Where are we in the current "Wave?"

[Smoolean]

This is one of, if not the most, knowledgeable computer forum I know of on the web today. And while my question may seem lame, please understand that I am only asking it here because I respect the opinions on these forums more so than anywhere else. That, and I am honestly curious.

The last computer I purchased was in '99. It was a Compaq and it was essentially obsolete in a year or two.

My friend bought a computer in 2002, and it's still running strong today.

I guess my point/question is that computers seem to go in waves, of good times to buy and bad times to buy. In regards to this possible theme, where does that leave us today, in 2006? Would I be sad if I bought a computer today?

I realize that question is impossible to answer unless I first explain what I'll be using the computer for.

I'm a web developer / graphic designer, so Photoshop, Illustrator, and basic text editing are my bread and butter (I've been surviving on a donated PowerMac G4 the last year, and would like to venture back into the world of Windows). For fun I'd like to be able to edit video and possibly even casually game. I have many more particulars, and questions regarding my individual situation, that I would like to be answered eventually. . .

But for now I'd like to keep this a wider, community based thread. How do you weigh in on the whole "wave" situation? Please don't flame me, I'm honestly just a concerned buyer and I respect the users of Anandtech to show me the light. Do you see any huge revolutions coming that would make computers bought today become phased out faster than usual? What can a potential buyer like myself expect?

Thanks for reading,
Brad

 

[halfadder]

IMHO, the only real "wave" turning point was when computers started shipping with Pentium II and PowerPC 604 and 750 ("G3") CPUs. Those machines are still perfectly usable today if you have at least 256 MB RAM and do a little system tuning.

The slowest PC I still use on a regular basis is actually about 18 months older than some PCs that my university recently trashed. The difference is my PC has dedicated graphics with dedicated gfx ram, a real 3Com 3C905b NIC, and 384 MB memory. While the PCs my university just dumped might have faster CPUs, they also used the nasty slow Intel i810 intergrated graphics, which stole a majority of the already slow PC100 memory bandwidth. The NIC was also built into the chipset and designed for "value", not performance.

The only other turning point I've really seen was when AMD released their second and third speed boosts to their original Athlon. This showed the world that they were finally serious about fast CPUs and finally scared Intel into some awesome competition. Just like the battle between ATI and NVIDIA, the compeition between AMD and Intel is giving us low prices and high performance.

As long as you do your product research and build a powerful, balanced system, you're going to have a machine that will last you a long time. For example, I have a friend who has a 3 year old PC that wasn't even top of the line when he built it. By todays standards it's old, but it still runs most games quite well and all indications suggest it will be great for Vista. 2.1 GHz AthlonXP 3000+, 256 MB Radeon 8500, 1 GB memory, 160 GB HD with 8 mb cache.

 

[stardrek]

That can be a really loaded question.

One way of looking at it is, did you buy the very best that was out there in 99? If not, did your friend buy the very best that could be bought when he did in 2002? If he did then one thing to look at would be making sure you buy a top notch system for the here-and-now. Buying something to just get you buy at any point in time will lead to an obsolete system very quickly.

Another thing to look at is what was a big change from 1999 to 2002? What is something that would change how computers were used and what was done with them? The operating system would be one major answer. In 1999 Windows 98 was still going strong, but in 2002 there was Windows XP. Windows XP has lasted quite some time and I would expect Vista, Microsoft?s upcoming OS, to last quite a while. Changing the operating system is a big push to bring in new form of technology. Vista isn?t going to be happy with your average joe computer, it is going to require some real power behind it if you want to fully utilize it. Then you have to think about what is going to be running on top of this already resource intensive OS.

Another thing that has started to happen is programming, while becoming more agile and also more complex is getting to become a little sloppier. Programmers now have something that programmers in the past never really had, the idea of almost limitless hard drive space. People don?t worry nearly as much about writing tight code because they know that computers have so much power and space that they can cut corners and still be fine. But this piles up over time and eventually your computer, that was once so powerful that it could take anything thrown at it, is not at the mercy of tons of bad code.

