Question Ten Years or Twenty?

[jnjnilson6]

For the Consumer

Fastest Intel CPU in 2003 - Pentium 4 EE @ 3.2 GHz (130 nm / 1 core and 2 threads / 3.2 GHz)

Fastest Intel CPU in 2013 - Core i7-4960X (22 nm / 6 cores and 12 threads / up to 4.0 GHz)

Fastest Intel CPU in 2023 - Core i9-13900KS (10 nm / 24 cores and 32 threads / up to 6.0 GHz)

For all whom it may concern, the vivid portrayal of specifications and the boldened adhering numerals would denote an inclining and definitive stature of processing power through the span of twenty years. By 2013, the aforementioned Pentium 4 Extreme Edition was already majorly outdated, whilst the Core i7-4960X would still prove benefactory in many spheres, threading along nicely in the pathways of innumerable users and performing swiftly numerous daunting tasks, today.

Do you think that the Core i9-13900KS would meet the same fate as the Core i7-4960X ten years from now? What would these specifications look like in ten or twenty years from now?

It is all subjective and objective and nobody may surely know. But let me know what you think and what your innermost convictions and predictions would be. It is not about accuracy, it's about the joy and exhilaration of finding novelty and sharing versatile opinion.

Do write up and

Thank you!

PS. I hope I may be forgiven for the desolate inclusion of Intel CPUs only and would like to reassure the persons responding to and reading this thread that all predictions and communication connected with the AMD counterpart would be greatly appreciated.

 

[USAFRet]

In all my years of working with PCs (since a VIC-20 in the mid 80's), I've never had a CPU fail.
Either in the dozens of personal systems, or hundreds of work systems.

 

[Moonstick2]

I don't think it's about CPUs failing, but it's easy to misunderstand with all the unnecessary prose.

I think the point is "After 10 years the Pentium 4EE was too slow to be of much practical use but after 10 years the 4960X is still pretty handy, so how good might a 13900KS be in ten years time?"

The thing is, commercial technology generally makes the biggest gains at the beginning, then slows up as it matures and tangible gains are harder to obtain. Most things you can think of (not just PC related) will have improved massively in the early days and now will be good enough for many years.

In 2003, the established home PC market (in the sense of it not being uncommon to own a Windows PC) was, what, 5-10 years old? While in 2023 it's more than quarter of a century old.

I'm sure in 10 years time a 13900KS will be sufficient for a lot of things.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Do you think that the Core i9-13900KS would meet the same fate as the Core i7-4960X ten years from now?

Yes.

What would these specifications look like in ten or twenty years from now?

What specifications? Clock speeds/Core counts? That's not an easy thing to predict. But if they don't get a handle on the thermal density problems of increasingly smaller process geometries I suspect it will go an entirely different direction. Meaning comparing such specs will be meaningless.

Moore's law may not be exactly dead but almost certainly it is morphing into something vastly different.

 

[USAFRet]

I don't think it's about CPUs failing, but it's easy to misunderstand with all the unnecessary prose.

Yeah, somehow I got stuck on 'dead CPU', not 'outdated CPU'.

 

[Firestone]

as suggested by the OP, CPU "speed" has not really been relevant since ~2013, these days there are far more interesting things happening with CPU's than just a speed metric.

 

[Zerk2012]

Let me get my crystal ball out.
Yes I see it 20 years from now it will be a chip in your head with instant access to everything.

 

[Tac 25]

not trying to be rude, but the first post feels like a politician's speech - confusing. Do you mean when a cpu get outdated?

this is subjective. A cpu can be outdated for some people who play newest games, but others who play older or less demanding games can still have a use for it.

for example, i7-4960X (6 cores and 12 threads) would be hopelessly outdated for some users.. but an even older cpu, i7-2600K (4 cores, 8 threads) is still ok for me in certain tasks. Still play Genshin Impact at high settings with it no lag, and several other playstation games. Actually just using the 4 cores of this thing, not the 8 threads, because one of my video encoder programs does not work with hyper threading. Released in 2011, this cpu is now an 11+ year old grandpa. It is not enough for certain newer games, but since it still works well for the majority of fighting games that I play.. this grandpa cpu will still see plenty of action for a few years more. lol

 

[TerryLaze]

Let me get my crystal ball out.
Yes I see it 20 years from now it will be a chip in your head with instant access to everything.

