Are PCs having TOO MUCH computing power?

[Man-wai Chang to The Door (33600bps)]

Esp when most PCs are not being used to play DirectX games....

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.32.9
^ ^ 17:04:01 up 1 day 1:53 0 users load average: 1.05 1.05 1.03
ä¸å€Ÿè²¸! ä¸è©é¨™! ä¸æ´äº¤! ä¸æ‰“交! ä¸æ‰“劫! ä¸è‡ªæ®º! è«‹è€ƒæ…®ç¶œæ´ (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa

 

[VanguardLH]

Esp when most PCs are not being used to play DirectX games....

Um, other than games, just what software pushes the envelope to prod users
to buy more powerful hardware? You think you need that 3GHz dual- or
quad-core processor with 4GB, or more, of system memory to run a word
processor (when then used to run back in DOS in under 640K on old P1
processors running at 100MHz)? You think PC sales having bleeding edge
maxed out hardware is driven by users of AutoCAD or video editing programs?
Games push for more powerful hardware and games are what draw consumers to
pay for that more powerful hardware.

 

[yaugin]

Um, other than games, just what software pushes the envelope to prod users
to buy more powerful hardware?

If you consider his question more carefully, that's what he was asking.

 

[GT]

(e-mail address removed)...


If you consider his question more carefully, that's what he was asking.

And if you consider his reply more carefully, he is agreeing!

 

[John McGaw]

No. Not nearly enough power for me. I run two i7, one Q6600, and an old P4
24X7 as part of a distributed processing project supporting medical and
energy research. I could use much more speed from my machines. Or more
machines but my electric bills would surely suffer then.

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/index.jsp

 

[Don Phillipson]

Um, other than games, just what software pushes the envelope to prod users
to buy more powerful hardware? You think you need that 3GHz dual- or
quad-core processor with 4GB, or more, of system memory to run a word
processor (when then used to run back in DOS in under 640K on old P1
processors running at 100MHz)? You think PC sales having bleeding edge
maxed out hardware is driven by users of AutoCAD or video editing programs?
Games push for more powerful hardware and games are what draw consumers to
pay for that more powerful hardware.

Sprint (emacs) and WordStar ran perfectly well in CP/M with 64 kb RAM
and CPUs at 2.5 MHz. (Being speed freaks, most Kaypro users bought
the newer chip for 5 MHz.)

The market tells us:
1. Most hardware and nearly all office software is bought by
businesses, thus by people either equipped with capital cost
depreciation accounting or personally ignorant of hardware
development (usually both.)
2. Most non-business software is bought by private people
accustomed at work to ample RAM and fast CPUs.

The paradox remains that much hardware is now designed
for games but used as noted for email, surfing the web et.

 

[VanguardLH]

For a start, there are photo and video editing programs.
Allen

Photo editing can be done on decade or older hosts. Video editing requires
horsepower to complete in a shorter time but then I already mentioned that.
You thought the vast majority of PC users are doing video editing?

 

[VanguardLH]

The paradox remains that much hardware is now designed
for games but used as noted for email, surfing the web et.

Like having fun driving a Bugatti Veyron on the racetrack but the vast
majority of the time you're putzing around in city traffic.

 

[GT]

No. Not nearly enough power for me. I run two i7, one Q6600, and an old P4
24X7 as part of a distributed processing project supporting medical and
energy research. I could use much more speed from my machines. Or more
machines but my electric bills would surely suffer then.

http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/index.jsp

You need one of these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch#playnext=1&playnext_from=TL&videos
=spJ1nqFDR-8&v=adfgMWQB_6o

 

[Man-wai Chang to The Door (33600bps)]

No. Not nearly enough power for me. I run two i7, one Q6600, and an old
P4 24X7 as part of a distributed processing project supporting medical
and energy research. I could use much more speed from my machines. Or
more machines but my electric bills would surely suffer then.

niche, minority!

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.33
^ ^ 21:21:01 up 5:16 1 user load average: 1.01 1.05 1.00
ä¸å€Ÿè²¸! ä¸è©é¨™! ä¸æ´äº¤! ä¸æ‰“交! ä¸æ‰“劫! ä¸è‡ªæ®º! è«‹è€ƒæ…®ç¶œæ´ (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa

 

[GT]

niche, minority!

If the demand for these high powered gaming or number crunching machines was
lower, then the manufacturers wouldn't bother developing them. I think your
'niche, minority', but actually be a significantly large group to justify
all the R&D money.

Quite whether we 'need' all this power for everyday use is another question,
to which the answer is probably no. But we also don't 'need' 40" plasma TVs
and corvettes do we - we choose to buy them and the manufacturers therefore
make money from researching and producing them.

 

[GT]

If you don't want answers, don't ask questions.

"I want the truth"
"You can't handle the truth"
"Son, we live in a world that's protected by walls."... etc. etc.

 

[Mickel]

Esp when most PCs are not being used to play DirectX games....

Most people watch video on their PC and it takes a 3ghz dual core PC to
watch a hi def video while recording one or 2 others.

Michael

 

[GT]

Most people watch video on their PC and it takes a 3ghz dual core PC to
watch a hi def video while recording one or 2 others.

I don't think that is true. At least half of the PCs in the world must sit
on desks in offices and aren't used as TV. Of those PCs in peoples home, I
would be surprised if more than 1 third are used to watch TV - most people
have a TV for that job. That means that less than 1 sixth of PCs are used to
watch TV. I also don't think many of those PC TV watchers actually watch 1
channel while recording 1 or 2 others - there are dedicated boxes that do
this job much better and easier.

