2007 - Most Disappointing Year in PC Tech Since... ?

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Sabrewulf165

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2006 finshed with a bang after the launch of the GeForce 8800 series, and then... a solid year of turds.

-2900XT was late late late and failed to beat or even match the 8800, especially when AA was applied. It was also power hungry and loud as hell

-I'm not even going to comment on the Phenom

-nVidia still hasn't launched a new top end part (Ultra doesn't count)

-the best things to happen this year (the 8800GT and HD3870) are scarcely available anywhere and it looks to continue that way through Christmas at this rate. And if you do manage to find them, be prepared to pay $40+ over MSRP for one.

-Intel continues to rest on their laurels as AMD flails... no new CPU SKUs have been launched that aren't essentially performance equivalent to what anyone could do with an easy 25% overclock on the day the Core 2 Duo launched.
 
I disagree, we got Vista: Flame

I agree with the 8800gt post, although they are unavailable.

And I kind of disagree on the phenom... The one thing that it has done, is bring AMD close to intel in price/performance, although we were all expecting or hoping it to destroy the Intel Quads.

Nvidia didnt have to release a 9800gtx or whatever this year... They're still king, might as well roll with it.
 
I agree on some points, but overall it was more or less a year that didnt see huge movement like 2006 gave us. The coming year should bring us some interesting technology, but it all depends on how AMD/ATI can do with thier cards and processors. If they run into issue with thier future stuff then Intel and Nvidia will be more hesitant to bring out anything totally new and just keep doing what they have done generally for the past year. The one good spotlight is that Crysis came out and was as expect a kickass game that has pretty much trumped even the best hardware out right now. Hopefully 2008 will be better year, as I look back now its been 10 years for me into computers and I can remember talking about 1998 as the year we would see the k6III and p3 starting to emerge on the scence.
 
People talking about the things they bought this year are missing my point... nothing you will be able to buy by the end of this year is much (if any) faster than the things you could buy at this time last year (Vista included, badum ching! :p). Intel Quads and the 8800 series both launched in late '06, and in their respective categories, they are still the fastest hardware available. Sure there are some new SKUs and bin speeds available, and some great prices, but none of that changes the fact that it is all year old (and then some) technology.

In fact, I find it funny that the guy with the Intel Quad + 8800GT remark has a QX6700 in his sig... the first Intel Quad, launched Nov. 1st of 2006 :p

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/core2quad_qx6700/
 
True, they didnt give us a ton of techno goodness this year, but then again, the stuff we do have is still going pretty strong.
For example, that guy's quad core at 3.5 ghz, although the first one released, is more power than 98% of any computer user will ever need, and the hardware makers know this too.
We're the enthusiast market, and make up a very small portion of the market, although we are the ones buying the most expensive parts.

One good thing this year did bring was laptops with some real gaming power at an affordable price. Yes, the 8xxx series has been around for desktops, but there have been many laptops lately going for $1000-$1200 with a decent C2D CPU and 8600GT, which is great for mobile users.
 
You got rock bottom ram prices, I even got 2gb of ddr 1 cheaper than I got 1gb of ddr 1 back when ddr 1 was in its prime.
 
munkle said:
You got rock bottom ram prices, I even got 2gb of ddr 1 cheaper than I got 1gb of ddr 1 back when ddr 1 was in its prime.
Click to expand...

I got a free 2 gig set of Corsair DDR2 800 4-4-4-12 timings with an AM2 4000+ CPU. To me, that's a damn good deal.

As far as new technology goes, we didn't really get much that's new. However, prices on some things went way down. Using an existing hard drive, monitor, keyboard/mouse and DVD burner I was able to build the rest of a pretty nice AM2 system for $200.00 last week. That was for RAM, motherboard, CPU, heatsink/fan and PSU. Less than a year ago I paid more than that for my C2D E6400. At the same time of that purchase I got 1 gig of Corsair DDR2 800 5-5-5-15 timings for around $130.

Don't get me wrong, I love greater performance as much or more than the next guy, especially for CPUs, but I'm not going to complain too much considering the way prices have fallen on a lot of the main components of a system.

 
Sabrewulf165 said:
People talking about the things they bought this year are missing my point... nothing you will be able to buy by the end of this year is much (if any) faster than the things you could buy at this time last year (Vista included, badum ching! :p). Intel Quads and the 8800 series both launched in late '06, and in their respective categories, they are still the fastest hardware available. Sure there are some new SKUs and bin speeds available, and some great prices, but none of that changes the fact that it is all year old (and then some) technology.

In fact, I find it funny that the guy with the Intel Quad + 8800GT remark has a QX6700 in his sig... the first Intel Quad, launched Nov. 1st of 2006 :p

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/core2quad_qx6700/
Click to expand...

