My stuff won't go obsolete

[AshleyAshes]

Does anyone else have this problem?  I see people talking about upgrades all the time even just single generational leaps among Intel CPUs but being ready to throw the last generation into the dumpster ASAP.  I'm in a different boat, I feel like the stuff I have just won't reach uselessness.

 

My laptop is from 2012, old right?  But it has an i7 2630QM in it and 16GB of RAM, that's a Quad Core 2.0ghz (2.9ghz Turbo) Sandy Bridge  The resolution mind you is only 1366x768 which is the biggest downside but for a laptop that I mostly just use to browse around on the couch while watching TV, it's beyond 'good enough' and I can't justify the cost of replacing it.  Even when the keyboard had failed it was easier to just spend 20 on eBay to buy a new keyboard and replace it.  This also let me ditch the Canadian Bilingual keyboard for the standard US English keyboard. D:

My desktop?  i7 Extreme 4930k that 's over clocked to 4.6ghz.  It'll be four years old come Christmas but it's still going strong.  Oh sure, I put a new GPU in it every 2 years but performance wise, that machine so it's hard to justify replacing the entire system without making a very big leap in performance.  Like, 8 core Intel or 10 core AMD, minimum.  Most other 'upgrades' would cost more money than they're worth.  I'll probably upgrade it's R9 390X to Vega in the fall but that's really the biggest upgrading I've done in sometime, keeping GPUs up to date every couple of years.

 

Even my other machines, I have a livingroom HTPC that runs an i7 3770K that runs at 4.2ghz and has an HD 7950 in it and it'll get the GPU hand-me-downs from the above mentioned i7 Extreme system.  It's hard to hate the 3770K, that's a rock solid CPU and for video decoding and casual TV gaming it's great.  When the workstation gets Vega, this machine gets the workstation's 390X which'll nearly, but not quite, match the Xbox One X in performance and AMD even backwards ported HDR support into it.

 

In the bedroom is another HTPC, the lightest used, it honestly does YouTube for all of the two hours a day it gets used.  It's i5 4590 could probably handle THAT job for the next ten years.  It's also technicaly capable of gaming with an HD 6950 (It gets the hand-me-downs from the above HTPC, so it'll get the HD 7950 in the fall.)

 

Basically, asside from GPUs... I can't justify upgrades to my computers.  I really just can't, with how CPU's have plateaued lately and most games do great on basically 'Any Intel Quad Core' if it's paired with a capable GPU it's just so hard to justify upgrades.

[Nicnac]

I mean those were all expensive cpus once so they should last a bit. Nothing wrong with that, init?? 

 

People upgrading their stuff all the time are like the ones buying a new phone every year just to have the latest. It's just part of their lifestyle and although not a sensible one in most cases it won't bother them and that's okay I guess 

[Zando_]

Lucky Linus. He doesn't have that problem, since he drops everything and breaks it. If you just make a habit of breaking your old hardware, then you have a great reason to upgrade. 

 

EDIT: And I do have the same problem. I really want to get an iPhone 7 Plus because of the water resistance, better camera, etc. But my iPhone 6 Plus works just fine and supports most of the features of iOS 11 and such, so there's not really a need to replace it, especially since an iPhone 7 Plus is around $900. 

[Dang3r D3bbi3]

I mean upgrading what you have now wont make that much of a difference at all. If you upgrade anything I would recommend the laptop as laptops usually drop performance quicker than desktops, however you said you dont really use the laptop for anything major sooo you really dont have to. Both your HTPCs are future proofed but say if you wanted to do more native 4K and HDR in the future then you might have to upgrade the CPU AND GPU both to handle that, your main desktop is fine, especially with Vega soon. Overall, I still dont see what your actually asking though?

[SPARTAN VI]

This is why I get a good chuckle out of the recent flurry of "upgrade time!" threads. These are folks running Ivy Bridge or later i5 and i7 "K" processors, and they're looking to upgrade their CPU/mobo again so soon? 

 

At least with the resurgence of AMD in the mid to high-end scene, we should actually see an influx of innovation and meaningful performance gains generation-over-generation. Not that anyone here needs a history lesson - but an unchallenged Intel is what gave us the last 7ish years of marginal performance improvements. I'm glad to see their reign is seemingly at an end. 

