Why is "Future Proof" such a hated term?

[Moonzy]

Most of us hate the term, but I personally think the hate is more from it being overused or misunderstood, than "it's not a thing" (it is a thing)

 

definition:

Quote

to design software, a computer, etc. so that it can still be used in the future, even when technology changes

not preventing the future from happening, that's some pretty sc-fi stuff, John Connor

 

When I see people saying "3600 and 3700x doesn't make a difference for gaming", I tend to question the statement myself.

I know, looking into the future is pretty much a guess work, but I would assume games would tend to use more and more cores, so even if most game doesn't utilise 8 cores now, they might in the next 2-4 years (which is a standard upgrade cycle for average-high end users), so having those extra cores today might make it "worth it" in the near future.

 

It's like buying a 2TB hard disk to fit in 2TB of data that you have today, 3 days later you'll need another drive because you didn't "future proof" and buy a larger capacity, you just bought whatever was enough for the time.

 

I understand that there are options that simply doesn't make a lick of sense for gaming, like the 3900x, which will probably lack the single threaded performance needed to run games well by the time games actually utilise more than 10 cores.

There's also many other factors such as resolution and system config's balance to consider, but this thread isn't about that.

It's about trying to understand (and maybe clarify) why the term will trigger some of the people I've seen.

 

So is my thought process invalid?

[Haro]

Because it means nothing, future proofing does not mean anything and you kind of can't do it, we do not know what's going to happen in the future and you can't future proof, getting a system that will do what ever you need it to do currently is what's important.

not making a build that could be good in the future.

[DailyProcrastinator]

Ahhh yes the F-word. I hate the term because no one owns a crystal ball. The future is not entirely predictable, so why plan for something we do not yet know about. 

[Drama Lama]

Just buy the computer and if it’s too slow buy a new/ upgrade certain parts.

[Moonzy]

6 minutes ago, TofuHaroto said:

we do not know what's going to happen in the future and you can't future proof

 

5 minutes ago, TheDailyProcrastinator said:

Ahhh yes the F-word. I hate the term because no one owns a crystal ball. The future is not entirely predictable, so why plan for something we do not yet know about. 

we cant know concretely, but we can do an educated guess

in almost every field we leave a "headroom" to allow for the unknowns, I don't see why computers deserve any other different treatment.

 

games have been progressing to use more and more cores, it's unlikely it'll suddenly stop its growth.

As market's average core count rises, so will the games' requirements.

 

6 minutes ago, TofuHaroto said:

not making a build that could be good in the future.

it's not about competing with future components

but to be able to perform better than current options that you can choose from, in the near future

[Cyracus]

What is the scope of future proof? usable in 2 years? 10 years? 100 years? For all the future?
It's easy to put together a build that should be good for 3-5 years but putting together something "future proof" is an excercise in futility due to the infinite frame of time

[Potatocell]

It depends how long you are thinking. 1 year? sure. any tech out now is future proof for 1 year. 10 years, 20 years? Idk 

[martward]

Well here's the thing, any computer component you buy now will work for the foreseeable future, so according to that definition basically every component either is future proof or isn't (let's say we ditch pcie slots at some point, that means all GPUs will no longer work, no matter how much you spend). So then future-proofing means buying stuff that will make you not want to upgrade for X amount of time. The term future-proofing is then very vague. How many months or years is X? What is your metric for "not needing to upgrade", is it when you can't run games at ultra 60fps or do you take into account that you will have to drop to medium in Y months/years and then only upgrade say a year later?

Then all of a sudden a new technology enters the field (e.g. raytracing), now every old GPU isn't able to run that so does that contribute to whether you need to upgrade, in which case it was impossible to future-proof your PC before the RTX series came out.

 

What I'm getting at that future-proofing is a very vague concept that can't be used in any objective measured terms, so even if you don't hate it (which I don't) it's not something that is helpful in a discussion. If some person says they want to buy a component and they want it to be future-proof, people recommending stuff can't know what future-proof would be to this person. In stead people should say "I'd like to buy a component that can hopefully/probably give me X performance for the next 1-2 years in these scenarios". Still a hard question which you can't answer, but you can at least take a guess.

[RadiatingLight]

It gets hate because of two things:

1. Future-proofing often costs more than just building 2 systems. (spend $2.5K right now, vs spending $1K now, $1K later and ending up with a better overall system)

2. Future-proofing is a good guess at best. Will all future games have RTX (and therefore the only way to future-proof is with an RTX card)?, maybe future games will need 32GB RAM, or more storage. You can't really future-proof because you don't know what's coming up. a 1080Ti, even though it was the best you can get, is not future-proofed for RTX because nobody knew it was coming.

 

you CAN make those guesses, and you can strategically design your PC to last longer, but I think it's the word "proof" that ticks people off, since there's no guarantee.