Well, not IN your head but a google glass type of thing with a decent 8 core that can also wifi to your home devices for more functions and compute if needed could be common.
The only thing stopping this now is that people don't like to have to talk to their devices to make them do stuff but with all of the alexa type devices taking off that could change soon.

 

[punkncat]

Let me get my crystal ball out.
Yes I see it 20 years from now it will be a chip in your head with instant access to everything.

I think you are more accurate than you know.

I foresee a future where electronics hardware and prosthesis join to allow humans not only to overcome disabilities but also to allow people to live and function in what I consider will be a very tech heavy existence. IMO the likes of what we see in CB77, but real.

I see things like phone implants, "personal PC/mobile device" type implants, things such as what has been released and tested in Google Glass, but actually IN peoples eyes or head. The possibilities will surely test the limits of imagination.

 

[punkncat]

this is subjective. A cpu can be outdated for some people who play newest games, but others who play older or less demanding games can still have a use for it.

for example, i7-4960X (6 cores and 12 threads) would be hopelessly outdated for some users.. but an even older cpu, i7-2600K (4 cores, 8 threads) is still ok for me in certain tasks. Still play Genshin Impact at high settings with it no lag, and several other playstation games. Actually just using the 4 cores of this thing, not the 8 threads, because one of my video encoder programs does not work with hyper threading. Released in 2011, this cpu is now an 11+ year old grandpa. It is not enough for certain newer games, but since it still works well for the majority of fighting games that I play.. this grandpa cpu will still see plenty of action for a few years more. lol

The processing power of many CPU of the Core generation remain quite viable to this day. The level of functionality left in many of them makes the decision by MS to make them obsolete just that much more unreasonable IMO. Not long after the 2025 EOS of W10 is going to put a lot of powerful computers in the trash bin when considering standard users. Not everyone is well versed enough in Linux to even consider swapping over.

 

[Tac 25]

@punkncat

the end of Windows 10 in 2025 is trouble for some cpu's who cannot install Windows 11. However, the games already here in my pc aren't gonna suddenly stop working when that time comes - so I can just keep playing them. Also, I'm sure Hoyoverse would not be crazy to suddenly require users to install Windows 11 to be able to play Genshin - this 2600K pc would still have a use as a Genshin pc, and fighting games pc.

past 2025, I do expect some developers would start releasing games that would require Windows 11 or even Windows 12? Which would force me to upgrade the OS of my 10600k pc to W11.

oh, and that sci-fi future you mentioned about implants in the eyes and head is terrifying to me. Feels like Men in Black or The Matrix would be just around the corner at that point. Just kidding ok.

 

[TerryLaze]

Not long after the 2025 EOS of W10 is going to put a lot of powerful computers in the trash bin when considering standard users. Not everyone is well versed enough in Linux to even consider swapping over.

Realistically how many of those people don't have at least one other device?!
You will be able to keep using w10 for many years just not on the internet although I do think that security updates do keep coming for a while even if support ends, you will be able to download stuff for it from a different PC or even from a smartphone.
There are plenty of people still having their XP systems up and running.

 

[TerryLaze]

but actually IN peoples eyes or head.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uASUHbFEhWY

 

[Eximo]

I think most any CPU you buy these days has about 10 years use in it, yes. As long as we are talking simple simple tasks.

The big problem is looking at competition and how that will change things.

x86 has ruled the PC space for the better part of 40 years, but there are now alternatives outside of the server space. Apple made a decent impact in the past with Motorola based systems, but it was short lived. Now that they are using ARM there are others following with ARM and RISCV based PCs (mostly limited to developers for now)

Another big question is security. They keep finding new ways to defeat platforms that may make keeping a CPU beyond 5 years risky.

Also going to have a complete revolution at some point when it comes to cryptography that may require some hardware that isn't supported by older processors.

And of some importance might be new hardware accelerated AI features baked into CPUs. There might come a time when you can only run the fancy local AI helper if you have the right CPU, otherwise you would have to use a cloud service. Though the later is more likely how that will go.

 

[punkncat]

Considering the level of "help me out" service that I perform on PC for having a virus or other malware is an indicator of how little the average user knows not only how to surf safely, but also in regard to having a system that IS updating security and such becoming not so on top of that. I cannot even say how many of those systems have multiple AV solutions and such installed on top of one another, every toolbar and extra that comes with pretty much any install process...the list goes on.

