Next gen's gonna be the worst gen ever! *spawn
- Thread starter Silenti
- Start date
Well I am referring to Zool 2 running on a 386. Thats the computer I had and played it on back then
I also had Golden Axe. I think it played just like the Genesis but it was much much slower and choppy
Of course my computer wasnt at all performing as good as a Genesis. But since my 386 could play games like Zool 2 and others decently, then I would expect a 486 to play them even much better
But I think you are right. A 60fps 2D game was probably out of the question on a 486 PC. Probably the only way to do that was to disable sound completely to free performance. And even that would have been questionable
The Sega Genesis came out in North America in 1989. Doom came out in 1993, when neither a 486 nor a 386 would bankrupt you. But the PS1 wasn't out yet.
Well, I stand corrected. I now know the Genesis could run Wolfenstein-style shooters about as well as an 8 MHz 286 could. I will correct myself, then: The gap between the Genesis and the 486 was "could barely run a Wolfenstein clone in a tiny window" to "Could run Doom at a smooth frame rate." That's still a pretty freaking huge gap.
But yeah, you all are right about the 2D performance gap. I remember platformers like Captain Comic and Commander Keen being quite choppy my 286 compared to games like Super Mario Bros 3 on the NES. But my PC could run Ken's Labyrinth (not at a very good frame rate, mind you), which an NES obviously wouldn't do.
Do you think maybe as we grow older and more cynical and look at the past with rose tinted spectacles it taints our memories?
Am just saying like...
No. I have examined that over and over. Not the case. Recently I have actually found myself cheering for studios and games to fail for what they have done. EXCOM remake, FPS, and it even lookes bad. I'm cheering for that one to flop in spectacular ways. Same for Syndicate. Was ecstatic when MS blew that Shadowrun game. Thought to myself, awesome, a Shadowrun game. Then found out what they had done. I am still dancing with joy inside after that failure. On the first page there was a post about the 60$ for all games, AAA model, killing developers. If what I received this gen continues, then I truly hope more fail. I hope that there is a bloodletting the likes of which hasn't been seen since Atari went down.
After more than a little thought and discussion with others-> My problems are specific with games this gen and there are far more of them and they are rather more serious than previously. There has not been a game in the last 7 years that I will want to pull out 5,10, 15 years from now the way I have plenty of my older games. Examples for consideration: (I'll stick with fairly popular ones.)
1. Call of Duty: Modren Warfare (and its successors) - First saw the ad and thought "FINALLY!, optics, drones, guns that may behave properly, real variation in the guns, MODERN! YAY!" What I received. A 4 hour interactive movie with monster closets, literally. I still remember fighting in a radio station in the ME, taking out the bad guys before I advance, only to see that they endlessly spawned the exact same squad, who all ran to the same positions. This was really the game that drove me to start using Gamestop. It was so bad that I actually traded in the game after maybe the first week in an attempt to get something out of it. A friend came over one afternoon, asked if he could play it. Told him sure, I would wait. Told him it wouldn't take long, he didn't believe me. Didn't take long before "Wow. that was really disappointing" emanated from the theater room.
2. Mass Effect 1: Loved the game, with a few faults. For whatever reason Bioware cannot do inventory management worth a damn. They couldn't on KOTOR and they couldn't here. That and some repetitive layouts/graphics. But hey, first attempt. Second should be better. Um.. Yeah, they basically removed the Role Playing elements and made it an action shooter. Guess they fixed that inventory system problem. ME 2, um, yeah. A giant Terminator boss fight. Need I say more?
3. Assassins Creed: I don't think there has been a game, ever, that I have anticipated more. No more jumping to walk up a curb. Natural motion as your character walks. Fighting moves are fluid. Just blew me away. Then I actually played the game. It was like they created an awesome system for a world, nice graphics and great animation, and then forgot to actually build a game into it. AC2 - yeah, that caused me to abandon the series and both games were traded in shortly thereafter. Aliens and fight with the Pope? Really? REALLY? I still remember being in awe of the stupidity tossed about in that game.