[spartaman64]

because when people say that they mean they want their pc to run all games at 60+ fps in like 10 years when thats probably not going to be a thing

[Jurrunio]

2 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

we cant know concretely, but we can do an educated guess

future proof needs more than just a guess, the concept's different. "Stay relevant as long as possible" is the right word if you're gonna put it like that.

[Haro]

10 hours ago, Moonzy said:

As market's average core count rises, so will the games' requirements.

that could happen but again i and you do not know that's not guaranteed to happen, and when people try to "future proof" some actually end up with a worse system trying to focus on one part and end up cheaping out on another and they end up with a worse system at the end of the day, what's important is having a system that is enough for today.

[tikker]

3 minutes ago, spartaman64 said:

because when people say that they mean they want their pc to run all games at 60+ fps in like 10 years when thats probably not going to be a thing

This perfectly summarizes the reply I wanted to type

 

It's not the future proofing per se that is the problem I think, but the expectations or idea that top of the line hardware now will still be top of the line hardware then. Take RTX for example. My 1080 Ti still holds up nicely for me in all the games I play, but Control with ray tracing enabled gets a whopping 6 FPS. You can do your best, but with revolutionary changes like RTX tomorrow's tech can be outdated yesterday.

[DailyProcrastinator]

11 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

we cant know concretely, but we can do an educated guess

I agree within reason, however, often I see people asking unrealistic questions when it comes to 'future proofing', and IMO if there was an ounce of critical thought the answer would be right in front of them.

 

There is often a difference between not knowing and understanding vs ignorance. If someone genuinely does not know, I have no problem.

 

But when someone has asked the same question 'how to future proof for a 3080/3090" (and they do not even have a built system) with 3+ responses saying wait for reviews, the end result is always frustrating. 

 

And often future proofing is expensive guess work that does not yield better performance per $. Instead the result is overcompensation for unrealistic use cases. 

 

11 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

games have been progressing to use more and more cores, it's unlikely it'll suddenly stop its growth.

As market's average core count rises, so will the games' requirements.

Yes, and no. Some multi core optimization has happened but as of now frequency still is the priority for an all out gaming CPU. Still waiting for this to change. If i had to pick one gaming CPU RIGHT now, it would be the i5 10600k, literally the same as a 10700k/10900k.

 

The trend seems to be more cores but the reality not quite there yet. 

 

 

[Eigenvektor]

5 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

we cant know concretely, but we can do an educated guess

Imagine you bought a 1080 Ti with the expectation of "future proof" — "I can use that card for 10 years with acceptable performance before I need to upgrade again"

 

Could you have predicted that RTX is suddenly a thing and all of a sudden there are effects you can't enable with that card because it doesn't have the necessary hardware? Of course there are no games that require RTX, but if you want to experience it, suddenly you can't without upgrading again much sooner than expected.

[DailyProcrastinator]

11 minutes ago, RadiatingLight said:

It gets hate because of two things:

1. Future-proofing often costs more than just building 2 systems. (spend $2.5K right now, vs spending $1K now, $1K later and ending up with a better overall system)

2. Future-proofing is a good guess at best. Will all future games have RTX (and therefore the only way to future-proof is with an RTX card)?, maybe future games will need 32GB RAM, or more storage. You can't really future-proof because you don't know what's coming up. a 1080Ti, even though it was the best you can get, is not future-proofed for RTX because nobody knew it was coming.

This ^^^

[eeeee1]

bought a 2060 back in december. and in one month, it will be nearly obsolete for its price i bought it for

[Princess Luna]

It's simply because there's no such thing as future proofing, you must buy for the today and not tomorrow.

 

Imagine buying a 1300$ RTX 2080 Ti for futureproof a month before this 499$ RTX 3070 that's supposedly on pair with it.

 

I'd say only things in a computer that you can future-proof are storage and monitor.

[Mister Woof]

I believe people are overly critical of the term. It's a bandwagon echo chamber to dogpile on anyone who uses it, and there's far more nuance than is often given credit for.

 

Personally, I believe planning your system builds with a moderate amount of overhead makes sense. If you've ever planned for any type of big project, you know that its important to plan for contingency and "what ifs". You don't make a budget proposal with exactly the minimum amount of staff to accomplish your mission objective, you have to account for turnover, sick days, vacation, etc.

 

You are using this philosophy to plan for what you need today, and what you might need for tomorrow if things don't go as planned. You can't know for sure that exactly 15 people are going to call out sick, 2 people go on maternity leave, or 2 people will leave the company. But you can plan for it in case they do, and not be stuck in the situation where you're boned if they do. Sure it costs more, but it gives you some headroom for growth/contingency. At worst case, you spent a little extra, call it insurance. You don't always use insurance. But it's dumb not to buy it.

What if games need more than 6 cores and 12 threads? What if games need more than 16GB of RAM? What if you need more than 500gb of SSD space? 

 

What if your goals change, and you're not just gaming anymore, but doing content creation or streaming?

