Posted by
michael
on from the penny-pinching dept.
Lt Wuff writes "CNN has a story about how the newest/fasted/latest and greatest processors aren't selling like Intel and AMD hoped. Maybe people are wising up to the fact that you don't need the fastest processors on the market in order to open AOL..."
The economy is a huge driver in this, and if they don't see that, they are silly.
Yeah, it's really so strange how being laid-off from a job that paid mid 5-figures up to near six-figures or more, scraping by on unemployment, really cuts down on consumers' willingness to plonk for newer technology. But companies saved staffing costs...
Especially when their "old" (2-3 years) home desktop or notebook PC works just fine for email and surfing job-search websites.
Henry Ford was a prime SOB, but one thing he did right was pay his workers $5/day (a high wage at the time), realizing that he'd never sell enough Model A's unless his workers could afford them. Today's overpaid and overprivileged corporate executive class seems to have lost sight of this. Refusing to pay more than rock-bottom wages destroys demand for their own high-tech products.
.. and what if DOOM3/UT2003 is 75% of all software that you run?
it means youre pretty bad at math.
software lag and video cards
by
cheese_wallet
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It seems that intel and amd have recently made pretty large jumps in their processor speeds. And while windows XP is processor greedy, the benchmark for good performance in XP was surpassed a while back.
So I think we are just seeing the results of a software lag, where the current batch of software doesn't need or even work better with the highest end processors.
On the other hand, video cards are taking more and more load off of the CPU. And they cost about the same. I know I've upgraded my video more often than my CPU. I've got four videocards sitting on my desk right now, victims of perceived obsolesence.
Maybe the future trend is for other peripherals to start adding computational functionality, and further reduce the CPU load. Perhaps CPUs of the future will be used for nothing but scheduling and coordination.
Re:software lag and video cards
by
ergo98
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
And while windows XP is processor greedy, the benchmark for good performance in XP was surpassed a while back.
I was actually writing a Slashdot submission some time ago that dealt with "minimum requirements" and how they are determined in the software industry. For instance, for Windows XP Microsoft states as the requirements "PC with 300 megahertz (MHz) or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233-MHz minimum required". I offer up the opinion that they pulled these numbers out of their ass, and that is the general routine of the software industry in general. While items such as memory or hard drive space can be actually metered and truly quoted on in minimum configurations (recommended becomes more of a suggestion as it is completely subjective: If you're willing to tolerate endless paging, Windows NT 4.0 will run on, and was originally specified as for, 12MB. If Microsoft re-released Windows NT 4.0 pre SP1 today, they'd claim that it required a minimum of 128MB, and a 300Mhz+ processor). I believe that software manufacturers simply find the middle to low end in the current marketplace and stick that on their box with the hopes that more detailed "requirements" makes it appear that the QA department did a better job, when all it's really doing is needlessly muddling and implying metrics that don't actually exist. Minimum CPU requirements for non-realtime applications are a farce.
Why do I bring up XP? Firstly, I've found XP to actually be significantly less demanding than Windows 2000 (for instance startup times have dropped dramatically as they optimized the kernel and ancilliary code). Windows 2000 specifies a "minimum" processor of a 133Mhz Pentium, yet Windows XP specifies that you need a 233Mhz or higher processor. Why the jump of 100Mhz? Does it latently consume more resources? Checking my CPU meter I can see that it generally sits at 0%. Compare this to Windows NT 4.0, to which XP still shares a tremendous lineage (one can still run virtually all current software on an NT 4.0 machine) which only requires a 486 33Mhz. Claims that XP is a CPU hog are ridiculous: While it can be demanding from a video perspective if you have the "effects" on, and you should have lots of memory, it would likely run perfectly fine on a Pentium Pro 60Mhz, presuming you had the required memory.
Why do I say this little rant? Because I truly was interested some time back about the engineering foundation for determining and quoting on minimum, recommended, and optimal configurations, and how they are derived.
The money I would spend on frivolous things is now being shoveled into the bank so I can save for things I really need(TM).
Aren't we all supposed to be spending money to Help Stimulate the Economy(TM)? We Can't Let the Terrorists Win! (TM)
Lazy Programming
by
unicron
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I blame lazy/inefficient programming for todays ever increasing processor demands. A good example would be Jedi Knight 2. On a my P3-800 with 256mb of ram and a geforce 2 ti it ran like ass anytime there were more than 3 guys running around or if I was in a big room. Really pissed me off. And that was at 800x600, I had to turn it down from 1024x768 because it was unplayable.
2 nights ago I downloaded UT2K3. I thought it was going to be worse than JK2. So I turn off all the effects, runs fine. Start turning settings up. 800x600 with medium effects runs fine. So I go to 1024x768 with full effects. Runs beautifully. Dropped 10 bots in, no drop in performance. I would've put more in but they were owning me.
Kind of off-topic, I know, but it really opened my eyes to what programmers can do if they honestly care about the their public and put good programming techniques to work.
-- Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Re:Lazy Programming
by
Stormie
·
· Score: 4, Informative
On a my P3-800 with 256mb of ram and a geforce 2 ti it ran like ass anytime there were more than 3 guys running around or if I was in a big room. Really pissed me off. And that was at 800x600, I had to turn it down from 1024x768 because it was unplayable.
News flash: if changing resolution improves performance, then your problem is that you're fillrate bound on the graphics card. Nothing to do with your CPU, nothing to do with "lazy/inefficient programming".
If you were getting the same crappy performance regardless of resolution, then you'd have a point.
I love when they use the Internet
by
asv108
·
· Score: 4, Informative
As a reason to upgrade your computer to a 2+ GHZ machine. The funny thing is, most people don't know any better and assume that buying a new computer will make the Internet faster. The FTC needs to start coming down hard on computer companies who advertise that a new pc will make the Internet faster.
Re:I love when they use the Internet
by
Kaz+Riprock
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Even better than the computer companies are the broadband providers that offer "lightning-fast downloads".
Hello! Do you know how fast lightning moves? That's just not even close to ATT Broadband/RCN/@home speeds.
-- Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
Re:I love when they use the Internet
by
alienmole
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Actually, the most common reason for improved performance of "the internet" that I've seen is increased RAM. Browsers tend to chew memory, and if you don't have enough, the page swapping will slow even a fast CPU to a crawl. There are plenty of people upgrading 400MHz machines to GHz+ machines, who really just need to pop in another DIMM. (Of course, they're not capable of doing that, so buying a computer may be the best choice... Ignorance costs.)
Well, bear in mind that most machines are purchased by businesses -- and they follow some weird rules.
Consider the 3-year-old Dell 450 PII on my desk. High end when I got it, low-end now. I don't need to do any heavy processing, but some of the apps I use consume a lot of RAM, and I'm always short of disk. So I requested an upgrade.
It had almost gone through, when my boss told me that I was making things difficult by not requesting a new machine. Computers are amortized over three years (at least by anybody who pays federal taxes), and our IS department takes the attitude that a fully-amortized computer costs more to support than it's worth.
Of course, as soon as I changed my upgrade request to a new computer request, there was a purchasing freeze....
We already determined in a previous slashdot article that gaming pushes computer tech forward. Since the minimum requirements for most games are still a 500mhz cpu with a 32MB AGP video card, nobody has a need to upgrade their pcs except for the most bleeding edge gamers, and other power users who do video encoding or AutoCAD type applications. I remember back in the day Virtual On came out for PC and the minimum sysreq were higher than any available pc on the market, unless you had 5 grand. When the minimum amount of power required to use new software goes above the power of most people's pcs then they'll start buying faster CPUs. Heck, even the people who are already buying faster CPUs don't buy the fastest processor available. The money:speed ratio makes it so much more worth it to buy the second or third fastest AMD, even though the fastest P4 is the best you can get.
-- The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Why in the world would anyone want to spend the money on a top of the line processor when they can buy an entire computer based on a value processor for $299 at Walmart.com? Heck, instead of spending $1500 or more on a new computer, I can buy three computers over the next year and be pretty sure that the computer I buy six months from now will be faster than the expensive computer I am buying now. So what if these computers are crap. At these prices I can afford to purchase another.
Besides, I don't want to spend my money on a processor. I don't run an processor intensive apps. I want more memory, a bigger monitor, and a faster hard drive. Spending money on a fast processor is just a waste.
The funniest part about this is that the killer application that would drive people to buy new processors is multimedia sharing. Encoding and decoding multimedia sucks down cycles like crazy. Instead of making it easy for people to share multimedia files Intel and AMD are busy making it as hard as possible. If sales are bad now, imagine when Intel and AMD's new products come out that treat their customers like criminals.
