A PM convo I have been having with sir "Spams-a-lot' (Nerdz) prompted me to gaze into my crystal ball and predict the future of PC's with information readily available today on the net, a few educated guesses, and generally filling in the blanks.

Below is his reply over me chastising him for going from his AMD XP rig and "Piecemealing" together a barely upgradeable 939 set up.

You have to understand, I have like probably no less than 29 PM's from him over the last 2 months on this subject, it started out with him asking what AGP card to upgrade to...maybe I'll post some of them up later

Re: woo hoo!

My Mood:

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Quote: Originally Posted by $SOLID$ Necro Quote: Originally Posted by Nerdz It seems I may have enough (MAY) to upgrade...Err..I got 140 to spend..(I'll probably end up with another 25..) I have 2 Options; 1) Updgrade now 2) Wait till I have a bit more cash and then upgrade.. 3) I dont want to get rid of AGP. I found a board that has both AGP and PCI E! http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157097 I also found a 939 Board with AGP.. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131558 AM2 with agp (seems they dont want to phase out AGP just yet..) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130064 But the only bad thing with that bard is that I'll have to get DDR2 Memory, which can be a bit costly. SO, really here are my estimates... Mobo: 45-50 CPU 75ish PSU 400W errr 50ish Mem- 80ish. Thats IF I go AM2, I could go with 939 and save myself 80ish dollars. Worst case (excluding mem): 175. I guess I should save my money and wait a bit longer. Well..I am not real familiar with the low end "Combo" boards, but I have heard they work well if you aren't expecting heavy OC'ing, or plan to do much in the way of benching. I would say go 939 and save the money on ram, since you are sticking with AGP... I hate to say I told ya so, but if you had decided to just sell/part out that rig, you could have easily made the jump to DDR-2 PCIE, and Conroe... 100$ Mobo that does 500FSB 180$ E6300 1.8GHZ (Does 3.5GHZ, about 2x as fast as an AMD at 2.6ghz) Or... 130$ End of this month the E4300 comes out with a 800FSB (Instead of 1066) and also does 3.5ghz !!!!! 200$ 2GB DDR 800 180$ X1900GT or 130$ 7600GT Total 460$ (Or less if you found some deals) if you went with the E4300 and 7600GT, I know this a bit above your total spending on this current rig, but after selling your old hardware...you would have been pretty close overall, and had a rig that was long term upgradable, and kicked all kinds of ass!

See If Intel Didnt own like 512512qwerty % of the market, I might go with Intel...But seeing as AMDs the Underdog (and also has a different marketing Philosphy) along with the fact they own like 3.14159254..etc % of the market..(Numbers are Fictious) I'll have to stick with AMD no matter what, But as they said Its turning to be another Mhz Race (and we all know, History Does Repeat itself)

Yea I know, you Did suggest to go with Conroe, but Im stickin with AMD. (Im probably bveing a PIA aint I?)

Actually, After recalculating my budget..Thats what I'll probably end up spending. For once, Im going to go all out (Well, I Could Get a FX 60.....or FX62....)

And whats Socket M2? Is it coming out?[/quote]


My Reply..and what prompted this thread....

