A reflection on modern 64-bit computing

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gaidensensei

Weaksauce
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Mar 20, 2005
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I thought about this the other week, but was never too strong of a PC buff to verify the validity of my thoughts.

I remember some of us were all hyped back in the babble of '02 and '03, where athlon 64 was getting released for us to use on our 32bit o/s's (namely XP) back then.

Lots of individuals saw this as the "real deal"and intel killers, new computing era coming up, blah blah.

When looking back now, I realized most of the initial Athlon 64's seem totally phased out these days, Anything that probably isn't an X2 (with exceptions, I can understand) is too slow for general use with W7 64bit.

This is not looking just from a modern gaming perspective, but usage of a computer overall. Hardware enthusiast or not, slower models are definitely out for them anyways.

Why is this the case?
Thought I'd ask some of the savvy ones out here. It's been awhile, but there was definitely an overrated hype - in my opinion at least. I'd think about putting in more thoughts, but would like to see some opinions before then.
 
gaidensensei said:
I thought about this the other week, but was never too strong of a PC buff to verify the validity of my thoughts.

I remember some of us were all hyped back in the babble of '02 and '03, where athlon 64 was getting released for us to use on our 32bit o/s's (namely XP) back then.

Lots of individuals saw this as the "real deal"and intel killers, new computing era coming up, blah blah.

When looking back now, I realized most of the initial Athlon 64's seem totally phased out these days, Anything that probably isn't an X2 (with exceptions, I can understand) is too slow for general use with W7 64bit.

This is not looking just from a modern gaming perspective, but usage of a computer overall. Hardware enthusiast or not, slower models are definitely out for them anyways.

Why is this the case?
Thought I'd ask some of the savvy ones out here. It's been awhile, but there was definitely an overrated hype - in my opinion at least. I'd think about putting in more thoughts, but would like to see some opinions before then.
Click to expand...


basically, if there isn't some "new feature" that everyone HAS TO HAVE or else NOTHING will work (currently I'd say DirectX 11 gets most of that hype, somehow in spite of years of experience, buying hardware that supports it will "future proof" us for 2-3 years (I cannot count on two hands how many times I've heard this in the last month alone)), the point is just to sell more generally unnecessary stuff to a disposable society, its about keeping us on the treadmill of buy and replace

consider that 64-bit computing *does* have benefits, although none of them really matter for the average consumer (do you really need programmable pixel shaders, a 64-bit address space, etc just to write a letter?), but if "they" didn't come up with some new widget to move units, there'd be no more sales and that'd mean no more money

the phenomenon you've noticed is true of a number of "new and improved innovations" of the last 20 years, I'll let you think of varied examples (you shouldn't have to go very far to find something)

point is: someone is always going to try to build and sell a better mousetrap, regardless of actual necessity
 
Are you asking why people will get rid of slow parts in favor of faster parts? It's so we can get our work done faster, so we have more time to do nothing. ;)
 
Sure, Athlon 64 CPU's are most likely most than fast enough for general use with Windows 7 64bit.

But as others have said, we want faster computing, to get more work done, faster, so we have more time, as enginurd put it, to do nothing. :p
 
I don't really understand your point, but I think you're asking why people no longer use Athlon64s if they were the CPUs that began the 64-bit move in the consumer market?

It's not really anything to do with 64-bit. They were great processors for their time, and are still quite capable, but they aren't used anymore because they aren't fast enough anymore - in the same way that the Model T Ford is no longer a sensible car to use.
 
I think oboski nailed it dead on post #2, that was quick.

It had to do with the reference of future proofing, I couldn't think of what was the exact term for this phenomenon until it was mentioned.

Athlon64 was mainly hyped for the ability to support the 64bit architecture, no? (aside from the substantial boost from going A-XP to A-64). We never really used it for the 64bit tech, and now when it's time we did, we realize the Athlon64's were somewhat redundant.

It's the same trend that seems to be going on with other shods of technology these past days, HD-DVD support, solid state drives, multitouch support on tablets, voice recognition stuff.

While it seems appealing to the uneducated normal consumer, little do (I) realize that it's better to wait out and buy after the market shifts in a particular direction, phasing out the others.

I guess I could say it's the same thing from C2D to i7 for the mobile market, while it's obviously faster, the technology - is it necessarily worth it in the long run in terms of price-per-future usage, rather than price-per-performance.
Unless you buy and sell and dispose your stuff to a community before it dies, of course. That's probably where all the fun is..
 
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Athlon64's are gone, and new 64bit supporting CPU's are made to succeed them.

How is this any different than any other cpu type in the past?
 
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