Re:Precisely
by
Jason+Earl
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Yes, I understand that fileserving (especially over the Internet) doesn't require a lot of processor power. I suppose I can't speak for those folks that are infringing on copyrights, but I have been ripping my CDs to Ogg, and I am starting to think a faster processor would be a good thing. And my buddy that is encoding all of his digital video is even more interested in a powerful processor.
And that's what Intel should be pushing. They should be running commmercials where people are sending video CDs of their kids to the grandparents. That requires a nifty processor, and it is precisely the kind of thing that gets normal people to upgrade their computer. Unfortunately Intel has been paying too much attention to Hollywood, who believes that they are the only folks that can make movies.
Besides, why should Intel care if people are downloading media? They aren't in the media biz. Multimedia files are big, and most people also purchase new computers when their hard drive gets full. Sure, you or I might simply pop in a new hard drive, but that's not at all normal. Computer sales mean processor sales. In other words it is in Intel (and AMD's) best interests to encourage people to share multimedia files.
The fact of the matter is that unless you are dealing with multimedia there is little reason to upgrade your Pentium II 500, and yet for whatever reason the hardware companies are going out of their way to make multimedia difficult to do on PCs.
Devil's Advocation
by
Jahf
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
So, most people seem to be in agreement that you don't need a faster processor to run today's applications. I would agree with that for the most part. I'm able to subsist on a desktop P3-800 and a laptop P3-600.
However, it's important to realize that the drop in sales will also result in a corresponding drop in research.
I'm kind of not happy about that... since I think it will slow down the pace of technology, at least on the client-side (versus server side, which was just beginning to be penetrated by the desktop architectures).
It may have 2 very cool side-effects, though:
1) Pervasive computing may become more... pervasive? It will be possible for the embedded computing to catch-up to the desktop power because more time will be allowed for miniaturization -and- embedded platforms will last longer (example: AMD is killing it's AMD K6-2 line because it's too slow... this will hurt alot of embedded products because the market isn't strong enough to allow redevelopment onto newer platforms)
2) Network/Telecom/etc infrastructure can finally catch-up. I strongly believe one of the things that caused the Internet boom was that a majority of people had access to modern telephone lines and most could scrounge up a computer. Since then, computing technology has outpaced infrastructure development (by that I mean -many- people currently still can't get xDSL, and yet your average new computer could completely swamp a T3). If things slow down and stabilize, we can again let the infrastructure mature and saturate the market, which is often the recipe needed for a new technological boom.
However, I am going to be upset if I can't buy a 32/64bit Hammer in a year at a decent cost, just because I want it:)
-- It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Building Systems
by
T-Kir
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I've found the best way to build a system is to get the mid/high level chip rather than the top end, the savings are large enough to speed up the system in other areas (like lower latency RAM).
If you can build someone a decent computer, but keeping costs down (I don't mean getting crappy componants), they're far more likely to upgrade sooner and in the same manner so the cost is more spread. i.e. someone spends $2000-3000 on a brand spanking new computer (latest everything) but loses the ultra performance crown in 3-6 months, is going to be less inclined to get a new system 1-2 years down the line (unless they have cash to burn), wheras if the costs are under $800-1000, they never lose the ultra peformance crown 'cos they never had it in the first place.
I suppose the nice thing about new chip releases (esp. major revisions) is they knock the lower specced chips down nicely.
-- Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
I'd be buying hardware if I had the money
by
Crag
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I browse/. at a threshold of 4, so if this is redundant, I appologize.
I have an infinite appatite for more toys. The only thing preventing me from buying quad Xeons, dual Athlons and a bunch of Sparc hardware is that I'm broke. This last year has been very difficult, and I think even more so in the technology sector. If we all start getting rich off of killing foreigners or something, then maybe the demand for more power will return. In the mean time I'd be more impressed if they could show that people were spending the same (inflation adjusted) money on lower-end hardware.
The article itself does mention the economic slump, but doesn't actually provide any real facts or data, just anecdote and fluff.
