Have CPU's got to a point where they don't have to be upgraded?

[+Warwagon MVC]

I remember back in 1998 when I got my first computer. It was a PII 333 with 64 or 128 of ram can't remember which. I ran windows good but by 2001 (3 years later) it felt long in the tooth. So I upgraded to a PIII 1ghz (dual CPU motherboard with only 1 CPU) with 512 megs of ram. It was a power house at the time running Windows 2000 and then Windows XP.

Then in 2005 (4 years later) the computer was feeling long in the tooth and I upgraded to the Athlon 64, still running XP. Point being I was upgrading about every 3 - 4 years. With every windows release, the hardware and the ram felt liked it needed upgrading.

My Newest system, built in October 2008 is an i7 920 with 6 gigs (Upgrade to 12GB) of ram. This machine is powering 4 monitors and is running off an 80GB SSD Drive. It even plays Skyrim good. This computer is still (4 years later) meeting every need I have and not feeling slow in the least (SSD helps in that ). I honestly don't see myself upgrading for at least another 3 years.

So do you think CPU's have got to the point where they just don't have to be upgraded as often as they use to?

[+Random Stranger Subscriber¹]

yeah, pretty much, the need for upgrage if you are buying high performance system, is reduced...

top of the range stuff from 4 years ago is still good. unlike it was back in the day.

[capr]

This is why there is such need for innovation. do you remember when we first went from single core to dual core? that was innovative. When we went to 4 cores, it was improving a good idea. with i7s they didn't add more cores but added more cash and all these other features you can read about on wiki. But there hasn't been any new "innovative" ideas. unless we have something like that, you won't see a giant leap in day to day performance.

If you look at the I/O side of things. we were stangnant for a long time with USB 2 and revisions of it. eSATA was sort of innovative and then USB 3 came about which was a huge improvement. Thunderbolt is innovative and rocks the rest right now....

[Vice]

A few years ago I'd upgrade to every new processor architecture because I needed it. But since 2009 I've not felt the need to upgrade. I have an X58 system with a Core i7 940 that I bought in 2009 and it still serves me great there is not a task I do on my computer that would benefit from me upgrading to either an LGA1155 or an LGA2011 socket & processor.

So for me I'm not going to upgrade my motherboard or CPU until probably 2013 or even 2014. I am much more likely to buy a larger density SSD (256GB or 512GB) in the next 24 months than I am a new CPU. I feel quite the same about graphics. I have a few GTX 480's in my system in SLI and I skipped the GTX 5xx and HD6xxx and HD7xxx series. I'll probably skip NVIDIA's kepler too. I just can't find games that push the system far enough that the FPS is dipping below an acceptable threshold.

In a way it sucks because I do enjoy building computers and modding them. My system is all water cooled right now with a loop I made myself which was a lot of fun and I'd like to do that again with my next system whenever that is. But I'm saving money and getting great performance from a system that is mostly 2-3 years old now so I can't complain really.

[firey]

I think computers have started to settle hardware wise. The current area of focus (in my opinion) is the mobile market. Tablets being updated all the time to support new versions of Android, or iOS. Tablets from a year ago are slow compared to those today. Same as a cell phone. I know very few people who buy a cellphone and actually keep the one for the duration of their contract. As new versions of android, ios, or windows phone come out the push for faster, more powerful devices are required.

Hell new android sets come out monthly. My phone (The Atrix) came out a year ago, and already has a successor, albeit not as good, it's been replaced.

[+DKAngel Subscriber²]

my i5 760 seems still really good for everything

[deactivated_]

Because of the work I do I used to upgrade every year, or year and a half, at most. However, my current i7 920 with 12 Gb RAM bought in 2009 has served me rather well, with no immediate 'need' to upgrade as in years gone by. Since 2009 I've upgraded to SSDs for the OS and a few of my crucial VMs, but am still not feeling any massive necessity to upgrade. Which is nice. I am waiting for the 6 or 8 core (+hyper-threading, for a total of 12 or 16 logical processors) to be readily available, and then I'll probably upgrade. However, for the general non-gamer, non-power user... a top-of-the-line computer from 2007 is I am sure still happily filling their needs.

[a1ien]

It was the 3GHz+ quad core processor that did it. Those had more power than most people knew what to do with. A Q6600 overclocked to 3GHz is what I'm talking about. Yeah, they're really something.

And yet, if you're doing the right kind of work with your computer, you find that a Sandy Bridge quad core running at almost 5GHz and with its ring bus and 256-bit vector units, is over 3x faster than a Q6600.

[dafin0]

the main bottle neck on computers now is the hard drive, once SSD become the norm then we might see the need for better CPUs. i think with graphics cards there will always be a need to upgrade to keep up with games

[Arceles]

Nope. Normal users won't see a need for upgrade often, that's true but any task that requires mid to fast calculations will still require better processors over all.

