jmarsh wrote on 2024-08-31, 16:29:

VivienM wrote on 2024-08-31, 16:17:

lti wrote on 2024-08-31, 15:49:

I haven't been interested in modern hardware since Sandy Bridge was such a huge disappointment (but apparently only for me).

(Also, I tend to agree that Sandy Bridge was somewhat of a disappointment at the time. It's only when everything that came after Sandy/Ivy Bridge turned out to be even more of a disappointment that Sandy/Ivy Bridge retroactively became this legendary platform. It's funny, in 2010 I reorganized some hardware around, made a Q8300 primarily out of existing parts my main desktop box thinking that that would be temporary due to how weird the Nehalem lineup was and it'd be replaced by the next thing after the Nehalem mess, and that Q8300 ended up lasting me until 2017 when I got an i7-7700)

Not sure what you guys are remembering, the 2600K was highly lauded when it arrived and practically everyone wanted one.

The entire Sandy Bridge series was highly recommended in 2011 (even with the chipset bug), and there are still a lot of them around today. The problem was that I had a mobile i3 (I was just starting college and didn't have a wealthy family), and the stuff I did in school must have been the one thing Sandy Bridge was bad at. I went from an Athlon XP-M 1400+ to that, and the performance difference was still disappointing. I've briefly mentioned in other threads that even desktop Sandy Bridge was strangely slow in MATLAB.

The graphics drivers were totally broken as well, meaning that the much-hyped Quick Sync encoder was totally non-functional. Since I had a cheap computer with only integrated graphics, I also found that hardware-accelerated H.264 decoding caused random BSODs, most software I tried couldn't even detect basic 3D acceleration, and Intel didn't release any updates for four years (and then they suddenly dumped a bunch of "older" drivers on their website at the same time as finally releasing that update in 2015 - two weeks prior, the latest driver on their website was the one the laptop shipped with).

Time to start archiving all their articles and reviews! The community cannot lose all of that content. I've been referencing their website for literally the entirety of the time they've been online. I probably read an AnandTech review back in the late 90s when I was contemplating upgrading my AMD K6 200 MHz to an Athlon slot A 700 MHz. Even now, I reference their old articles for my current retro builds to compare hardware options. A sign of the times, but I'll surely be archiving the data. Need to do the same for other sites as well.

Sad, but somehow not surprising to me. It felt like the quality / timeliness of their articles started going down. Tom's HW had articles up faster when big events happened, like a new CPU architecture was announced.

I'm working on an archive like I have for:
https://falconfly.vogonswiki.com/
http://redhill.vogonswiki.com/

Anandtech represented perfectly the 90's and 2000's philosophy: upgrade, upgrade, upgrade just to keep up with the software - not necessarily games. The hardware has long since caught up with the software; you can use a 15 years old PC today and still browse the web, run latest Office, email and watch/listen movies/music.
For me Sandy Bridge represents the end of the road, the last PC I ever purchased new an assembled myself. Up until SB I had a new platform - not necessarily a new PC - every 2 years, starting with Cyrix! Back in the 90's and 2000's it was impossible to keep even a top of the line computer for more than 5 years and expect to do any real work/game on it after that. You couldn't do much in 2000 with a 1995 Pentium 166, the top of the line consumer CPU from that year- even basic things like running Windows, Office, email, surfing the net would have been a gargantuan task; likewise in 2005 running XP and work on a Pentium 3 1000 would have been a exercise in frustration; this was true also in 2010 for a top of the line 2005 computer.
But everything changed with the Core 2 duo and after that with Nehalem/Phenom II: my best friend still has the I7 870 running Windows 10 and working on that PC even today in 2024 and I know lots a people using hardware from that era today and not complaining one bit. I used for 13 years my 2600K and never had an issue with it! It did everything I asked of it. Today my main PC is an Q9650 with 8gb of RAM and runs Windows and Office perfectly fine, I browse the web, write lots of emails every day, listen all day to music and works OK.
This is true also for games: today if you want to play the latest and greatest at 4K you need a real powerhouse but for 1080P even a 5 year old PC will still run the latest games, maybe not at max settings but will run them, a impossible thing back in the 90's and 2000's. Microsoft used to release a new DirectX version every 1-2 years. Today innovation has slowed to a crawl, no more huge jumps in performance are expected.
So people do not upgrade anymore, even enthusiasts use the same PC for years on end; as for the rest of the world they just buy a laptop and use it until it falls to pieces because it will run until it brakes just fine for 99% of the people out there.

