I don’t see nearly the focus on CPU speed benchmarking these days as I did in years past. The only things I really see intensively benchmarked nowdays are new video cards. Are CPUs so fast and (relatively) inexpensive now that people can get acceptable performance with anything from a 1 gig to 3 gig CPU, and tweaking for every last iota of speed care is less important than it used to be?
Why do people care less now. Is the PC really just an appliance these days?
I’d say it’s the rise of the video card. If you have a good video card, then CPU doesn’t matter as much and, frankly, any of the modern CPUs will handle most of the tasks most people want to do with ease. RAM and Video Card matter more now.
[what GMRyujin said]… Especially if your Video card is HwT&L enabled. Meaning it takes almost all the work of 3d graphics away from the computer’s CPU.
Basically, yes.
Processors have gotten to the point where they aren’t really a major factor. The slowest processor on the market will run most all software with surprising quickness, and with a good video card, play games too.
The processor wars between Intel and AMD have benefitted everyone who uses PC’s, as even the cheapest PC’s available are faster than anyone needs.
On the Mac side, a low end iBook, which is the absolute slowest Mac you can buy (mine was new in Nov, 700Mhz, 256 megs ram) is faster than I need. My 400Mhz iMac runs all the same software quite fine.
Short of people into gaming, hardware specs are largely irrelevant now. As long as the computer has a decent size HD, and a good amount of RAM, most people won’t notice the difference between a 1ghz p3, and a 2.5ghz p4
Eeyup. I just upgraded from a 700mhz p3 with 310 megs of RAM to a 2ghz Athlon with 512. Other than games, which got a significant boost, my computer doesn’t visibly run any faster than it did before.