1173
It's so expensive to upgrade... (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
161 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 8 points 4 months ago (11 children)

Computer I built 15 years ago is just now showing up as minimum requirements on most of the games. It's called future proofing. If you're going to spend the money to build a computer build something that can last.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 11 child comments
    •
  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    future proofing

    I understand the sentiment, but this wording was always a marketing ploy for people to spend more than they need and it was never useful.

    When I was young, we were having so many innovations that there was no need to overpay, in two years you could get something twice as powerful for half the price. Even less if you could get used.

    Then it took a halt, by the time I needed more memory. It was cheap to get a DDR3 + mobo + CPU than filling the empty slots on my DDR2 motherboard.

    I failed for "future proofing" a few times. Extra memory slots, multicores and 64bits that windows and programs struggled to see, PSU with 4x that power I needed, when I needed it most of the plugs already changed.

    I lived through a bunch of hardware shenanigans, some were shrugged, some were caught and received a slap on the wrist.

    Now, more than ever, people should buy what they can afford and properly dimension their hardware for their current needs, not some future fantasy. There are communities over here that can help them with that.

    There are no big innovations either, mostly exaggerated hardware usage for no apparent reason to force buy new hardware that does not do much either.

    My rule of thumb for games early last year was if you cannot build something better than Steam Deck for cheaper, get the Deck, but now it is all crazy.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago*

    yeah, i've tried building the fancy expensive system too. there's always some bit of hardware architecture that needs an upgrade and now i've blown $1000 on some little useless piece after 2-3 years. getting something midgrade and upgrading in 7 years instead of 10-15 saves so much money

    what pisses me off is i was just about to upgrade my SSD and my PSU right before the crazy hit. I can do without, i just don't want to. Now i have to wait a decade for the market to cool down and it'll be time for an entire new box by then

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Future proofing does not require you to shell out a ton of money. I spent less than $1,000 building my machine back in 2012, buying each part individually as I went when I could save up the money. And I didn't actually put the thing together until 2016 or so cause my previous machine was working fine at the time. (Still is actually, as a file server in my basement) It just takes a modicum of planning and research on compatibility and what technologies are being used in cutting edge games and programs.

    Or, I should say it did. Nowadays everything has become so stupid expensive because of the race to the bottom AI Data center bullshit corporate destruction of the retail market. Though, I kind of saw this coming and bought a whole mess of parts right after Trump was elected so that I can build a decent machine to use once the one I have is no longer viable. Which I have not reached yet...

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    I finally had to replace mine because my CPU was, I think, x64 v2, but at least two games needed the v3 instruction set.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago*

    I'm actually kicking myself a little bit. I was having some trouble with my processor and decided to get a replacement and I got a one-to-one replacement and I actually should have gotten the absolute limit of what my motherboard was capable of handling. I didn't do that and now my computer is just shy of being able to run Diablo 4. 😒

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    RHEL9 and forward require v3, and the numpy in pip as of a few versions back uses either v2 or v3 instructions, so v1 is silently broke for certain workloads. FreeBSD works on it just fine as do Debian based distributions as long as you don't need recent versions of numpy, but there's no telling what else out there just tries to run and fails with an illegal instruction.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    If you got a 1080p screen back then and haven't moved to a higher res since, then maybe there's some truth to that.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    oh dude i'm still using the screens i had 20 and 10 years ago. one is 1366x788, the other 1680x1050. they work so why buy new ones? or steal them from the firms i occasionally consult with? oh that's a good idea.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    I was on 1680x1050 too (I had a 20"), then moved to 2560x1440 (27"), and now recently to 5120x2160 (40"). Every such upgrade has been meaningful for me, and still, it's not something I do every year. The first 27" I bought is almost 10 years old at this point.

    Depends on what you do, of course - but for me, even just scrolling through text feels better on a higher refresh rate and higher resolution.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent