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When will we see the next decent/worthy boost in hardware?

JayFiveAliveJayFiveAlive Member UncommonPosts: 601
I currently have an old Sandybridge that is overclocked to 4.7Ghz and my graphics card is a 670GTX. Neither are that fancy and the cpu is years old but I can still play most games on max detail and everything loads fast etc. Ivybridge and haswell were meh in terms of raw performance. Will Broadwell be the next big upgrade? Or what about for GPU? The 800 series?


I'm really curious when it will be worth upgrading. This is a great age for pc gaming with components lasting so long!
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Comments

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    In single-threaded performance, possibly never.  In GPU performance, we're waiting on die shrinks, and should get to 14/16 nm in about two years.
  • Dagon13Dagon13 Member UncommonPosts: 566
    Why do you care about boosts in hardware when you already run everything at max settings?
  • cnutempcnutemp Member UncommonPosts: 230
    Well, long term we will be getting a game changing boost in about 10-15 years.  400 Ghz Graphine processors are going to change everything.
  • tom_goretom_gore Member UncommonPosts: 2,001

    Intel Haswell K-sku refresh is coming in Q3. Rumors are Intel has significantly improved the heat transfer from core to the heatspreader. They should be overclockable to 5+ GHz on air.

    Still not a massive boost, but keep on mind Haswell is about 20% faster clock-on-clock against Sandy Bridge.

  • JayFiveAliveJayFiveAlive Member UncommonPosts: 601
    I enjoy building new comps and want to make one lol but I'm not going to do it until it makes sense. Gone are the days of an outdated system in 6 months to a year :)
  • FlyByKnightFlyByKnight Member EpicPosts: 3,967
    I'd like to see a boost in how game engines use the current generation of hardware. They're not using the full potential of them.  Hardware race makes developers complacent IMO.
    "As far as the forum code of conduct, I would think it's a bit outdated and in need of a refre *CLOSED*" 

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  • VrikaVrika Member LegendaryPosts: 7,882

    The current technology is already so fast, that I don't think we'll be seeing any large performance jumps just by improving it.

    I'd say we'll need nanotubes, graphene or silicene, or single-atom transistors to replace our current computer parts before we'll be able to get large boosts to single core performance again.

     
  • BoneserinoBoneserino Member UncommonPosts: 1,768

    A more important question might be :  How will a significant hardware boost, improve the games we have today?

    I am not convinced that better graphics at this point will make games better, which generally what a hardware improvement provides.   The differences are becoming minimal. 

    What sort of hardware advance will provide improved gameplay as in better NPC  artificial intelligence, which is what I would like to see in games?  

    FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!

  • WizardryWizardry Member LegendaryPosts: 19,332
    Originally posted by FlyByKnight
    I'd like to see a boost in how game engines use the current generation of hardware. They're not using the full potential of them.  Hardware race makes developers complacent IMO.

    That is the real problem,the coding is very lazy as we already have gpu's that are more than fast enough when compared to the junk they are selling us in games.Instead of constantly evolving,MOST games are delivering 2000-2005 graphics,some even worse,so why bother upgrading the hardware when it is the developers that need to upgrade their efforts.

    Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.

  • strawhat0981strawhat0981 Member RarePosts: 1,198
    Originally posted by Wizardry
    Originally posted by FlyByKnight
    I'd like to see a boost in how game engines use the current generation of hardware. They're not using the full potential of them.  Hardware race makes developers complacent IMO.

    That is the real problem,the coding is very lazy as we already have gpu's that are more than fast enough when compared to the junk they are selling us in games.Instead of constantly evolving,MOST games are delivering 2000-2005 graphics,some even worse,so why bother upgrading the hardware when it is the developers that need to upgrade their efforts.

    Well i think companies dont push the hardware because most people are on the low end of performance. They want to have those computers in places like south america and asia (and other places) to be able to play their game. If they cater to high end rigs then they alienate many people and that makes them less money. 

