PC CPU Shipments See Steepest Decline In 30 Years (tomshardware.com) 128
According to a new report by Dean McCarron of Mercury Research, the x86 processor market has just endured "the largest on-quarter and on-year declines in our 30-year history." "Based on previously published third-party data, McCarron is also reasonably sure that the 2022 Q4 and full-year numbers represent the worst downturn in PC processor history," adds Tom's Hardware. From the report: The x86 processor downturn observed has been precipitated by the terrible twosome of lower demand and an inventory correction. This menacing pincer movement has resulted in 2022 unit shipments of 374 million processors (excluding ARM), a figure 21% lower than in 2021. Revenues were $65 billion, down 19 percent YoY. McCarron was keen to emphasize that Mercury's gloomy stats about x86 shipments through 2022 do not necessarily directly correlate with x86 PC (processors) shipments to end users. Earlier, we mentioned that the two downward driving forces were inventory adjustments and a slowing of sales -- but which played the most significant part in this x86 record slump?
The Mercury Research analyst explained, "Most of the downturn in shipments is blamed on excess inventory shipping in prior quarters impacting current sales." A perfect storm is thus brewing as "CPU suppliers are also deliberately limiting shipments to help increase the rate of inventory consumption... [and] PC demand for processors is lower, and weakening macroeconomic concerns are driving PC OEMs to reduce their inventory as well." Mercury also asserted that the trend is likely to continue through H1 2023. Its thoughts about the underlying inventory shenanigans should also be evidenced by upcoming financials from the major players in the next few months. [...]
McCarron shines a glimmer of light in the wake of this gloom, reminding us that overall processor revenue was still higher in 2022 than any year before the 2020s began. Another ray of light shone on AMD, with its gains in server CPU share, one of the only segments which saw some growth in Q4 2022. Also, AMD gained market share in the shrinking desktop and laptop markets.
The Mercury Research analyst explained, "Most of the downturn in shipments is blamed on excess inventory shipping in prior quarters impacting current sales." A perfect storm is thus brewing as "CPU suppliers are also deliberately limiting shipments to help increase the rate of inventory consumption... [and] PC demand for processors is lower, and weakening macroeconomic concerns are driving PC OEMs to reduce their inventory as well." Mercury also asserted that the trend is likely to continue through H1 2023. Its thoughts about the underlying inventory shenanigans should also be evidenced by upcoming financials from the major players in the next few months. [...]
McCarron shines a glimmer of light in the wake of this gloom, reminding us that overall processor revenue was still higher in 2022 than any year before the 2020s began. Another ray of light shone on AMD, with its gains in server CPU share, one of the only segments which saw some growth in Q4 2022. Also, AMD gained market share in the shrinking desktop and laptop markets.
I could actually use some new PC hardware... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: I could actually use some new PC hardware... (Score:5, Informative)
I have been considering an upgrade, but the total price is nasty.
"Modern" motherboards also have very few slots, which sucks if you want to do some things.
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"Modern" motherboards also have very few slots, which sucks if you want to do some things.
How many slots do you need? Most ATX form factor boards have 4-5 PCIe slots. Bear in mind features like sound, networking, and even WiFI/Bluetooth are built into many motherboards, the need for expansion beyond video is usually beyond what average consumers need.
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2 or 3 slots on most of the ones I have seen today.
1 or 2 for graphics card, then I sometimes use oddball old stuff requiring actual classic serial port. Often software to program communication radios.
Re:I could actually use some new PC hardware... (Score:4, Informative)
If market theory is correct, that is going to happen, right?
Your market theory is one sided. It will hold weight if there is a massive supply chain glut that can't be moved. Otherwise the other side of market theory will state that a supply side reduction occurs to prevent the price from dropping to the point of no longer generating profits on units.
If you're expecting cheap toys because people aren't buying, you're going to be disappointed.
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If you're expecting cheap toys because people aren't buying, you're going to be disappointed.
Not as disappointed as those invested into the manufacturers. For me, not having a newer PC is at most a slight inconvenience. For them its the difference between selling something and selling nothing. Selling nothing is a certain way to not make profits.
