Desktop CPU upgrades have now shifted to a 20 year cycle.

[Hulk]

If you checked the development pace of CPUs in the last Decade and realize there is almost no difference from the sandy bridge to Skylake, and whatever difference there exists is too small for 90% of PC owners to warrant an upgrade. I know many people with Q6600 core 2 who have 0 need to upgrade at all. I know many with core 2 duos who play their games just fine.

So what exactly is the issue? isn't it the case that new games need much better CPU?

Well from statistics of PC Gamers the actual ones who are real gamers not those like us who steal games on torrents, I mean people who actually play games online to benchmark our new super duper ubber skylake rig for 5 minutes and claimed we played said game.

90% of PC Gamers are still playing World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, League of Legends, DOTA 2 and Counter Strike 1.6/ CS GO, team fortress 2 etc. None of these games support more than 2 cores and runs on very old hardware. League of Legends alone claims a staggering 20 million online Players by itself. DOTA 2 another few million same for CS GO. World of Warcraft another 8 million remaining.

How many actually buy these latest games? let us have a look shall we?

http://steamspy.com/app/208650

^ Batman Arkham Knight one of the hottest if not the hottest PC game of 2015. Sells short of Half a Million copies. This therefore falls into the 10% category of PC Gamers who are interested in non PC like games.

And more and more people are realizing that technology has finally caught up, console like games sell on the consoles, there is a second hand market, technology has caught up on the consoles with its 8GB GDDR 5 RAM. That the graphics look so good, many flat out does not care about owning a PC for those kind of games.

The PC market is growing but not for console ports, there is 0 sense in building a PC to play console ports, they are flat out horribly BROKEN mess. Mortal Kombat X is a prime example of that the online is already dead while the online on PS4 is flooded and active. The PC Market is growing in League of Legends and DOTA 2. Games that do not use high end hardware games that have a 20 year lifespan through microtransaction monetary.

League of Legends, DOTA 2 and many of the very popular PC games are expected to have a 20 year lifespan because the graphics are now "good enough" This is NOT the 90's anymore, games now have matured enough where gameplay is everything and graphics is nothing.

Thanks to Blizzard and Valve. we know now the meaning of Gameplay over Graphics. For 90% of PC Gamers there will be no reason for upgrades for 20 years on each of the top played titles in the world.

Yes you are absolutely correct. Thank you for this information. No need for you to post again until 2035 to confirm.

 

[jason5220]

Why are you all comparing 1995 to now? Back in the 90's there were no options for multi core, today you can buy a 8 core Devil's canyon with 16 threads which will easily last for 25 years.

In the 90's these technology was in its infancy, people never knew what "realistic" graphics were. They were the days of pixels. Today video games have reached practically real life.

So much the point where companies are now scaling back and focusing the time and effort into gameplay rather than graphics. We are far pass the age of wow look at this graphics. We have seen it all and we don't want to see anymore we want gameplay we want optimizations.

There is a "good enough" sweet spot that many of you all will not understand. Intel realized this years ago when they scrapped labrre and focused on integrated GPU and people laughed at intel saying which gamer would game on a intel iGPU

Today 90% of Gamers can run their games on a Intel Iris GPU. And the age of ultrabooks is finally here to game on.

I get that you all fall in the 10% of Gamers who buy the latest hardware to play the latest games sorry I mean you torrent the latest games to test out your FPS and then delete it after. But I am not talking about you 10% I am talking about the other 90% of PC gamers who play the same game for 15 years and more.

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

Why are you all comparing 1995 to now? Back in the 90's there were no options for multi core, today you can buy a 8 core Devil's canyon with 16 threads which will easily last for 25 years.

In the 90's these technology was in its infancy, people never knew what "realistic" graphics were. They were the days of pixels. Today video games have reached practically real life.

So much the point where companies are now scaling back and focusing the time and effort into gameplay rather than graphics. We are far pass the age of wow look at this graphics. We have seen it all and we don't want to see anymore we want gameplay we want optimizations.

There is a "good enough" sweet spot that many of you all will not understand. Intel realized this years ago when they scrapped labrre and focused on integrated GPU and people laughed at intel saying which gamer would game on a intel iGPU

Today 90% of Gamers can run their games on a Intel Iris GPU. And the age of ultrabooks is finally here to game on.

