what is the average lifespan of a desktop computer ?

[QuietDad]

I still have one of the $98 specials they sold when Windows 98 was released. They last forever if you fix what breaks and upgrade what you need.

 

[destrekor]

At this point, infinite. A Core2 still surpasses the need of 95% of the population's general needs. The industry has compensated with increasingly inefficient software.

Core2? Nah. Not unless you bought towards the end with the top-end Core2 models, especially top-end Core2Quad.

Bought a first-gen i7, or better yet, a Sandy Bridge (or later) i5 or i7? Good to go for a decade, most likely.

Software isn't getting inefficient, but more efficient threading is becoming a must, because single-thread max capability hasn't really been improving at the rate that overall computing has been improving. What we're seeing is single-thread software making even somewhat recent models, especially all those Core2 series parts, look like absolute shit.

Point being: if you barely use the full capabilities of a computer, as in, you really just use it for simple tasks, late C2Qs and any i5/i7 will probably work perfectly for a long while, especially as Windows gets more efficient with every release.
If you DO stretch those computing legs with some resource-intensive software, either regularly or on occasion, even Core2Quads are going to start becoming long in the tooth, if not already... that is, unless y'all are patient - I'm not known for patience with resource-intensive software unless I know even top-end systems still take time for the task, like loading thousands of RAW files or editing multiple large RAW/TIFF files, encoding/transcoding, rendering if that's your line of work, etc.
I say that because Core2Quads are very old threads, and while I said thread performance hasn't been changing significantly, there was a rather drastic change between Core2 and, at the very least, the second-gen Core series (Sandy Bridge).

Some aspects of computing don't seem to follow the hardware - but that's because, indirectly, they have. Depending on what the application is, something may be sampled more, the resolution is higher, the bit rate is higher, more processing is going on at the same time for immediate access instead of delayed response for the less often used features... some software always seems slow because it just keeps demanding more and more because it is finally capable of more and more.




And games HAVE been improving. Some publishers/developers are taking advantage of the market with yearly releases on the same ol' tired engines, yes... but some developers are constantly upgrading their engines.
I mean, hell, The Witcher 2 wasn't even utilizing the latest APIs and brought systems to their knees because it looked so good. Granted, recent APIs could have introduced more efficiency - so the devs could have done a better job on that front... but I digress.

I haven't seen BF4 in a good light yet (top settings, good driver, etc), so I can't comment how much that has improved, but some recent engines have introduced MUCH better multi-threading (multi-core) efficiency.
Sometimes the raw number of polygons and whatnot isn't drastically changing, but behind the scenes many things have improved. Due to the way everything changed with hardware audio in the Windows kernel stack (with NT 6.0 aka Vista) and the failure of any new direct hardware access to catch on (EAX was huge - you don't see support for X-Fi or other hardware directly offered in games all that often, if at all in recent days), most audio in games has been entirely pushed to software. Surround is a common supported feature now, and that's also still software driven. That requires CPU time, more than one might expect as the audio quality goes up.
That, shadow/lighting calculation and the quality of shadows (also CPU), better physics (CPU)... also the increased particles and modeling requirements for better physics (remember, more CPU time) also mandates by necessity more polygons and in general more demands of the GPU.

By making more things in the virtual environment something the user can interact with, especially the more destructible the environment becomes, the more both the CPU and GPU are getting taxed - and the overall visual appeal of the engine might not even change that much.
Add a higher quality sound engine, better network access coding (multiplayer), better lighting and shadows, and you might require more CPU and GPU capabilities, all without ever changing the polygon count and textures. Increase the quality and amount of "physics" present, you DO force more polygons to be drawn (which the developer obviously has to support, mind you).

Include more demanding peripherals in the equation as well. Some gaming peripherals are using 1000hz polling. Might not seem like much, but the less capable the CPU you have, the more you'll notice the impact as you add additional peripherals or up the ante in some way.

There are so, SO MANY things being added to game engines, that you really have to stop and look at the details to really see (and hear) the less than obvious differences.

There are many iterative games, many rehashes of the same tired idea... and many games that utilize the same engine developed what seems like forever ago, with perhaps minimal additional flourishes. I get that.
But there are plenty of golden examples to pick out of that mess that keep upping the ante in so many ways.

 

[Leyawiin]

I would have said two or three years back in 2004 or 2005. Now I say five. I have a Phenom II X4 @ 3.9 Ghz that I assembled in summer of 2009. Its still doing just fine for my gaming. I've swapped out the GPU of course (currently a GTX 670) and it has an SSD now, but other than that its the same PC. I'll probably replace the CPU and motherboard next summer for something current.

