When did we become numb to processor speed?

[FishTankX]

It seems like 5 or 6 years ago, a CPU upgrade could do real wonders for the responsivness of your computer. you upgraded, it was faster at just about everything. This was the 33MHZ era..

Now, in the 2GHZ/PR+ Era, a CPU upgrade means little to nothing for the average Joe.

My question is..

When did we stop feeling speed boosts (For general use, not professional applications or games and such) when upgrading our CPU?

 

[Wolfsraider]

i guess i'm always going to be last

 

[Siddhartha]

Originally posted by: FishTankX
It seems like 5 or 6 years ago, a CPU upgrade could do real wonders for the responsivness of your computer. you upgraded, it was faster at just about everything. This was the 33MHZ era..

Now, in the 2GHZ/PR+ Era, a CPU upgrade means little to nothing for the average Joe.

My question is..

When did we stop feeling speed boosts (For general use, not professional applications or games and such) when upgrading our CPU?

You are asking when did the cpu stop being the bottleneck.

AMD: Athlon XP 1600+
Intel: P4A 1.6 gig

 

[bex0rs]

I didn't think it was possible for the start menu in XP to be rendered instantaneously with menu shadows enabled until I played with a P4-2.4 at the store the other day. The 2.0 nearby couldn't do it.

~bex0rs

 

[Imported]

No clue.. I know that when I went from a 100mhz Pentium.. to a 1GHz Athlon.. I was so damn amazed..

Now I'm up to 2.6Ghz.. not the same feeling as before, but it's nice knowing I got the top dog among my friends..

 

[DaveSimmons]

Depends on the Windows version -- Win95 OSR1 ran OK on 486-66 and great on a P133 with 32 MB. Win98 gave us integrated browser to suck down CPU and required 64 MB / P2-233 to be snappy. etc. etc. until Win XP is so loaded down with integrated competitor-crushing borg bloatware and screen sparkley eye candy you can waste a 1+ GHz CPU just getting a file listing at a decent speed.

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: bex0rs
I didn't think it was possible for the start menu in XP to be rendered instantaneously with menu shadows enabled until I played with a P4-2.4 at the store the other day. The 2.0 nearby couldn't do it.

~bex0rs

That's funny, my 2.0A does it just fine.

 

[imgod2u]

You know, when I first moved from my 333 Celeron to my current 1 GHz P3 2 years back and ran win98 and I.E. 5 on both, I really couldn't notice the difference in "responsiveness". Simple programs like Word 97 loaded just as fast as before and all the start menus and shortcut animations worked perfectly. Yes I noticed the tremendous difference in games like Homeworld. I was absolutely amazed at how well the thing could handle it.
Now, I've upgraded to WinXP Pro on my current rig and are running I.E. 6 and lots of other applications like OfficeXP and ICQ 2002. I thought that the responsiveness was just as good on my old Celeron 333 until I actually went back recently and tried it. I'm currently on it and an extra IE6 window would kill it. Loading ICQ is a huge pain and practically any game I play won't run worth a $#$# on it. So in short, what seems like too much today can be barely tolerable tomorrow.

 

[bex0rs]

Originally posted by: AmusedOne

That's funny, my 2.0A does it just fine.

I wasn't trying to be humorous, but the point I was making was that the 2.4 was noticeably faster at performing the said task than the nearby and otherwise similarly configured 2.0. Perhaps a 3Ghz machine would draw the start menu even faster, but the 2.4 did it fast enough for me to call it instantaneous with regard to the limit of my perception. Of course, I am not disputing your claim as it is all really subjective, but I suppose that is the point of this thread.

~bex0rs

 

[AndyHui]

Consider the percentages in speed by which processors increment.

Going from a Pentium 200MMX to a Pentium II 300MHz really was a big jump: 50% in clock speed as well as going from the P5 to the P6 architecture.

From there you could jump out to 1GHz, 3 times the original speed: sure it is fast, and it's very obvious. But when you are making smaller and smaller steps, say 1GHz to 1.8, you are not even doubling the clock speed and you are pretty much staying within the same processor family (family in the CPUID context).

 

[Insane3D]

Another thing to consider is not only the new CPU making a difference, but also the platform, ie chipset, memory subsystem. If you went from say a 1ghz Athlon on a SDRAM platform, like the KT133, and upgraded to say a 1.4ghz 1600+ XP on a KT333 DDR platform, you might notice the difference a good deal more than just dropping that new XP into the older SDRAM platform.

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: bex0rs

Originally posted by: AmusedOne

That's funny, my 2.0A does it just fine.

I wasn't trying to be humorous, but the point I was making was that the 2.4 was noticeably faster at performing the said task than the nearby and otherwise similarly configured 2.0. Perhaps a 3Ghz machine would draw the start menu even faster, but the 2.4 did it fast enough for me to call it instantaneous with regard to the limit of my perception. Of course, I am not disputing your claim as it is all really subjective, but I suppose that is the point of this thread.

~bex0rs

And my point was that I can see no delay whatsoever in drawing the start menu with shadows, and I've never seen a difference in GUI speed between a 2.4 and 2.0 P4 machine when all other things were equal. I've built both 2.4 and 2.0 machines with upper end video cards. When simply moving around in Windows XP I can see no difference in speed.

There are other things here at play. The video card, the amount of video memory, what processes are running in the background, and what other Windows GUI visual effects are turned on at the time all can make a difference.

The largest effect I've noticed on XP's GUI speed is the video card and amount of video memory. I installed XP on a family member's PIII850 and found it to be very slow in drawing menus and windows. Having a large wallpaper on it made it even worse. I then upgraded the 8MB video card to one with 32MB, and noticed a HUGE improvement. Once it had a 32MB video card in it, it was drawing menus and windows nearly as fast as the P4 machines.