[LooneyJuice]

Honestly, this whole thought process firstly requires knowledge of what performance you need for what purpose, and being realistic about it. Shoving the epeen race aside. For me, loads of the cutting edge stuff is for people who are either just getting into higher end hardware, or are upgrading from something way, way older. And let's not forget expandability and newer features such as thunderbolt, more USB 3-3.1, m.2 and the like. But I'm in the same boat as you. With light content creation, plenty of gaming, and having been lucky with a 5.2GHz chip(running 4.6 daily), I honestly, putting my hand on my heart, can't really say I need more performance out of my 2600k. And it's not an Extreme Ivy such as yours, which had excellent single thread performance to boot. Additionally, I just got my Sandy a new AIO (Arctic 240) so if things ever get sluggish, I just crank her up a bit.

 

GPU-wise, same story as you. I've scrounged up a system over the years that I honestly can't say it does not satisfy my needs. That being said, old stuff is old, and will eventually drop out. Whether that's due to performance, feature set or lifespan, it's up to individual users. But your point kind of emphasizes what I keep advocating, and even Linus and others have mentioned on a number of occasions. Buy the most high end piece of kit you can afford at the time of purchase. I do think that this "Don't really feel like I need an upgrade" mentality is owed to the fact that higher end hardware lasts proportionately longer than cheaping out for the sake of cheaping out. People think of these exorbitant amounts of cash for rigs and think nothing should cost that much, when in fact, they should be thinking about it as cost over time. What's best? Buying 2 or 3 generations of cheap hardware or a single generation of very expensive hardware that'll last proportionately longer and save you money in the meantime? 

 

And trust me, this isn't coming from someone who has money to burn. But instead of moaning about hardware prices, and wanting to have the cake whole and eat it (life's amenities AND a ballin' rig), I just reassign my funds around slightly to account for my great love for the PC world. Can't expect to drink 2 grand a month and still want to build a badass rig 

[GER_T4IGA]

22 minutes ago, AshleyAshes said:

I see people talking about upgrades all the time even just single generational leaps among Intel CPUs but being ready to throw the last generation into the dumpster ASAP

Those are imho the people to stay away from because they never tried it themselves or just generally don't know for shit what they are talking about.

[vanished]

It used to be that once a computer was 4 or 5 years old it was really showing its age, and much more than that and it was painful.  Now it seems, like you said, you can hold onto things seemingly without end and they're still perfect, with perhaps the exception of gaming requirements, but even those don't seem to change as fast as they used to.

 

Maybe I'm misremembering, or maybe it's a real effect.  Either hardware makers aren't making the leaps and bounds they used to, or it's just gotten to a point where it's good enough and whatever progress they are making isn't necessary for the vast majority of things.

[AshleyAshes]

1 minute ago, Dang3r D3bbi3 said:

if you wanted to do more native 4K and HDR in the future then you might have to upgrade the CPU AND GPU both to handle that, your main desktop is fine, especially with Vega soon.

I'm not sure about the non-hyper threaded i5 4590, but the 3770k may be up tot he task on pure CPU power as it is.  Kodi already has no problems doing 4K HEVC and since I'm using the 32bit Windows build, the 32bit build of FFMPEG used is painfully inefficent for HEVC but the in progress 64bit build will solve that issue.  So Kodi should have no problem with at least 24/30fps HEVC 4K content using prue CPU.  60fps COULD pose an issue, but that remains to be seen.

 

AMD has already released HDR support fort he 390X, though I've only tested it on the HDMI port which is capped to 30hz at 4K.  My DP1.2 to HDMI 2.0 adapter is not HDR capable so I need to test it with an HDR capable DP adapter to see if it can spit out 60hz 4K HDR, but those are hitting the market now.

 

However there's also a huge issue of software maturity for HDR video playback, it could be a year or more till that is sorted out.  I mean, the Creator's update ONLY dropped a couple of months ago, devs will need time.

 

However, yeah, Full 4K HDR on that system without a fancy new GPU is actually pretty plausible just by brute forcing it with the CPU.