I guess I dont see whats so funny. To me updates/revisions and new models at cheaper prices is still an evolution. Maybe it doesn't have the ZOMG LOOK AT ME IM SHINEY stuff that ADD people are looking for...

The model of quad I bought wasn't released until march, and the 8800GT i bought (awesome hp/$ ratio!!) wasn't released until a month or so ago. All 2007 released models.

So whats so funny again?
 
What really is the most depressing part is not only was 2007 a complete hardware flop but it was one of the best years for PC game titles

Everyone on the hardware front completely and utterly failed to match the Development houses in making 2007 a really spectacular year.

Let's hope they come on strong in 2008.
 
Top-end hardware by then has become extremely cheap. Not a good year for people seeking top-end performance, but a very good one for the mainstream.
 
Abu Som3a said:
Top-end hardware by then has become extremely cheap. Not a good year for people seeking top-end performance, but a very good one for the mainstream.
Click to expand...
Agree. Most of us can now afford to put together a system that we could only wish we had, a year ago.

....and I'm still rockin' my old "PresHott".....go figure.....:p
 
Monkey God said:
I guess I dont see whats so funny. To me updates/revisions and new models at cheaper prices is still an evolution. Maybe it doesn't have the ZOMG LOOK AT ME IM SHINEY stuff that ADD people are looking for...

The model of quad I bought wasn't released until march, and the 8800GT i bought (awesome hp/$ ratio!!) wasn't released until a month or so ago. All 2007 released models.

So whats so funny again?
Click to expand...

Do you even read my posts? I'm griping about the lack of new tech, not the pricing or availability of old tech. And your CPU was launched in 2006, whether you bought one in March of '07 is beside the point. That's what I find funny.

|CR|Constantine said:
What really is the most depressing part is not only was 2007 a complete hardware flop but it was one of the best years for PC game titles

Everyone on the hardware front completely and utterly failed to match the Development houses in making 2007 a really spectacular year.

Let's hope they come on strong in 2008.
Click to expand...

Very much agreed. Up until late this summer, I was fully expecting to play Crysis on the next generation of nVidia products, but instead I got to play it on high-ish settings with no filtering... don't get me wrong, it was still fun, but I guess I was a little spoiled after a year of playing everything at max settings with 4x/16x. It's beaten and sold now anyway, maybe I'll play it "TWIWMTBP" in a few years when there's a free ad-supported version on FileShack :p
 
I really hope that a GPU twice as fast as the 8800GT/HD3870 won't be launched until at the end of next year. This card would then be at around the same price like the current 8800GT/HD3870 and this GPU will be the fastest available at that time.

This way we won't have any >$350 GPU anymore and for those who bought the 8800GTX last year @$600, they don't have to worry because their investment is really a good one since their have bought a $600 card that lasted for two years ;)
 
alg7_munif said:
I really hope that a GPU twice as fast as the 8800GT/HD3870 won't be launched until at the end of next year. This card would then be at around the same price like the current 8800GT/HD3870 and this GPU will be the fastest available at that time.

This way we won't have any >$350 GPU anymore and for those who bought the 8800GTX last year @$600, they don't have to worry because their investment is really a good one since their have bought a $600 card that lasted for two years ;)
Click to expand...

In your case it would have lasted 2 years simply cuz hardware wasnt released...not becuase it wasnt needed, big difference.
Im building a new system at the end of this month and Im really annoyed that the new 9 series isnt being released until next year, supposively February (thanks to a lack of competition from ATI/AMD). So instead of dropping ~$500 on a GTX im going to go with an 8800 GT and upgrade once the D9E is released. Til then I will be struggling in Crysis and not playing at the quality I want. IMO, performance of DX10 hardware sucks right now, and I feel that nvidia should have stepped up and released the newer hardware sooner rather than later, just my 2 cents.

I definitely agree with Sabrewulf165, 2007 was "slow" with regards to hardware releases (and we arent talking about hardware prices, with regards to prices 2007 was a great year) and I feel its due to the lack of competition for Intel and Nvidia.
 
I'd have to agree. This is the first whole year I have not upgraded my PC.*

8800 didn't seem like a boost to me at all seeing as I already had two 7800 GT's in SLI. I guess I could have gone 8800 sli, but $1000+ for that seemed "meh". Already had 2 gigs of ram, already hand an Audigy 2 ZS and didn't see a major reason to get an X-Fi. There were no new burning technologies to replace my Dual Layer DVD burner from 2 years ago. And I didn't quite see a reason to replace my AMD 939 3500+.

C'mon, where are the AMD 10,000's, 4 gigs of RAM on a stick for $99. nVidia 9800's that could replace a set of 8800 in sli. It almost feels like that skulkingly slow point of computing when 66 mhz was king and 2400 baud ruled the earth just before the technological growth spurt.

*The only thing I did "upgrade" was replacing four 250 gig satas to two 500 gig satas when prices bottomed out just before CompUSA closed up.
 
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