I just built a new computer and am quite surprised at how things have changed.
New processor - Intel back in businessFirst of all, the new Core 2 Duo processors from Intel (also called "Conroes") are simply so fast and can handle so much overclocking in addition, that there is simply nothing left that I can imagine anyone even wanting anymore. If for some reason you can't part with the $700-$1000 needed to get a real system like this you can bet your ass that the old ones, no matter how great they were, will soon be getting blown out for crazy cheap prices. AMD-based systems with Athlon 64's are now basically door stops, as are the old Pentium dual core machines.
Mid-range prices are upIt seemed there for a while that things would never again see the big performance leaps we expect in technology. For years we crept along with little improvements in clock speeds. Well, the clock speeds are all the same still (2 to 3 gigahertz) but the performance is off the damn scale. The system I just built has the exact same clock speed as my 3-year old system but is easily 4 times faster. There was a time when $100 CPUs reigned...along with $70 motherboards and $50 a gigabyte memory. They were a bit slower than the thousand dollar systems, but only idiots payed out the ass for the latest CPU. It looks like that has changed a bit now too. The new CPUs, motherboards, and DDR-2 memory are often double the prices we've come to expect and might stay that way for some time. Cheap systems (<$700) are now crappy systems. A cheap system today will be 4-6 times slower than the mid-range ($700-$1000) system. The premium systems are still not worth it but the free ride is over. The mid-range systems are now the sweet spot.
Overclocking is worth it againFor a while the business of pushing your computer beyond it's normal limits seemed like a waste of time and lots of money. Nitwits would water cool and nitrogen cool their "rigs" to get 25% more performance for hundreds of dollars. Screw that shit!
Now you can get a simple massive air cooler for $70 and squeeze out huge results. Just like with those sweet Celerons (anyone?) you can just turn up the speed dial and get a machine that's 50% faster or more...it pays.
My new system is running at a 40% overclock and I've just been tweaking it with minimal effort.
Who cares?I don't know. Maybe we don't need faster computers.
Here are the only justifications I can think of:
Content creation (3D, digital video)
Games
High-definition video playback
Science
If you like Microsoft Office and Powerpoint and just use email and web browsing all day - good news! You can pick up a previous generation dinosaur that will be screaming fast for those rudimentary programs for next to nothing. Or just ignore the whole thing and wait for your current machine to crap out. You don't give a shit anyway so stop wasting my time. Oh, wait, I'm wasting your time.
