re: traditional PC desktops are dead. discuss.

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I brought up an interesting hypothesists and said 'discuss'.

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It was in no way technologically interesting. Closer to technology retarded.

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The while point of this board is to stimulate discussion right?

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Of course. But save that for the people with more knowledgeable things to say.

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intelligent discussion, not incoherent rambling.

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3 pages and you're still here. Don't like the topic? Don't read or respond to it.

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Comp gaming is only growing thanks to things like Steam and Origin.

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Honest question. You think the fact PCs are currently in vogue for gaming will drive major manufacturers to continue building desktops? You think that's enough to sustain r&d?

I'm lol-ing at the number of gamers in this thread acting like they're going to be the reason desktop computers will continue to be relevant.

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At home I'd tend to agree. At the workplace, not really.

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I think at the workplace too.

My work is in process of offering many users a choice - ipad or laptop. Now that you have ms office on the ipad, light users are going to be moving to the ipad. Its just easier. And I work for a fricking software company!

For power users, they are going to require workstations for the foreseeable future. But that is going to be the minority.

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Let's say $1500 of computing power split over 12 years...that's not bad!

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so easy to upgrade - you can build an excellent pc from just you tube videos.

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You think the fact PCs are currently in vogue for gaming will drive major manufacturers to continue building desktops? You think that's enough to sustain r&d?

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This was a response to your statement that PC gaming is dying when it clearly isn't. In addition, the title of your thread states that "desktops are dead" when they clearly aren't. Choose your words carefully. There is a huge difference between "PC desktops are dead" and "PC desktops are not currently dominating the mainstream home computing environment." That means the days of a "family computer," where there's a desktop PC in the living room or office for anyone to use, is not as common as it was 10 years ago.

The desktop used to be the primary computer of every home, prior to laptops reaching the $500 and under price range. Then came the era of laptops and all-in-ones. At the same time, we had desktops for dirt cheap to appeal to the lower-income market who could get a better machine than the $500 laptop, for less cost, followed by smartphones, tablets, and other dedicated devices primarily for digital media. For the big home PC companies like Dell and HP, this simply means they can no longer survive on selling desktops, laptops, and printers.

Desktops aren't dead and aren't dying. What's declined are off-the-shelf low/mid-end PC sales, and significantly so in the past year, as more people spend their money on tablets that serve their limited or finite needs. People aren't throwing their PCs away, though. They simply don't have a need to upgrade or replace them as often as a non-modular tablet or phone, which is practically disposable by design. So, even the folks using their mobile devices as part of an ecosystem involving traditional PCs are not buying new PCs just for that, hence the decline in sales.

Yes, typical John Derp probably sees no need for a tower in his house when he just wants his email, calendar, contacts, Web, social media and netflix. That can be done with a tablet. In fact, more John Derps of the world could be realizing less of a need for a tablet if their phone has a large enough screen. The market and the R&D focus on desktop hardware is simply narrowing to primarily accommodate power users and business users who are more likely to continuously and conveniently upgrade their workstations. Power users still have a need for power and enough knowledge to understand the role of a mobile device as a complement to their primary hardware. As I already said, as long as there is desktop hardware far exceeding the capabilities of any mobile devices, there will still be desktops and an eager market for them.

Just look at Intel's current and future line-up and roadmaps. In addition to be able to grow within the mobile market, they're still making and planning for future iterations of traditional desktop CPUs that have always been unmatched by any other consumer computing platform, including laptops and all-in-one desktops:

- Annual refreshes of mainstream desktop CPUs that allow overclocking and voltage control, increased integrated graphics for strictly the power-user non-gaming market, and additional codec engines supporting 4k resolution content.


- Mainstream desktop chipsets that offer PCIe 3.0 specifically for dedicated graphics, which, by the way, can be used for a lot more than gaming (including additional accelerated encoding and 3d modeling)

- Introduction of more native SATA 6gbps for SSDs in RAID configuration, and SATA Express on the newest desktop boards, which significantly increases the max available throughput for SSDs, shaping practically the entire market for future SSD development.

- An entirely separate line of even higher-end desktop CPUs with desktop-exclusive features, continuously refreshed/updated with new chipsets and platform-exclusive features.

- The only platform offering quad-channel RAM and 32 PCIe lanes for full bandwidth saturation of the most powerful GPUs, both gaming and professional (FirePro and Quadro)

- The first market segment to support DDR4 memory (announced next year).



On top of that, AMD has reshaped their entire desktop CPU strategy to make mainstream/low-end gaming PCs and HTPCs more affordable. Here's their desktop roadmap through 2015:



Here's a glimpse at their R&D for high-end dedicated desktop GPUs to 2015:


And NVidia's through 2016:


Maybe you, your wife, and John Derp don't care about any of this, but apparently there are enough of us to sustain the billions of dollars spent on R&D for the supposedly dead desktop.

Strongly disagree. Anything that needs performance demands a desktop. People don't want expensive crap that runs programs slower than their old clunker did.

rekt

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the desktop will be essentially dead.

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The laws of physics still apply. You can fit more power in a larger box. There will always be a market for people that need power beyond what you can fit in a tablet or laptop.

That market may shrink, but it ain't gonna die.

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Wait. So servers aren't going to move to iPads form?

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The cloud bruh... No need for servers if you have the cloud right?