Moore's law and choice of computer purchase

sharkie

for servers (possible desktops too?) 12 cores cpu were released last year. 16 cores are planned for this year. Intel researchers have already built an 80 core chip. Who knows how long it will be before they are found in laptops.

Nothing depreciates as fast as the bleeding edge of technology. You can't reliably predict the future. Just buy what you need as it will only get cheaper and faster in the future.

Your friend my have a 10 year old that is faster than a current base level one. However using his logic I could buy a top range sony for around £2300 and hope it lasts 10 years, or buy a run of the mill for £600 and upgrade every 2 years. Personally I'd choose the £600 option.

S0litaire

"Moore's Law" is becoming more of a goal rather than a rule these days...
CPU speeds have levelled off at around the 3.5Ghz mark, they are making things faster by adding multiple CPU's per chip.

globalds

It looks like overall computing speeds can continue along the curve as other bottlenecks will speed up (at a reduced price)

SSD drives are now hitting realistic prices and a couple more years will see the prices drop as quickly. And fundamental changes to BIOS could make a massive improvement to boot up times.

tweeter

My friend won a PowerBook G3 Mac in a competition about 10 years ago and its still going strong - I reinstalled OS X 10.3.9 on it last year. She just uses it for emails and stuff.

cepheus

epninety wrote: »

Slightly sideways view, but my computers are work tools - if it takes me a day to setup a new computer with everything I use, copy over user data files etc., that's a day of lost earnings. That can easily exceed the cost of a run-of-the-mill desktop or laptop. For my daily use CAD machine, getting everything back to 'just so' and ensuring I didn't lose anything on the way might easily take 2 days (well ok, probably one 16 hour day), and exceed the cost of a high end machine.

You have to work out what you think your own lost time is worth, but it's worth considering when you make your purchasing budget.

Wise words, and my feelings exactly. Not only that, but the stress of things having to be fixed and sometimes learning new software versions can lead to far more time than a day! Thank God I skipped Vista altogether!!

cepheus

4743hudsonj wrote: »

Its not as easy as that, i have the higher mid end i7 Q740. Its clock is 1.75Ghz. But then again its quad core and can "turbo" boost to 2.93Ghz (i think?) on a single core.

The numbers mean nothing unless you understand the implications of certain models.

Another example is that because its an i7, by default the Motherboard supports DDR3 RAM. Whereas the cheapos will mostly use the now superseded DDR2.

OK assuming the 2.93 GHz is fast and the cheapo 2 GHz is slow that amounts to about a year of development? Considering I am using a 6 year old computer now, these high end computers must 'devalue' more rapidly than a new executive car in relative terms.

free4440273

cepheus wrote: »

OK assuming the 2.93 GHz is fast and the cheapo 2 GHz is slow that amounts to about a year of development? Considering I am using a 6 year old computer now, these high end computers must 'devalue' more rapidly than a new executive car in relative terms.

they certainly devalue technologically speaking ; but it's the nature of the computing beast -- you either buy a computer now or you don't/ the technological push will always be better/faster/smaller /

/myself, i examine when purchasing technological excellence , build quality and price -- perhaps not in that order

I think also that there is no real price premium to pay anymore -- and that's a good thing for consumers -- esp. if you don't need the latest/fastest processor -- and most don't imo //

Derivative

My opponent's view its always worth getting a top grade computer since it will remain useful for longer. He is bragging that his laptop (bought just before XP came out possible 10 years ago?) is still better than the cheapest laptops on offer today due to the ability to upgrade. It cost him around £1300 then.

I'll start off by saying, your friend is talking complete and utter !!!!!!!!. Year 2000, the absolute top of the line CPU was an Athlon XP Thunderbird, and one of those at full power (1.4Ghz) in a laptop would have had the battery last 4 seconds shortly before it melted through the keyboard. Not too much of an exaggeration. Pentium 4's weren't much better on power consumption either. Today you can get processors far far better for £300 all in on a laptop.

Buying absolute bleeding edge is always daft as it comes at a huge premium.
I've not kept up recently but the norm in the past few years has been "Extreme Edition" processors for £800 that have 10% more performance than a standard Core 2 for £100-200.

Laptops I'd go for portability and just get a decent desktop. I have the ThinkPad x100e, crap battery life but I always have a power source. It's just annoying lugging around 15"+ laptops, 12 and smaller will go in a messenger bag.

Keep in mind that with computers nowadays, for most people a top end system is like buying a Veyron. You don't need the amount of power these new CPU's have to browse the web and look at YouTube.

Hammyman

EdgEy wrote: »

I'll start off by saying, your friend is talking complete and utter !!!!!!!!. Year 2000, the absolute top of the line CPU was an Athlon XP Thunderbird, and one of those at full power (1.4Ghz) in a laptop would have had the battery last 4 seconds shortly before it melted through the keyboard.

I've been in IT 27 years in the hardware building, repair, upgrade and OS side. That doesn't fit the description of any CPU fitted in any laptop that I know of.

olly300

EdgEy wrote: »

Laptops I'd go for portability and just get a decent desktop. I have the ThinkPad x100e, crap battery life but I always have a power source. It's just annoying lugging around 15"+ laptops, 12 and smaller will go in a messenger bag.

15"+ laptops are desktop replacements and are useful if you need to do stuff with graphics where you can't always take a smaller laptop or be guaranteed an external monitor to plug the laptop into.

EdgEy wrote: »

Keep in mind that with computers nowadays, for most people a top end system is like buying a Veyron. You don't need the amount of power these new CPU's have to browse the web and look at YouTube.

It's called a mobile phone which should have WiFi as well.