Quote:
Originally Posted by Syndrome
It dawned upon me that the laptop I'm currently using is the one I have used for the longest. ASUS G55V purchased in 2013. In the past I used to update my hardware between every 3 and 5 years. This machine still works fine. I remember the first few PCs became unusable after about 4 years.
With the law of diminishing returns and Moore's Law slowing it appears there isn't a need to change hardware as often as in the past. Does it mean computers as we known them have reached there peak with new and significant changes will become more scarce?
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The releases of CPUs slowed in recent years because Intel was dominating and held back on new releases. Why burn money on high R&D levels when there's no real competition? Now with the new AMD CPUs and their more aggressive roadmap for new future releases, Intel have woken up a little. i3 desktop CPUs are now running 4 core/8 thread configurations that were the domain of i7 CPUs not long ago. GPUs the improvement from generation to generation is even greater. It enabled us to move from 4:3 displays to 16:9 or 21:9 at higher resolutions and game smoothly on them. But the relatively rapid move from single core to dual/quad etc basically ramped up CPU performance significantly. Those tasks you bought a strong single core CPU for are barely registering on today's mid-range multi core CPU. The Intel K processors have enabled enthusiasts to maximise performance and it is why my main PC still runs an i5-2500k @ 4.6GHz and is still a solid gaming rig with a more recent GPU. In the next year or so a new build is on the cards.
Looking at the specs of your laptop - if you want to extend it's useful life, swap out the hard drive for an SSD. It should make a vast difference to bootup times. My friend is still using his 2008 Macbook Pro - the SSD really helped. It became painful installing and updating Win7 on normal hard drives I bought another friend an SSD for his desktop mainly to ease my suffering when setting it up.
8GB RAM should be OK - I would be cautious spending money on machines running older RAM without a genuine need. 4GB >8GB would be a no brainer, but most machines won't need more than 8GB without running something demanding. If you are, then it is likely there'll be shortcomings in other areas as well.