Not till I see nickel on the core�.
by
(H)elix1
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I'll buy the high end CPU's when I don't have to worry about chipping or cracking the silicon. Fool me once, shame on me... I know the P4 has a nice slab of nickel on top, but I don't care for the performance/price I get for the high end CPU's. That leaves AMD, and I'll be damned if I spend top dollar for something I can crush that easy (again). With much fear and trembling, I got my dual MP CPU's mounted in my workstation. I spent ~$100 for a 'disposable' CPU and ~$80 for mainboard, which was an AMD XP 2000 (1.66?) and a cheap Asus board with the works last week, but no way will I bite for the top end processor for my gaming box until I get a no heat sink whammy guarantee. When I see something I can lapp, I'll pull out my wallet for something that can run 1942 w/o lagging.
I know its coming... I've seen (pictures) of the engineering samples...
I'm running a Z-80 computer system (1 Mhz) and I was wondering if I should upgrade to the new Z-80B processor. They go 2.5 Mhz, and supposedly really scream. But is the extra speed worth the $4 that the new processor would cost? Thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't need all that processor power. The apps I use, the games I play, everything else runs just fine on existing hardware.
Plus, I don't have as much throw-away money like I used to. The economy is a huge driver in this, and if they don't see that, they are silly.
The money I would spend on frivolous things is now being shoveled into the bank so I can save for things I really need(TM).
Sent from your iPad.
It seems that intel and amd have recently made pretty large jumps in their processor speeds. And while windows XP is processor greedy, the benchmark for good performance in XP was surpassed a while back.
So I think we are just seeing the results of a software lag, where the current batch of software doesn't need or even work better with the highest end processors.
On the other hand, video cards are taking more and more load off of the CPU. And they cost about the same. I know I've upgraded my video more often than my CPU. I've got four videocards sitting on my desk right now, victims of perceived obsolesence.
Maybe the future trend is for other peripherals to start adding computational functionality, and further reduce the CPU load. Perhaps CPUs of the future will be used for nothing but scheduling and coordination.
I blame lazy/inefficient programming for todays ever increasing processor demands. A good example would be Jedi Knight 2. On a my P3-800 with 256mb of ram and a geforce 2 ti it ran like ass anytime there were more than 3 guys running around or if I was in a big room. Really pissed me off. And that was at 800x600, I had to turn it down from 1024x768 because it was unplayable.
2 nights ago I downloaded UT2K3. I thought it was going to be worse than JK2. So I turn off all the effects, runs fine. Start turning settings up. 800x600 with medium effects runs fine. So I go to 1024x768 with full effects. Runs beautifully. Dropped 10 bots in, no drop in performance. I would've put more in but they were owning me.
Kind of off-topic, I know, but it really opened my eyes to what programmers can do if they honestly care about the their public and put good programming techniques to work.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
As a reason to upgrade your computer to a 2+ GHZ machine. The funny thing is, most people don't know any better and assume that buying a new computer will make the Internet faster. The FTC needs to start coming down hard on computer companies who advertise that a new pc will make the Internet faster.
Consider the 3-year-old Dell 450 PII on my desk. High end when I got it, low-end now. I don't need to do any heavy processing, but some of the apps I use consume a lot of RAM, and I'm always short of disk. So I requested an upgrade.
It had almost gone through, when my boss told me that I was making things difficult by not requesting a new machine. Computers are amortized over three years (at least by anybody who pays federal taxes), and our IS department takes the attitude that a fully-amortized computer costs more to support than it's worth.
Of course, as soon as I changed my upgrade request to a new computer request, there was a purchasing freeze....
We already determined in a previous slashdot article that gaming pushes computer tech forward. Since the minimum requirements for most games are still a 500mhz cpu with a 32MB AGP video card, nobody has a need to upgrade their pcs except for the most bleeding edge gamers, and other power users who do video encoding or AutoCAD type applications.
I remember back in the day Virtual On came out for PC and the minimum sysreq were higher than any available pc on the market, unless you had 5 grand. When the minimum amount of power required to use new software goes above the power of most people's pcs then they'll start buying faster CPUs.
Heck, even the people who are already buying faster CPUs don't buy the fastest processor available. The money:speed ratio makes it so much more worth it to buy the second or third fastest AMD, even though the fastest P4 is the best you can get.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Why in the world would anyone want to spend the money on a top of the line processor when they can buy an entire computer based on a value processor for $299 at Walmart.com? Heck, instead of spending $1500 or more on a new computer, I can buy three computers over the next year and be pretty sure that the computer I buy six months from now will be faster than the expensive computer I am buying now. So what if these computers are crap. At these prices I can afford to purchase another.