Quote: I have owned nothing but AMD since my K6-2, and as much as I love them, they are just too slow these days...and from what I can see in my crystal ball, they have pretty much abandoned the performance race, and gone in a new direction. They are going after more of the mainstream budget sector, they bought ATi so they can integrate the video right on the cpu die, and that has more "Sales" potential when you consider how the laptop and mobile phone market is growing, while the desktop market is slowly shrinking...most games come out for the consoles these days and then are ported over to the PC as an afterthought...it used to be the other way around! I am not one to yell the sky is falling...but, when John Carmack (Founder of ID software and creator of the original Doom) abaondons the PC platform to make games for mobile phones...then you know the tides have shifted! I see the PC and gaming entering into a "Niche" market in the next 5 years, and in 10 years, it will probably all but disapear as we know it today...other than for CAD type apps and scientific research. There just isnt much that a PC can do that you can't do on a laptop or a SFF PC, other than the absolute high end app's at breakneck speed. The software is lagging behind the hardware for the most part so badly anymore, it takes a good 2 years before the cuting edge hardware of today is ever fully utilized..think 64 bit computing (Won't become mainstream till Vista launches in 07) and that has been around since what...2003? How about dual core XPU's? only a select few games take advantage of that! If you buy a quad core CPU today, it will be probably another 2 years before most games take advantage of that. I have always been one to root for the underdog, but when they take there ball and go play another game completely...you don't have much choice but to go with the other team if you want to keep playing the same game! Anyways..enough rant... Socket AM-2 is what you are talking about, and it's basically socket 939 with one extra pin for DDR-2 memory (940 pins) and is what you can buy today...it was originally called M-2, but was renamed just before launch to AM-2. Socket AM-3 will be out in a year or less, and will use DDR-3.

I was kinda eluding to the future of the "PC Desktop" market as we know it today...may people have "PRedicted" it's death for quite some time, and were premature...

I think however, there are many signs that this may be actually coming soon, much sooner than anyone here would like to admit!

There are MANY signs of this...the fact that todays laptops can game..and game pretty damn well at the high end...you can even get SLI!

Another is todays consoles are looking pretty damn sweat graphic wise, yeah DX-10 is coming to the desktop with Vista, and will blow away what you can get on the XBOX 360 or PS3...but going Vista is a bitter sweet thing....I will get back to that later.

I mentioned that today's hottest titles, with a few exceptions, are coming out for the console, and then ported to the PC as an aftertought...if you look at the total sales of PC games over the last few years, you will see it's slipping...and console game sales are growing by leaps and bounds!

For software designers, it a hella lot easier to desgin for one platform rather than try and set the game up for everything from a 2 year old PC to what is cutting edge at the launch of a gme!

I kinda balme companies like EA games and BF-2 for part of the decline, they make it so the end user cannot make his own maps or mods anymore, they took a page from the book written by drug dealers, they got everyone hooked on a great game, and then every few months, they release an "Upgrade" that amounts to little more than a few new maps and a few new weapons...and charge you 15$!!!!

If you wanna play on empty servers, skip the upgrade...

In fact, this is exactly the kind of acid test "Uncle Bill" was waiting for, Vista will be the last "OS" you can buy!

His "Roadmap" for the future will be a OS you "Pay for Play" and will recieve upgrades on a regular basis...but when you can't afford the 30-50$ a month he's gonna charge ya anymore....ZAP! all your files are gonna be locked away!
Your PC will sit there as a lifeless hulk unless you have an OLD OS installed (IF you thought that far ahead)

And what of Vista today? Do you even realize what impact the DRM hidden in that code will do to the "Sheeple"? I have allready seen one of my friends loose his "Music Collection" due too it being deleted by Uncle Bill!

Why the hell would anybody need 2x 500GB hard drives if they sit empty? Thats gonna impact HD sales for sure!

ALL the DRM that is being built into Blue Ray and HDVD will also kill consumer apeal, hell..if you don't have the right Monitor with the DRM BS stuff in it, it won't even play your high definition content! (Well it will, but only at standard res..wich will realy irk Joe Average when he just laid out big coin for it!)

I am not shouting "The sky is falling" or anything here, but...the "Wild West" days of PC's and the internet are quickly coming to a close...there are only a few "Buffalo's" left for corprate America to kill, and then...they will wonder what the hell happened! Why isn't my new OS, PC's or Hardware "Upgrades"selling?

I say right now, by 2017, the PC as we know it will have died and gone the way of the Buffalo, they will exist in other forms mostly, Laptops will be around, SFF computers, and Cell phones..but that big ass honker of a box we know and love today will be sitting in the basement collecting dust, only to be seen in museams from then on...our "All In Wonder" magic box's will have outlived there usefulness.

