Ya I know the feeling. My custom pc is starting to age... in the wrong way lol. Had it for 3 and a half years. Upgraded it last year. I can barely play crysis on medium. Well I still messing with that. Ahhh college... I can't devert money to my pc as I use too... Theres always next year... hopefully summer... Still runs everything else just fine so I guess I am good. But back in the day...

It really does seem that PCs haven't advanced that much in the last few years.  My son's PC runs an early Athlon XP chip and it is perfectly functional for him.  At work we still have many old Pentium III's (933 Mhz) that we use (running Windows 2000 on them, hoping to retire them eventually, but not too soon).  Those work just fine for what we use them for.  Daughter runs a new AMD based system, but not that new (about 2 or 3 year old tech now).  My Vista 64 bit box (MCE type box actually) uses Athlon Dual Core 3200+ cpu.  Not terribly fast, but fast enough for what I use it for (including capturing/recording over-the-air HDTV and playing back same, as well as playing live HDTV broadcasts).

I could get some hardware that *should be* faster, but it just doesn't seem like the return on the investment would be enough for now.  The software that I run works well on the hardware I have, and I'm happy with what I have.  3 years from now I may be saying otherwise, but for now I'm gonna stick with what I have and save pennies for a good while longer.

Hi!

I stepped off that train many years ago. Now I use computer that makes job done. Since I'm not playing FPSs anymore (comes with age ), that job consists of internet browsing, using some office programs, some coding in ancient comp languages and playing "evergreen" games. GalCiv-2 is by far marging the newest game on it, and Stars! the most played recently.

I'd call myself lost case for comp industry.   

BR, Iztok

This is one reason why I build my own computers.

My brother once said that the one I'm using right now is a beast. This was after he read posts made by people beta testing a MMO with superior computers were working slow, or were having troubles. He asked me "what did you do?".

It can be surprising how well an older computer that uses an AGP graphics card can work. If you need some recommendations on parts for a new computer, feel free to ask. Unfortunately, I'm not around to build it for you.

Just upgraded my own computer - to a *slightly* higher GHz, but with four cores, more memory, and a new motherboard.

Yeah, it does seem like the GHz stuff is starting to sizzle because of the thermal limits, but computers haven't stopped: Now it seems to be about how fast is the motherboard and memory, as well as how many cores. I think you're going to start to see 8, 16, 32, etc cores in the future rather than faster clock speeds - until they start hitting more limits. After that, we may either need to find a way to package silicon in 3D or go to more exotic technologies.

What?! Don't you build your own PCs Brad?!

I'd say that computers are just as slow as ever compared to the games that are available.

In 1993 when DOOM was released, it required a 33MHz CPU and the best available was only the next model! (The 66MHz). Today, Crysis on 1920x1200 with everything maxed (I think) on a 8800GT only gets WWW Link on the latest computer....That means that the technology companies need to pick up the pace! Like the Stormboyz in DoW says: Faster! Faster!

At first I thought this was gonna be a parody of some users complaining about GalCiv 2 performance on their "new" PCs and that their PCs can't possibly be slow.

Well, I don't trust mothererboard RAID yet: I tried it once, and the controller failed. Despite the dual harddrives, the controller is still a single point of failure - and one that doesn't appear to be very reliable.

Even worse, when a RAID controller fails it's a pain to get the data back because the hard drives are written in a special format an OS can't read. These days I stick with regular backups.

Anyways, glad to hear that TA is working well for you . Stardock is really trying to cut way back on memory usage - they are starting to hit the limits of what current 32 bit technology is capable of.

It's nothing to do with sloppy coding, barring the relatively new OS to get to grips with. It's simply that the game market (at least the traditional high graphics stuff like FPS's) has moved away from graphics as the demanding feature (you can thank the consoles for that). To bring up your example; COD4 is still the same old segmented shooter of old, while Crysis is attempting to simulate a couple of square miles simultaneously. It's not the graphics slowing the system down, it's the physics, the AI and simply having the entire area loaded into the system at once rather than being able to feed gradual segments through.
I've got two boxes at home, one with a quad core 2.6Ghz Intel, one with a 3.0Ghz Dual Core. Both can run Crysis at maximum graphics settings with near identical performance (40-50 FPS). Try turning physics up to full on the dual core and it becomes a slideshow (6 - 8 FPS, dropping to 1 FPS if anything moves), while the quad core sees around a 6 - 7 FPS drop maximum. The Quad has a Geforce 8800GTX, while the Dual has a 7900GT. Something tells me it isn't the difference in cards causing the slowdown there

Draginol,

You don't mention how you benchmarked the machines. Usually, the graphics side of laptops (both GPU and the actual display, itself) are miserable (Laptop LCD Roundup: Road Warriors Deserve Better). So, if you only tested processing power instead of the graphics ability, then you might want to do some more testing.

More generally, a couple of years ago, I was thinking about not building my own desktop machines any more and just buying laptops. Since my wife needed a new computer at the time, I bought her one of the best laptops I could afford. It's a fine machine. But, being locked into the laptop vendor's proprietary mindset has driven the idea of "just laptops" right out of my head. In general, with laptops, if anything breaks, you're toast. Replacing drives or memory are about the only thing a user can do with these things. Heck, even getting updated video drivers is darn near impossible. Essentially, the laptop makers want you to trash that old laptop and buy a new one for more performance or newer drivers. And, updating, changing, or just plain re-installing the OS might be impossible.

So, in a nutshell, retire the old Dell. But, don't bother with the docking station, either. Instead, go to someplace like Silent PC Review and try building yourself the quietest computer you can. It's not just a job, it's an adventure.

Currently using my first built computer; jumped right in and changed heatsinks, overclocked, a little of everything. Never will I go back, as not only am I getting a better price/performance ratio, but the damn thing looks nicer, is more reliable (quality components), and, most importantly of all, it was damn fun to build.


It has to do with "sloppy" coding as well; simply as hardware has increased, developers/coders have found themselves with much more legroom than previous generations of coders had, in both flexibility and capability--basically there hasn't been as much of an emphasis on conservation because there hasn't been as much of a need. Does this mean that they're any less talented or lazier? Not necessarily, but to disregard the coding side is a bit naive.

Also, unless you're running Crysis @ 12x10 on XP (which isn't technically "max" details anyways), there's no way you're running the game at 40-50 fps on a dual core 7900GT machine, sorry, especially not considering even the 8800ultra struggles. I also have not seen this slideshow effect of cranking the physics out to full with a C2D (I have mine at 3.2)...Crysis is far more GPU bound than anything--even though it will benefit from a quad core, it's a moot point considering even the 8800ultra has problems running it.