[21rkosta]

its awesome that our computers can last this long without needing too much upgrades, the only upgrade i forsee in the future for me is an ssd because one of my main rigs is still missing one of those, probobly a cpu eventually because lately ive had problems with not being able to watch netflix while i game,  and maybe like the 1170 after a year of it being out lol

[RadiatingLight]

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

It used to be that once a computer was 4 or 5 years old it was really showing its age, and much more than that and it was painful.  Now it seems, like you said, you can hold onto things seemingly without end and they're still perfect, with perhaps the exception of gaming requirements, but even those don't seem to change as fast as they used to.

 

Maybe I'm misremembering, or maybe it's a real effect.  Either hardware makers aren't making the leaps and bounds they used to, or it's just gotten to a point where it's good enough and whatever progress they are making isn't necessary for the vast majority of things.

IMO it's that requirements for an internet machine have barely changed, since almost all the hard work is serverside anyway, so normal users with a midrange sandy bridge i5 have no reason to upgrade their facebook machines at all.

for gaming, GPU power is still evolving at a fast pace. a high-end GPU from a few years ago, like the GTX 680, is on the verge of not being able to run games at 1080p 60fps anymore, which is a more traditional upgrade cycle.

gaming has also become less CPU dependent, and with intel's lack of innovation anyway, there's little reason to upgrade.

(I wonder if games would use more CPU if intel had innovated the last 5 years, and CPUs were way more powerful?)

[vanished]

Just now, RadiatingLight said:

(I wonder if games would use more CPU if intel had innovated the last 5 years, and CPUs were way more powerful?)

I think one thing is for certain, game devs will expand the product to use what's available.  If Intel (or someone) had managed to move us on to 6 or 8 core CPUs as the norm for even midrange systems by now, you can bet gaming on anything less wouldn't work, much like trying to use an i3 is currently.

[Cyracus]

cpus haven't had major performance upgrades for quite a while since amd stopped giving intel competition, now that there's competition I really hope to see a renewed trend of actual improvements. So yeah hardware from the last few years still works fine, intel's only been doing small incremental improvements. The main reason I built my current system from my 2500k system I used to have is because my mom needed a computer and I had budget to build a computer, would've cost me the same to build any generation so of course I chose the new hotness, and got the 7700k because it cost what I was able to sell my 6600k for, intel employee discount helped a lot in this regard. When I go over to my moms my old rig still works fine, I'd expect a decent fps drop if I tried to game with it compared to my current system if I swapped the gpu over, but I'm sure it'd still be an acceptable experience

[AshleyAshes]

23 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

It used to be that once a computer was 4 or 5 years old it was really showing its age, and much more than that and it was painful.  Now it seems, like you said, you can hold onto things seemingly without end and they're still perfect, with perhaps the exception of gaming requirements, but even those don't seem to change as fast as they used to.

 

Maybe I'm misremembering, or maybe it's a real effect.  Either hardware makers aren't making the leaps and bounds they used to, or it's just gotten to a point where it's good enough and whatever progress they are making isn't necessary for the vast majority of things.

Oh no, I def remember this.  My eMachines eMonster 500a was AMAZING on Christmas 1999.  Pentium 3 @ 500mhz, ATi Xpert 128 with 16mb, 64MB of system memory.  It played ANYTHING I tossed at it that Christmas.  Come 2004 it could barely do flash heavy internet sites.

 

However, I think that what's happened is that the demands of a lot of work we do hasn't evolved.  Between say 1999 and 2004, what constituted a 'webpage' evolved a LOT and they got much more demanding.  However how much, outside of gaming, have computer demands increased?  Websites while improving, haven't gotten that much heavier as they improved.  Office work has stagnated, no one's going to need 8 cores for Microsoft Office.  Even photoshop, images get higher in resolution but the workflow is otherwise stagnant.  Video decoding has had some specific leaps, namely the move to h.264 and now HEVC, but there's always die hards encoding in XviD still these days.  Outside of gaming and some content creation, a Q6600 with 8GB of RAM could get a lot of the work done.