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> If market theory is correct, that is going to happen, right?
Perhaps eventually, in a rational market.
In the meantime GM can't ship vehicles because they can't get chips made and Intel has idle desktop chip fabs because they demand $2-300 profit per SKU while AMD is happy with $25.
The beancounters are holding out for the cheapest car chips and the most expensive CPU chips respectively and causing great harm to their companies with that mindset.
When MBA's get engineering management jobs and bonuses are
Not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
PC tech has not gotten much faster in the last few years and for most applications even systems from 10 years back are sufficient, despite attempts by MS to force people on new hardware. The sorely lacking adoption numbers for Windows 11 are a good indicator for that. We are simply seeing an adjustment from upgrades to mere replacement of broken systems. That is as it should be.
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Re:Not a surprise (Score:4, Funny)
Do you realize that for most it is just a klick to say "yes, I want". And many, many chose "no" or go back. Well, you probably do not realize that at all.
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And? The same was for Windows 10 and the GP is right. 2 years in Windows 11 has a higher adoption rate than Windows 10 did, and Windows 10 was released on the back of a disaster OS that most of us would like to forget.
People who are only used to iOS adoption rate numbers are masturbating furiously over Microsoft's "failure", but in reality it is nothing of the sort.
You think you were making a point with Windows 11, but the reality is most OS updates have been tied to replacement hardware. That's literally h
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And? The same was for Windows 10 and the GP is right. 2 years in Windows 11 has a higher adoption rate than Windows 10 did, and Windows 10 was released on the back of a disaster OS that most of us would like to forget.
People who are only used to iOS adoption rate numbers are masturbating furiously over Microsoft's "failure", but in reality it is nothing of the sort.
You think you were making a point with Windows 11, but the reality is most OS updates have been tied to replacement hardware. That's literally how it's been since Windows 95 came out.
Not in the Mac world. Nevermind iOS/iPadOS. Here we have 81% adoption of macOS Catalina in those same 2 years.
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
Re:Not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Wasn't 10 way faster? It was initially only supposed to be a free upgrade for a limited time, it was a huge improvement over 8, it basically ran fine on any PC that could handle 7 or 8, and it satisfied most people who preferred 7 over 8. All of that combined to make 10 pretty attractive. Yeah, I know they ended up the upgrade to 10 free permanently, but the threat of it expiring helped make people upgrade.
11 will be a free upgrade indefinitely. Tech oriented people seem to be completely avoiding 11. The UI seems to be a regression over 10. It doesn't work on a lot of PCs that are more than a few years old. 10 won't be EOL any time soon. There's no compelling reason to rush to upgrade now, but there are reasons to wait.
Re:Not a surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
Most of my stuff is 4th and 6th gen intel, which is still WAY MORE compute than I, an enthusiast, need. The brand new stuff coming out are basically extreme HEDT chips and so overkill they're more powerful than actual servers I deploy for heavy hitting companies.
Oh, who am I kidding? I'll just switch to linux like my laptops already are.
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They're not going to drop the TPM requirement.
And they're going to use the tech to start creating encrypted file storage with little slowdown. Which is a good thing across the board.
Linux will probably adopt something similar before too long. But it'll be optional for a much longer time.
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They gladly tell you how to bypass it.
Windows has automatically enabled BDE (drive encryption) on devices that fit all the criteria since Windows 8.
Linux supports TPM just fine. It'll never be a requiremen though, of course.
You will probably eventually see systems without Secure Boot and UEFI unsupported in the mainstream distributions, though.
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It's not a hard requirement... yet. I expect it'll become mandatory in a future version of Windows. Maybe 13 or 14. But I also wouldn't be surprised to see it become mandatory in Windows 12, given how eager they were to force everyone to it in Windows 11.
I expect they'll start adding signed hardware soon. And on-board biometric verification devices.
I could see Linux defaulting to an encrypted /home partition before too long. And I expect they'll start requiring Secure Boot and UEFI once more hardware with i
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I could see Linux defaulting to an encrypted /home partition before too long. And I expect they'll start requiring Secure Boot and UEFI once more hardware with it gets out into the world.