nd22 wrote on 2024-09-04, 03:22:

So people do not upgrade anymore, even enthusiasts use the same PC for years on end; as for the rest of the world they just buy a laptop and use it until it falls to pieces because it will run until it brakes just fine for 99% of the people out there.

I agree that the upgrade cycle is (thankfully) no longer as short as it used to be. As you say, until the mid 2000s or so, you pretty much had to upgrade every 3-4 years in order for your system to stay relevant for the latest software, especially games. But starting with Core 2 and the GeForce 8 series, we had a very durable platform, which could deliver solid performance for years to come.

Today, I think it's mostly the modern internet that makes things more demanding. For example, I have an 8 year old laptop with a Haswell CPU, integrated AMD graphics and 8GB RAM running Debian Linux. It's hooked up to my big TV, and I mostly use it for watching YouTube videos. That worked fine until about a year ago or so, when the AV1 codec became prevalent. Now, the system struggles even with 720p videos, with the fan whirring incessantly because it has to decode content in software, as it has no hardware support for AV1. The 8GB RAM is slowly becoming an issue as well, but not as much as for some other people, since I rarely keep more than 4-5 tabs open at the same time.

Many Bothans wrote on 2024-09-01, 13:19:

This one is kind of a bummer... I have fond memories of reading Anandtech and researching my first PC build with a Computer Shopper magazine. Ended up getting an M-Tech R534 to run a P5-150 at a then exotic 75MHz FSB.

This grassroots enthusiast journalism of the era, along with Tom's/HardOCP, were seemingly the only ones testing and reporting on Intel's issues with the 1.13GHz P3 that eventually led to a recall.

Though that was kind of the end of the grassroots era too. That investigative reporting got them into the eye of "Mainstream" tech media, the stuff still going into physical print, and owned by media conglomerates... which all brought more eyes, more ads, a bit more funding so they got to be run more like a business rather than a side gig. They did build on that for a good 5 years after, but the "grassroots" just fellow computer nerds thing kinda died then, a victim of success. I was on some email chains with Tom and Kyle in the late 90s, shooting the shit about thermal paste and potential for water cooling, I don't remember what else. Unfortunately my webmail provider from the time was a dotcom casualty... so yeah, before that, they had time to "chat" by email, after that, not so much.

I never liked video contents, and prefer written articles. But times have changed. The new generations prefer videos.

I have fond memories of visiting AnandTech frequently, when I was deep into retro building when I just started working and were able to buy various hardware on my own, to look at the reviews of Pentium II and III era hardware.

Sucks - I loved reading such websites in the later 90ies(with the U.S. Robotics modem).

Maybe vogons itself could start a site("Vintage Hardware Reviews") where users test equipment and write reviews.
There's already great content in these forums(especially the cpu comparisons by Feipoa) so in some cases it's just a matter of representing the already established material in a slightly different format.

mwdmeyer wrote on 2024-09-02, 06:34:

I'm working on an archive like I have for:
https://falconfly.vogonswiki.com/
http://redhill.vogonswiki.com/

Thankyou very much.

I lost interest in computers, games, etc during the mid 2000's, you know all the hardware that makes for great Win9x/XP builds that I'm interested in these days and their articles are very handy for catching up with what's what.