     

    So in short....$$$$$$$$$

    Originally posted by laokoko
    "if you want to be a game designer, you should sell your house and fund your game. Since if you won't even fund your own game, no one will".

  • centkincentkin Member RarePosts: 1,527

    Not for a very long time which is why the focus is changing.  A PC will last a lot longer for a while until the next major revolution, whether that be graphene, optical, or quantum.  Silicon has pretty much reached its limits.

     

    It is kind of surprising how little we can do with it actually.  Back when the 80386 came out, I pondered on just how many amazing things one could do with a 10th generation chip of the same kind.  Reality did not fulfill the expectation.

  • rojoArcueidrojoArcueid Member EpicPosts: 10,722
    Originally posted by JayFiveAlive
    I enjoy building new comps and want to make one lol but I'm not going to do it until it makes sense. Gone are the days of an outdated system in 6 months to a year :)

    upgrades only make sense when your PC needs the upgrade. That could be any time. I got my PC in 2009-10 and i did a some upgrade one year later. I still can play all games out there with max settings but high fps is a must and im not getting it with mmos. Strangely enough FFXIV gives me the highest fps in mmos (40-60). Even wow gets 35 and lower on my pc. And im the type of person that rather not play a game if i have to lower the settings to get decent fps, rendering my money wasted. So yeah i do need an upgrade lol.





  • CrusadesCrusades Member Posts: 480
    seems like we are seeing it happen as we speak, project morpheus and oculus rift
  • grndzrogrndzro Member UncommonPosts: 1,162

    The next big boost is coming from low level optimizations and architecture that is designed around it.

    AMD's next architecture will be designed with Mantle and the new OGL optimizations and DX12 in mind.

    Nvidia's next one will be centered around OGL, DX12, and CUDA 6 which will mirror many Mantle features.

  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383

    I think you missed the memo. The big boosts are all happening over in the mobile sector. Mostly with ARM, but there's a good bit of x86 shakeup too in that realm (the AMD Beema/Mullins post, for instance).

    The PC isn't dead - that isn't what I'm saying. But it's not growing either. That sector is receding now, as mobile (tablets/smart phones) not necessarily supersedes it, but rather augments it and is able to get at markets that were unreachable by PCs.

    Not everyone in the third world has a place where they can keep a desktop dry and with steady power, but there aren't a lot of people who don't at least have a pocket and occasional access to charge a phone up every couple of days.

    We will continue to see the mobile sector advance very very quickly becausae it's being approached from two directions - some of it by taking ultra-energy efficient hardware and making it faster, while some is driven by the (now) slower advances in the PC/desktop segment and then brought down to the mobile market via increased energy efficiency.

    The hardware R&D will follow the money, and the money right now is in mobile. We will see modest increases in desktop performance, but it will no longer be because that's where the money is, it will be because faster desktop parts can then be brought down to the mobile arena with subsequent energy efficiency improvements. The proof is already happening: nVidia's Maxwell has started out with a highly efficient 750/750Ti, rather than the beastly high performance card first (880 or whatever they may call it). Intel hasn't appreciably gotten faster for 2 generations now, instead focusing almost exclusvely on energy improvements. AMD is basically doing the same thing, focusing mostly on GCN graphics and more tight integration between their GPU and CPU components.

    Your PC will get faster. It just won't be at the same rate as it was in the 1980's-90's. The PC you bought in 2005 isn't going to be that much slower than one you could buy today... but the modern version will be a heck of a lot smaller, quieter, and more energy efficient.

    In my opinion, PC gaming components having such a lifespan is bad for the gaming industry (although great for my wallet). I was hoping we'd see a modest burst of activity again with the new consoles, since we seemed to have stagnated out with the last console generation, but the hardware specs on the consoles is not terribly promising. Perhaps I'm wrong in blaming the consoles at all, maybe PC stagnation has been because of the mobile bubble this entire time, and I should be blaming Apple for introducing the iPhone.