The "Killer App's" that made PC's the darling of everyone will also be it's undoing...Ask Jon Carmack why he bailed out now...he knows it's a dead end road, and he basically put modern day gaming where it is today!

Ask "Al Gore" why "Internet 2" killed his beloved Internet...and all the things we take for granted now (Like free email, unlimited surfing and access to most sites without charge)

(Again..that is another post entirely, lots thing we aren't gonna like are going to be attached to that nightmare!)

Did ya realy think I would be talking about some 100GHZ 32 core monster with 500 gigabytes of ram and 300 pettabytes of solid state HD space? Oh and of course don't forget a second case that holds your "Graphics Unit" with 16 GPU's lol

It may happen, along with "Holographic" or at least a true 3-D display...but I see a much darker future my friends, and not because I want to believe the worst, it's just hard to see past all the corporate greed, and the downsizing of today's PC's....Necro's Crystal ball does not always hold pleasant visions!

You will probably only find that "Good Stuff" at a College or large business, that is after all where PC's got there start kinda, and I think that they will return home one day...history tends to repeat itself, never forget that!

Till then, enjoy the freedoms of the net over the next 5 years, the upcoming Quad and Octo core CPU's, various versions of multiple graphics cards 2,4 and then 8GB sticks of ram, and of course...10 terrabytes of Raid 0 Goodness!

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Just for the record, I got a Geforce 6800 GS OC 256 AGP for xmas.

The necro crystal ball, is getting a bit hazy, and its what im betting is going to happen, nice write up.

That asteroid that kills all of them, and its codenamed Vista

Thats a lot of dark stuff youre predicting....and i fear you are right about a lot of it. I can only hope that when 'they' try to start doing things like charging for internet sites and all the drm crap there will be enough of us here in the US and abroad that will take issue with it and stop them. The internet is quite possibly the biggest thing to happen to us as a civilization....think about all it enables us to do. I dont know about the rest of you, but i'll go down fightin.

The PC will never be killed by appliances and schemes that regal computing tasks to appliances (consoles and entertainment devices) the pc is the only device out there that is a true multiuse computing platform with power. It can do anything and that is why it will always exist, editing, controlling, computing, creating. The PC has always cost more than its console rival because it is modular and can do way more than your playstation could dream of. But if you canÂ’t afford to game on a PC, the console is the way to go, or you can get a job. The only thing falling from the sky is a hellfire of DRM. When there is a will there is a way. Copies will be made and there will always be people who understand freedom and doing things for the fans and public over making money. I believe people are basically good, call me optimistic, but I think everything will be just fine. If man made it, man can hack it. You are either smart enough to know how to do something, rich enough to not be bothered by change, or too poor to adapt to technology that your donÂ’t really need to enjoy life.

I've heard these same things in one form or another since 1995. So using 11 years previously hearing these same things, and looking into many aspect's marketting reports and figures:

How many here have switched to Linux in the last 18 months time? A LOT, that's not me being a fanboy for either, it's an observation I've made though pie charts to back it up not in hand. Many of us cited our constant usage of XP because of it's sole advantage to most of us - gaming. There's something there I'll get back to later, so let us remember the gaming aspect as a core thing for many of us. Lets be honest here though, out of all you I talk to outside forum on IM services, I know this every one of you pirates though and some game.

The internet might have been invented for pr0n by Al Gore, but the data we all love and cherish our mp3s and w4r3z aren't going to play nice with MS. People will find a way to patch and bypass it, and I really have no doubts about it. All the DRM is going to accomplish is the same ol' pony trick we've delt with before, duck and doge and pass.

The reason why the PC gaming market is in decline is console - we're a little too hard core. Average person who's a PC gamer doesn't buy as many games as the average console gamer. Console gamers rent a new game every weekend and buy a new game every month. I know PC gamers who doesn't even play CS:S - they say CS 1.6 is still the greatest game and have probably bought 3 game titles since. We're currently not the butter zone yo.