4. HALO 3, Reach - These convinced me Bungie lost it. 3 was terrible in ways I still have problems describing and Reach felt like Bungie built multiplayer, added AI and built the campaign around it while going all George Lucas Episode 1-3 on the series. I am actually happy that 343 took it over, maybe it will have a chance in the future.
The game I received the most enjoyment, most playthroughs, fun with friends, etc, etc? Borderlands. No question, not even close. In previous times I feel like that game would have been an "Honorable Mention" type of title, now it sits at the top.
I'm still critical of the older titles I love. Conquest of the New World -> had that hitch around turn 100 where turns could take minutes to hours, but it was a bug that was fixed. Xcom -> tad short, but the play was brilliant if the interface is terribly dated at this point. Syndicate/Wars -> Couple of bugs, and some view difficulties, but that is about it. Goldeneye - tad easy for the campaign, but probably one of the titles I spent more time with. Halo 1/2 -> Awesome campaigns, Library and Elevator aside, more hours spent on that than I care to admit. Guns very unrealistic (in that the pistol was a power weapon and the assault rifle was more like a subgun.) Fallout tactics: don't care for the Fallout world, but loved the game itself. Quit buying Madden around 15 years ago because EA pissed me off and the game stagnated. Bought 2 years of it this time around, Season mode was broken, and went unfixed, with the EXACT same problem for 2 straight years. John Madden will likely be dead before I try that again. Creative Assembly still owes me 85$ for that broken pos that was the travesty Total War: Empire.
If these trends continue, I may be done. Give me a long campaign and co-op. Inventory systems should not be difficult to create at this point. If you try to appeal to the 12 year olds who actually like SW E1-3/ Harry Potter we are not going to get along. Adjustable difficulty (presets or a dynamic, either are fine). A complete game. Strategy, tactics, management.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Jazz Jack Rabbit was hugely dependant on what video card you had. Back then ATI cards weren't worth a crap for game playing, for example. I had a Tseng ET4000 based card (/mourn the death of Tseng) at the time and it could play it smooth as silk on a 386. Most other 2D "accelerators" at the time weren't worth a damn for games as they were more focused on attempting to accelerate the 2D interface of early versions of Windows with various levels of success (meaning mostly not much). Trident and Cirrus Logic back then were also fairly horrid despite advertising themselves as graphics accelerators.
Ah, the glory days of the demo scene moving from Amiga to PC and exploiting some of the hardware quirks of the Tseng graphics chips.
The biggest advantage consoles had back then was the fact that PC's were HUGELY user unfriendly. Gaming on a PC required a level of PC knowledge far above the norm and the ability to modify .bat and .com files in order to shuffle around memory, DMA, and interrupts. Not to mention having to navigate folder structures in DOS. I made a living for a while making custom .bat files to allow people to more easily run their games as well to swap boot options for clean boot for gaming versus a more normal boot for application use.
[edit] Oh and I forgot to mention the other large PC drawback (also it's greatest strength) being that mixing and matching of hardware was largely hit or miss (implied by the DMA/Interrupt headaches mentioned above). Great for people like me that knew what they were doing. But even then you couldn't know ahead of time whether one piece of hardware would play nice with another piece of hardware. Back in those days with no internet, most people either relied on magazines, local CUGs, or local/national BBSes. Things like Compuserve being a national large multiuser BBS system.
Regards,
SB
french toast
Veteran
SILENTI; Ha i actually disagree with every game review you did..i loved all of them, although the faults were apparent.
Halo 3?? that ROCKED!! online, forge was mind blowing, single player story was underated, but online was revolutionary and provided me with many hours of fun.
Reach was less so, but still very good.
Mass effect 1 had faults yes, but still was bloody great, the whole complexity of the thing, the brilliant story, the scifi world with a story and description to EVERYTHING that was in it..but didn't force you to learn if you didn't want to.
The brilliant music and 'atmosphere' The upgrades, in game character voice for everything....crap fighting mechanic though, KOTOR 1 still the best!
Mass effect 2 was a bit of a let down, but still very good.
Modern warfair was awesome come on, hasn't been equalled in my opinion since, MW2 was good as well..havn't played MW3 or any of the treyarch designed games.
