rant about specs for casual use...

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

1 minute ago, Jamiec1130 said:

Other than my SSD (which I use for a lot of my computes, not just one), my Core 2 Duo rigs and all their parts were free. 

you were lucky. i bought my core 2 machine second hand 1.5 years ago as a replacement for my athlon x2 system that died. 

 

[ProjectBox153]

Just now, firelighter487 said:

you were lucky. i bought my core 2 machine second hand 1.5 years ago as a replacement for my athlon x2 system that died. 

 

I've only paid for one Core 2 Duo desktop, but I really only paid for the software that came with it. Activated Windows 10 Pro, Office 2013 Professional Plus and more for $50 USD. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

1 hour ago, typographie said:

 

I can only speak for myself, but I've never met a truly casual user who has even heard of an SSD, let alone one that wants to pay extra for one. That's doubly true with regards to Hyperthreading or chipset features.

 

If you're tech savvy enough to recognize that, you're probably not a casual user. It's a paradox: if you know enough about this tech to make an informed and reasonable decision,  then you also know enough not to overspend.

 

I'm not sure the premise of this question is sound. Casual users are fleeing towards laptops and iPads in droves, and office PCs still seem to me to be dominated by Celerons and Pentiums. Is it even a fact that 'casuals' are buying a lot of $500+ PCs? That part seems to have been glossed over a bit.

it's true i'm not a casual user. that wasn't the point of my rant. 

 

for example, my little brother has a i5 laptop. only uses it for minecraft. and then he freaks out when my old pc's run it better because he only has intel graphics. and then i'm like, why did you buy it then...  

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

1 minute ago, Jamiec1130 said:

I've only paid for one Core 2 Duo desktop, but I really only paid for the software that came with it. Activated Windows 10 Pro, Office 2013 Professional Plus and more for $50 USD. 

wow... mine came from a store that sells second hand systems, and it came with activated windows 10 pro, and a 640gb hdd that's still in it. it cost me about €100 then.. 

[ProjectBox153]

6 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

wow... mine came from a store that sells second hand systems, and it came with activated windows 10 pro, and a 640gb hdd that's still in it. it cost me about €100 then.. 

Yeah, I got one hell of a deal, I might say. That shop also had another identical system, but I don't think they ever sold it before going out of business. I also got a monitor with it as well. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

1 minute ago, Jamiec1130 said:

Yeah, I got one hell of a deal, I might say. That shop also had another identical system, but I don't think they ever sold it before going out of business. I also got a monitor with it as well. 

i got a monitor with mine too! nice 1440x900 one that i still use now

[Coaxialgamer]

41 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

 

really? just the ssd? but all of my games are stored on the harddrives, and they run smooth, and the last time i used a hdd system, it was only slow when opening stuff. web browsing itself was fine...

Well the ssd will definitely not make your games run at higher fps or anything. That's on your cpu/gpu (depending on what you play). However, for everything else, it's impact is huge. A core 2 duo machine with an hdd as boot might feel unusable, but an ssd can fix that for day to day tasks. 

Heck, i even had to use an athlon 64 x2 system for a month as my main rig, but because of my ssd, it didn't feel quite as bad as it sounds. 

[MEC-777]

What the average casual user believes they need is very different from what they actually need. So much money could be saved by installing an SSD in an older, yet still very capable PC instead of buying yet another new pre-built with another slow-ass HDD. Sadly most people don't realize it's the HDD that's slowing the machine way down. 

 

Helped my dad pick out a new laptop recently (his old one was legitimately crap) and the first thing I did was remove the 1TB slow-ass 5400rpm HDD and swap it out with a 256GB SSD (he only needs a fraction of that for storage even) and it blew his mind how much faster the machine is with the SSD. Boots into windows in less than 10 seconds.  

 

In terms of minimum specs for casual users, it kind of depends on how much multi-tasking they do and how heavily they use a browser. Some people only have 1 or 2 tabs open and only do one thing at a time on their PC. Other people, although still considered casual users, could have dozens of tabs, multiple word, spreadsheets, pdf's etc. open at the same time, which can benefit from more cores and more ram. 

 

I specifically chose a laptop with at least an i5 and 8GB ram for my dad, even though he is a light user - because he keeps things for a long time and I wanted this PC to last him as long as possible. I would imagine a celeron or pentium will probably struggle with basic use in 5-8 years time, where as an i5 (like the first gen i5's) will still hold up decently in that time span. 

 

So again, it really depends on the user and how long they plan on keeping it.   

