How much is enough?

cannondale06 said:
haven't we heard this all many times before?
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Don't think so. This was just written. Just thought it was an interesting discussion point. Not trying to bash anything as I'm an enthusiast myself, a budget enthusiast that is.
 
I think the user Freeze summed it up best in the comments section:

No matter how fast your computer is, count on bad programmers and Windows to slow it down very very soon. Until we start forcing programmers to work carefully, we’ll ‘need’ faster hardware, today rather than tomorrow.
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Ain't that the truth. Nearly every instructor for all my classes, programmers old and new, professional and casual are always venting at how sloppy most programmers have become completely neglecting efficiency and rather submit to simplicity with this, "Computers have so much power already the need isn't always needed to save on resources when time is money" kind of attitude. It's honestly embarrassing and many old dog programmers (my father included) are absolutely disgusted by some code that's out there.

I don't think benchmarks are the best measurement, I agree on that, but only to a point. I judge "performance" these days with apps of all kinds finally starting to take advantage of multiple cores and multi-threading, by how well they can do some heavy tasks as well as function doing other "light" tasks, ie smooth or the machine functions but as if it's going up a mountain back and forth rocking on the rocks. I think with the introduction to Quad Cores people find it very difficult to justify going from one quad core to a newer version of a quad core. For the basic individual it doesn't always register, thanks in no part to the CPU Megahertz days where the more Megahertz the better. Most people out there don't even see the industry is at a very critical point with moving forward. Sure we like to believe AMD/Intel and others have some sort of magic rabbit to pull out of their hat by the time we get there, but we don't know for sure.

Also GPU acceleration has further changed everything. Nowadays I look for applications that are specifically oriented to multi-threading, multi-core, x64, and GPU acceleration whenever possible, even if they are inferior in options and ability. Simply because think we need to start demanding developers take hold of this in the now and not waddle around for another 10 years with old ways of doing things fearing the coming change.

As far as some of the comparisons being made I'll say the author is setting himself up for failure in the future. The bigger the hard drive the bigger you'll need to have a backup solution. No CPU on the market can run TRUE HD streams let alone 8 without some sort of acceleration, and I'm not talking about the Bluray spec, but the actual full specs where bit rates would make Bluray look like XviD compression.

There will always be another "Killer App" and hell I think it's safe to say broadband could never get fast enough especially with "Phony Caps", but that's another story.
 
Nearsite said:
Don't think so. This was just written. Just thought it was an interesting discussion point. Not trying to bash anything as I'm an enthusiast myself, a budget enthusiast that is.
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lol, what? I was not talking about this exact article. ;)
 
Liger88 said:
I think the user Freeze summed it up best in the comments section:



Ain't that the truth. Nearly every instructor for all my classes, programmers old and new, professional and casual are always venting at how sloppy most programmers have become completely neglecting efficiency and rather submit to simplicity with this, "Computers have so much power already the need isn't always needed to save on resources when time is money" kind of attitude. It's honestly embarrassing and many old dog programmers (my father included) are absolutely disgusted by some code that's out there.

I don't think benchmarks are the best measurement, I agree on that, but only to a point. I judge "performance" these days with apps of all kinds finally starting to take advantage of multiple cores and multi-threading, by how well they can do some heavy tasks as well as function doing other "light" tasks, ie smooth or the machine functions but as if it's going up a mountain back and forth rocking on the rocks. I think with the introduction to Quad Cores people find it very difficult to justify going from one quad core to a newer version of a quad core. For the basic individual it doesn't always register, thanks in no part to the CPU Megahertz days where the more Megahertz the better. Most people out there don't even see the industry is at a very critical point with moving forward. Sure we like to believe AMD/Intel and others have some sort of magic rabbit to pull out of their hat by the time we get there, but we don't know for sure.

Also GPU acceleration has further changed everything. Nowadays I look for applications that are specifically oriented to multi-threading, multi-core, x64, and GPU acceleration whenever possible, even if they are inferior in options and ability. Simply because think we need to start demanding developers take hold of this in the now and not waddle around for another 10 years with old ways of doing things fearing the coming change.