 

There's any numbers of reasons to want to assign more budget to more performance/lateral resources than you currently need.

 

So applying that to computer tech, yes, I believe it is definitely still a valuable philosophy and I won't fault anyone for wanting to be "future proofed" to an extent. 

 

Obviously there's limits, and obviously there's points where it doesn't make sense. You don't hire 20 extra employees to cover for 5. But hiring 6 or 7 isn't crazy. It might not make sense to spend double your CPU budget on a 3900x when a 3600 can get it done perfectly fine. But if you want that little extra cushion in case your goals DO change, or in case games DO need more than 6/12 chips, then it doesn't cost you much overall to start with a 3700x to improve your chances of a positive outcome.

 

Hating on the phrase without even considering the actual legitimate reasons why it would be needed is just as dumb or even dumber than the guy who says they want to "future" proof his PC for gaming by getting a 3950x.

[Murasaki]

For me future proof just means being good enough to suit one's needs for lets say 3-5 years.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

One reason why people hate that term right now: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. 

[Mister Woof]

Just now, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

One reason why people hates that term right now: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. 

tbf this is kind of like the new Crysis

 

doesn't matter what you buy, this one won't be easy to run for another few years.

 

it's more of an outlier than the norm.

[St. Nick]

Moonzy: My biggest caution with future proofing is that it generally is taken as BUY THE PERFORMANCE I THINK I MIGHT NEED IN 4 YEARS. NOW. Rather then making a system with headroom for upgrade ability. We all take for granted that getting an M-Atx board with 2 dimm slots and 2 4 gig dimms is a dumb idea if you say your gonna GAME on it. We tell people all the time DON'T DO IT. Yet this is future proofing. We also tell people, Buy a slightly roomy good quality PSU so it doesn't blow up in your face and you can upgrade your GPU at least once in the upgrade cycle. Also essentially future proofing. Deciding how much CPU you need now though? That's a harder one. Buying a 3700X in case you need more cores in the future is future proofing. But so is 'I'm buying a 3600 now, because I will probably flip it and buy a zen 3 CPU in half a year". Why people usually get triggered by it is that many people get so lost in future proofing that they buy an imbalanced system because 'I might need the performance later'.

And then we have our unpredictables, Technologies like RTX I/O which now have people questioning WILL we need all that CPU power for gaming later? And sometimes future proofing makes people laugh hand over fist at the people questioning them. I am pretty smug now that I bought an X570 Board with a 3600 9 months ago 'because I'mma upgrade later!' and many users here told me NO GET B450 TOMAHAWK MAX! But I'm sitting here with my X570 board and gen 4 SSD going, alright bring it on NVIDIA!

However at the same token, i spend a good 6 of those past months thinking 'You know, I should have listened I spend a whole lot on a shiny Gen 4 SSD and it is doing Jack all for me.' Future proofing is, basically, Buying things you might not need and can't properly justify to yourself because of a 'hunch' or a 'want' because we can barely predict whats coming out in a month let alone in 4 years. Telling people not to gamble with their hundreds even thousands of dollars... well I can see both sides of the argument.

[svmlegacy]

49 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

Most of us hate the term, but I personally think the hate is more from it being overused or misunderstood, than "it's not a thing" (it is a thing)

 

definition:

not preventing the future from happening, that's some pretty sc-fi stuff, John Connor

 

When I see people saying "3600 and 3700x doesn't make a difference for gaming", I tend to question the statement myself.

I know, looking into the future is pretty much a guess work, but I would assume games would tend to use more and more cores, so even if most game doesn't utilise 8 cores now, they might in the next 2-4 years (which is a standard upgrade cycle for average-high end users), so having those extra cores today might make it "worth it" in the near future.

 

It's like buying a 2TB hard disk to fit in 2TB of data that you have today, 3 days later you'll need another drive because you didn't "future proof" and buy a larger capacity, you just bought whatever was enough for the time.

 

I understand that there are options that simply doesn't make a lick of sense for gaming, like the 3900x, which will probably lack the single threaded performance needed to run games well by the time games actually utilise more than 10 cores.

There's also many other factors such as resolution and system config's balance to consider, but this thread isn't about that.

It's about trying to understand (and maybe clarify) why the term will trigger some of the people I've seen.

 

So is my thought process invalid?

Personally, I dislike it with the set of expectations that comes with it. I refuse to be held responsible if a system becomes slow, buggy, or poor performing in the future, due to ever advancing requirements, or a users poor choices.

[Mister Woof]

1 minute ago, svmlegacy said:

Personally, I dislike it with the set of expectations that comes with it. I refuse to be held responsible if a system becomes slow, buggy, or poor performing in the future, due to ever advancing requirements, or a users poor choices.

How are you responsible? Nobody's paying you here for consultation fees.....People come to an open forum and ask for suggestions. It's a given majority of it is opinion and people need to make their own decisions.

 

That said, I usually try to justify my position whenever recommending something.