Do computers get slower, or does everything else get faster?

[HarrisonCassidy]

Pretty much the title. It is a question that pops into my head once and a while. For computers, is it that with each software update things use a little more resources each time, or does a cpu/ram/other components just get worn down? Similar question could be applied to phones I suppose.

 

Are all the old computers in my life slowing down or is the bar just being raised with each new device?

[Slottr]

Software gets more demanding, hardware deteriorates with use

[RAS_3885]

If you're old computer is still on a mechanical hard drive that also causes everything to feel slower as well.

[porina]

Generally hardware works or don't work. About the only common condition that could cause it to slow down is if cooling gets worse (thermal compound degrading, fans/heatsink blocked by dust) then higher temperatures could result in throttling.

 

If overclocking hard, there can be degradation which requires backing off the overclock over time. As a hopefully special case, the microcode updates required for Spectre / Meltdown protection could cause a reduction in performance in some situations.

 

I think most perceptions of slowness with age is because of software bloat, and OS installs collecting excess baggage over time.

[minibois]

Software gets generally more demanding, but things like the amount of space your use on your SSD/HDD and the amount of programs you install on your PC usually increases too, meaning your PC tends to run slower the longer you have it.

[Tristerin]

Bar is being raised.

 

Example - I was gifted an i3 6100t with a mech drive - installed Windows 7....Windows 10....it was horrid.  I mean you could just FEEL the latency oozing.  All because I am used to snappy performance.

 

Slapped an SSD in there - instant magic.

 

Silicone and deteriorate but not in the sense that you will lose compute power, as far as I am aware - and if so it would be within margin of error or it would be a complete failure, there really is no middle ground.  If something is on the fritz its about to blow basically.

[DrMacintosh]

It’s a bit of both. 

[GoldenLag]

the Bar is being raised in terms of requirements. 

 

also you have poor driver upkeep. not uncommon with 900 series and before Nvidia cards where they get deprioritized. 

 

GCN with AMD is still holding on, but you will start to feel the lack of new hardware features at some point, even if GCN gen 1 holds strong (HD7000 series i belive). 

 

 

you also have Ram requirements increasing. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Hardware may have a stability point that degrades over time. For example, the reason why NAND flash fails is because each cell holds a bit of charge to set the voltage. However, not all of the charge depletes when the cell's value changes, so over time it accumulates a bit of charge. At some point, the accumulated charge crosses the threshold for when the cell is a 0 or 1.  Similarly with overclocking a CPU, you can probably get it to a really fast, stable speed, but over time that ceiling will lower due to degradation.

 

Otherwise, we also demand more out of software and developers often don't have time to make sure it's optimized enough.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Usually software gets more demanding, which will slow down on hardware that can't keep up with it.

 

Hardware will usually outlast software, and you will eventually be unable to run or in some cases install newer software on a computer.

[Sauron]

43 minutes ago, Slottr said:

hardware deteriorates with use

This only really applies to hard disks and cooling, at least as far as performance goes (obviously things can break with use). Your CPU will either work at full capacity or not work, as long as it's properly cooled there's no inbetween.

49 minutes ago, HarrisonCassidy said:

Are all the old computers in my life slowing down or is the bar just being raised with each new device?

Software and poor maintenance can cause slowdowns over time; new software can also be more demanding. Browsers and websites in particular have been getting heavier and slower in an effort to look pretty and steal your data. In the last decade or so, however, hardware has been winning the race; software gets heavier, yes, but already back in 2010 we had decent quad cores and some really fast dual cores that still run most things just fine.

[Jessica.Fawkes]

When a device starts aging it can start feeling slower. I used a iPod classic compared to an iPod nano, and I could see the visible difference in speed, since the Nano was based around flash memory instead of a venerable 3200rpm drive. Software updates can also makes systems even slower, since there's more code the system may have to run, or access from a drive.

[Srius1]

Mix of both . It’s what you get used to; imagine when you got your new car, it used to be so “fast” but now 5 months later...you know it’s limits and now it’s not fast anymore.

[RoseLuck462]

You need to do fresh software installs every so often.

[SkilledRebuilds]

So many variations and aspects can change..

Junk files, excess bloat (even removed leaves traces behind) empty folders, all the leftovers from removing apps and the like...

Over months and months, apps don't always clean their tracks...

 

It's never ever ever going to be clean clean again without a reinstall and reset.

 

This junk, unmanaged, will over time lead you to Believe your slower and may in fact (processing data) add delays to tasks.

#NotAlways #GeneralizingALot #UpkeepNeeded

 

Best to be aware, never afraid to reset the PC, your file system should have you backup things for an easier process.

[jofraarcher]

It completely depends on your computers which version you are using and ram matters alot. belkin wireless router orange light error helped me to get the solution of this.

[cluelessgenius]

While hardware deteriation is a thing. the performance lost over time for most components is insignificant. the hardware will fail before any performance decrease is measurable.

 

Software always orientates itself on the current state of hardware. so any software developed right now will focus on current hardware. In reality the framework underneith the software usually do change even more according to hardware advances but lets leave that ou for now.

 

so right now if i for example write a software for foto editing. of course i wanna take advantage of multithreading. with cpu 's getting more and more core in the past couple years why wouldnt i. at the company i work right now we have specifc pcs, like spefically configured to represent the average system for most of our customers. and those pcs are then used for all kinds of test that are performance related. in software, at least around here, there never enough power. if we could we do all the calculations with every click the user does but performance is what limits us. so the more powerful pcs get the more of the more advanced the software can get. of course this leaves older systems behind or at least with poor performance but thats what the minimal rquirements on the box are for.

[straight_stewie]

On 4/23/2019 at 11:11 AM, HarrisonCassidy said:

For computers, is it that with each software update things use a little more resources each time

I refer to this as "the darkside of abstraction". As computers become faster, more abstraction layers become feasible, and therefore most of your performance improvements are eroded away in trade for "developer productivity".

That's not necessarily a bad thing, however. The question we should be asking is "How fast do I actually need this to be". Is the cheaper software that comes with the increased ease of development worth the performance tradeoff? I would argue that in most cases the answer is "absolutely".

 

 

[JuztBe]

We went from HTML/CSS/PHP websites to React.js + Node.JS with boatloads tracking scripts and unoptimized images.

Software it is.