I'm unaware of a motherboard or laptop made in the last 10 years that wasn't UEFI (and supported SecureBoot)
Any machine that shipped with Windows 8 (circa 2011+) had to have UEFI and support SecureBoot.
Linux has supported it for somewhere around as long.
SecureBoot is so ubiquitous these days, that distributions (PopOS, I'm looking at you) are a serious PITA.
SecureBoot is well designed though, so if you're an industrious fellow, you can setup your own signing CA and setup your non-SecureBoot OS to sig
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MS signs the UEFI SecureBoot shim that allows distributions to enroll a MOK at install, which will then allow the distribution to control what binaries and signatures it considers secure.
If you were paranoid and wanted to skip that step, you could build and sign the shim yourself, and then enroll your signing CA in your UEFI. I've done it. It takes 5 minutes.
The only disaster for open source here is fuckwads like you spreading misinformation.
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Mostly agree, but
You will probably eventually see systems without Secure Boot and UEFI unsupported in the mainstream distributions, though.
is rather unlikely. Linux runs on too diverse hardware, of which a lot does not support Secure boot and UEFI, and anybody going for a hard limitation here would reduce their potential user-base massively. I am sure we will see some distros try it, but I would be very surprised if they are successful with it.
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is rather unlikely. Linux runs on too diverse hardware, of which a lot does not support Secure boot and UEFI, and anybody going for a hard limitation here would reduce their potential user-base massively.
Linux itself does- absolutely.
Linux will never require SecureBoot.
I said mainstream distributions for a reason-
Things like ubuntu are targeted for specific hardware (though "alternatives" [their terminology, not mine] exist), while linux definitely isn't.
Supporting SecureBoot and non requires branched buildes (hell, even UEFI vs BIOS does)
I think it's probably inevitable that the target for things like Ubuntu, Fedora, etc, will be UEFI + SecureBoot.
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I'll upgrade to windows 11 when they drop the TPM requirement. I'm fine if that breaks DRM as I don't use DRM infested streams anyway.
It was never a hard requirement. [tomshardware.com]
Oh, who am I kidding? I'll just switch to linux like my laptops already are.
Aye. Only thing I keep Windows around for is games anyway. I couldn't care less if the game OS is running Windows 8 or Windows 26.
When I get a P+E core Intel at some point in the future, I'll have to move the game OS over to 11, but meh. Again, who gives a fuck?
If you don't have a machine that has P+E cores- stick with 10 and below. It's going to be a decade before games stop targeting it.
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You do realise Windows 11 is actually one of the fastest adoption rates for OS upgrades ever. they are already hitting about 20% which is insane for an OS less than 2 years old.
Any OS Ever?!?
20% in two years?!?
Hahahahahahaaa!!!
Howabout 81% in 2 years?!?
https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
BTW, that was despite the fact that Catalina (macOS 10.15) was the first version of macOS to completely discontinue all support for 32-bit Applications, Drivers, Frameworks, etc..
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That and people looking to dig in on "work from home" or "educational" buys, they MASSIVELY over-bought in terms of power.
Meaning that they're probably at LEAST a decade from needing another machine (barring high-end gaming).
This will distort the buying market for at LEAST another 3-5 years.
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I personally dropped 3500USD or so. I upgraded both the kids game machines with new CPUs and RAM as well.
I desperately want to get back to Intel as AMD just seems to be morons when it comes to chipsets. But this PC is only 3 years old and should last another 5-10
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Also, most people who actually needed an upgrade or had a good case for replacement did so during the pandemic.
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prices at all time highs (Score:2)
and we can play older games forever cause also no one is gonna pay 90-99 for a base game that then needs dlc
todays lesson in stupid is brought to you by
microsoft , apple , nvidia, amd, and intel and more....
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Yeah, the gaming market is hitting a wall. Gaming managed to stay at the 50 (PC) or 60 (consoles) price tag for almost 3 decades. We got very used to that price tag. And until now it was very sustainable.
