Last year I bought a new motherboard with an eight-core processor when my old one died. Just a couple of day ago I realized that my experience with that set up is exactly the same as the previous one I bought in 2008. The 1TB hard drive I bought in 2009 is only half full. 16GB of RAM runs no better than 4. Two cores humming along at 3000 mHz can handle everything I throw at them. The others sit idle.
It's a huge change from ten years ago when I would anxiously await the day when I could afford a new rig because I was already pushing my three-year old one to its limit. Desktop PC technology has clearly reached the point where its capabilities far exceed the needs of ordinary users.
The ordinary user argument. I argue it too, because it's true for now. Facebook and email don't require 8 cores and a Kepler card and 32gb of RAM. They require an $80 Pentium 4 machine. Youtube HD is about the only thing that a normal person uses that'd push that, other than games.
The best counter-argument I've seen so far is that these modern machines are capable of great but uninvented or unpopularized things. If developers give users a reason to upgrade, they will. Nvidia wouldn't exist if game developers hadn't made 3D games to take advantage of their hardware. Same with PCs, developers have to give them a purpose.
I agree with that argument, and I hope someone capable steps up and makes it happen.
It's a huge change from ten years ago when I would anxiously await the day when I could afford a new rig because I was already pushing my three-year old one to its limit. Desktop PC technology has clearly reached the point where its capabilities far exceed the needs of ordinary users.