[DarkBlade2117]

24 minutes ago, spartanvi said:

This is why I get a good chuckle out of the recent flurry of "upgrade time!" threads. These are folks running Ivy Bridge or later i5 and i7 "K" processors, and they're looking to upgrade their CPU/mobo again so soon? 

 

At least with the resurgence of AMD in the mid to high-end scene, we should actually see an influx of innovation and meaningful performance gains generation-over-generation. Not that anyone here needs a history lesson - but an unchallenged Intel is what gave us the last 7ish years of marginal performance improvements. I'm glad to see their reign is seemingly at an end. 

The thing with this is I don't think you understand..The argument for Ivy-Bridge or older can be made. If you had said Haswell, ya sure but Ivy? You can get upwards of an extra 15-30FPS in gaming! In multithreaded task the 7700k can be upwards of 15-25% faster. Whether that's worth it to some or not is up to them. Same argument can be had for Ryzen 5/8 though not really the time to go pull out the numbers on that. 

As for this guy here, the laptop is not something I'd use tbh. You can get laptops with 1050/1050Tis/1060s in them with i7-6700HQ's/7700HQ's, 8-16GBs of RAM, IPS screens 1TB HDDs and sometimes 128-256GB SSDs for $700-$1000. I mean, ya it's usuable and probably for his cases but if given the opportunity I'd for sure upgrade to a nicer thinner, better battery life, resolution ect laptop. 

Don't tell anyone they can't upgrade, it's really up to them whether or not they want an upgrade. They could have an FX-6300 and GTX 750Ti and if they are happy with their performance, they don't need a upgrade.

[AshleyAshes]

7 minutes ago, DarkBlade2117 said:

The thing with this is I don't think you understand..The argument for Ivy-Bridge or older can be made. If you had said Haswell, ya sure but Ivy? You can get upwards of an extra 15-30FPS in gaming! In multithreaded task the 7700k can be upwards of 15-25% faster. Whether that's worth it to some or not is up to them. Same argument can be had for Ryzen 5/8 though not really the time to go pull out the numbers on that.

First, you're saying UPWARDS of 15-30fps more.  Also, the critical question is, how much more compared to what?  Like, 75fps + 15fps to 90fps for the price of a $300 CPU, $150 for a mobo and $100-$200 for new DDR4 memory. That is a LOT of money for a not so significant improvement, especially when most people have 60hz monitors.  Though say 45fps to 60fps would be a HUGE improvement on the other hand.

 

Obviously, for some that price is fine, but that seems like a not so great improvement for a $550-$650 or so investment especially when you could put that money towards a GPU and probably see vastly better results.  '15-25% faster' has to be weighed against the cost of getting there and how meaningful the improvement is in a practical sense.

 

This is why I'm in a situation where, to upgrade my workstation, I'd have to move to at least an 8 core Intel to even feel like I really 'moved up'.  I don't want 15-25% faster, I want 30-40% faster even if it costs me.  I want to go 'Wow, this is WAY faster. :O'

[Speakerator]

2 hours ago, AshleyAshes said:

Does anyone else have this problem?

[...]
My desktop?  i7 Extreme 4930k that 's over clocked to 4.6ghz.  It'll be four years old come Christmas but it's still going strong.  

4 years? Pfff..  I'm still rocking a 2500 non-k and was debating the same questions every year with every new hardware release. TBO, it does struggle at 4k YouTube (since Chrome won't use the GPU for that..  ), but I can still game at 1440p with reasonable settings. But currently I fear that with the next release, it's time has finally come, since it probably will bottleneck the hell out of whatever GPU will look like a suitable replacement in a years time... Which is kinda sad, because otherwise it still is a pretty decent system for most tasks..

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

17 minutes ago, Speakerator said:

I'm still rocking a 2500 non-k and was debating the same questions every year with every new hardware release.

The non-K 2500 is hitting its limits indeed when it comes to gaming, even if you turn the multiplier all the way to 41.  For regular use it should easily last another 5 years though.  Ever since I stopped playing modern AAA games I turned mine down to the stock speed again and am not noticing any lack of performance really.