Yes, development cost for games went up, but so did sales. And with games, sales almost entirely mean additional profit. There is a very low per-unit cost in software. But the market has reached saturation, while costs exploded. What we saw was 0-day DLCs and other tricks to make games still LOOK like they
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And the rest of the game creates itself, or why do you think that's a non-issue? The artists, the programmers, the project managers and the toilet cleaners all want to be paid, and they will probably not be happy with 1990s salaries, not to mention that the players will not be too happy with 1990s graphics.
Why do I want to upgrade? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a 5yo laptop. My wife has a brand new one. Both are expensive and I can't tell the difference in any app. I haven't bought a computer for a few years. I just looked and I honestly can't tell the difference from the specs..the number of cores and speed looks really similar. If I upgraded today, I can't tell if I would actually notice, even on CPU-intensive games.
Give us cool and meaningful upgrades...not just slightly faster RAM which we'll never notice...and I bet you'll see a lot more people upgrading.
So let's turn the question around.
If someone has a 5-year-old computer, what benefit would they get from upgrading their CPU/RAM/Motherboard? Will webapps work more smoothly? Will they notice a difference in any local app? What about games? I know upgrading the GPU probably makes a difference, but how much faster is a $500 CPU from today vs a $500 CPU from 2018 even on a demanding game?
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Try MSFS 2020. My rig is not even a year old, and I'm thinking of building another one that can take at least half a terabyte of ram and slots for 4 Arc 770 cards - thou gh by that time my 2 Arc 770 cards will probably be obsolete, replaced by Battlemage 770s. Because that is one sim that can use everything you can throw on in when using a 100" 8k video wall. But boy is the view awesome.
Read an article of a bios ack someone did to allow a 128gb motherboard to take a full terabyte. I'd settle for 512gb and
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As to feeding 8K, it really only needs a RTX 4080. Turn on DLSS upscaling and frame generation
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MSFS thrives on a 5800X3D more than any other cpu.
Not quite. It's about on par with an i9-12900k, and an i9-13900k handily beats it.
Of course from a value perspective.... It's no contest.
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As for CPU, it runs fine at 8k on an i5-12400. You gust need LOTS of ram to make up for the CPU. At 128 gb, I'm good. However, for my next build, I'm looking for half a terabyte and a cpu upgrade, and maybe doubling the number of 770LEs to 4. Already figured out the power supply problems - dual Corsai
But will it be faster? (Score:2)
Try MSFS 2020. My rig is not even a year old, and I'm thinking of building another one that can take at least half a terabyte of ram and slots for 4 Arc 770 cards - thou gh by that time my 2 Arc 770 cards will probably be obsolete, replaced by Battlemage 770s. Because that is one sim that can use everything you can throw on in when using a 100" 8k video wall. But boy is the view awesome.
So an 8k 100" video wall is anything but mainstream. But even then...are there benchmarks that indicate how much faster a CPU at the same price is today vs a year ago for your application?
I will wager that given a dollar-per-dollar comparison, a $500 CPU today is 20% faster than a $500 CPU from 2018. Given that you'd have to upgrade your RAM and motherboard, it's a 1k investment if your drives and PSU are still good. 1k for 20% boost is just not compelling.
Like most consumers, I'll buy when I need
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Let's try some apples-to-apples comparisons. Some games have implemented XeSS and they kick ass.
And you can bet if the performance on an 8k 100" video wall is sweet, it's gonna be even better at 4k - and definitely a lot better than all those gamers running at 1440 or 1080.
Seriously, if you're going to spend money gaming, at least get something decent.
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If you aren't using your system for playing new games, what do you need an upgrade for? I'm running Linux on ten year old hardware and it still plays all the games I want to play. I'll upgrade when something breaks because otherwise, what kill app is there?
It's not like Linux is just going to turn around and not work on my hardware for no real reason at all. That's for Windows users.
Ability to replace it when something breaks (Score:2)
I'll upgrade when something breaks because otherwise, what kill app is there?
The killer app is exactly that: being able to replace it when something breaks. Compare fourth quarter 2012, when companies stopped making replacements for entry-level compact laptops that break [slashdot.org]. Instead, PC makers focused on then-more-lucrative tablets running phone operating systems, followed by laptops locked down not to run anything but Google's web browser without deal-breaking inconvenience.
hardly surprising (Score:2)
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Maybe price gouging should stop then? (Score:5, Insightful)
When GPU prices are 2.5x MSRP even on cards that are a year old, why would I want to upgrade my motherboard and CPU to have the bottleneck be the 4 year old card I already have.