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

4 minutes ago, MEC-777 said:

What the average casual user believes they need is very different from what they actually need. So much money could be saved by installing an SSD in an older, yet still very capable PC instead of buying yet another new pre-built with another slow-ass HDD. Sadly most people don't realize it's the HDD that's slowing the machine way down. 

 

Helped my dad pick out a new laptop recently (his old one was legitimately crap) and the first thing I did was remove the 1TB slow-ass 5400rpm HDD and swap it out with a 256GB SSD (he only needs a fraction of that for storage even) and it blew his mind how much faster the machine is with the SSD. Boots into windows in less than 10 seconds.  

 

In terms of minimum specs for casual users, it kind of depends on how much multi-tasking they do and how heavily they use a browser. Some people only have 1 or 2 tabs open and only do one thing at a time on their PC. Other people, although still considered casual users, could have dozens of tabs, multiple word, spreadsheets, pdf's etc. open at the same time, which can benefit from more cores and more ram. 

 

I specifically chose a laptop with at least an i5 and 8GB ram for my dad, even though he is a light user - because he keeps things for a long time and I wanted this PC to last him as long as possible. I would imagine a celeron or pentium will probably struggle with basic use in 5-8 years time, where as an i5 (like the first gen i5's) will still hold up decently in that time span. 

 

So again, it really depends on the user and how long they plan on keeping it.   

yeah, 8gb of ram is pretty nice. too bad this old machine only has 2 dimm slots, so it supports 4gb max. 

[Sniperfox47]

59 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

when i was fixing up my old gaming rig the other day, i started thinking,

because everything i tried to do on that machine was still fast and smooth, what are the minimum specs for casual use?

For decent performance?

• Multicore CPU
• Fast hard drive, or preferably a cheap eMMC/UFS/SATA/nVME SSD
• GPU with h.264 and preferably VP8 decoding for video if you don't want to kill your CPU. Note doesn't need to be a discrete graphics card, can be integrated as long as it has video decoding.
• 4GBs of ram for casual use. 8GBs of ram if you wanna be super smooth on sites with huge amounts of infinitely scrolling images like Tumblr. 64GB of ram if you use chrome (JK. Or am I?)
• Mouse, keyboard, and Display support. Unless you use switches or some other accessibility device. Then those.
• A power supply capable of supplying the devices with adequate power and fans for adequate cooling.

[MilfShake]

Depends on your definition of "casual" usage.

 

Casual usage for me means open 10-15 chrome tabs on 1 screen while watching 1080p videos on 1 screen. And I don't want to wait for the PC to process every time I open chrome with 10 tabs pre-loaded, or any other programs for that matter.

 

Casual gaming for me means overwatch at 144hz, and I'm also playing Prey.

 

I don't think that PC can even open 15 chrome tabs with youtube videos and stuff playing at the same time... and still run smoothly. Chrome alone will eat 4GB of RAM.

 

And that CPU and GPU can't play anything later than 2012 with high settings past 60 fps at 1080p

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

4 minutes ago, MilfShake said:

Depends on your definition of "casual" usage.

 

Casual usage for me means open 10-15 chrome tabs on 1 screen while watching 1080p videos on 1 screen. And I don't want to wait for the PC to process every time I open chrome with 10 tabs pre-loaded, or any other programs for that matter.

 

Casual gaming for me means overwatch at 144hz, and I'm also playing Prey.

 

I don't think that PC can even open 15 chrome tabs with youtube videos and stuff playing at the same time... and still run smoothly. Chrome alone will eat 4GB of RAM.

 

And that CPU and GPU can't play anything later than 2012 with high settings past 60 fps

casual usage to me is writing emails, browsing the web (with 2-4 tabs open), old games maybe... asual gaming to me is need for speed, and older stuff. 

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

13 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

For decent performance?

• Multicore CPU
• Fast hard drive, or preferably a cheap eMMC/UFS/SATA/nVME SSD
• GPU with h.264 and preferably VP8 decoding for video if you don't want to kill your CPU. Note doesn't need to be a discrete graphics card, can be integrated as long as it has video decoding.
• 4GBs of ram for casual use. 8GBs of ram if you wanna be super smooth on sites with huge amounts of infinitely scrolling images like Tumblr. 64GB of ram if you use chrome (JK. Or am I?)
• Mouse, keyboard, and Display support. Unless you use switches or some other accessibility device. Then those.
• A power supply capable of supplying the devices with adequate power and fans for adequate cooling.

chrome is really ram hungry. with 4 tabs open, i run out of ram on this machine... it will have about 400-600mb left. on ms Edge, right now, with the forum open and a youtube video, i have 2.2 gb used. 