With game companies spending more on their titles than Hollywood spends on a movie it comes to no suprise they're placing safest bets possible. Reason MMOs get most all the development money, they're cash cows. Their servers decide if your game code is paid for, no way to crack that really, they're addictive to some people, and so on and so on. If no one is old enough to remember, you might think paying monthly fees is absurd. But believe it or not MMOs in the form of text based games were charging by the HOUR in 1993 all the way up to 1996 even. What's old is now new again. That isn't an evolution nor change, it's old hat. Should also note something: they were based on BBS code, they took advantage of the neophye AOL group and made bank. People like me who ran free MUDs sprange up everywhere, they lost their strangle hold... they developed Doom, FPS was born. Whatever. Speaking of classic old trends....

Also anyone remember a rather desolate section of computer gaming history - you know that vague area between the era of Pirates! for Commodore 64/Oregon Trail for old Macs and well... Windows 95 which gave us NASCAR branded racing games, Duke Nukem, Doom? There were a few - but it wasn't a golden era at all really. Remember what was smack dab in the center of the era? Nintendo, Sega Genesis and related. It's gone PC to console back to PC and now it's going back to console. Maybe it'll go to stay, heck if anyone really knows - it's just rather hard to say PC gaming is really on the decline and we should be preparing a headstone within the next decade or two with history zig-zagging.

Frankly I'm with JoHn Carmack though - lower development costs, blank market. Great area for someone to start their own game company - you don't have to go in with backers. He's pure business through and through - he never liked slim profit margins. I read his blog tonight - certainly seems to be his reasons. He likes Java, he likes the simplistic nature. He actually goes on rather well about how piss poorly cell phone's are designed though and frustrations with BREW/Java. It's nice he has a hobby.


Digital Rights Management - this could be a blessing or a bane. I actually see three possibilities here:
1) Mac and Linux clean up after many folks loose their 15,000 mp3 libraries. You know who you are.
2) We crack it and patch it and pass it along like always and keep using Microsoft. You know who you are.
3) People actually pay for stuff - yah I know stetch. Lets face it, piracy isn't a new problem, back in the 1980s almost all the software on government computers was unlicensed even. Okay you don't have to make a spectable of yourself laughing like that.

Either which was I don't see how it offers anything in terms of the decline of the personal computer. Companies make up the market, and they don't want to go back to virtual stations really. Some bean counter might cook up this idea ever few years, but meh. So the intergrate the GPU into the CPU for mainstream market, fabulous, marvelous even.... there's to large of a market that relies on niche graphical solutions to be covered by that model though so there will be continued use of seperate GPU
for ages to come. Honestly folks - even the gamers out there. 8800GTX? Who in the flockin' universe "needs" it? No one, who pays the premium? Not everyone, but plenty enough - and that's the butter zone of the profits - and keeps so many different GPU vendors in business. By the time the graphical processing power is needed, it'll be offered in a 150 to 200 dollar midline card - but we'll be to the 9xxx series by then.

Also let's remember this too, the 8800 series is nVidia's answer to ATi's 9700 PRO. The pipe line is rather long in the hardware world. We'll heard about it's demise several years in advance. Paper launches are marketting, hardware revisions are for sales. Engineering is wild guesses - and prophecy is throwin' darts with a blind fold on, sooner or later you'll have a hit but you'll have a crap load of misses.

Necro - I have heard of revolutions that have never come, I have heard of intergration that never took, I have heard so many god awful theories it's beyond belief. I remember when there was talk about how by this point Moores law obviously ment we were going to have stopped using silicon semi-conductors a year ago and move on to specially engineered elements or use synthetic diamond wafers. I have heard no one would own a desk top PC after 1999 because we could play Duke Nukem on Compaq laptops of that era too. I have heard that the BIOS chip was going to be replaced 2 different times in the last 5 years but IBM's 3 month temporary fix back in the infancy of technology before most of us were born still remains. I have heard magnetic disk based storage media was to be replaced before the new millenium... all we got was Microsoft's worse operating system, no Y2k bug, and a really crappy stock market. Now we're stepping back and saying "hybrid" drives. LAWL!