They jacked up prices the last 2 years and when demand came down they still want the same outrageous prices. And they wonder why no one is buying. I'm not paying $2500 for a card that they told us had an MSRP of $800. They can go F themselves.
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If 770LE is the same as A770 it benchmarks slightly higher then the RX 580 which costs almost half.
Bullshit. the 770 DirectX 12 performance [videocardbenchmark.net], even without XeSS, beats the pants off an rx580 [videocardbenchmark.net]
And Intel is issuing new driver updates pretty much every week. So even these results for the Arc are very dated. Everyone on the msfs flight sim forums who's bought one is VERY happy. And DirectX12 rendering at 8192 x 2160 is NICE.
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Dude see the numbers on the right part of those pages and the prices underneath. Like you literally posted my reference material.
And yet you claimed the were pretty much equivalent. No wonder you didn't post the actual links, because they totally disprove what you say. And once programs start supporting XeSS (some already do, and get huge performance increases), it will really be no contest whatsoever.
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And yet you claimed the were pretty much equivalent.
His claim was: "If 770LE is the same as A770 it benchmarks slightly higher then the RX 580 which costs almost half." Your links show A770: 9038 at $349.99 vs RX580: 8928 at $179.99. Yet your claim was the A770 "beats the pants off" the RX580. I do not see how you can equate a difference of 110 on a benchmark on a scale of around 9000 as one beating the pants off the other. The truth and reality of the matter is the new A770 is slightly better than a 6 year old RX580 at almost twice the price. His assessmen
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Totally bullshit - games that have already enabled XeSS totally beat the shit out of his video card, and if he bothered to do any research he'd know it. By a factor of 2 or more.
Where in the link you provided does it show this? I am going to guess nowhere as now you are just pulling this out as you destroyed your own claim
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Oh, now you're too lazy to do a search? I'm not your nursemaid.
You can either
I just hate it when people who have zero skin in the game (haven't bought one, etc) throw shade on those who have.
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OP: The A770 is not that good and costs twice as much.
You: How DARE YOU!!! Here is a link totally proving me wrong and you right.
Me: The OP is right based on the link you provided.
You: How DARE YOU!!! Please provide evidence where you have to prove everything I say.
Me: Let me guess: You want to speak to my manager too?
I just hate it when people who have zero skin in the game (haven't bought one, etc) throw shade on those who have.
Bahahahahahaha. I hate it when people are so butthurt that they are wrong they cry and whine when someone points it out to them. Whatever, Karen.
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BTW - NO radeon 580, even the latest, is any good for 8k gaming. Only people with shit hardware run at 1440. Even the XBox X runs at 4k.
No one but you has brought this up but you. This is, at best, a strawman argument.
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So you admit that the cited card is obsolete. Was that REALLY so hard?
8k is coming, whether you like it or not. Same as anyone running games at 1440 or 1080 is really missing out on the total experience. Seriously, you paid for the software, don't you want to get the best out of it? And that means at least 4k. More and more, people bragging about framerates at lower resolutions are becoming irrelevant to the whole "immersive" experience. But you get what you pay for. I'm willing to pay for a superb exper
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So you admit that the cited card is obsolete. Was that REALLY so hard?
NO ONE INCLUDING YOU SAID ANTHING ABOUT THAT. That's my point. At this point you're just pulling things out of your ass in a desperate attempt to cover up the fact that you were just wrong. Your fanboism really shows when you got butthurt that someone else said the A770 was not that good.
8k is coming, whether you like it or not. Same as anyone running games at 1440 or 1080 is really missing out on the total experience. Seriously, you paid for the software, don't you want to get the best out of it? And that means at least 4k. More and more, people bragging about framerates at lower resolutions are becoming irrelevant to the whole "immersive" experience. But you get what you pay for. I'm willing to pay for a superb experience, including a 100" video wall, 128 gb of ram (looking for a mb that wil
None of that was the point.
