would never have been dreamed of w/ a 100 mhz cpu. The point is, there was significantly MORE reasons to upgrade to the latest and greatest 3 yrs ago than there is today. the difference between a 166 Pentium and a 66 486 were SIGNFICANT. Much more so than an upgrade from a 1 ghz PIII to the 3.06 PIV (well, mb that's a bit extreme, but you get my point).

Somebody...at last...thank you

 

[LeeTJ]

Originally posted by: MCS

I think you missed his point. Although Moores Law has held up, what has changed is the FUNCTIONALITY of computers. you can do stuff w/ a 1 ghz cpu now that would never have been dreamed of w/ a 100 mhz cpu. The point is, there was significantly MORE reasons to upgrade to the latest and greatest 3 yrs ago than there is today. the difference between a 166 Pentium and a 66 486 were SIGNFICANT. Much more so than an upgrade from a 1 ghz PIII to the 3.06 PIV (well, mb that's a bit extreme, but you get my point).

Somebody...at last...thank you

that's because most of these guys only think in terms of cutting edge games etc. they forget that there's a whole world of ordinary users out there.

 

[AtomicDude512]

Originally posted by: Shiva112
gamers won't be happy until we have "holodecks". Once we reach that you'll see Moore's law slow down quite a bit as the demand comes down.

Now you're talking!