Personally I watch hardware reviews for entertainment for serious research I prefer articles where I can skim or entirely skip past the non relevant sections easily

With all the talk about the end of an era -
Just a "cheap thought" but not such a sudden thing. Hobbyist computing has been declining for two decades. Think about it - the days of stores that just sold computers and computer parts are LONG gone. What retail store even stocks computer parts anymore? Best Buy? Wal-Mart? Even places I used for online ordering are gone.
Insert conspiracy theory here:
How long before microsoft google etc find a way to end the whole linux thing?

Man, don't get me started. I've long had this conspiracy theory for the blueprint to end open computing.

That said, I think the same thing happened to brick & mortar computer stores as happened to every other. Amazon killed them. I'm still lucky to have a MIcrocenter near me, well, 60 minutes from me. At least for now, it's shopping center is being demolished for redevelopment, then I'll be without.

ncmark wrote on 2024-09-04, 14:49:

With all the talk about the end of an era -
Just a "cheap thought" but not such a sudden thing. Hobbyist computing has been declining for two decades. Think about it - the days of stores that just sold computers and computer parts are LONG gone. What retail store even stocks computer parts anymore?

In Canada, the retail chain Canada Computers is still around and sells computer parts. You can walk in and pick up all sorts of individual components.

Though their stores have been diversifying over the years. In one of my recent visits, I noticed they started stocking Gundam model kits and various toys.

There are also some independent computer stores around me that are still in business after ~25 years or so. Though they have embraced online shopping and have online stores in addition to their retail locations.

BUT you can't deny it's not at all like it was in the 90s

ncmark wrote on 2024-09-04, 17:37:

BUT you can't deny it's not at all like it was in the 90s

No doubt. CompUSA still existed, along with a smattering of mom and pop shops in strip malls or out of the way industrial parks. Computer shows were held routinely near me. I miss those most of all, and all the sketchy vendors selling Doom WADs on floppy's with hastily printed labels. Barely knew what you got until you made it home. To say nothing of the plethora of unboxed used RAM or CD-ROM drives, or CD-ROMs that promised "1001 Games!". I suppose ebay ate that market.

The computer show, in the form of a regional computer bazaar, was such a niche cultural artifact. I remember one was featured in a single episode of the X-Files. I found an article once eulogizing them, but that's practically it. Youtube has no idea they ever existed, which shocks me because I even found a 90 minute video someone uploaded from a regional LAN party I had gone to in 2001!

Edit: I spoke too soon! Found some old commercials for one that was put up on Youtube.

ncmark wrote on 2024-09-04, 14:49:

What retail store even stocks computer parts anymore? Best Buy? Wal-Mart? Even places I used for online ordering are gone.

You are welcome to visit Taiwan and build your own computer like Linus Sebastian did. 😉

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-09-04, 15:46:

In Canada, the retail chain Canada Computers is still around and sells computer parts. You can walk in and pick up all sorts of individual components.

And they are pretty much the only one left, province-wide. NCIX entered Ontario and bankrupted itself in the process some years ago. Memory Express has tried to build a teeny Ontario presence. Canada Computers was a late arrival to Ottawa and ate everybody out of existence.

When I moved to Toronto almost (wow) 20 years ago, there was still an entire district of small sketchy computer stores overflowing with parts around College/Spadina. Haven't been up there in some time, but I'm pretty sure everyone other than Canada Computers is pretty much gone.

Namrok wrote on 2024-09-04, 15:04:

That said, I think the same thing happened to brick & mortar computer stores as happened to every other.

I think there's another important thing to note - in the mid-late 1990s, a lot of those stores sold generic clones. Walk in, pick a standardish configuration from a couple on a random laser-printed piece of paper at the front, some dude on a table assembles your system, you pick it up a few hours. And they didn't sell those only to enthusiasts - lots of ordinaryish consumers, businesses, etc might have bought from those guys too.

And there was an entire industry of boring white (later black) cases with passable PSUs, boring motherboards, GeForce 2/4 MXes, etc that were really aimed at those systems more than they were aimed at the true gamery enthusiast.