Besides, I don't want to spend my money on a processor. I don't run an processor intensive apps. I want more memory, a bigger monitor, and a faster hard drive. Spending money on a fast processor is just a waste.
The funniest part about this is that the killer application that would drive people to buy new processors is multimedia sharing. Encoding and decoding multimedia sucks down cycles like crazy. Instead of making it easy for people to share multimedia files Intel and AMD are busy making it as hard as possible. If sales are bad now, imagine when Intel and AMD's new products come out that treat their customers like criminals.
So, most people seem to be in agreement that you don't need a faster processor to run today's applications. I would agree with that for the most part. I'm able to subsist on a desktop P3-800 and a laptop P3-600.
... since I think it will slow down the pace of technology, at least on the client-side (versus server side, which was just beginning to be penetrated by the desktop architectures).
... pervasive? It will be possible for the embedded computing to catch-up to the desktop power because more time will be allowed for miniaturization -and- embedded platforms will last longer (example: AMD is killing it's AMD K6-2 line because it's too slow ... this will hurt alot of embedded products because the market isn't strong enough to allow redevelopment onto newer platforms)
:)
However, it's important to realize that the drop in sales will also result in a corresponding drop in research.
I'm kind of not happy about that
It may have 2 very cool side-effects, though:
1) Pervasive computing may become more
2) Network/Telecom/etc infrastructure can finally catch-up. I strongly believe one of the things that caused the Internet boom was that a majority of people had access to modern telephone lines and most could scrounge up a computer. Since then, computing technology has outpaced infrastructure development (by that I mean -many- people currently still can't get xDSL, and yet your average new computer could completely swamp a T3). If things slow down and stabilize, we can again let the infrastructure mature and saturate the market, which is often the recipe needed for a new technological boom.
However, I am going to be upset if I can't buy a 32/64bit Hammer in a year at a decent cost, just because I want it
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
I've found the best way to build a system is to get the mid/high level chip rather than the top end, the savings are large enough to speed up the system in other areas (like lower latency RAM).
If you can build someone a decent computer, but keeping costs down (I don't mean getting crappy componants), they're far more likely to upgrade sooner and in the same manner so the cost is more spread. i.e. someone spends $2000-3000 on a brand spanking new computer (latest everything) but loses the ultra performance crown in 3-6 months, is going to be less inclined to get a new system 1-2 years down the line (unless they have cash to burn), wheras if the costs are under $800-1000, they never lose the ultra peformance crown 'cos they never had it in the first place.
I suppose the nice thing about new chip releases (esp. major revisions) is they knock the lower specced chips down nicely.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
I browse /. at a threshold of 4, so if this is redundant, I appologize.
I have an infinite appatite for more toys. The only thing preventing me from buying quad Xeons, dual Athlons and a bunch of Sparc hardware is that I'm broke. This last year has been very difficult, and I think even more so in the technology sector. If we all start getting rich off of killing foreigners or something, then maybe the demand for more power will return. In the mean time I'd be more impressed if they could show that people were spending the same (inflation adjusted) money on lower-end hardware.
The article itself does mention the economic slump, but doesn't actually provide any real facts or data, just anecdote and fluff.
I'll buy the high end CPU's when I don't have to worry about chipping or cracking the silicon. Fool me once, shame on me... I know the P4 has a nice slab of nickel on top, but I don't care for the performance/price I get for the high end CPU's. That leaves AMD, and I'll be damned if I spend top dollar for something I can crush that easy (again). With much fear and trembling, I got my dual MP CPU's mounted in my workstation. I spent ~$100 for a 'disposable' CPU and ~$80 for mainboard, which was an AMD XP 2000 (1.66?) and a cheap Asus board with the works last week, but no way will I bite for the top end processor for my gaming box until I get a no heat sink whammy guarantee. When I see something I can lapp, I'll pull out my wallet for something that can run 1942 w/o lagging.
I know its coming... I've seen (pictures) of the engineering samples...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
See subject.
There will be plenty of time for smoking doobies when your living in a VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER.
I'm running a Z-80 computer system (1 Mhz) and I was wondering if I should upgrade to the new Z-80B processor. They go 2.5 Mhz, and supposedly really scream. But is the extra speed worth the $4 that the new processor would cost? Thanks.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.