[Sniperfox47]

2 minutes ago, firelighter487 said:

chrome is really ram hungry. with 4 tabs open, i run out of ram on this machine... it will have about 400-600mb left. on ms Edge, right now, with the forum open and a youtube video, i have 2.2 gb used. 

Do you have a lot of extensions/apps or something? I get the whole "chrome eats all your ram" joke as much as anyone but it shouldn't be nearly that bad even with 64 bit chrome.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

3 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Do you have a lot of extensions/apps or something? I get the whole "chrome eats all your ram" joke as much as anyone but it shouldn't be nearly that bad even with 64 bit chrome.

only adblock. but in general chrome uses about 400-500 mb more than Edge in my experience. you don't really notice it if you have 8gb of ram or even 6gb, but on 4gb you do notice it. 

[ProjectBox153]

19 minutes ago, MilfShake said:

Depends on your definition of "casual" usage.

 

Casual usage for me means open 10-15 chrome tabs on 1 screen while watching 1080p videos on 1 screen. And I don't want to wait for the PC to process every time I open chrome with 10 tabs pre-loaded, or any other programs for that matter.

 

Casual gaming for me means overwatch at 144hz, and I'm also playing Prey.

 

I don't think that PC can even open 15 chrome tabs with youtube videos and stuff playing at the same time... and still run smoothly. Chrome alone will eat 4GB of RAM.

 

And that CPU and GPU can't play anything later than 2012 with high settings past 60 fps at 1080p

Casual for me (and I use many Core 2 Duos every day, mind you) is many Chrome windows, each with 5-6 tabs open, maybe more, and a 720p YouTube video playing on one of them. Running 4 monitors. Folding @ Home with the CPU pinned at full usage while doing everything else. Spotify open, VMware open and running Windows 7 and AutoCAD, Firefox open, one or more RDP sessions going, and more, and my little Core 2 Duo E8400 with 8GB of RAM and a mechanical HDD still has more to offer. 

[linkboy]

Casual for me is Chrome (w/ 9 tabs), maybe word, media go (for my Sony Walkman). I might play some of The Witcher 2.

 

 

[MilfShake]

1 hour ago, Jamiec1130 said:

Casual for me (and I use many Core 2 Duos every day, mind you) is many Chrome windows, each with 5-6 tabs open, maybe more, and a 720p YouTube video playing on one of them. Running 4 monitors. Folding @ Home with the CPU pinned at full usage while doing everything else. Spotify open, VMware open and running Windows 7 and AutoCAD, Firefox open, one or more RDP sessions going, and more, and my little Core 2 Duo E8400 with 8GB of RAM and a mechanical HDD still has more to offer. 

Send that CPU to NASA because it is from the outer space

[ProjectBox153]

2 hours ago, MilfShake said:

Send that CPU to NASA because it is from the outer space

It is not just one; all of my E8400's are like that as well as my E8500, and whatever chip is in my laptop.

[sazrocks]

To answer the question about i5s:

Because windows is fricking stupid and will use up half your CPU otherwise.

[HelplmChoking]

I will always get the best thing I can afford. Only need a 1060, but have enough spare cash for a 1080? Then I'm getting that one.

[Zodiark1593]

I use an Atom tablet for non demanding tasks. It's probably because I'm not a casual user that I can make the most use of such low powered hardware. I would not recommend it for a casual user. 

[TetraSky]

Can you even playback 4k videos on that machine? Without dropping frames.

[Sir Asvald]

My laptop is an okay-ish an i5 2430m 8gb ram. The HDD makes it slow. I don't even like using my laptop anymore. 5400 rpm laptop drives are sooo annoying. They shouldn't even exist.  -.-

Takes at least 3 minutes to load up. And another 5 minutes to actually settle so I can use the darn thing. 

[Zodiark1593]

4 minutes ago, Abdul201588 said:

My laptop is an okay-ish an i5 2430m 8gb ram. The HDD makes it slow. I don't even like using my laptop anymore. 5400 rpm laptop drives are sooo annoying. They shouldn't even exist.  -.-

Takes at least 3 minutes to load up. And another 5 minutes to actually settle so I can use the darn thing. 

While the eMMC in my $100 tablet/netbook/thing isn't exactly speedy, it happily stomps all over hard drives any day as far as random read/writes.