I have heard them from users such as us, I have read it in the marketting speil from Intel, Maxtor, Soundblaster in publications from Wired to CPU Magazine. I have seen their slide shows on their magnificently designed new Flash sites - all hail web 2.0. Moore's law is a prophey - you could claim it unnervingly accurate, if we forget he's revised it from every two years, to ever 1.5 years then back to 2 years. Meh it's almost over anyways. Multicores is like shooting steriod's into your offensive player - still playing the same game and brute forcing for a few more points.

Here's what's really happened in the last 11 years:

We've cooked up chipsets to handle what was classicly two chips - n.bridge and s.bridge. This started with Nforce 250s and still not widely implimented.

We've seen the advent of dedicated cards for graphics really with 3DFX - where graphics used to sit nice and cozy with a n.bridge... but all these years later we still see it. Dual PCI-Express 16 lanes now where it used to be on ISA.... but fundamentally the same. We might intergrate the GPU with the CPU soon - but like the graphics with a system chipset we'll still see seperate because of niche markets for many years to come. Gamers and designers are niche, always have been too - we're what have keep Quadros, Wildcats, Radeon and GeForce going since they opened shop. Otherwise if regular main stream market really ruled it's be like a communist state long before now with Intel Extreme Graphics II handed out to us all.

My first PC based on the AT form factor was no larger than any BTX/ATX I see made by Dell really. Only real difference is less beige and that power button just doesn't quite feel that same. My first PC also had a TV tuner card and a single 5.25 optical drive that'd handle 3 CDs - I don't even have that now 12 years later. But oddly enough I had SoundBlaster Live early on and really, that hasn't changed much since either.

EDO, SDRAM, DDR, a flirt with RAMBUS, now to DDR2... maybe DDR3 but AMD removed that from their road map. I really don't see where it's fundamentally changed at any interval. It's still random access memory. Maybe if we went back 20 years to Commodore running solely off RAM and having no reliance on ROM - that could be called a large change... backwards, but at lest that'd be a change.

Trivial things such as ZRAM may appear groundbreaking even, til you step away and find such advances trivial in the grand scheme. Cell processors - just another trick, implimented better hopefully with time, but the output in the end will calculate the same.

Changes will come in time, but revolution will probably not come from evolution of current status quo.

I dont think consoles will Ever Take over a PC, a PC just has a different feel over a Console. After you beat a game on a console, What else is there left to do? You cant Mod it or hack it, and after a while Multiplayer just loses its glory. However, on a PC You can mod games to give them new life!

Just Look at the future. CPUs will become Quad core, MB's will have integrated Physics units and theres the possiblity of a CPU having a integrated GPU. Theres going to be a need for PCs no matter what, Consoles are a totally different market.

On the subject of Laptops; As Ive said before in our IM, There will always be the need for power, People will Want a Desktop PC. Granted they can almost do the same thing, all a laptop is, is a comp in a smaller box. Laptops= Portablity, Desktops= Power

Quote: Originally Posted by Fortran im not predicting, but more like wishing to see stuff like this in the near future .... i mean, this "display" was so responsive .....

Theyre working on multi-point touch interfaces.

Quote: Originally Posted by Cyno01 Theyre working on multi-point touch interfaces.

As well as motion gloves, and OLED's to make nifty clear screens, that respond to multiple movements of your hands, i can't wait for that.

What about Google OS? Google definitely Has the power and Money to do something like this, and think about it, It would be an alternative to M$. Since they have the money, I can see that they could incorporate Direct X somehow into their OS.

Quote: Originally Posted by Nerdz What about Google OS? Google definitely Has the power and Money to do something like this, and think about it, It would be an alternative to M$. Since they have the money, I can see that they could incorporate Direct X somehow into their OS.

not to sound like a total fanboy here but if google were to release an OS i'd switch immediately .... of course it'd have to be NON-Linux based

Quote: Originally Posted by Fortran not to sound like a total fanboy here but if google were to release an OS i'd switch immediately .... of course it'd have to be NON-Linux based

I dont know about that... Microsoft seems to be getting its game together the past few months, and google seems to be heading to the direction of microsoft when it comes to bus. practices...