I get that you all fall in the 10% of Gamers who buy the latest hardware to play the latest games sorry I mean you torrent the latest games to test out your FPS and then delete it after. But I am not talking about you 10% I am talking about the other 90% of PC gamers who play the same game for 15 years and more.

Have you got a brother or sister called JOHN5220 ?
Your posts seem amazingly similar.

E.g. Your computers seem to be very similar. (E.g. Both seem to use FX6300 and Zalman fans).
http://forums.anandtech.com/member.php?u=344042

 

[Fjodor2001]

FYI, a 20 year old CPU is something that was released in 1995. Unless your thing is playing DOOM and Quake all day (Unreal miiight be feasible, although I'd say it's iffy), a 20 year old CPU on a 20 year old platform is completely unusable today.

Although the pace of speed increases in CPUs has slowed, I still think that if you're trying to use a Skylake chip to play video games in the year 2035, "you're gonna have a bad time."

To be fair, we should be looking forward, not backward, when talking possible upgrade cycles in this day and age. In the 1995 era we were in the middle of the golden age of performance increases, where we saw CPU performance double every 2 years or so. Now, not so much.

 

[ninaholic37]

FYI, a 20 year old CPU is something that was released in 1995. Unless your thing is playing DOOM and Quake all day (Unreal miiight be feasible, although I'd say it's iffy), a 20 year old CPU on a 20 year old platform is completely unusable today.

Funny you should mention that, there are 6 games on my laptop right now, and Doom II is the newest one.

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

Funny you should mention that, there are 6 games on my laptop right now, and Doom II is the newest one.

Twenty years is a VERY long time.

E.g. The phenomenally well known and massive, Google company, was only formed, almost exactly to the day, seventeen years ago.

On September 4, 1998, Google was formed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google

In twenty years time. Who knows what new (possibly cpu manufacturing) companies, will be making cpus then.

E.g. Arm was NOT very big (relatively speaking), twenty years ago.

 

[MrTeal]

To be fair, we should be looking forward, not backward, when talking possible upgrade cycles in this day and age. In the 1995 era we were in the middle of the golden age of performance increases, where we saw CPU performance double every 2 years or so. Now, not so much.

True, but looking forward all but 20 years is all but impossible. Forget CPU power, 20 years ago AOL was mailing out CDs to get people onto their BBS service and people were logging in with their brand new 28.8k modems. The Motorola StarTac was the sexy new phone, though only rich businessmen had them.

The difference in CPU speed might not be as great 20 years from now as it was between now and 1995, but you're just throwing darts at a board even guessing the ways we'll be using technology in 20 years.

 

[MrTeal]

Twenty years is a VERY long time.

20 years ago neither nVIDIA, ATI nor 3DFX had produced a 3D graphics card.

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

20 years ago neither nVIDIA, ATI nor 3DFX had produced a 3D graphics card.

In theory (as long as they can keep on reducing the manufacturing cost of IC transistors). Graphics cards can carry on progressing. (But some sources are saying the continual existence of ever cheaper (and usually smaller) IC transistors, is coming to an end).

A number of computer things, are likely to continue to improve, each year.

For example, we use to only have single core (desktop) computers. E.g. 486/Pentium.

We are already at 4 cores (mainstream/Intel), or 8 cores (AMD or Intels Socket 2011 stuff).

So in a number of years, the number of cores should keep on going up and up.

I think that Intel may be holding back on this. I would have thought that 8 core (mainstream) cpus, are already a realistic possibility.

E.g. Intel Broadwell Microserver chips (Broadwell-D/Xeon-D ?), are already 8 core. At a not too expensive price (if I recall, correctly). But sadly, I've never seen the Broadwell-D motherboards for sale anywhere.

So although single core performance, may not go up much, on a year by year basis. In theory, we could have 1024 core cpus, when the manufacturing costs are low enough, and they can run at a low enough power/consumption efficiency.

Anyway, even 8 core (mainstream, sensible price), would be nice to have. Hopefully an increasing amount of software, could then usefully exploit it.

 

[crisium]

10 years, yes. 20 years, not yet. Someone who bought a Q6600 in 2007 should be able to use it in 2017. It will fall short in some things, but will be usable. i7 920 in 2018 will be even better off. 2500k in 2021? It's a running gag how the 2500k is still viable, but it also wouldn't surprise me if it can be used in 2021 just fine.