Didn't play Assasins creed, but thought NO2 was very original, had a great 'atmosphere' to it, brilliant graphics and great gameplay with a few different aspects to it...one of the top 5 games on 360 in my view.
my top 360 played..
1, Halo 3
2, LOTR 2 (lord of the rings..RTS)
3, Mass effect 1
4, COD 4; Modern warfair
5, Assasins creed 2.
All time top games no order;
Halo; combat evolved.
Halo 3.
Final fantasy 7
Half life 1&2
KOTOR 1
Tiger woods PGA golf 2004
Grand theft auto 3
Project gotham racing
grand tourismo 2
bomberman
mortal combat 2&3
mario
quake 3 arena (dreamcast)
shen mue
sega rally
virtua fighter 2
shining wisdom&holy ark
sonic r
and likely many more!
Halo 3?? that ROCKED!! online, forge was mind blowing, single player story was underated, but online was revolutionary and provided me with many hours of fun.
Reach was less so, but still very good.
Mass effect 1 had faults yes, but still was bloody great, the whole complexity of the thing, the brilliant story, the scifi world with a story and description to EVERYTHING that was in it..but didn't force you to learn if you didn't want to.
The brilliant music and 'atmosphere' The upgrades, in game character voice for everything....crap fighting mechanic though, KOTOR 1 still the best!
Mass effect 2 was a bit of a let down, but still very good.
Modern warfair was awesome come on, hasn't been equalled in my opinion since, MW2 was good as well..havn't played MW3 or any of the treyarch designed games.
Didn't play Assasins creed, but thought NO2 was very original, had a great 'atmosphere' to it, brilliant graphics and great gameplay with a few different aspects to it...one of the top 5 games on 360 in my view.
my top 360 played..
1, Halo 3
2, LOTR 2 (lord of the rings..RTS)
3, Mass effect 1
4, COD 4; Modern warfair
5, Assasins creed 2.
All time top games no order;
Halo; combat evolved.
Halo 3.
Final fantasy 7
Half life 1&2
KOTOR 1
Tiger woods PGA golf 2004
Grand theft auto 3
Project gotham racing
grand tourismo 2
bomberman
mortal combat 2&3
mario
quake 3 arena (dreamcast)
shen mue
sega rally
virtua fighter 2
shining wisdom&holy ark
sonic r
and likely many more!
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(((interference)))
Veteran
I agree with Silenti, apart from MP and the community features the campaigns and story in both Halo 3 and Reach were quite underwhelming compared to Halo 1 and 2.
I am looking forward to seeing what 343 can bring to their table, the art direction and sound design already look very promising.
I think this has been the best console generation so far, this is really the first time we've had enough hardware performance to do things like seamless, detailed open worlds, truly cinematic storytelling with realistic character animation or large scale environment destruction.
Not to mention the huge benefits of widespread online connectivity (user generated content etc.) or even the new methods of interaction offered by the Wii, Move & Kinect.
I am looking forward to seeing what 343 can bring to their table, the art direction and sound design already look very promising.
I think this has been the best console generation so far, this is really the first time we've had enough hardware performance to do things like seamless, detailed open worlds, truly cinematic storytelling with realistic character animation or large scale environment destruction.
Not to mention the huge benefits of widespread online connectivity (user generated content etc.) or even the new methods of interaction offered by the Wii, Move & Kinect.
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My memory of the PC back in the SNES days is a lot different than maybe a lot of those here. Maybe it is because I had a NES and SNES and enjoyed console games and on the PC enjoyed PC games. I can see where the PC lacked some of the nice glitter as well as the advantage of a standard arcade input.
