Where we have come in 5 years of computers.

[Lonyo]

Around 5 years ago, ~£2200 got you from Dell:

P3 600MHz
384MB PC100 RAM
34GB HDD
TNT2 Ultra
19" Flatscreen CRT
4.1 speakers and SB Live!
DVD ROM drive and CD-RW (4x/2x/??x)
Floppy drive.



Now, you get
P4 3.4GHz
2048MB DDR2 PC4200
ATi Radeon X850XT
16x DVD+-RW
20" LCD monitor
No floppy
SB Audigy 2 and 5.1 speakers
400GB HDD


We've increased hard drive space a LOT, 10x the amount in fact.
RAM amounts have gone up A LOT.
Processor speeds have increased
Monitors have chaned, but not really got much bigger.
Graphics cards are faster, with more RAM.
Sound hasn't changed much.


In 5 years, will the same thing happen all over again?
Will it be a faster processor, new screen, more RAM, or will we make some different changes?
Who knows.
This thread is just to illustrate that we have come a fair way in terms of a lot of things, but we can improve on other areas.
Sound still seems to be much ignored, which is a shame, but really that's one of the few things which hasn't changed.

 

[Red]

I think storage is going to continue to exponentially increase. 5 years from now we'll all have advanced flat panel monitors. Sound will be similar, we can't just keep adding channels until speakers are stuck all over the walls Graphics will definitely be much more advanced.

 

[sharkeeper]

No floppy? They're ripping you off!

Cheers!

 

[clarkey01]

I think we'r hitting a slow down, silicon is nearing the end of its life.

 

[Snoop]

Maybe in another 5 years a sound card company can come out with something equivalent to what we had 5 years ago with A3d 2.0/(unreleased but developed 3.0).

 

[Regs]

Another example: 5 years ago a 21 Inch LCD was 2200 dollars. Now it's 600 dollars.

The hard drive, in my theory, will be the big thing to change in the up coming years. It is the slowest object in your computer right now.

It is true, technology is rapidly evolving. Long Horn is asking for more RAM, so you know where that might be heading. However, what about those solid state hard drives I keep hearing about that are only now affordable to huge corporations? (Does this trend sound familiar with every other expensive new technology coming to the consumer market?)

We might not need RAM with solid state hard drives. Just system cache(local RAM on Hard drive and CPU) and a large bus for the information to travel on. Just imagine a hard drive with a seek time in the milli-seconds completely by-passing RAM. We have all ready eliminated the Northbridge, thanks to AMD, and the results from that have shown great significance.

 

[Edward Lee]

In 5 years we'll have:
Advanced "Super Slim" CRT monitors for gamming, 10 Tera bit Hard Drives Drives, 2 Gigs of SUPER DDR Ram standard, 2X PCI-E, Dual Core Graphics cards that can be used universaly, 4.5 GHz Dual processors with 2x 1600 Hyperthreading, High Definition DVD-RW, MP3 Storage Drives, 10 Channel Sound, Satelite Radio Cards....

 

[HardcoreRobot]

i dont expect monitors are going to get any bigger... well, they already have, they are called TVs. because of the way a computer is used, it doesnt make sense to look at a 30" screen on your desktop, its just too much. that being said, i do expect them continue to drop in price and increase in quality.

RAM fabrication will continue to grow, but not at the same pace as processors (it never has)

processors will continue along following moores law, though eventually chip materials will have to change

graphics cards are just specialized processors and RAM

optical media wont get any faster (physically impossible pretty much), but capacity will increase using smaller wavelength laser

i really dont know about hard drives. i heard that we are approaching the capacity limit for our current technology, but i really cant say. perhaps in 5 years we will start to see the hologram drives...

as for sound, it hasnt really increased that much, but what is left for it to accomplish? you have speed and size for the other components, but there is nothing similar for sound.

fiber is starting to make its way to the homes... this should make high speed internet an option for some people, and will drive down the price / increase the minimum speeds for other broadband (looking forward to this )

 

[Shenkoa]

I predict 8 Ghz Dual Die P4's (Yes P4's) 2,048 MB of DDR2 at 1 Ghz, Video cards with 64 rendering pipelines, HDD's are unpredictable.