You've lost your head though if you think a Q6600 in 2027 or a 2500K in 2031 will be viable. Enjoy your padded room.

 

[poofyhairguy]

20 years ago neither nVIDIA, ATI nor 3DFX had produced a 3D graphics card.

False. In 1995 Nvidia released the NV1:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NV1

It used quadratic surfaces instead of triangles.

 

[jason5220]

To be fair, we should be looking forward, not backward, when talking possible upgrade cycles in this day and age. In the 1995 era we were in the middle of the golden age of performance increases, where we saw CPU performance double every 2 years or so. Now, not so much.

^ And this is what I am trying to say.

2015 is NOT 1995 when it comes to technology. That golden age is gone, If you have Sandy Bridge you have absolutely NO reason to upgrade to Skylake for performance increase when gaming.

I think that technology has matured so much to the point where there is only so much the human mind can do from this point onwards. The added fact that we have gotten bored of realism graphics and companies wanting to charge $100 US for a game every year like COD whereas everyone just wants to play CS GO cause its flat out so much more fun than boring ass COD.

Combined with microtransactions there seems to be 0 need at all for companies to create sequels anymore and even when they do the top companies where 90% of Gamers are buying from, Valve, Blizzard etc focus on ultra low end hardware when they make a game.

Look at starcraft 2, WOW and Diablo 3 most of its processing is done on a single core. If Blizzard was to create a game in 3 years from now bet your ass they are going to make it Dual core minimum and quad core recommended. A Blizzard game lasts atleast 10 years.

So in 10 years a minimum would be quad core and recommended is 8 threads. Thats a total of 20 years service you are getting if you have an i7 4790K right now you can go even better and buy a 16 threaded devils canyon and you may even get 30 years, its so easy to predict. These companies who aim for multi million online player base always make game that a potato can run because its all about gameplay and online playerbase.

I don't see whats so hard for people to understand. People here are educated and should be able to see whats happening here. Today you have the choice of dual cores quad cores and 8 cores all with over clocking.

In 1995 there was only 1 core and nothing else to choose from also in 1995 games were nowhere near as graphically impressive as it is today.

Note if anyone bothered to read my Original title I never said every gamer will be using this hardware for 20 years I said 90% of gamers who play valve and blizzard games will, the rest of you who pirate games on torrent to run and test your rig aren't real gamers you are just tech demo people and fall into the 10% market and even then I don't believe you are 10% because this market is with SLI and crap which I heard is 1%

 

[2is]

Not sure what games you're playing where a Core 2 Duo is adequate, but those of us playing new releases know they are completely inadequate as are Core 2 Quads for many titles.

 

[SPBHM]

the oldest PC I have for current software is an Athlon 64 X2, which was available 10 years ago (the one I have is from 2007), but it's already far from ideal, it can run win10, chrome, youtube (with lower res, not 1080p) and run MS office for sure, but it's totally inadequate for gaming, sure you can play TF2 (with some bad framreate drops), but I tried f1 2014 recently and it was really bad, even compared to an E5400.

I don't think even a 5960X will be good after 10 year., but it might be usable for more basic software, perhaps it will age better than a 2005 dual core,

 

[jason5220]

Not sure what games you're playing where a Core 2 Duo is adequate, but those of us playing new releases know they are completely inadequate as are Core 2 Quads for many titles.

I made it clear the figure of new release games and gamers who play these new releases is around 10%.

The rest of PC gamers play League of Legends, World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, CS GO, DOTA 2, team fortress 2 etc. Which all run fine at 60 FPS on core 2 duos

All of these games are designed with a 15 to 20 year lifespan. (Blizzard still support 1998's starcraft brood war) and it has a higher online playerbase than the latest Call of Duty on PC.

League of Legends alone commands over 20 million PC gamers. World of Warcraft, another 8 million, CS GO and DOTA 2 millions upon millions.

Latest games? I provided my links as proof batman arkham knight has 500,000 players. Those are your "latest" game figures which falls into 10% or less.

 

[jason5220]

the oldest PC I have for current software is an Athlon 64 X2, which was available 10 years ago (the one I have is from 2007), but it's already far from ideal, it can run win10, chrome, youtube (with lower res, not 1080p) and run MS office for sure, but it's totally inadequate for gaming, sure you can play TF2 (with some bad framreate drops), but I tried f1 2014 recently and it was really bad, even compared to an E5400.