But on the other hand I just cringe when the PC from that era and "power" and "gaming" are discussed with modern notions of graphics. The PC could create some great graphics but yes, it really fell behind in some areas. Some. But looking at what is out at the time I really remember my distinct feeling as I had back then: the PC was technically doing stuff it would take a decade to happen in mainstream console spaces. Games like Front Page Sports Football, Dune (an early RTS before C&C and Warcraft) and Dune II, adventure games like King's Quest, and all sorts of sims (space combat, 4x, etc) that had no substantial place on the consoles. Things like Civilization in 1991 Ultimate VII and Wolfenstein in 1992 were not experiences easily had on the common console. Doom and Doom II looked were far and away an experience I was not seeing on the consoles (we had a couple 386s and a 486 when Doom II came out). In 1993 we were getting stuff like MoO and X-wing (and long before that there were the great Wingcommander games). A game like FP Sports Football in 1992 was crushing junk like Tecmo (1991) and Madden (1990 on the consoles, before that on the PC). Not necessarily in the arcade element but in terms of everything a PC does well it just trashed the competition: you could create and save plays and formations, draft and play multiple seasons as well as create your own players, teams, uniforms, etc. You could create leagues of variable sizes, sim parts of or full games, even seasons. The playbook was large and you could create a playcalling tendancy guide for your sim-coaching profile. It was epically deep, robust, and detailed. It contained options and features that would not see the light of day for a decade in the console space.
I am not saying one experience is better than another but in the spirit of Beyond 3D I would say the PC from the era cannot be simply looked at from what it through up on screen. The larger memory pools, long term storage, and higher resolution displays, and the options of keyboards, mice, and often gamepads (e.g. Gravis pads, flight sticks) made it a very different experience. The fact you had the HDD, a mouse and KB (which were not far behind a Dpad and 6 tactile buttons for most games), and an advanced processor and a large pool of RAM allowed for games that are not really comparable.
I just felt compelled to throw that out after reading some comments about the underpowered graphics of PCs. Yeah, they were underpowered in some ways, but in other ways were doing things in the game space that made consoles from the next 2 generations cry (PS1 and PS2).
But on the other hand I just cringe when the PC from that era and "power" and "gaming" are discussed with modern notions of graphics. The PC could create some great graphics but yes, it really fell behind in some areas. Some. But looking at what is out at the time I really remember my distinct feeling as I had back then: the PC was technically doing stuff it would take a decade to happen in mainstream console spaces. Games like Front Page Sports Football, Dune (an early RTS before C&C and Warcraft) and Dune II, adventure games like King's Quest, and all sorts of sims (space combat, 4x, etc) that had no substantial place on the consoles. Things like Civilization in 1991 Ultimate VII and Wolfenstein in 1992 were not experiences easily had on the common console. Doom and Doom II looked were far and away an experience I was not seeing on the consoles (we had a couple 386s and a 486 when Doom II came out). In 1993 we were getting stuff like MoO and X-wing (and long before that there were the great Wingcommander games). A game like FP Sports Football in 1992 was crushing junk like Tecmo (1991) and Madden (1990 on the consoles, before that on the PC). Not necessarily in the arcade element but in terms of everything a PC does well it just trashed the competition: you could create and save plays and formations, draft and play multiple seasons as well as create your own players, teams, uniforms, etc. You could create leagues of variable sizes, sim parts of or full games, even seasons. The playbook was large and you could create a playcalling tendancy guide for your sim-coaching profile. It was epically deep, robust, and detailed. It contained options and features that would not see the light of day for a decade in the console space.
I am not saying one experience is better than another but in the spirit of Beyond 3D I would say the PC from the era cannot be simply looked at from what it through up on screen. The larger memory pools, long term storage, and higher resolution displays, and the options of keyboards, mice, and often gamepads (e.g. Gravis pads, flight sticks) made it a very different experience. The fact you had the HDD, a mouse and KB (which were not far behind a Dpad and 6 tactile buttons for most games), and an advanced processor and a large pool of RAM allowed for games that are not really comparable.
I just felt compelled to throw that out after reading some comments about the underpowered graphics of PCs. Yeah, they were underpowered in some ways, but in other ways were doing things in the game space that made consoles from the next 2 generations cry (PS1 and PS2).
Whatever you say about PC gets trounced by Amiga, until things turned 3D. Amiga was best of all worlds, with a decent OS to boot. And I have to say it was the best platform ever for game experiences. It had console-like experiences in fighters and platformers, and 'PC-like experiences' (although back then Amiga spawned many experiences) in RTS, RPGs, and novel games (God games, Lemmings, etc.). It showed how versatile, closed-box hardware really throws open creative possibilities.