I agree with your spec statement, just not the % of users implied.

 

[Man-wai Chang to The Door (33600bps)]

If the demand for these high powered gaming or number crunching machines was

lower, then the manufacturers wouldn't bother developing them. I think your
'niche, minority', but actually be a significantly large group to justify
all the R&D money.

No, they would not go back. Once you have a better and faster, the old
ones would be replaced! I only think most people are not using the full
potential of the latest and greatest!

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.33
^ ^ 20:52:01 up 1 day 4:47 1 user load average: 1.06 1.06 1.07
ä¸å€Ÿè²¸! ä¸è©é¨™! ä¸æ´äº¤! ä¸æ‰“交! ä¸æ‰“劫! ä¸è‡ªæ®º! è«‹è€ƒæ…®ç¶œæ´ (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_pubsvc/page_socsecu/sub_addressesa

 

[John McGaw]

No, they would not go back. Once you have a better and faster, the old
ones would be replaced! I only think most people are not using the full
potential of the latest and greatest!

"Most people" do nothing more intensive than reading email, browsing the
web (mostly for porn it seems), and simple messing about. So for "most
people" an old P4 would probably do as well as anything. But not everybody
is "most" and when someone needs to do heavy lifting in a time-critical way
even the fastest is probably not fast enough (and never will be).

 

[Sjouke Burry]

I don't think that is true. At least half of the PCs in the world must sit
on desks in offices and aren't used as TV. Of those PCs in peoples home, I
would be surprised if more than 1 third are used to watch TV - most people
have a TV for that job. That means that less than 1 sixth of PCs are used to
watch TV. I also don't think many of those PC TV watchers actually watch 1
channel while recording 1 or 2 others - there are dedicated boxes that do
this job much better and easier.

I agree with your spec statement, just not the % of users implied.

I watch an occasional tv program fine on a 2.6G singlecore celeron,
with 512mb memory.
Mostly the transmissions have a lousy quality, and no improvement on
your system will cure that.

 

[Mickel]

I don't think that is true. At least half of the PCs in the world must sit
on desks in offices and aren't used as TV. Of those PCs in peoples home, I
would be surprised if more than 1 third are used to watch TV - most people
have a TV for that job. That means that less than 1 sixth of PCs are used
to watch TV. I also don't think many of those PC TV watchers actually
watch 1 channel while recording 1 or 2 others - there are dedicated boxes
that do this job much better and easier.

I agree with your spec statement, just not the % of users implied.

I'm not sure of the actual specs exactly but don't you require something
reasonably quick just to watch 1 full high def movie? I think a guy at work
here had something around 2.6ghz or 2.8ghz that wasn't up to the task.

Also I would think that most of the PCs at work would have been used to
watch a video of some sort at some stage

Although there isn't really a lot to argue about, I think the OP is correct
in that most PCs were more than powerful enough 5 years ago for most users
and all the new power is mainly used by MS bloat.

 

[VanguardLH]

Methinks you are mixing generations here.

P-ones @ 100 megahurts were usually running Windows. M# Office won't do
diddly in 640K.

Did I mention Microsoft Office? No, I said "word processor". Remember
Wordstar (both DOS and Windows versions)? Wordstar 3.3 was written for
hosts with just 128KB of system memory. I don't know what the later DOS and
Windows versions for Wordstar required for memory. Xywrite worked on a host
with 384KB. Word for DOS 3.1 ran on a host with 256KB.

I didn't feel like wasting my time in my prior reply to have to prove what I
know I did over 20 years ago on a PC. I remember paying somewhere around
$2500 for an IBM PC-AT around 1984 with 640KB and also had a word processor
(don't remember which) along with Multiplan, a spreadsheet program. I don't
recall how much I spent on a full-size memory card to get all the way up to
a whopping total of 2MB. That was back using an Intel 8088 (which got
replaced with a NEC V20) and having to buy a separate math coprocessor.

Yes, I was single-tasking under DOS but I did word processing, too. My
point was that typical applications found on consumer-grade hosts do not
require the high-speed CPUs and gobs of memory that users are demanding for
their computers. The computer is waiting eons between the keystrokes when a
user is typing in their document (whether using a word processor or sending
e-mail) and is dying of eternal boredom while waiting for a user to read
that same document.

 

[Mickel]

Did I mention Microsoft Office? No, I said "word processor". Remember
Wordstar (both DOS and Windows versions)? Wordstar 3.3 was written for
hosts with just 128KB of system memory. I don't know what the later DOS
and
Windows versions for Wordstar required for memory. Xywrite worked on a
host
with 384KB. Word for DOS 3.1 ran on a host with 256KB.

I didn't feel like wasting my time in my prior reply to have to prove what
I
know I did over 20 years ago on a PC. I remember paying somewhere around
$2500 for an IBM PC-AT around 1984 with 640KB and also had a word
processor
(don't remember which) along with Multiplan, a spreadsheet program. I
don't
recall how much I spent on a full-size memory card to get all the way up
to
a whopping total of 2MB. That was back using an Intel 8088 (which got
replaced with a NEC V20) and having to buy a separate math coprocessor.

Yes, I was single-tasking under DOS but I did word processing, too. My
point was that typical applications found on consumer-grade hosts do not
require the high-speed CPUs and gobs of memory that users are demanding
for
their computers. The computer is waiting eons between the keystrokes when
a
user is typing in their document (whether using a word processor or
sending
e-mail) and is dying of eternal boredom while waiting for a user to read
that same document.

I think though if you went back to using such systems you would be amazed at
how basic they are now compared to new stuff.