I don't think even a 5960X will be good after 10 year., but it might be usable for more basic software, perhaps it will age better than a 2005 dual core,

Something is seriously wrong if you cannot play team fortress 2 at 60 FPS on your Athlon X2

when I had my Athlon X2 5600+ I could of ran Team Fortress 2 at 60 FPS just fine. TF2 was designed around hardware lower than that athlon it was designed for single core AMD and Pentium 4

Also where do you get this insane prediction that 5960X won't last for 10 years?

You do realize that dual cores save for Pentium D are working just fine for 90% of PC Gamers today right? and thats 10 years we are talking about.

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

when I had my Athlon X2 5600+

john5220

Athlon X2 5600+

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37648607&postcount=109

Is this new user (jason5220), to get round a forum ban or something ?

 

[2is]

I made it clear the figure of new release games and gamers who play these new releases is around 10%.

The rest of PC gamers play League of Legends, World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, CS GO, DOTA 2, team fortress 2 etc. Which all run fine at 60 FPS on core 2 duos

All of these games are designed with a 15 to 20 year lifespan. (Blizzard still support 1998's starcraft brood war) and it has a higher online playerbase than the latest Call of Duty on PC.

League of Legends alone commands over 20 million PC gamers. World of Warcraft, another 8 million, CS GO and DOTA 2 millions upon millions.

Latest games? I provided my links as proof batman arkham knight has 500,000 players. Those are your "latest" game figures which falls into 10% or less.

Soooo what you're saying is, as long as you keep playing old games your old hardware won't need upgrading... Genius!

 

[cytg111]

OP is spot on. (yet the usual suspects call bs and "troll".)

I agree on most points, however, the upcoming occulus rift, morpheus and others, - we are gonna get a new race towards the nextgen VR experience (thats gonna need lotsa cpu and lotsa gpu)...

 

[jason5220]

Yes

 

[2is]

Something is seriously wrong if you cannot play team fortress 2 at 60 FPS on your Athlon X2

when I had my Athlon X2 5600+ I could of ran Team Fortress 2 at 60 FPS just fine. TF2 was designed around hardware lower than that athlon it was designed for single core AMD and Pentium 4

Also where do you get this insane prediction that 5960X won't last for 10 years?

You do realize that dual cores save for Pentium D are working just fine for 90% of PC Gamers today right? and thats 10 years we are talking about.

You can't play TF2 with an X2 at 60fps

 

[SPBHM]

Something is seriously wrong if you cannot play team fortress 2 at 60 FPS on your Athlon X2

when I had my Athlon X2 5600+ I could of ran Team Fortress 2 at 60 FPS just fine. TF2 was designed around hardware lower than that athlon it was designed for single core AMD and Pentium 4

if you play on high pop (32players) and some maps enough you should see a lot of drops under 30FPS with an A64 X2 when there is a ton of action, even at 3GHz, even my sandy bridge i3 would go under 50fps (under 40 on extreme cases) and that thing was absurdly faster than the A64 X2, if you run around empty servers, sure it should run like a champ,

 

[jason5220]

OP is spot on. (yet the usual suspects call bs and "troll".)

I agree on most points, however, the upcoming occulus rift, morpheus and others, - we are gonna get a new race towards the nextgen VR experience (thats gonna need lotsa cpu and lotsa gpu)...

NOW THIS!!! is something that "could" change it.

I will agree with you here, if there is a product that is enough to persuade gamers, not bullshit like MS kinect and all that rubbish. But something like Occulus rift that drastically changes how we game and opens up a whole new world.

I can see that whole 20 year cycle going through the window but even then there is no competition from AMD and intel could very well just continue on it's slow 1 FPS a year increase. Which would still put us at 20 fps in 20 years.

 

[jason5220]

if you play on high pop (32players) and some maps enough you should see a lot of drops under 30FPS with an A64 X2 when there is a ton of action, even at 3GHz, even my sandy bridge i3 would go under 50fps (under 40 on extreme cases) and that thing was absurdly faster than the A64 X2, if you run around empty servers, sure it should run like a champ,

When selecting more than 24 players per server on TF2 it says that TF2 does not officially support more than 24 players and you may increase slow downs.

In that case yes I will agree with you however if you stick to valve's recommendations then it would run fine.

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

Yes

Thanks for admitting it. But I suspect that when the mods find out, something might happen.