  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383


    Originally posted by tom_gore
    Still not a massive boost, but keep on mind Haswell is about 20% faster clock-on-clock against Sandy Bridge.

    That is true, and sounds impressive.

    But realize... Sandy was released in Feb 2011, Haswell June 2013. That's a bit over 2 years, for 20% performance. That's nothing to sneeze at, for sure.

    Take that same 2 year span:
    1993-1995: P5 Pentium @ 60Mhz -> P54CS a@ 200Mhz.

    That isn't a 20% jump, that's over 3x just on clock speed alone.
    And 6 months after the P54CS, we got the P6, and another 100Mhz clock.
    And 6 months after the P6, we jumped the the PII.

    Back in the 80's and 90's... we used to double performance inside of a year. ALl the way until just shortly after the turn of the century. We kind of hit a road block around 4-5Ghz, and we're still there. Pesky laws of nature.

    Going from 100-200% increases annually, to 10-20%... that's a huge change. An order of magnitude slower.

    Just bringing this back into some perspective. Yes, there was a period in time where a computer that was 2-3 years old was ~ancient~ and utterly obsolete. Now, 4-5 year old computers are typical, and you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference in performance between that and a new one.

  • asmkm22asmkm22 Member Posts: 1,788

    We'll probably see a boost over the next year, as games are designed with a greater scope to take advantage of the new consoles.  Unfortunately PC gaming is largely bottlenecked by this.  They can create a game and do stuff like add better textures and draw distances for the PC, but the overall design is still constrained by what the console hardware can use.

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  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383


    Originally posted by JayFiveAlive
    I enjoy building new comps and want to make one lol but I'm not going to do it until it makes sense. Gone are the days of an outdated system in 6 months to a year :)

    I agree. My current computer is a circa 2008 CPU, and 2010 GPU. I do keep the main hard drive relatively current (I only have SATA2 interface, but I have a M4 SSD installed).

    There's some stuff that can't MAX-MAX at 1920x1200, but I'm ok with that for right now. The stuff that I have to turn down to maintain an acceptable frame rate, honestly, I can't tell much of a difference with or without it anyway. There are some games where I need to kick up the overclock, but most games run fine at stock clocks of 2.66Ghz - from 2008.

    I was going to build a Haswell system about this time last year, but passed over it, seeing as how this rig still works ok. Now I'm thinking I'll just wait for a DDR4-based system -- not because I believe it will necessarily be that much faster, but I'm betting it won't be like RAMBUS and that most systems past that will also be DDR4 based for a while, rather than investing in another DDR3 system now and having DDR4 come out 6 months later. Not that I have a really valid reason for doing so, other than it's just some artificial and somewhat arbitrary milestone I have set for myself.

    This computer, as long as it's been running, could die any moment. I've decided once the next part goes out on it, I'm replacing entirely, and if that's before DDR4 is out (or out at some price point where I'm willing to purchase), then I'll just build another DDR3 system and be happy. And if it's still chugging right along when DDR4 is out and cheap... then maybe I'll keep chugging along, or maybe I'll get bit by the bug and decide to rebuild.

  • frestonfreston Member UncommonPosts: 503
    Coding is expensive. Advanced hardwared makes your pc  successfully work with more advanced coding, but it doesn't cheapen it significantly. Companies are  reaching a point in which they have to start reining in the complexity of their games, not because they are technologically unviable but because they are financially unfeasible. If you need an army of designers working for five years to create a game, no matter how beautiful it looks, no amount of tech is going to make it cheap. 
  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383


    Originally posted by freston
    Coding is expensive. Advanced hardwared makes your pc  successfully work with more advanced coding, but it doesn't cheapen it significantly. Companies are  reaching a point in which they have to start reining in the complexity of their games, not because they are technologically unviable but because they are finacially unfeasible. If you need an army of designers working for five years to create a game, no matter how beautiful it looks, no amount of tech is going to make it cheap. 

    That is actually a very good point.

    I have heard that with each generation of console, the cost to develop a game goes up by about a factor of 10 - based mainly on the complexity added by all the new features that players come to expect.

