Tom’s Hardware’s 2015 Wish List

[smeezekitty]

It actually bugs me when they pretend to be interested, just to gain favor.

When someone pretends to be interested, it is the worst!

That's why friends have to be genuinely interested 😉

 

[yanta]

1. PSU cable pin-out standardization
2. Halt to production of HDDs in favor of SSDs only. Isn't this like still producing 3.5" floppies?
3. Cancellation of any Windows development past Windows 7
4. Ditch DVI in favor of HDMI

+1 to all of those, except the DVI/HDMI. HDMI is good for entertainment, but (from all that I've read, and I'm prepared to be corrected if I'm wrong), DVI-D is better for gaming and other graphics intensive applications.

With 2. though there needs to be a massive price decrease otherwise it's not a particularly good investment. I'm not sure the SSD technology is mature enough.. But I like the idea.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

HDMI = DVI-D, but in a different plug and with audio. That's basically it. You also can't get a dual-link version of HDMI.

DP is where it's at, though.

 

[smeezekitty]

HDMI = DVI-D, but in a different plug and with audio. That's basically it. You also can't get a dual-link version of HDMI.

DP is where it's at, though.

Even through the signal may be the same, DVI-D is still superior in a few ways.
DVI-D I believe has more bandwidth for high more resolution. The DVI connector is also more robust
while HDMI can accidentally get pulled out. I also find the audio capability more than useless on HDMI

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Only more bandwidth when dual-link, and that's only because there's no specified limit to the pixel clock. The cable won't handle stupid frequencies.

Haven't had an HDMI connector break that I can think of.

Screws are horrid on monitors. Especially when they're wall mounted.

Again, DP is where it's at.

 

[InvalidError]

2. Halt to production of HDDs in favor of SSDs only. Isn't this like still producing 3.5" floppies?

Show me a 4TB SSD for under $200, then we'll talk. Right, now, 4TB worth of SSDs would cost you somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000. HDD prices bottom out at $60 for a 1TB HDD; for $60, all you get is a 64GB SSD. You may argue that for $75 you can get a 128GB SSDs but then I can up the ante to $85 for a 2TB HDD. If you raise again to $100 for a 256GB SSD, I can raise you $105 for a 3TB HDD.

SSDs are still about an order of magnitude more expensive per byte in most cases, so they are still many years away from replacing HDDs for people who hoard TBs worth of data and less frequently used games/programs - I am not going to waste 1TB of SSD storage worth ~$450 on Steam games I play less than once a month and a $60 1TB HDD is still orders of magnitude faster than re-downloading a game every time I want to play one or re-installing software every time I need it.

HDDs might not be as fast or sexy as SSDs but they still have an order of magnitude advantage on cost per bit, which I think easily secures their future for the next couple of years. I know I will not be in any rush to move my archived stuff to SSDs until they reach price parity with HDDs or very close to it.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

$60 will get you a decent 128GB drive, not a 64GB one. $100 will get you a 256GB drive.

Still nowhere near as cheap per GB as HDDs, but if you're not looking to store lots of video or many games, an SSD-only system is quite affordable and liveable. You're unlikely to need to re-install software with 256GB of space, though large games is a bit more tricky.

For the average consumer not playing local games beyond The Sims, I can see HDDs going the way of the dedicated GPU in another year or two.

If you're playing the games less than once a month... do they need to be local?

Ever-increasing internet speeds will make re-downloading games much faster. 100Mb/s+ is becoming pretty common.

 

[InvalidError]

Ever-increasing internet speeds will make re-downloading games much faster. 100Mb/s+ is becoming pretty common.

Depends on where you live and how much you are willing to pay for it. Even at 100Mbps, that's still the better part of an hour to re-install a 30GB game vs seconds to start it from a secondary HDD or minutes to dust off an external HDD.

While I could get up to 120Mbps at my current location, it is not worth anywhere near the $70/month extra it would cost to me - there are many other things I would prefer spending that extra $840/year on.

 

[smeezekitty]

$60 will get you a decent 128GB drive, not a 64GB one. $100 will get you a 256GB drive.

Still nowhere near as cheap per GB as HDDs, but if you're not looking to store lots of video or many games, an SSD-only system is quite affordable and liveable. You're unlikely to need to re-install software with 256GB of space, though large games is a bit more tricky.

For the average consumer not playing local games beyond The Sims, I can see HDDs going the way of the dedicated GPU in another year or two.

If you're playing the games less than once a month... do they need to be local?

Ever-increasing internet speeds will make re-downloading games much faster. 100Mb/s+ is becoming pretty common.

That's nonsense. I have over 600GB of data. Storing that on SSDs would be prohibitive.
An SSD is nice for frequently used stuff but spinning HDDs have not replaced them for "junk" (and probably
wont for a decade)
100Mb/s is common?

Where I live, its 6Mb/s. Don't assume everyone lives in a city with ultra high speed internet

 

[bit_user]

2. Halt to production of HDDs in favor of SSDs only. Isn't this like still producing 3.5" floppies?

Show me a 4TB SSD for under $200, then we'll talk.

You're spot on, of course.

As clunky as it may seem to use the magnetic equivalent of record player to store digital data, there's nothing wrong with the technology. And I'm for more options, not less. And I say that, even though I'm typing this on a PC with only a SSD, and I just built a NAS with a RAID-5 of SSDs (but I also have a fileserver with spinners in a RAID-6, for bulk data).

Consider that the cloud, which everyone seems to take for granted, these days, couldn't happen without cheap (and ever cheaper) storage. If cloud providers were forced to use only SSDs, I'd bet they would no longer be economically viable. There's a reason cloud didn't happen sooner, and I think it has a lot less to do with bandwidth and a lot more to do with both cheap storage and compute power.

In the end, economics will determine when HDDs die out. Until then, use SSDs if you want, but it's pointless to hate on HDDs. I just marvel at how refined the tech has become. HDDs are quite possibly the most precise mechanical devices that have ever been mass produced. And they still work to spec after all the abuse they endure during shipping and sometimes even installation.