Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="drothgery" data-source="post: 4894762" data-attributes="member: 360">Huh? After four years, you generally need to upgrade a PC just for normal business apps. Serious gamers pretty much can't get away with upgrading their video card (and until very recently high-end video cards cost more than consoles even ignoring the insanely expensive PS3) less often than every other year, if not every year. After five years, you're lucky if you still can use your mouse and keyboard with a new computer; it's unlikely anything else will work.Five years ago, you were still looking at single-core CPUs; four years ago, the very earliest dual cores (the hacked-together Pentium D and first-generation Athlon 64 X2). The highest-end desktop you could buy in 2005 would be easily outperformed by a $300 budget box with a $100 video card today. And that video card likely could not be used on the old PC, because of the AGP to PCI Express transition (which started in 2004). Hard drive interfaces have changed. USB devices have become ubiquitous, requiring more slots (plus standards have moved on to USB2). Memory has gone from DDR and RDRAM to DDR2 to DDR3 (in new high-end systems, and poised to move down-market later this year with the mainstream Core i7 variants).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="drothgery, post: 4894762, member: 360"] Huh? After four years, you generally need to upgrade a PC just for normal business apps. Serious gamers pretty much can't get away with upgrading their video card (and until very recently high-end video cards cost more than consoles even ignoring the insanely expensive PS3) less often than every other year, if not every year. After five years, you're lucky if you still can use your mouse and keyboard with a new computer; it's unlikely anything else will work. Five years ago, you were still looking at single-core CPUs; four years ago, the very earliest dual cores (the hacked-together Pentium D and first-generation Athlon 64 X2). The highest-end desktop you could buy in 2005 would be easily outperformed by a $300 budget box with a $100 video card today. And that video card likely could not be used on the old PC, because of the AGP to PCI Express transition (which started in 2004). Hard drive interfaces have changed. USB devices have become ubiquitous, requiring more slots (plus standards have moved on to USB2). Memory has gone from DDR and RDRAM to DDR2 to DDR3 (in new high-end systems, and poised to move down-market later this year with the mainstream Core i7 variants). [/QUOTE]

Verification