 

[rudeguy]

Core2? Nah. Not unless you bought towards the end with the top-end Core2 models, especially top-end Core2Quad.

Bought a first-gen i7, or better yet, a Sandy Bridge (or later) i5 or i7? Good to go for a decade, most likely.

Software isn't getting inefficient, but more efficient threading is becoming a must, because single-thread max capability hasn't really been improving at the rate that overall computing has been improving. What we're seeing is single-thread software making even somewhat recent models, especially all those Core2 series parts, look like absolute shit.

Point being: if you barely use the full capabilities of a computer, as in, you really just use it for simple tasks, late C2Qs and any i5/i7 will probably work perfectly for a long while, especially as Windows gets more efficient with every release.
If you DO stretch those computing legs with some resource-intensive software, either regularly or on occasion, even Core2Quads are going to start becoming long in the tooth, if not already... that is, unless y'all are patient - I'm not known for patience with resource-intensive software unless I know even top-end systems still take time for the task, like loading thousands of RAW files or editing multiple large RAW/TIFF files, encoding/transcoding, rendering if that's your line of work, etc.
I say that because Core2Quads are very old threads, and while I said thread performance hasn't been changing significantly, there was a rather drastic change between Core2 and, at the very least, the second-gen Core series (Sandy Bridge).

Some aspects of computing don't seem to follow the hardware - but that's because, indirectly, they have. Depending on what the application is, something may be sampled more, the resolution is higher, the bit rate is higher, more processing is going on at the same time for immediate access instead of delayed response for the less often used features... some software always seems slow because it just keeps demanding more and more because it is finally capable of more and more.




And games HAVE been improving. Some publishers/developers are taking advantage of the market with yearly releases on the same ol' tired engines, yes... but some developers are constantly upgrading their engines.
I mean, hell, The Witcher 2 wasn't even utilizing the latest APIs and brought systems to their knees because it looked so good. Granted, recent APIs could have introduced more efficiency - so the devs could have done a better job on that front... but I digress.

I haven't seen BF4 in a good light yet (top settings, good driver, etc), so I can't comment how much that has improved, but some recent engines have introduced MUCH better multi-threading (multi-core) efficiency.
Sometimes the raw number of polygons and whatnot isn't drastically changing, but behind the scenes many things have improved. Due to the way everything changed with hardware audio in the Windows kernel stack (with NT 6.0 aka Vista) and the failure of any new direct hardware access to catch on (EAX was huge - you don't see support for X-Fi or other hardware directly offered in games all that often, if at all in recent days), most audio in games has been entirely pushed to software. Surround is a common supported feature now, and that's also still software driven. That requires CPU time, more than one might expect as the audio quality goes up.
That, shadow/lighting calculation and the quality of shadows (also CPU), better physics (CPU)... also the increased particles and modeling requirements for better physics (remember, more CPU time) also mandates by necessity more polygons and in general more demands of the GPU.

By making more things in the virtual environment something the user can interact with, especially the more destructible the environment becomes, the more both the CPU and GPU are getting taxed - and the overall visual appeal of the engine might not even change that much.
Add a higher quality sound engine, better network access coding (multiplayer), better lighting and shadows, and you might require more CPU and GPU capabilities, all without ever changing the polygon count and textures. Increase the quality and amount of "physics" present, you DO force more polygons to be drawn (which the developer obviously has to support, mind you).

Include more demanding peripherals in the equation as well. Some gaming peripherals are using 1000hz polling. Might not seem like much, but the less capable the CPU you have, the more you'll notice the impact as you add additional peripherals or up the ante in some way.

There are so, SO MANY things being added to game engines, that you really have to stop and look at the details to really see (and hear) the less than obvious differences.

There are many iterative games, many rehashes of the same tired idea... and many games that utilize the same engine developed what seems like forever ago, with perhaps minimal additional flourishes. I get that.
But there are plenty of golden examples to pick out of that mess that keep upping the ante in so many ways.

is there any subject you can't type a 25 paragraph reply to?

 

[ISAslot]

:hmm: I have a 120mm panflo from 1985 in my main rig

 

[zinfamous]

I'll go with 6, just to split it down the middle. It really depends on what you need it for, though.

Plenty of uses where a 10 year-15 year and older desktop will do just fine. But in some cases you will probably need to upgrade every 2-3 years at the absolute minimum (any kind of serious rendering work).

 

[thegimp03]

I just upgraded to a 4670k from a C2D E8500 and have noticed a huge improvement. I don't see myself upgrading the processor again for at least 6-8 years.

 

[zinfamous]

I am still using my unlocked Phenom II 550 and GTX 460 I got in early 2010. Haven't seen any need to upgrade. About to get 4 years out of it, easily, plays FF14 perfectly.

pretty much the same--I have a Phenom II 960 + 5850 that I put together in 2009/2010.