    Maybe that's why we are seeing such an explosion of "retro" indie games that have simplified 8/16-bit graphic styles and such.

    I have to admit, I'm a sucker for some good graphics. But a good game is good regardless, it's just harder for me to get into without the eye candy.

  • JayFiveAliveJayFiveAlive Member UncommonPosts: 601

    Wow, what an interesting thread! I really didn't think it would spin off into the practicality (or lack of) new hardware, but this is really awesome. Great conversation here :) I suppose the mobile market becoming the focus now is partly a big reason and cost of coding complex games, etc. A lot of good points all around.

    DDR 4 definitely could be a good time for an upgrade IMO and that maaaay be when I do it next. I am tempted to just buy a new case and re-build my current setup, but seems kind of a waste of time lol.

    I think once 4K monitors get more available and affordable we may see some more hardware need in the GPU department, but current cards are kind of ahead of that came, but they would become more affordable to push 4K as well.

  • syntax42syntax42 Member UncommonPosts: 1,378
    Originally posted by cnutemp
    Well, long term we will be getting a game changing boost in about 10-15 years.  400 Ghz Graphine processors are going to change everything.

    Why wait?  Brain-inspired processors have been in testing for a while. 

    http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/11/qualcomm-zeroth-brain-like-computer/

  • goboygogoboygo Member RarePosts: 2,141

    Mobile gaming and consoles have really put a damper on the progress of game graphics outside of these platforms.  Developers just don't care anymore, even the best of todays console graphics look like a pixelated mess up close, they only render the player and the weapon in high rez everything else is created to give you the illusion of nice graphic's.   You used to have PC developers pushing the hardware envelope on every title .  These days it's all about low rez poly's so it can run on someone's smart phone.  I haven't needed to upgraded my computer now in almost 3 years, there's just nothing out there pushing the limits of technology with the exception of one maybe two titles.

    Save your money until the trend reverses.

  • BartDaCatBartDaCat Member UncommonPosts: 813
    Originally posted by JayFiveAlive
    I enjoy building new comps and want to make one lol but I'm not going to do it until it makes sense. Gone are the days of an outdated system in 6 months to a year :)

    I'd hold off until at least Q4 of this year, or early next year.  With TITAN Z cards running at nearly $3k, NVidia 790's on the market, and NVidia having made an announcement that they are going to be introducing a whole new architecture that rivals Kepler in the near future, just in GPU news alone, it would be worth it to sit and wait a while.

     

    New MOBO and CPU infrastructures are on their way as well, and new versions of HDMI, PCI-E, and SATA will be following as well to beef up  the frame rates of higher definition 4K technology.  Most of these have been announced for Q3 2014 and beyond.

     

    We're definitely on the cusp of a boost in performance speeds and newer generations of existing technologies, so I'd hold off if I were you if you want to build another big gaming beast from the ground up.

     

    Correction:  My last update on NVidia technology was based upon the announcement of Volta, but it appears Volta has been cancelled to make way for Pascal, which won't be appearing until 2016.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347

    What is there that you could do on hardware ten times as powerful as today's in all ways that you can't do on today's hardware?

    Draw ten times as many things at once?  That assumes that you have ten times as many things to draw.  You could certainly increase draw distances, but would tripling the distance at which you can see everything really be such a revolutionary change?

    Higher resolution textures?  Yes, though that means larger download and installation sizes.  From a performance perspective, texture resolution is almost solely limited by video memory capacity.

    The only graphical capability that current GPUs are glaringly missing that has much chance of being addressed in the near future is better ways to do transparency--and more to the point, order-independent transparency, so that it can be practical to look correct when one partially transparent object is in front of another.  But is that really such a revolutionary thing?

    Good dynamic shadows and reflections are still a long way off, and making hardware ten times as powerful likely wouldn't get us there if we're still relying on rasterization.

    The main things that could be done to make games better are limited by programmer cleverness, not hardware capabilities.

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