I feel like many of those type users are going to see the messages pop up about end of (or after) support drops and just move on to another cheap PC. Most of them don't know enough to start using aftermarket solutions to keeping the PC safe and operational. I mean, if you know what you are doing there is still very little in the way of running a system on W7, aside from some drops in support for apps and programs for said by a handful of companies.

Anyway, I think this is a bit of a side to the main subject, so I will grab my soapbox and go.

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

In all my years of working with PCs (since a VIC-20 in the mid 80's), I've never had a CPU fail.
Either in the dozens of personal systems, or hundreds of work systems.

This thread is like a trip down memory lane...

View: https://youtu.be/VsE0BwQ3l8U

 

[thx1138v2]

Be it 10 or 20 years, users will still be asking why they can't get advertised speeds from their mis-matched DRAM modules.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

 

[Avro Arrow]

It completely depends on two things:

#1 - What's your use-case?
If you're using a CPU in an HTPC or for office work, a high-end CPU can definitely last more than ten years. If it's for a high-end gaming rig or professional workstation, you'd be lucky to get 5 years out of it. This is because unlike office apps or media playback, software types like games and productivity evolve extremely quickly. They're always pushing the envelope because they're in very competitive markets.

#2 - How forward-thinking is the CPU's design?
My mother's HTPC uses an FX-8350 that I bought back in 2012 and it runs Windows 10 just fine. The FX-8350 was forward-thinking in the way that it was the first CPU to have 8 physical CPU Cores (ALUs). While it only had 4 FPUs, most CPU work is integer-based so it didn't suffer all that badly.

As time went on, programs became more and more dependent on multi-threaded performance and a lot of floating-point operations started to be off-loaded to GPUs. This had a profound positive effect on the FX-8350 and while I wouldn't go so far as to say that it got faster over time, it definitely didn't get any slower.

It was like a diesel truck in the way that it wasn't going to win any races but it was fast enough to be functional and you could keep adding more and more load to it without slowing it down.

Having said all that, I don't think that the Core i9-13900KS will age that well because its power draw is much too high. It is literally the hottest-running and most power-hungry consumer-grade CPU ever released, period. It requires so much power that liquid-cooling is a necessity. In addition, all that power and heat could possibly damage the motherboard on which it sits, if not the CPU itself, especially if there were ever a failure in the cooling solution.

The i9-13900KS is not a forward-thinking product. If anything, it's a backwards-thinking product because it's akin to Intel taking one of its previous-generation CPUs and overclocking the hell out of it. I honestly don't know what possesses some people to choose it.

 

[TerryLaze]

Having said all that, I don't think that the Core i9-13900KS will age that well because its power draw is much too high. It is literally the hottest-running and most power-hungry consumer-grade CPU ever released, period. It requires so much power that liquid-cooling is a necessity. In addition, all that power and heat could possibly damage the motherboard on which it sits, if not the CPU itself, especially if there were ever a failure in the cooling solution.

The 13900k can be cooled by a $20 cooler and keep 94% of the performance a high end AIO will give you...and those AIO results are overclocking results since they go above the rated 253W.
Even a SFF cooler keeps 88% of that performance.
The 7950x on the other hand stays at 95 degrees even with a $200 cooler.
So if power and heat is the concern then the 13900k will be the product of this generation to age well.

Both AMD and intel CPUs boost as high as conditions allow them, if you don't want them to boost that high then just lower the conditions.

Core i9-13900K Cooling Guide: Testing Intel's Flagship With Budget Air and Big AIOs

The Core i9-13900K can push even the most capable liquid coolers to their limits, but you don’t lose that much performance if you go with budget-priced air cooling.

www.tomshardware.com

A Lighter Touch: Exploring CPU Power Scaling On Core i9-13900K and Ryzen 9 7950X

www.anandtech.com

 

[Deleted member 2838871]

The 13900k can be cooled by a $20 cooler and keep 94% of the performance a high end AIO will give you...and those AIO results are overclocking results since they go above the rated 253W.
Even a SFF cooler keeps 88% of that performance.
The 7950x on the other hand stays at 95 degrees even with a $200 cooler.
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x3D has better thermals than both. Mine hasn't even sniffed 90C yet under all core burn tests with a D15 air cooler.