[AshleyAshes]

37 minutes ago, Speakerator said:

4 years? Pfff..  I'm still rocking a 2500 non-k and was debating the same questions every year with every new hardware release. TBO, it does struggle at 4k YouTube (since Chrome won't use the GPU for that..  ), but I can still game at 1440p with reasonable settings. But currently I fear that with the next release, it's time has finally come, since it probably will bottleneck the hell out of whatever GPU will look like a suitable replacement in a years time... Which is kinda sad, because otherwise it still is a pretty decent system for most tasks..

 

19 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

The non-K 2500 is hitting its limits indeed when it comes to gaming, even if you turn the multiplier all the way to 41.  For regular use it should easily last another 5 years though.  Ever since I stopped playing modern AAA games I turned mine down to the stock speed again and am not noticing any lack of performance really.

My last PC, the media storage server, is an i5 2300 powered server, and for something that just does SMB, transmission, sabnzbd, MySQL and a few other things, it's disgustingly overspeced or the job and unless a hardware failure happens, it could literally run me anothr 10 years.  I'll just keep jamming SATA cards and HDDs into it.

[vanished]

We have an old laptop that was acquired for free with an "i5" 2540M and no dedicated GPU serving as an HTPC, and for playing netflix and youtube, it's frankly overpowered.

[VerticalDiscussions]

2 hours ago, Nicnac said:

-snip-

I was only forced to upgrade on a consistent basis, because:

• First two phones died (same phones, two flagships, same battery issues, too hot too slow.), nobody could bring them back (repair services screwd up really hard, they were hammering the phones before actually fixing them) and it took a lot of patience, formal messages and external advice to get a replacement.
• Second phone survived 1 year, had an issurance plan and later had an accident. A few months later, it was replaced and all i can say is RIP.
• Third and current phone works, but it wasnt the phone i truly wanted nor it performs how i desire.

I will stop upgrading until the phone that i really want is aquired and it too has died (luckily at least, it will last a few years)... so far i have only been getting false expections, overhyped phones and terrible support from the company, how am i suppose to want to keep anything for more than a few months?

 

But money is precious, and i need it now for something else.

[Mitko_DSV]

48 minutes ago, Speakerator said:

4 years? Pfff..  I'm still rocking a 2500 non-k and was debating the same questions every year with every new hardware release. TBO, it does struggle at 4k YouTube (since Chrome won't use the GPU for that..  ), but I can still game at 1440p with reasonable settings. But currently I fear that with the next release, it's time has finally come, since it probably will bottleneck the hell out of whatever GPU will look like a suitable replacement in a years time... Which is kinda sad, because otherwise it still is a pretty decent system for most tasks..

Your i5 2500 struggles with 4k YouTube? My i5 2320 and 3320M both handle in without problems, can't reach more than 85-90% load. Tested with Chrome and Firefox.

 

I don't upgrade a lot either. Last year I upgraded my CPU from Celeron G530 to i5 2320 and I'm not planning to upgrade any time soon. And if I upgrade it'll be to an i7 2600. And my secondary PC has and Athlon XP era Sempron running at 2GHz. Doesn't even have SSE2 so can't run newer programs, but it does the job for now.

[asand1]

I struggled with an Athlon 64 3000+ for over 8 years. Within the last 3 years I have upgraded 4 times. Athlon 64>FX 4300>i3 2100>i7 2600>Xeon X5680. Now that I am on the Sabertooth X58 and Xeon I see no reason to upgrade for another 6 years.

[Nicnac]

3 hours ago, Zando Bob said:

Lucky Linus. He doesn't have that problem, since he drops everything and breaks it. If you just make a habit of breaking your old hardware, then you have a great reason to upgrade. 

 

EDIT: And I do have the same problem. I really want to get an iPhone 7 Plus because of the water resistance, better camera, etc. But my iPhone 6 Plus works just fine and supports most of the features of iOS 11 and such, so there's not really a need to replace it, especially since an iPhone 7 Plus is around $900. 

throw it against the wall a few times while drunk or drop it while drunk. Made mine obsolete rather quickly

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

2 hours ago, Nicnac said:

throw it against the wall a few times while drunk or drop it while drunk. Made mine obsolete rather quickly

Been trying that for years now, doesn't help. 

 

 

Yes, that's my actual phone.  It's not obsolete and works just fine, so I keep using it.