 

[halfadder]

And amazingly, the P3/600 is still usable under XP.

Many of the LCDs from 5 years ago are also still very decent, especially the SGI 1600SW.

 

[w00t]

tecnology grows so fast. this is what happens but you say it like its a bad thing

 

[imported_Beavis]

In five years
Quad-core Nanochips for Processors
AMD will reach 256 Bit processors
2 GB of 1-1-1-1 Memory QuadChannel Standard
2 GHz 2Gb Video PCI-E Cards
PCI-E at 64x speeds,
Improvements to SLI which you can run 128x in SLI mode
Super HDMI Imputs on Graphic Cards
LCDs with a 1 ms response time standard
FIOS To be standard for broadband at 1gb/sec up and down
Dial-up still be around in a few places
Windows Will Still Have Holes in the OS
Linux become a standard for Desktops with windows based Games and Apps compatible
etc....

 

[Edward Lee]

Originally posted by: Beavis
In five years
Quad-core Nanochips for Processors
AMD will reach 256 Bit processors
2 GB of 1-1-1-1 Memory QuadChannel Standard
2 GHz 2Gb Video PCI-E Cards
PCI-E at 64x speeds,
Improvements to SLI which you can run 128x in SLI mode
Super HDMI Imputs on Graphic Cards
LCDs with a 1 ms response time standard
FIOS To be standard for broadband at 1gb/sec up and down
Dial-up still be around in a few places
Windows Will Still Have Holes in the OS
Linux become a standard for Desktops with windows based Games and Apps compatible
etc....

I don't see even one of those things you mentioned as having even a shot at becomming reality anytime soon.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Lonyo

Monitors have chaned, but not really got much bigger.

Monitors really slowed down when the SVGA was originally introduced.

Hard drives are supposedly slowing down right now as well, on the size increase I guess. Lets hope they focus on what we really need: faster drives. I don't need 400GBs, but I would like my games to load faster and windows to boot faster. The hard drive is the main bottleneck on the computer now.

 

[imported_Beavis]

Originally posted by: PingSpike

Originally posted by: Lonyo

Monitors have chaned, but not really got much bigger.

Monitors really slowed down when the SVGA was originally introduced.

Hard drives are supposedly slowing down right now as well, on the size increase I guess. Lets hope they focus on what we really need: faster drives. I don't need 400GBs, but I would like my games to load faster and windows to boot faster. The hard drive is the main bottleneck on the computer now.

Hell yeah to faster drives

I would like to see SCSI Connectors on regular Mainboards instead on the server boards.

 

[SunSamurai]

Originally posted by: HardcoreRobot
i dont expect monitors are going to get any bigger... well, they already have, they are called TVs. because of the way a computer is used, it doesnt make sense to look at a 30" screen on your desktop, its just too much. that being said, i do expect them continue to drop in price and increase in quality.

RAM fabrication will continue to grow, but not at the same pace as processors (it never has)

processors will continue along following moores law, though eventually chip materials will have to change

haha, tell that to graphics designers. 30 inches too much? My ass. Many people would love if Apple made bigger monitors. They already have two huge LCDs side by side. Monitors will get wider and resolution will get tighter.

Moores law has not been in effect for ages.

Hard drives will hit a point around 1TB then the industry will start getting creative. They will start makeig 2XDrives that basically function as RAID0-1 in a normal looking 3.5 inch drive. Perhaps two or four read/write heads for added thoughput and close to instant access time. Perhaps evolving to the point where there is no one read write head, but tens of thousands on a bridge spanning each platter, where, theoretically one 360 degree turn of a platter could enable the entire contents of the drive to be read.