Amiga was best of all worlds, with a decent OS to boot. And I have to say it was the best platform ever for game experiences. It had console-like experiences in fighters and platformers, and 'PC-like experiences' (although back then Amiga spawned many experiences) in RTS, RPGs, and novel games (God games, Lemmings, etc.). It showed how versatile, closed-box hardware really throws open creative possibilities.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
My first console was the Sega Master System and I always felt it had an appropriate name for MY console It had some pretty good games like Phantasy Star and Wonderboy 2 and 3 among others, but my older brother's Amiga 500 did feel pretty stunning back then!
PS1 is probably the console that I consider the greatest. Tekken 1 was something truly spectacular and it only got better. FF8 was great(Patsu never finished it), much better than FF7... Too many good games to list. PS1 was also really powerful compared to PCs as well. PS2 was good too, but personally I have more fond memories of Xbox 1, that was a solid powerhouse and looked like it as well! I immediately fell in love with the asymetric thumbstick layout.
Halo and Kotor all the way baby! I pre-ordered Xbox, because I was nervous to get one at launch, turns out I was pretty much the only one getting it then. I bought 8-9 games on launch day and they were all good or great, except "Wreckless the Yakuza missions." The Euro launch lineup was solid in March 2002.
As for next gen. I like powerful consoles, but even I think it's more about content and developer skill from now on. I'll take as much power as they can put in and don't care how big or ugly the box is, but I think were already at a point where your imagination doesn't have to fill huge caps when playing a game like Skyrim, Mass Effect or Uncharted. It's more about the overall experience for me.
It had some pretty good games like Phantasy Star and Wonderboy 2 and 3 among others, but my older brother's Amiga 500 did feel pretty stunning back then!PS1 is probably the console that I consider the greatest. Tekken 1 was something truly spectacular and it only got better. FF8 was great(Patsu never finished it
), much better than FF7... Too many good games to list. PS1 was also really powerful compared to PCs as well. PS2 was good too, but personally I have more fond memories of Xbox 1, that was a solid powerhouse and looked like it as well! I immediately fell in love with the asymetric thumbstick layout.Halo and Kotor all the way baby! I pre-ordered Xbox, because I was nervous to get one at launch, turns out I was pretty much the only one getting it then
. I bought 8-9 games on launch day and they were all good or great, except "Wreckless the Yakuza missions." The Euro launch lineup was solid in March 2002. As for next gen. I like powerful consoles, but even I think it's more about content and developer skill from now on. I'll take as much power as they can put in and don't care how big or ugly the box is, but I think were already at a point where your imagination doesn't have to fill huge caps when playing a game like Skyrim, Mass Effect or Uncharted. It's more about the overall experience for me.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
I pre-ordered Xbox, because I was nervous to get one at launch, turns out I was pretty much the only one getting it then
Hah! I got an Xbox for one reason and one reason only (I had a PS2 at the time so didn't feel the need for an Xbox). And that was for Blizzard's Ghost because it was going to be Xbox only and wasn't coming to PC...
Yeah, that went well.
But since it turned out to be an excellant early PC media extender (XBMC) I don't regret getting it. Regards,
SB
I'm with Shifty. I had the Atari ST, which was better in some PC stuff and a few specific game types (polygon only, benefitted most from its slightly higher clock), and the Atari ST had most of the games the Amiga had, but the Amiga was better, particularly in terms of sound. At the end of that cycle I even got an Amiga 600HD, which I used to play all those games that weren't multiplatform.
I always played both that and IBM/Intel PCs though (Atari and Amiga were also PCs). The point where I think PCs were starting to become the best platform for a while for me was around the 486 though, but particularly when the 3Dfx hit there was a period during which all games were optimised for that card and ran great.
But it didn't last - PC gaming became too much hassle for me personally, and I started loving what consoles offered in terms of ease of use, bang for buck for the hardware (in particular games for it only getting better the older your console gets rather than worse as is for PC ), controllers, etc.
