Well, unless we want to keep playing the new Triple-A games and enjoy the hyper graphics, I don’t really see a problem. We don’t need to keep upgrading and building the best possible PCs… We could just settle at some point. Clean them regularly, change pastes, get the same-level parts if something breaks… There’s plenty of new indie games that would run on a toaster and still be perfectly enjoyable.
The next PC I build, well, build with using the parts I already got and/or can get used from online or from my friends, will be an offline DVD player with Linux. Radical, yes and not for everyone. But it’s an option…
Yep. In fact I wrote a blob somewhere (will link back if I find it) that for most users I believe we reached “peak good-enough” compute few years ago already.
Sure for some very VERY specific use cases, it’s never enough (e.g. super high res video editing, photo realistic rendering, weather simulations) but for the average Joe with normal eyes… at some point you just browse Website that show photos and text, even 4K videos… you don’t NEED 8K or a more powerful CPU when you are jolting down your 5 family holiday options. We got into a habit that year after year we would get significantly better hardware but… you can store your entire life of text, photos, documents, etc in a microSD that fits in your wallet and costs you the price of a meal.
It’s weird that we needed the AI bubble to realize it but that’s OK.
Well, unless we want to keep playing the new Triple-A games and enjoy the hyper graphics, I don’t really see a problem. We don’t need to keep upgrading and building the best possible PCs… We could just settle at some point. Clean them regularly, change pastes, get the same-level parts if something breaks… There’s plenty of new indie games that would run on a toaster and still be perfectly enjoyable.
The next PC I build, well, build with using the parts I already got and/or can get used from online or from my friends, will be an offline DVD player with Linux. Radical, yes and not for everyone. But it’s an option…
Yep. In fact I wrote a blob somewhere (will link back if I find it) that for most users I believe we reached “peak good-enough” compute few years ago already.
Sure for some very VERY specific use cases, it’s never enough (e.g. super high res video editing, photo realistic rendering, weather simulations) but for the average Joe with normal eyes… at some point you just browse Website that show photos and text, even 4K videos… you don’t NEED 8K or a more powerful CPU when you are jolting down your 5 family holiday options. We got into a habit that year after year we would get significantly better hardware but… you can store your entire life of text, photos, documents, etc in a microSD that fits in your wallet and costs you the price of a meal.
It’s weird that we needed the AI bubble to realize it but that’s OK.
Good enough until you run factorio megafactories. Now you need 8 rack mounted servers.