As far as some of the comparisons being made I'll say the author is setting himself up for failure in the future. The bigger the hard drive the bigger you'll need to have a backup solution. No CPU on the market can run TRUE HD streams let alone 8 without some sort of acceleration, and I'm not talking about the Bluray spec, but the actual full specs where bit rates would make Bluray look like XviD compression.

There will always be another "Killer App" and hell I think it's safe to say broadband could never get fast enough especially with "Phony Caps", but that's another story.
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Sounds like you think that we need faster processors, because most code out there is written very sloppily? That could definitely be a possibility.
 
Nearsite said:
Yah, I'm referring to the article.:confused:
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ok maybe its lack of sleep on my part but I am confused here. you link to an article talking about how things are good enough. I simply said that we have heard this many times before because people have always said these types of things over the years.
 
As far as gaming goes it's not "good enough" until games look like big budget Hollywood movies. We're presently stuck in a bit of a rut because game developers haven't made the jump to 64-bit yet, so they've been limited by the default 2GB process size limit in 32-bit Windows for years. That really limits what game designers can do with textures. Once they finally start making games that require a 64-bit OS I think we'll start seeing memory requirements go up fairly quickly.
 
Nearsite said:
Sounds like you think that we need faster processors, because most code out there is written very sloppily? That could definitely be a possibility.
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LOL not exactly but I'm never one to stop the advancement of technology even if I'm perfectly satisfied with my Q9550 :p. Plus bad code or good Encoding is still a mother b***ch.
 
cannondale06 said:
ok maybe its lack of sleep on my part but I am confused here. you link to an article talking about how things are good enough. I simply said that we have heard this many times before because people have always said these types of things over the years.
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Yah, no worries. You mean in general. I think this was brought up one other time before that I can recall. Just some talking points. What are your thoughts? Sounds like you think this is hogwash.
 
zandor said:
As far as gaming goes it's not "good enough" until games look like big budget Hollywood movies. We're presently stuck in a bit of a rut because game developers haven't made the jump to 64-bit yet, so they've been limited by the default 2GB process size limit in 32-bit Windows for years. That really limits what game designers can do with textures. Once they finally start making games that require a 64-bit OS I think we'll start seeing memory requirements go up fairly quickly.
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When you refer to big budget movies, which ones specifically are you referring to? So basically, you'd like to see us be able to play games with the look of say, a Marvel movie, and be as responsive as games are currently, all running smooth, no lag, no stutter - basically life like movement. That would be good enough?
 
I predicted this a while ago. It's also why you see an explosion of tablet/smartphone and ultrabooks like the air. The desktop they have is good enough for anything they'll probably ever need, so they spend that money that they normally would on a new PC on tablets and phones.
 
Nearsite said:
When you refer to big budget movies, which ones specifically are you referring to? So basically, you'd like to see us be able to play games with the look of say, a Marvel movie, and be as responsive as games are currently, all running smooth, no lag, no stutter - basically life like movement. That would be good enough?
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Until it's Virtual Reality (indistinguishable from RL), it won't be good enough. Think Holodecks :)
 
I think that article was pretty dumb. Good enough is going to vary from person to person. Benchmarks are a tool to help a person decide if it is good enough or not. Then that person needs to decide if the increase in performance is worth the cost. The author is coming off as saying everything is good enough except for GPU's. That's it folks, we've reached the goal of what PC's should do!
 
I was speaking with an Atari 2600 game programmer a while back, and he said that the programmer had to account for every byte of code because there was only so much ram available (128 bytes I believe) in the Atari. The cartridges themselves couldn't have held any more than 4-8k of code themselves.

Imagine taking that mentality and designing programs where every byte counts.
 
zandor said:
As far as gaming goes it's not "good enough" until games look like big budget Hollywood movies. We're presently stuck in a bit of a rut because game developers haven't made the jump to 64-bit yet, so they've been limited by the default 2GB process size limit in 32-bit Windows for years. That really limits what game designers can do with textures. Once they finally start making games that require a 64-bit OS I think we'll start seeing memory requirements go up fairly quickly.
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Unfortunately, according to the steam hw-survey, 37% of all PC's still use a 32-bit OS. Because of this, no game-developer in their right mind will make a game that requires 64-bit anytime soon.
Until next-gen consolegames get ported to PC, the best thing we can hope for is texture-packs like those for Skyrim and Crysis2, that do require a 64-bit OS.

