Jump to content

What will computers be like in a year?


Recommended Posts

Ever tried playing Supreme Commander on a 2.4 ghz Pentium 4 computer? It's not a pleasurable experience. The lag.......uugh. I should play it on a system that has the recommended 3 or more ghz.

 

My problem is, the computer is too old to be worth upgrading. I'm better off getting a new computer with the latest and greatest graphics cards and a 3.0ghz quad core CPU. I should be able to afford that.........in about a year. So what I'm asking is:

 

What are good gaming computers going to cost then, and how much power will they have?

 

(I'm looking to spend $1000-$1600)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If any major breakthrough is achieved, it will undoubtedly make computers more expensive. If they create something like Oct Core processors, that'll be super high priced. In truth, it's impossible to predict the future, so the best advice anyone can offer would be to save your money; expect the worst; hope for the best.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Marcus, go to various websites, like BestBuy, CircuitCity and Dell, where ever. Price the system your looking for and in one years time I guarantee you it will cost 500-800$ less than it does now. For more details on how see my post here.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I'm only interested in getting the latest and greatest............

So what's that going to be in a year?

In a year, computers will probably need atleast 3-4gb ram to play games well enough. 512mb videocards will be the minimum, but still good enough for almost everything but FPS games. Spore will probably be geared around current technology, so there shouldn't be any issue there. The speed of the videocard may however be an issue, as always you won't be able to get by with any of the onboard cards or even what Dell is offering is you really want the performance. But since replacing a videocard isn't that big a deal, you can upgrade at a later date. Having multiple linked videocards will probably be the best way to go. For processors, you should aim for a multicore with atleast 3.5ghz but are better off closer to 5ghz. Although I can't really see games getting much more resource intensive than they are now. There's only so much that you can display, and there are certain limitations of various hardware standards. Even cooling can become an issue.

 

What I'm trying to say is that there are limitations as to what will be out on the market for the average "buying a PC and just plugging it in" crowd. This is because to get into the 5+ ghz range, you really need a more efficient method of cooling than with fans and air. That creates a problem in the marketplace since your average consumer wouldn't be able to understand, let alone maintain a water cooled system. This means that unless some sort of breakthrough does occur, games will eventually have to just plan for those limitations since you can't expect to sell a game that requires everyone to customize their computer to play. It may not mean that these games play extremely well on an "off the shelf" computer, but they will play well enough to make the product viable. If anything ends up limiting you, it'll probably be videocards, but again game companies can't expect people to have multiple cards installed and setup, so unless the standard is to put two sets of video processors and memory on a single card, there probably won't be a serious need to go beyond what is currently available now. Think about it for a moment, how much have things advanced within the last year, compared to the year before that, or the year before that. The tech push isn't as strong now, and a slowly dying american economy isn't making it stronger.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...