Slow PC updates.

[Thomas Smet]

Is it just me or are updates in the hardware PC world kind of slow these days. I remember when almost every other week something newer and faster was coming out. Now it seems like things haven't really been moving very fast. Has PC hardware kind of reached a ceiling in terms of how far they can push it?

Is the only real place to go from here multi-core systems where every few months more cores are added to cpu's to make them faster?

I'm not just talking cpu's here but all PC hardware. I haven't really seen motherboards updated in awhile. DDR2 ram hasn't been updated very much either. What little updates we have seen gain us really a less than 1% speed boost for a much higher price tag. Even accroding to Tomshardware the new AMD chipsets that will use DDR2 ram are not any faster than current systems that use DDR ram.

What are some thoughts on this from others or am I just crazy here?

[Lars Siden]

I can agree that we've seen some slowing down - for instance a p4 at 3.x ghz is still a rather good machine, and it has been around for more than 2 years.

More cores will make a quatum leap in performance WHEN the software works with multiple threads. Make a multi-threaded application is difficult. Because the simple flow "Start-End-next" doesn't apply any more. And you can't gain all that performance by doing "start-start-start-wait", the gain here is that you can have a responsive GUI but you can't really do anything until the data is actually there to work with.

So in the case of video editing I see a future in "multicore renders" where rendering time should be reduced by 50% per core or something like that. And then it should be really good if the NLE:s took more use of the gfx-card power when doing previews. I mean, if you can put out 1600x1200 at 30fps when playing games, doing 1024x768 with some effects shouldn't be to hard on the gfx card.

this is just my 2 two SEK (Swedish kronas :-)

// Lazze

[Tim Goldman]

Oh I dunno, seems like it's still pretty fast. Every 6 months theres a new video card. Some of the other things are slower. The next big thing is quad core , that'll be in 2007. I think alot of stuff is waiting for Vista to come out. It'll have direct X 10, so that actually something big.

Go back 20 years to when I started to use computers. Sheesh that's when technoligy was slow. Seems like EGA was around forever!

[Marco Wagner]

AMD and Intel started to hit the ceiling as far as MHz was concerned. They found that adding a little extra cache yielded the same performance as a couple extra 100MHz did (hence all the different variants of 3+GHz P4's 512K, 1MB, 2MB etc).

Bottlesnecks started to happen as memory got faster but BUS speeds didn't evolve as fast. Speed in MHz or GHz is still a be deal and major factor in GPUs just not as big in CPUs these days. Dual-cores are great, Intel's are much weaker than AMD's. The true performance will come when we have 64bit *AND* multi-threaded applications.

Your computer is only as fast as its slowest relied upon component, my professor used to say. I think BUS speeds and HD speeds are probably the slowest components currently. AMD is ahead of the game on BUS speed and dual-core architecture with their hyper-transport.

Vista, IMO, is a nightmare that forces unnecessary upgrades. I won't be touching it until SP2. The beta's are horribly slow.

[Tim Goldman]

True True, I thiink Visa will be much like 2000/XP was, in that not everything was supported and the update was sort of forced on folks.
The update is need in the long run, you can't run windows 98 forever (har har)
Now that Video cards are finally fast enough so their no longer a bottle neck, things are looking good.

For video editing I supose the hard drive is a bottle neck, or can be.

[Pat Sherman]

Originally Posted by Marco Wagner

AMD and Intel started to hit the ceiling as far as MHz was concerned.

Actually they haven't really hit the ceiling... My neighbor was sporting a PentiumX 5.2Ghz 2 years ago.. But it helps he works in the R&D of Intel. I have seen the 5.2Ghz with standard cooling.. It was some mobo version I never of before and was sporting DDR2. Of course I kept saying, "You have the coolest job, you have the coolest job, you have the coolest job"

THey get all the test boards from ATI and Nvidia basically they get all the latest alpha dev versions of hardware to integrate into intel structures..

Of course he claims at work they have pentiums running up in the 10-13Ghz range, but of course he could be pulling my leg, but then again he was playing CS:Source on a 5.2Ghz..

[Marco Wagner]

I agree that there probably is some seriously high speeds in R&D, but I was really referring to chips that actually make it out the fab. They can't yeild say a 6GHz chip in mass, economically viable and energy efficient quantities. To think that Intel and AMD are just sitting on an extra 2-4 GHz that could make it out the fab in GOOD quantities is not logical. Then there's the whole chipset and memory factor, we'll not go there, LOL.


That would be a cool job! :)

[Pat Sherman]

I remember asking that question..

The response was if they jump past a Ghz or two they lose the money and they can make more $$ that way.. Of course that's an engineers perspective..

[Marco Wagner]

Hmmm, interesting. Wouldn't you think either of the two would however release something that would stomp the other, for sheer marketing? And I'm not talking about Xtreme Edition or Itanic. Remember how big a deal it was at 1GHz? AMD released television commercials with a couple decent names in them. 5GHz would be a nice milestone, of course no one really cares about speed as much as back then.

I'd love to see one or the other push out a 5GHz while the other is still at 3.x+.

[Tim Goldman]

this article was already posted else where on the board, but hereit is again
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/..._41_ghz_cores/

I think the main reason they don't put out the "ufo" technoligy is because most people (like myself) don't want to mess with water based cpu coolers and things of that nature.
Also alot of people have vidoe cards aimed at gamers. While these cards might have niffty 3-d and neat 2-d preformance, they arn't set up for video editing.
pny makes the quatro series, soem of thoese cards are specificly made for vidoe editing. And yes, it make sa difference

[Marco Wagner]

Yeah those cards kick some serious butt!