Now though I think an App Store model where people can freely publish and get money is a great model, and I think consoles won't be able to ignore that model for too long, though on the flipside the App Store model is similar to PC, in that older iOS devices start to struggle to keep up relatively soon. My Touch 3G for instance can't be upgraded anymore to the latest OS, it's struggling more and more with various apps, and rather disconcertingly and disappointingly, can't connect to YouTube anymore.
That kind of 'development' screams PC all over again and renews my expectations that something like a PS Vita or even 3DS is going to offer better value for money and a much better shelflife for the hardware.
I always played both that and IBM/Intel PCs though (Atari and Amiga were also PCs). The point where I think PCs were starting to become the best platform for a while for me was around the 486 though, but particularly when the 3Dfx hit there was a period during which all games were optimised for that card and ran great.
But it didn't last - PC gaming became too much hassle for me personally, and I started loving what consoles offered in terms of ease of use, bang for buck for the hardware (in particular games for it only getting better the older your console gets rather than worse as is for PC
), controllers, etc. Now though I think an App Store model where people can freely publish and get money is a great model, and I think consoles won't be able to ignore that model for too long, though on the flipside the App Store model is similar to PC, in that older iOS devices start to struggle to keep up relatively soon. My Touch 3G for instance can't be upgraded anymore to the latest OS, it's struggling more and more with various apps, and rather disconcertingly and disappointingly, can't connect to YouTube anymore.
That kind of 'development' screams PC all over again
and renews my expectations that something like a PS Vita or even 3DS is going to offer better value for money and a much better shelflife for the hardware.
I think this defines why the gaming market developed how it did, and where it's going. PC's used to be work computers, onto which games were shoehorned. Getting games to work was a damned hassle, so console's pick-up-and-play was a huge blessing. Now the PCs have become easier to manage, and the development of hardware is PC centric (or mobile), we're at a point where the console's can't add much. They too are becoming more PC like in extended features. It's the old convergence convergifying. And now even TVs are becoming PCs! The development of games as a business is going to have to decouple itself from the hardware, which means the future is software platforms. As such, the golden age of the console is behind us. I can't see it being any other way. It had it's time, but now it's about the software only. Gaming might have a renaissance in variety and quality and whatnot, but the hardware interest is coming to an end. Even if next-gen provides awesome games, it may still be the worst generation of consoles ever regards the pure console experience and feelings the hardware could generate.But it didn't last - PC gaming became too much hassle for me personally, and I started loving what consoles offered in terms of ease of use, bang for buck for the hardware (in particular games for it only getting better the older your console gets rather than worse as is for PC
You either missed my point completely about moving hardware targets on PC/iOS/Android platforms versus consoles, or you just disagree.
We are going to see a growth of games that can be sold to a cross-hardware platform, I don't doubt that. But beyond that, I don't think dedicated hardware is going away. Some of the major factors aren't changing.
We are going to see a growth of games that can be sold to a cross-hardware platform, I don't doubt that. But beyond that, I don't think dedicated hardware is going away. Some of the major factors aren't changing.
I was just adding.You either missed my point completely about moving hardware targets on PC/iOS/Android platforms versus consoles, or you just disagree.
People have been predicting the death of the console at the hands of the PC for about 25 years now. This gen has already sold around 200 million consoles. If anything is happening, it's that the old-fashioned, high-powered desktop PC is getting disrupted by note/netbooks, smartphones, and tablets. While technology is still following Moore's law, consumer demand for computing power isn't. When the average consumer has a few hundred bucks burning a hole in his pocket, he's getting an iPhone, not a GeForce Whatevernumber GT.
The market for updating a modular machine with the latest graphics hardware is still just as small a niche as it's always been.
The market for updating a modular machine with the latest graphics hardware is still just as small a niche as it's always been.
Not arguing your point here, because I agree completely, but I deny that Moore's law has much relevance for todays consumers.