But like the semiaccurate article mentions, current PC's are fast enough for most things, and that's why that 37% 32-bit-crowd will not suddenly upgrade to 64-bit just because it's "better".
I think 32-bit will become the new "windows xp"-constraint for PC-ports. Today we have DX9-fallback options in DX11 titles. In coming years we might see "Low-res textures" (read 32-bit) for older PC's.
 
What is "good enough" strongly depends on the user. Even a 2600K@4,5GHz cannot maintain 60fps at all times in all my games - not good enough. GPU-wise it's even worse. Give me GPU powered amazing physic effects, dynamic perfect lighting and shadowing and tessellation, pair it with SGSSAA for a perfectly smooth image with no jaggies or shimmering and then we can BEGIN to say "good enough". We're not there yet, by far.
 
Seems like each time systems hit "good enough" someone else things of something new that current systems are not capable of. Take that 12MHz system he outlines in the article -- background spellcheck wasn't possible until PCs were "good enough" to handle keystrokes without severe input lag. Then all of a sudden maybe 12MHz wasn't "good enough" for typing at 60 words per minute or anything more than dial-up (IDK what the next big thing was back then).

What's on the horizon that I can think of? Hmmm....4K video and beyond, retina displays for PCs, 3D displays could become mainstream (yuck :p), voice recognition on a PC that works better than Android and Siri and can actually do "Star Trek PADD" like functions (voice logs, communication, etc), video phone calls at 1080p@30fps with H.264 encoding. That's just for starters and I would think most of this could require more CPU power, more GPU power, and/or more HDD space in the future.

Maybe Charlie is just a little too shortsighted to see what the possibilities are :p.
 
Charlie's version of "good enough" is good enough to write badly researched and aggressively poised opinion columns toted as factual knowledge while he chows down on doritos and greases up his computer playing angry birds. He should be fine with an iphone 2 for the rest of his life then. He's been good enough since 2007!

My good enough is getting my favorite games to play 120fps+ with all the eye candy. Might be a while for me.
 
I'll take a 24" retina display (I don't know the resolution at 1-2ft for a retina display but it's a big number) that runs 120hz, with no bezel, perfect color reproduction, and perfect viewing angles. Three of those or one display that stretches into my peripheries. Note I didn't list LED or any of those specs because I know that's going to change.

I'll take a computer that can run a game on those monitors at full resolution, all eye candy, and someone needs to invent something that makes AA unnecessary or AA so good that there are no more edges.

Then take the panels away entirely and just give me the image with those same specifications and give me the computer for that too.

Just be glad I don't see a digital world like the Matrix in my lifetime or I'd be asking more.

It doesn't end. Life is the pursuit of something better and while we may not get a perfect setup, people will try their best to get there .
 
It's like the old Bud Dry commercial.... why as why?

Why do certain people buy new cars every couple years?
Why do certain people buy the new iphone to replace their old one?
Why do certain people like red/blue/green/ etc?

We all have needs/wants that we set the requirements for to obtain fulfillment. And I believe with any product purchase, fulfillment is the key here. Everyone is different and have different priorities but I myself upgrade more frequently than needs dictate. Like most of you, I do it because I have it higher on my priority list. I could go into a whole spew about how companies have brainwashed us to think we have to have the latest and greatest and how certain people will buy said products over necessities to gain that fulfillment……… but I won't.
 
boxleitnerb said:
What is "good enough" strongly depends on the user. Even a 2600K@4,5GHz cannot maintain 60fps at all times in all my games - not good enough. GPU-wise it's even worse. Give me GPU powered amazing physic effects, dynamic perfect lighting and shadowing and tessellation, pair it with SGSSAA for a perfectly smooth image with no jaggies or shimmering and then we can BEGIN to say "good enough". We're not there yet, by far.
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Well, when your monitor gets to enormous pixel counts, you won't need AA.

:D

I'm anxiously awaiting a reasonably priced 4K monitor (under $900) and a GPU or two that can run that sorta resolution with decent FPS and life-like graphics.
 
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