Does anyone except the very cheapest even buy a screen that can't do 4k nowadays.
Yes. Some people don't care about 4K because guess what: not many games can take advantage of 4K. Business don't care about 4K. The last replacement monitor I got from work cannot do 4K because Mi
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What $800 card costs $2500? You can get a MSRP $999 7900 xtx for around $1100 if you shop around.
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Also there MSRP $1099 6950XT is now $699.
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When GPU prices are 2.5x MSRP
When are GPU prices 2.5x MSRP? You are repeating a stale talking about from this time last year that isn't at all relevant right now. The past quarter GPUs have been sold at MSRP or below and yet we've seen a decline.
Whatever point you were making is wrong, try and find another reason.
Too many hoops (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Too many hoops (Score:4, Interesting)
I started down the path of specing out a new PC and ran into all of the disincentives you mentioned above. The general PC component marketplace is a cesspool. But, even after sourcing reputable parts, I find the cases themselves lacking. Front bays for blue-ray drives, audio inputs, and USB connectors? Forget it.. it's Disco lights for you, son.
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It's the End of the World As We Know It (Score:2)
McCarron shines a glimmer of light in the wake of this gloom, reminding us that overall processor revenue was still higher in 2022 than any year before the 2020s began.
Truly it's the end of everything, and no one could have ever predicted after much of the developed world decided to upgrade their home equipment in the last two years due to a global pandemic!
More disaster!: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a... [wsj.com]
I don't know about all of you... (Score:3)
I haven't bought any upgrades in a while, because every time I buy something new... things break.
Before "product activation" became a thing with XP, I used to upgrade my PC every 6 months whether it needed it or not. After XP, there were two occasions when I replace some hardware and I had to call Microsoft on the phone, begging to use my PC again. Since then, I realized I didn't need to upgrade my PC so often, and I only really change hardware when something dies. I think the only thing I've bought in the last decade are a slew of larger SSDs.
If it were worth buying new hardware, both in terms of a performance upgrade and reliability, I'd do it. I'm not going to spend real money on minor tweaks and a lecture about how certain features are "not supported". No kidding CPU sales are the slowest in 30 years. This is a different market than back in the 1990's. Upgrading isn't fun anymore. It's a chore.
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Just set up a KMS server emulator on a rpi somewhere in your house, an rpi zero will even work.
Now all Microsoft product activation is free and they’ll let you download software off their website. It’s actually a really good system and probably the best relationship I’ve had with microsoft in years.
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Re: April 1st, 1970 (Score:2)
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Get a Mac? But then you have a Mac, eww.
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April 1st, 1970
Datapoint 2200 is June 1970, Intel 8008 is April 1972. Earliest precursors/implementations of x86 have nothing to do with April 1st, 1970, as you see.
Consumer demand is dead (Score:3)
Consumers have migrated to mobile and/or tablets, and don't need a PC/laptop anymore.
Businesses have also realized that an i5 is just fine, and lasts for years. In fact, the only thing moving CPUs now is going to be Windows EOL'ing hardware platforms.
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Actually they're more likely to use a phone for personal stuff and a lappie for work/school. Tablets are kind of passe now.
That was a surprise Not! (Score:2)
The hype train is slowing down? (Score:2)
Not so long ago - a few years back - the large corporate entity I work for did laptop replacements every 3 years.
It was just a standard procedure - and I'm sure they had a preferred supplier(s) and a contract signed to that end.
Now it's every 5 years. This corporate has over 70,000 staff.
I can't prove it, I doubt I could find any evidence to support it, but it seems highly likely they aren't alone in extending the "lifetime" of hardware issued to employees.
They also keep some of those older laptops in stora
Future is in phones (Score:3)
I can plug my phone into the docking station made for my laptop. That way, I can take the screen of my phone to a real screen, use a real keyboard and mouse to access everything and practically work that way. Now add a few office applications to the whole thing and I have to wonder: What exactly do I need a computer for?
The speed is about on par of a computer of roughly 10 years ago. Which is plenty for office work, unless you're working with graphically challenging applications or if you need a lot of processing power to crunch numbers. For that, I'd SSH/RDP into a relevant server and use its power instead.