These are just a few examples and I?m sure that people here can give you plenty more detailed and informative responses. The wave is hard to predict. Computing power grows by leaps and bounds, but sometimes there are slumps. Pentium 4 lasted for over 5 years, only now is it being thrown out, which should help bring about a new era in computing. Thank god for competition like AMD. Thanks to companies like them, AMD, Intel has had to get their act together. Once they become comfortable with their architectures again, then the wave might settle for a little bit. But no one really knows. Something else could come about that completely changes the personal computing platform, and I for one hope something does. I?m ok with my shiny new hardware being obsolete, as long as something great comes out of it.

 

[pkme2]

PMed you.

 

[Geomagick]

This is from my perspective so is just an opinion.

Technolgy for the core of the system ie CPU, RAM, HD speeds and capacities have been advancing gradually over the past couple of years rather than the explosive speed increases we had in the late 1990's and early 2000's. This has meant that these components in people's systems are lasting longer and longer than ever before. The same cannot be said though for graphics. Both ATI and nVidia are relentlessly trying to get one over on each other on graphics performance and games developers are taking full advantage of the available perofrmance. However this only applies if you are an avid gamer, which from your post I can see that you are not.

There are a few advances though just around the corner that might be worth waiting for.

AMD is moving from socket 939 to AM2 and as a result is ditching DDR in favour of the faster DDR2 RAM. However the performance should be fairly close to todays offerings.

Intel on the other hand are very close to unleashing Core 2 Duo on us which will from early benchmark data be an excellent processor series giving a significant boost to performance across a wide range of applications.

From this summer both AMD and Intel will be using DDR2 so there will be no reason to choose one over the other based on memory technology.

Hard drives for the desktop have got steadily quicker and more capacious but just about any 7200rpm drive will be fine, the newer Seagate 7200.10 drives are proving to be superb performers and are available in capacities up to 750GB. For all out performance Western Digital Raptors are great but expensive and small.

 

[Madwand1]

One way to answer this question is to look at what's in the pipe for the near future -- 2006-2007. There is a fair bit -- Intel's new core architecture (Conroe, etc.), AMD's new socket AM2, AMD's new socket F for servers, Microsoft's Vista OS, Vista DRM (like it or not), D3D 10, HD DVD formats, 802.11n wireless, increased 64-bit OS's, potentially new display technology, potentially new DRAM technologies.

Affordable gigabit wired networking is already here. Further increases in internet speed and city-wide wireless are incoming. Multi-core CPU's are here. HD capacity is ever-increasing.

In the home, with accumulation of personal digital data, storage and backup and networking are becoming increasingly important.

World-wide, there is increasing demand for this stuff, but a wider market can only be reached at lower costs. This has nice side-effects of lowering costs all around, and making building low cost systems rewarding.

At present, all options are quite viable for at least the basics -- yesterday's, today's, and tomorrow's technology, and I don't see that changing much.

Always, there are areas where you might want to push the envelope fo specific reasons, you have a different perspective -- best performance or best performance / price, instead of just sufficient performance. Asking yourself what's too slow / too small / too klunky / etc., for me, and finding out how you can go about improving it, is a great way to approach this issue instead of the reverse -- what's the latest and greatest brand/item/technology/hype.

 

[phaxmohdem]

I think what we have witnessed over the past several years is the outpacing of Hardware VS. software. Computers are getting powerful enough that software can't fully saturate hardware as fast (With the exception of the 3D gaming industry). With Vista, we are seeing the first big software "power leap" in a while.

I'm a big fan of older computers from thje PPro era on up, and in fact my second PC on my desk is a Compaq AP400 Dual PII 600 machine from 1999. I outfitted her with its max 1GB of RAM, and a modern graphics card and she will run anything like butter still. Hell I've got a Dual PPro 200M Machine w/ 512MB RAM that will run XP like it was born to do it.

I guess to answer your question, it all depends what you bought back in '99 and '02 that would determine if it is still viable today. Most older systems processors are still fast for many modern tasks, they are just bogged down by the slower peripherals & small RAM ammounts of its era. You just need a new faster hard drive, vid card, and as much RAM as the system can handle, and it will practially fart the star spangled banner for you again, even in its old age.