One down to earth example are the laptops, laptops can't spend as much power as a desktop but they are quite mobile, but still they lack power... My copy of Guilty Gear Accent Core Plus cant run smooth enough on a PS2 emulator (I'm missing 5fps) in my dv6 6110sg, at 2.9 ghz... I almost made it but not enough yet.

BTW, harddrive is not a bottleneck, it's a storage medium and nothing else, real work always go to ram, because there is almost nothing faster than it... except, perhaps, other types of ram.

[~Johnny]

Nope. Normal users won't see a need for upgrade often, that's true but any task that requires mid to fast calculations will still require better processors over all.

One down to earth example are the laptops, laptops can't spend as much power as a desktop but they are quite mobile, but still they lack power... My copy of Guilty Gear Accent Core Plus cant run smooth enough on a PS2 emulator (I'm missing 5fps) in my dv6 6110sg, at 2.9 ghz... I almost made it but not enough yet.

BTW, harddrive is not a bottleneck, it's a storage medium and nothing else, real work always go to ram, because there is almost nothing faster than it... except, perhaps, other types of ram.

The hard-drive is a bottleneck in a lot of places - especially start up, loading, saving, etc. Heck, to get data to the RAM or even to the CPU that data has to be loaded from somewhere, and that's usually a harddrive or an SSD.

I was talking about some research some people doing at my Uni a few weeks back, and I reckon they're on a good track for innovation in CPU's - computing where the processor can understand more than the two basic states of 0 & 1. (Which are technically just two different voltages). If we could get them to understand something like 4 states, we'd get theoretically be able to get maybe nearly 8 times the throughput with the same clock speeds? Of course, they're not anywhere close to a viable product yet :p That or quantum computing, but I've never bothered looking too much into how that'd work or its viability.

[SuperKid]

I still use a Q9550 and its still pretty fast to me! So I would say Yes, it is getting to a point where you don't need to upgrade.

[Astra.Xtreme]

BTW, harddrive is not a bottleneck, it's a storage medium and nothing else, real work always go to ram, because there is almost nothing faster than it... except, perhaps, other types of ram.

Do you even know what "bottleneck" means? A hard drive is almost always the bottleneck in a PC, hence why a SSD makes such a huge difference.

[Kondrath]

I was just thinking about this the other day, as I have a similar build from 2009, which is listed in my signature. I really have no need to upgrade in the slightest, although I do plan to get an SSD once my Seagate HDD dies again. They die every few months, lol. Still does everything I need and handles whatever I throw at it. Though obviously the ATI 4870 can't quite play ultra on 1920x1080 with some newer games. In a sense, it's great, because my investment has been worthwhile. However, it might be bad since the CPU industry isn't innovating or making any amazing advances. I know more powerful CPUs have come out since my i7 920, but I don't think I'd notice much of a difference if someone installed one into my computer without me knowing.

[ToneKnee]

Apart from SSDs, the reason why CPU's dont need upgrading as much is because of the multiple cores. A E6600 or even a Q6600 back in the day and even now are still fine because the majority of the software out there is single threaded. Now that we have games using the other cores of a CPU it doesn't feel we need an upgrade. I only upgraded from a Q6600 to a AMD Phenom II 6T because it was cheap and I wanted to use DDR3.

[Arceles]

Do you even know what "bottleneck" means? A hard drive is almost always the bottleneck in a PC, hence why a SSD makes such a huge difference.

Yeah precisely because I know what a bottleneck means I can tell you that since the conception of PCs all the storage mediums have been "a bottleneck", it was that much that actually they were never relied for constant operations in them, instead ram loaded all the contents for work and the processor did work with them. Descent 2 comes to mind in this, it used some kind of "virtual memory" that actually relied on the HDD for loading textures, one was able to see how textures were loaded quite slow with this method. SSD is an improvement, nevertheless it will never be used for "ram operations" and stills a big bottleneck overall, hence ram stills working in cooperation with the processor for "no bottleneck" operation, that's why is an storage medium.

[Prince781]

What people don't realize is that, it's not that the previous CPUs have become good enough to run most of the future software, but that the future software has started to slow down in advancement to become good enough to be run by previous CPUs.

Either we're losing software innovation, or we're gaining it--in the form of reducing bloat dramatically. I will say that, for example, older versions of Ubuntu from a year ago run slowly on an old computer of mine (2GB RAM, Dual-Core, from 2005), while the newest one seems to run amazingly, as if it's brand new. I've noticed this improvement in performance in Windows software, too...

...so, I guess it's a little of both, or we really don't know.

[+Warwagon MVC]

Though obviously the ATI 4870 can't quite play ultra on 1920x1080 with some newer games. In a sense, it's great, because my investment has been worthwhile. However, it might be bad since the CPU industry isn't innovating or making any amazing advances. I know more powerful CPUs have come out since my i7 920, but I don't think I'd notice much of a difference if someone installed one into my computer without me knowing.