That's long gone. Killed by two things, really:
1) whereas in the late 1990s, the rapidly-declining price of parts worked against the Compaqs and IBMs who had paid Intel and WD three months earlier for a system that was sitting in inventory, starting in the mid-2000s, labour costs became much more significant, so a prebuilt assembled in Asia and shipped on a boat, with big discounts on its Windows licence, etc, can undercut the clone shop special by hundreds of dollars
2) the move towards laptops by many, many non-enthusiasts. Especially since, sadly, laptops are much cheaper than desktops these days - a mediocre laptop (which obviously includes a keyboard/mouse/screen) costs less than a mediocre retail desktop paired with a mediocre monitor, let alone something custom-built by a clone shop.

So if you walk into the surviving computer shops (and here in Canada where shipping is expensive and population concentrated, we do have a few left), they've basically turned into gamer supply stores. RGB and cases with no drive bays galore. And you see this on the motherboard front, too - e.g. 15 years I bought for $135CAD a P43/ICH10R motherboard from Asus, boring, solid, reliable board. Can you get any motherboard in that price point today? No - everything is gamer this and RGB that and overclock this and 'oh sorry you only get one PCI express slot because well no one puts expansion cards in their desktops anymore'

Namrok wrote on 2024-09-04, 17:50:

No doubt. CompUSA still existed, along with a smattering of mom and pop shops in strip malls or out of the way industrial parks. Computer shows were held routinely near me. I miss those most of all, and all the sketchy vendors selling Doom WADs on floppy's with hastily printed labels. Barely knew what you got until you made it home. To say nothing of the plethora of unboxed used RAM or CD-ROM drives, or CD-ROMs that promised "1001 Games!". I suppose ebay ate that market.

The computer show, in the form of a regional computer bazaar, was such a niche cultural artifact. I remember one was featured in a single episode of the X-Files. I found an article once eulogizing them, but that's practically it. Youtube has no idea they ever existed, which shocks me because I even found a 90 minute video someone uploaded from a regional LAN party I had gone to in 2001!

I would add that this was combined with another feature of the 90s - the computer magazine with a huge second half full of ads for mail-order vendors. And here in Canada, along with the glossy American-made magazines, we also had the free monthly local computer newspapers, full of advertising for every generic clone shop in town. Also had a list of BBSes, ads for dialup ISPs, etc.

The Internet generally ate all that by making information about computer parts much more broadly available, and by making it much easier to connect sellers and buyers of stuff. Also obsoleted things like, say, the shareware CD - who needs a CD if you can just download your shareware direct from the developer's web site?

VivienM wrote on 2024-09-04, 23:21:

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-09-04, 15:46:

In Canada, the retail chain Canada Computers is still around and sells computer parts. You can walk in and pick up all sorts of individual components.

And they are pretty much the only one left, province-wide. NCIX entered Ontario and bankrupted itself in the process some years ago. Memory Express has tried to build a teeny Ontario presence. Canada Computers was a late arrival to Ottawa and ate everybody out of existence.

When I moved to Toronto almost (wow) 20 years ago, there was still an entire district of small sketchy computer stores overflowing with parts around College/Spadina. Haven't been up there in some time, but I'm pretty sure everyone other than Canada Computers is pretty much gone.

Yeah I was up there last about 15 years ago and it was pretty much a shadow of it's former self then, just a handful there, cellphone stores popping up like a fungus and nobody had anything in the store anymore, didn't even pin up a pricelist, ummm what do you got? What do you want? ... then by the time you'd asked a couple of things they were getting tired of you. I think the rents going insane finally did it though, like that surplus place that had to pack up. Time was, I'd pay for a hotel night in that area, just to spend a whole day poking round all the specialist stores, electronics and computer and bookshops, and there got less and less reasons for me to go there.

I don't get really why Canada Computers came out on top, they're alright, but they weren't cheaper, they weren't flashier, maybe it's coz they actually kept stuff to look at in the store? IDK ... had a Summit Direct in town for a while, liked their sales, picked up the occasional HDD etc at need... Then practically last place in town that had anything was Staples, but their hardware shelf got shorter and shorter and has gone altogether with the latest revamp.