I'm typing this on an Intel 45nm processor, with 4 cores (8 hardware threads) running at 2.8GHz and with 8MB of L3 and dual channel DDR3 running at 1333MHz. They were made, for general consumer desktop use, up to 3.06GHz (3.33 if you count the same chip in other sockets). In a few months, Intel will introduce their 22nm line-up, the top of which is a chip running at 3.4GHz with 8MB of L3, and dual channel DDR3 running at 1600MHz. If we are generous, two generations of lithography has yielded roughly a 20% improvement in processing power. In two lithographic generations! Even if we factor in that the new line-up includes a pretty decently performing GPU and has lower TDP, the fact remains that in terms of performance the consumer has very little reason to care. Not that they would anyway, so lowering TDPs and adding GPU functionality are probably wise moves by Intel.
Even GPUs, doing such an embarrassingly parallel task that performance more or less scaled linearly with transistor density before power draw was an issue, is slowing down significantly. The new 28nm AMD HD7970 has roughly the same die size and power draw as its 40nm HD6970 predecessor. But performance is "only" some 30-ish percent higher, even with 50% higher bandwidth!
Add that the time between lithographic node changes is increasing.
Unless you find watching snails racing up flagpoles exciting, odds are you could walk away from PC tech for five years and come back and find everything looking pretty much the same, just shifted a predictable (small) amount, walk away for another five years, and then decide that you might actually perceive a difference if you upgraded your system - but why should you, since you're just using mobile devices by then anyway.
Performance driven computer upgrading is, by and large, dead.
Smaller. Just how much smaller is hard to say though, since the hardware enthusiast niche isn't usefully broken out in conference calls. Ironically, this segment may well be more stable than the domestic PC market as a whole, because they do get some tangible value out of the modularity.
I bought a 7900GTX card back when the current generation consoles were introduced, figuring that with twice the ROPs and bandwidth of the PS3, it would allow me to play all games introduced for as long as this console generation lasted. I have upgraded the graphics card four times since then.
But I still got that 7900GTX, and when I put it in last autumn, I found that my reasoning was sound - it did the job. The only thing my tinkering had bought me was grey hairs, and higher resolution/levels of AA. So I'd say that if you're really not interested in futzing around with your gaming PC hardware, you actually don't have to. Just buy something that is a bit ahead of what will be put into the next generation of consoles, (and it will be easy given the power constraints of consoles vs. desktop PCs) and then simply ignore your hardware for this upcoming decade. You'll do fine.Silent_Buddha
Legend
Don't disagree with what you're saying but just wanted to clarify that the HD 7970 is ~45-55% faster than the 6970 in general. It's roughly 20-30% faster than the GTX 580 which is generally 15-20% faster than the 6970. And that lead is growing as AMD starts to tune the driver for GCN as seen by the latest driver drop (games that benefitted from the tuning got anywhere from 5-20% improvement in speed).
Still, it doesn't change that Moore's law doesn't really apply to many (if any) hardware area's of computing anymore. [edit] Actually now that I think about it. Moore's law applies more to transistors and not performance doesn't it? In which case it does still apply to some hardware.
Regards,
SB
Yes, Moore's law applies to transistors.
Of course that used to translate not only to twice the number of transistors every 18 months, but also to roughly a factor sqrt(2) improvement in clock frequencies. The combination of architectural advances and clock advances gave an approximate factor of two in processing power along with the corresponding increase in transistors, leading to the generalization of his statement to processing power. It also led to "the 3-year upgrade cycle", because three years typically yielded a factor of 3-4 in processing power, enough to be significant.
Those days are over.
Whatever you say about PC gets trounced by Amiga, until things turned 3D.
Yeah.. Amiga were the greatest piece of hardware ever..
I would swap out Windows in a second, for Workbench 3.1, if software were available for it. Like a 1000 times more usable if you wanted to do anything with it.
The Windows-security has gotten ridickolous, not long now, until you have to call in to Microsoft in order to be able to go view your various hardware-settings..
It's allmost impossible to format your PC now. :-/
Would have been interesting if Sony got DMA Designs in the Psygnosis-deal, when they bought them, back in the day.
Would be cool to see if they delivered the same as the breakout-group (Rockstar) as first party.