So True. I don't think i'd notice a difference either. I also have that same graphics card.

[Rudy]

Pretty much any system running an i5 or i7 is descent and doesn't really need to be upgraded

[+Warwagon MVC]

Then there is windows 8 coming out which is going to use even less resources than windows 8 and windows 9 won't be released for another 4 years, so modern day CPU's don't need to be upgraded for a while. That isn't to say that they won't also be able to run windows 9 great as well.

Heck Even my Moms AMD X2 5000 runs great and the only thing slowing it down is the hard drive. The PC was built back in 2006, so it's already 6 years old and runs Windows 7 great. Add an SSD to the machine you could probably get another 4 years out of it... or a total 10 years or more.

[Astra.Xtreme]

Yeah precisely because I know what a bottleneck means I can tell you that since the conception of PCs all the storage mediums have been "a bottleneck", it was that much that actually they were never relied for constant operations in them, instead ram loaded all the contents for work and the processor did work with them. Descent 2 comes to mind in this, it used some kind of "virtual memory" that actually relied on the HDD for loading textures, one was able to see how textures were loaded quite slow with this method. SSD is an improvement, nevertheless it will never be used for "ram operations" and stills a big bottleneck overall, hence ram stills working in cooperation with the processor for "no bottleneck" operation, that's why is an storage medium.

Not really sure what you're trying to get at. You previously said that a hard drive isn't a bottleneck, which is absolutely false in most cases. A bottleneck refers to the slowest component. The concept of a storage medium has nothing to do with this.

[Arceles]

Not really sure what you're trying to get at. You previously said that a hard drive isn't a bottleneck, which is absolutely false in most cases. A bottleneck refers to the slowest component. The concept of a storage medium has nothing to do with this.

If you were working on the hdd as ram, then that would be a true bottleneck, that's why ram is used instead and on a system an hdd can be referred more like a storage medium rather than a bottleneck, because it's not a "essential" part to put the processor to work at full speed. Slow loading times arise from this yeah, but once you're on the windows desktop (or playing a game) the hdd is far from being the bottleneck.

[Kreuger]

All of you guys bought your iX core processors in 2009 and I had just gotten up to Core2Duo. I guess Ill always remain a few years behind. It's my understanding that these days, CPUs are just improving in power consumption and things like that. I mean, we haven't really seen them move further than 3.8ghz without any kind of O/C. Instead, we've just shrunk them and added more cores.

[tsupersonic]

I was just thinking about this the other day, as I have a similar build from 2009, which is listed in my signature. I really have no need to upgrade in the slightest, although I do plan to get an SSD once my Seagate HDD dies again. They die every few months, lol. Still does everything I need and handles whatever I throw at it. Though obviously the ATI 4870 can't quite play ultra on 1920x1080 with some newer games. In a sense, it's great, because my investment has been worthwhile. However, it might be bad since the CPU industry isn't innovating or making any amazing advances. I know more powerful CPUs have come out since my i7 920, but I don't think I'd notice much of a difference if someone installed one into my computer without me knowing.

I disagree. Intel has done pretty good with any CPU's since Core Duo, which was a huge leap from the P4/PD days. Heck, even after Core Duo, you had Core 2 Duo, and the i5/i7's which were a bigger improvement, and now you have Sandy Bridge(-E), and soon Ivy Bridge. Intel is continually improving their CPU's, while AMD on the other hand is falling behind. Also, software doesn't truly take advantage of the CPU's very well. We have started to see games recently take advantage of quad cores, but in most cases, it's the GPU that will be the bottleneck there. I hope Intel/AMD can work on lowering the power usage of these CPU's (especially in the higher end CPU's).

Technology is now switching from the desktop to mobile platforms - like the laptop, cell phones and tablets. So, we''ll see CPU improvements in those areas, especially cell phones and tablets.

[remixedcat]

For my next system I am building with server grade components and a 15K SAS array and that should last me a while. however I think many are shifting to SSDs that are just enough for the OS+Programs, and then using SANs, NAS devices or cloud storage.

I would like to do that with my household here.

I'm getting by fine with my system:

CPU

AMD Phenom X4 9550 91 ?F

Agena 65nm Technology

RAM

4.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 401MHz (5-5-5-18)

Motherboard

ASUSTeK Computer INC. M2N-SLI (Socket AM2 ) 105 ?F

Graphics

SyncMaster (1920x1080@60Hz)

W1952 (1440x900@60Hz)

1024MB GeForce 8800 GT (EVGA) 139 ?F

Hard Drives

313GB Hitachi Hitachi HDT725032VLA360 ATA Device (SATA) 90 ?F

199GB Maxtor Maxtor 6L200M0 ATA Device (SATA) 92 ?F

Optical Drives

HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GSA-H55L ATA Device

Audio

SB Audigy

I've had it since mid 2008....