Those of us who are Linux-shy will probably be running Windows Vienna.

30 years ago people said we'd be flying around like the
Jetsons. But I'm still stuck with a car. Somebody give
Necro a xanax and hold a flashlight up to his Crystal Ball.
HeHeHe :-)

You all must forgive me for playing the "Devil's Advocate" here, I looked in my crystal ball, and did not like what I was seeing.

I cannot accurately predict that far off, much like a weatherman trying to predict the weather next year... I can only see glimpses of "Possibilities" and picked the scariest scenarios and possible future trends of the bunch...

This was more of an "Exercises" to get a reaction from the community, much like the old AMD vs Intel or ATi vs Nvidia threads that crop up now and then.

I was curious too see if this would stir a few veteran's into action, and to open the eyes of our newer members.

I will regard this a success on both fronts, Iat certainly took the opposing point of view and showed us all that no matter how much things may appear to change, they are often just a rehash of places we have been with a new spin....+rep!

I am optimistic about the future of the PC, there will always be a hardcore dedicated group that will keep the torches burning...There are still plenty of us patiently waiting for the return of Duke Nukem!

I often wonder though if the PC and the Net will end up going the way of the CB radio that was sooo outrageously popular back in the 70's

Yeah, there are still a few regular people that use them, but most of the population has long since abandoned them, in general only "Truckers" use them on a regular basis anymore...the guys who started it up the trend (For the most part) in the first place for the most part, now pretty much have the airwaves back to themselves, something I am sure they are glad to see happen!

Ii don't think there are too many hardcore "Geeks" out there that would be sad to see AOL and MS "Get what's coming" and put it back in the hands of the people who prefer to be sitting by the keyboard all hours of the night, with only the light of the monitor to illuminate the room...they certainly don't need to see a keyboard to manipulate the core of the "Magic Box"

I will add a link to a new thread that does kinda hit the nail on the head of the type of tech that I saw leading to the "Big" PC's demise, and then you cannot tell me at least part of this vision was not too far off the mark...

http://forums.pcapex.com/video_card_...a_desktop.html

Well Necro and Iateronemly ,youve given us alot of food for thought.

The hardware and software will evolve,but we as users are pretty steadfast in our habits.

You need look no farther than the auto industry to see that.
After 100 years ,cars still have wheels,you get in ,and you drive where you going.
The packeging has changed, but the means to an end is the same.

There will allways be different choices,different levels of power, because of the vast amount of different users.

When I look in the crystal ball ,what I see is that in ten years consoles/Pc's will be so powerfull that 99% of the users wont notice... or care.

Its going to be all about the software ,thats where the biggest differences will be.
The Virtual world we experience and the quality of it, will be much more dependent on the innovations provided buy the software designers.

Hardware innovations will be an afterthought,only needed when massive changes in the software environment evolve.

Quote: Originally Posted by $SOLID$ Necro I will add a link to a new thread that does kinda hit the nail on the head of the type of tech that I saw leading to the "Big" PC's demise, and then you cannot tell me at least part of this vision was not too far off the mark... http://forums.pcapex.com/video_card_...a_desktop.html

So I'll have to buy one of those gizmo's and a LapTop. I don't see this tech
as anything futuristic. I don't even see LapTop in the future. Student's are
the only people I know with LapTop's and I can see them being replaced
with PDA clones (LapTop's, not the Students). I see the PC becoming more
intergrated with the household and portable devices. Students will access
the home PC wirelessly with full functionality via a touchscreen. The PC will
read RIFD tags in your Refrig and order more food as needed. The CPU will
become so powerful that Video cards are no longer needed. The whole family
will be able to access the PC at the same time and play Duke Nukem on a
1/2 dozen access points. And so on. I see consules and all the other devices
fading away as the PC becomes the One Box to Rule Them All :-)