Offices will move towards cellphone-based computing in the near future. Especially now with WFH being more and more adopted, having your "computer" in your pocket 24/7 will be considered an asset by companies, not only are you reachable 24/7 but you have all your documents and information with you 24/7 as well. They will like that. Employees will enjoy not having to lug about their laptops, they just plug out their phone at work, take it home in their pocket, plug it into their home office setup and continue exactly as they did in office.
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I can plug my phone into the docking station made for my laptop.
Meh. We've had this thick/thin client debate since the 80s at least. Basically what happens is that thin clients are all the rage until computing power gets so cheap that you can just throw another CPU in the screen anyway (I mean, this is basically what's happened to TVs already) and then it's just easier to do it that way rather than having to plug your phone in.
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The thick/thin client processing power debate is moot. Phones do have enough processing power for nearly all applications you'd want to run in an office environment.
If the OS allows (Score:2)
Phones do have enough processing power for nearly all applications you'd want to run in an office environment.
True. However, having enough processing power is not sufficient. The application also has to fit the restrictions of a major phone operating system's platform security model. Software development, for example, tends to be one of the things that phone operating systems tend to deter as a side effect of deterring malware.
Terrible decline, or unnatural growth (Score:2)
It's funny how these reports only look at deltas, narrowly. The pandemic and the lockdowns created a hugely unnatural growth in the PC market, with the work from home and all. Now that the lockdowns are over, people don't buy computers as a matter of emergency anymore, so obviously we go back to the trends before the pandemic. The demand goes abruptly back where it was, and the natural trend will resume, i.e. the years long slow decline of the market.
If Market Buys in Groups--It Passes in Groups (Score:2)
On the gaming/workstation side, in spite of the RTX 4090's popularity for a high-end card, most video cards are still too expensive. Their prices still haven't settled to the inflation-adjusted leve
Windows 11's Failure is Also an Issue (Score:2)
Good ! (Score:2)
WFH + Inflation (Score:2)
This was to be somewhat expected. During the pandemic everybody started working from home so they upgraded their systems. Now, everybody has new computers so they're a few years from needing another upgrade. Not only that, but the used/refurb market is fairly well stocked with their old systems.
The second part is inflation. Wages trail prices which means the average consumer has less discretionary spending power. Computer upgrades are one of those discretionary items that can be postponed, meaning yet anoth
A return to normalcy (Score:2)
PC sales have been on a slow decline for quite a few years. Then we got a pandemic-fueled surge in demand as people set up for work-at-home, and as schools bought large quantities of Chromebooks and other systems for at-home learning.
As the world reopens from the pandemic, we have simply returned to the ongoing trend; PC sales are gradually falling off because of a shift to mobile devices and because people are keeping them longer than they did in the past. But it looks like a huge drop because of the incre
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Remember that ship that blocked the Baring Straight a while ago? That caused the chip shortage....
I might be wrong, but I have a very hard time believing that one temporary ship grounding was enough to have such a large impact. The number of chips that could have been carried in that ship doesn't seem remotely large enough to so thoroughly devastate the entire market.
I was under the impression that the global lockdowns were largely responsible for all but halting chip production for an extended period of time. We may or may not be back to normal soon, but I don't see these companies letting a crisis go
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It wasn't what was on the ship that blocked... it was the traffic jam that followed behind it.
Re:That stupid ship... (Score:4, Funny)
no no... the chip shortage was because they were loading all them vaccines up with computer chips for mind control...
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Re:That stupid ship... (Score:5, Funny)
> Remember that ship that blocked the Baring Straight a while ago?
Damn, but that's a hell of a lot of wrong to pack into one sentence. I salute you, sir!
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Remember that ship that blocked the Baring Straight a while ago?
Wow! I knew container ships were getting ludicrously large, but I had no idea there are some that are over 80 km in length!
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Re: That stupid ship... (Score:2)
More likely that the surge in buying during the Covid lockdown years that reversed a longer term down trend has resulted in a massive drop in demand. This is going to hurt PC sellers for years.