I have sense added 16gb RAM because it was a steal (up from 4GB in 2010) and a 90gb SSD.

As far as general speeds in games or movies, no real problems for me to warrant an upgrade.

 

[ahmedelbehairy]

After how many years less efficient computer ?

 

[rh71]

I just checked my Newegg purchase history. Parts for this machine were all bought in '08 and are still running good (just upgraded the video card last year). Also a 320gb hdd is still good from '06. Running pretty much 24/7.

Before that, '04/'05 parts were for my prior PC which can't run XP very well anymore. So by my count, my previous PC lasted about 5 years. This one, Q6600 quad core, about 5 years and still going and it is probably still good for at least another 3+ with no problem. I think the 4GB RAM and plenty of disk space (4 drives) helps a lot in terms of not needing anything new. I'm not so sure about the quad core.

 

[Daverino]

With upgrades? Infinite, I guess.

 

[destrekor]

is there any subject you can't type a 25 paragraph reply to?

:hmm:

Fair question. You want the long answer or the short one?

 

[atotnine]

When I was a gamer, 2 years.

Since gaming industry has turned into money sucking industry and there has been very little to NONE progression in games and ESPECIALLY GRAPHICS.....I honestly can't see myself building a new rig/desktop for MANY years to come.

To top it off, even though games are not really progressing from a graphics perspective the requirements to play those games keep going up and up. Almost as if Software/Development is supporting Hardware makers.

DLC crap has a lot to do with it and fact that almost every game maker keeps recycling the same crap over and over with a "new name" and few extra features.

Not worth it.

Or maybe, I'm just getting old......

Wow this is exactly what I think. Well said! I used to build every 2 years but now... meh.

 

[dainthomas]

It's been probably four since I've done anything major with mine, and it still plays all the games I want acceptably. I went ahead and voted 6.

 

[ForumMaster]

depends on what you do. the parts in my computer are from 2006 (e6300) and yet for what i use it, it's great.

i'm not an avid gamer (grew up and don't have the time), and it can play movies, surf the net, run oracle, visual studio, eclipse all quite well.

 

[Gooberlx2]

10 years ago (2003, Pentium 4s, 256MB RAM was still common, etc...), doing even basic tasks (music ripping, word processing, web browsing) could be laggy due to processing, memory, slow HDDs, etc... I'd have put useful life as 2-3 years back then.

Starting with Intel Core2 though, I think an average computer's usefulness finally expanded out to about 10 years for those basic tasks. I think starting with Sandy bridge, 10 years is a reasonable expectation for even more advanced tasks, like HD video encoding/transcoding, image processing, etc...

But we'll see. Iterations of hardware can certainly come with useful new features that would cause older machines to crawl, like accelerated encoding/decoding, etc...

 

[TrueBlueLS]

I found out someone who "runs" a publishing business using a Dell from 2003.

 

[Sheik Yerbouti]

3 - 5 years for the CPU/GPU/Mainboard in my experience. A DVD drive is good pretty much forever (an who really uses them much anymore?)

 

[VirtualLarry]

I voted 10 years. I hope that my Q9300 and P35-DS3R last that long.

 

[LoveMachine]

After how many years less efficient computer ?

Can you rephrase the question? Also, why do all of your posts begin with polls?

 

[ahmedelbehairy]

Can you rephrase the question? Also, why do all of your posts begin with polls?

Because I am an Arab and I do not understand English well

 

[rudeguy]

Because I am an Arab and I do not understand English well

No worries. English is a second language to a lot of our members and we go out of our way to not insult them. Having members from all over the world is a great benefit of such a large forum.

Where are you from?

 

[Gorrillasnot]

c2d @ 3.2GHz (specs in sig) is really getting close to the end of its usefulness as my main rig. I web surf a lot and having 10+ tabs open in firefox including flash content sites like youtube slows it down to a crawl.
I think the "updated" software is the issue more then the hardware though. Back in the day when I used firefox 2 I could have tons of tabs open and it still seemed fast.
Now with every update my rig seems to get slower and slower.
Sure I could upgrade to an ssd and another 2 gigs of ram which might help a little, but I think it would be smarter to save up and just build a new rig.

I'd say 5 years or so is a good useful lifespan for a PC

 

[Blain]

Can you rephrase the question? Also, why do all of your posts begin with polls?

Because I am an Arab and I do not understand English well

Do all Arabs like polls for gathering opinions?

For the record, I will never vote in any of your polls again.

 

[corkyg]

The one I am now using will be 10 in just a few months. My laptops are 7 and 4. My "newish" floortop is about 5. I plan to build a new system next year.