Next-Gen Gaming PC?

1920x1080 monitor

Why restrict your speculation to decade-old technology, especially when there's already a host of gaming machines (iPads, iPhones, etc) with better than 96 dpi tech?

At least 3840x2160 if you need to reproduce the native resolution of WWII-era entertainment tech, maybe in a nice 32" form factor. For your first monitor. The second and third can be the same.

In your opinion, is this what you think an average mid-high end gaming PC will be like in, say, 2015?

Intel Ivy Bridge processor

This is pessimistic.

32gb RAM[/quote]

This is pessimistic.

x2 Nvidia GeForce GTX 880[/quote]

This is very pessimistic. (Wait, are you just assuming they'll keep using the naming convention they have been? Because I guess that's also optimistic)

Blu-Ray Drive (with games that come on Blu-Ray, if discs are still around, but I don't think retailers will let them phase out)[/quote]

This is optimistic. (Although only because I think optical drives will be even more rare on computers at that point)

1920x1080 monitor[/quote]

This is absurdly pessimistic.

some odd input device in addition to the mouse/keyboard[/quote]

This is optimistic.

1gb/s internet[/quote]

This is probably optimistic.

When is DDR4 coming by the way? Would add a nice boost to performance...

Frankly for game PLAYING above 8gig isn't going to be all that useful; there is after all a limit to the amount of memory you can touch in a frame.

CPU wise; Haswell is coming soon so Ivy Bridge already has its replacement.

Powerwise; power consumption is going down/staying level rather than climbing

GPU wise; SLI/Crossfire is not 'average' so forget that.

Optical media is already on the way out.

That's what I thought. 1000w PSUs for reasonable high end PCs? That's a disaster.

No single PC with one CPU and two GPUs should require 1Kw to function, that said, there are times in CPU/GPU development history when some architectures dont scale well enough and for the required increase in performance, a heavy hit to power consumption is made. ie, Pentium 4s, Bulldozers arent that good either, nVidia FX5xxx series, nVidia went along the high power consumption wagon for a long time with GF8xxx series, GTX2xxx series, first fermi chips, and AMD had their fair share of power beasts before the HD4xxx series came along, and today HD7xxx series does fairly worse than nVidias GTX6xx in power consumption.

You can buy a GTX680 that has twice the performance of my GTX560, yet its consumption is roughly the same. Sandy bridge and Ivy bridge CPUs are very, very power efficient given their performance, and Intel plans to make Haswell scale up in power consumption from mobile segments to high end server stuff.

1Kw as a "common thing" it'd be very bad imo.

Frankly for game PLAYING above 8gig isn't going to be all that useful; there is after all a limit to the amount of memory you can touch in a frame.

Isn't it less a question of needing everything in a single frame and more a question of not knowing what you'll need in the next frame? Being able to have larger chunks of game stay in memory for longer seems like a useful thing to me. Besides, increasing the amount of RAM over time is generally comparatively cost effective, so frankly I'd be disappointed if people didn't find some way to make it "useful."

2015 hmm.. three years away that's two periods of 18 months according to Moores law assuming the current top of the line has a 6 core i7 and 16 gb of ram it would be more like this: 24 core processor, 64gb of ram, 8 tb hard drive, 1 tb ssd. So you were right on with the HDD and SSD but try doubling your ram again. As for 64 cores I think the doubling of transistors will go into something more important like a new instruction set similar to SSE.

In Australia, the National Broadband Network (optic fibre) is rolling out now that will provide fibre plans based on 12/1 Mbps or 25/5 Mbps and there are high-range plans giving at least up to 100/40 Mbps. And it isn't expected to be complete before 2015. So I think 1Gbps is way too high. These things take many years to develop and deploy. And you'll find that internet speeds will be staggered over time and across nations rather than gradually improving. Note that I currently have 8.5 Mbps (Our national average is 4.9 Mbps). I think Korea currently has an average connection speed of about 17 Mbps, making them #1 in the world.

I think Korea currently has an average connection speed of about 17 Mbps, making them #1 in the world.

But Korea is so small, so that really isn't a fair comparison.

[quote name='Gavin Williams' timestamp='1353215744' post='5001963']I think Korea currently has an average connection speed of about 17 Mbps, making them #1 in the world.

But Korea is so small, so that really isn't a fair comparison.
[/quote]

Eh? Korea (assuming you mean South), is the 25th largest country in the world by population and about about the median value in terms of area. It's not China, but I wouldn't call it "so small".

As for the OP, I think some of those are reasonable.
According to the Steam Hardware Survey

• 1080p is already the most common resolution. I expect it will remain so for a while with 1440p IPS panels starting to become prevalent in the high end. I know I'm looking at one of these bad boys in the near future.
  
• There's a roughly even split between 2 and 4 core CPUs. Over the next few years, I'd expect to see that become a 3 way split between quad (~20%) hexa (another 20%) and 8 core [size=1]er, octo core? (40%).
  
• RAM is cheap. Again we see a split here between 3,4 and 8 gbs. By 2015, I would expect 8 to be the minimum and 16 or 32 to be the average. Simply because it's a cheap easy upgrade.
  

1gb/s internet

This is probably optimistic.
[/quote]

Depends on where you live i think, 1Gbps connections are allready available where i live. at around 50-80 euros / month.
There just isn't a great need for it yet, (100Mbps is enough for pretty much everything a normal user does). but yeah, 1000Gbps will not be "average" anytime soon.

1080p is already the most common resolution. I expect it will remain so for a while with 1440p IPS panels starting to become prevalent in the high end. I know I'm looking at one of these bad boysin the near future.
[/quote]

yeah 1080p will remain dominant for atleast a few more years, they are optimal for HD video and are being mass produced which pushes prices down on them so if we're just looking at the average mid-high end gaming PC then it is likely to use a 1080p monitor in 2-3 years as well, the next good step for the average consumer(Who most likely will still want to watch 1080p vidoes at high quality then) would be 3840x2160 (Those monitors should be available at the high end by then but are unlikely to drop enough in price to really become common)

[quote name='MrJoshL' timestamp='1353250401' post='5002048']
[quote name='Gavin Williams' timestamp='1353215744' post='5001963']I think Korea currently has an average connection speed of about 17 Mbps, making them #1 in the world.

But Korea is so small, so that really isn't a fair comparison.
[/quote]

Eh? Korea (assuming you mean South), is the 25th largest country in the world by population and about about the median value in terms of area. It's not China, but I wouldn't call it "so small".
[/quote]

I think the point was rather that they have a high population density. It's one of the biggest hurdles for US infrastructure development. We're so damn spread out

My take:

Intel Broadwell processor (see Intel's roadmap)
64gb RAM (32gb is already seen today)
NVidia GeForce 900 Series (or whatever 3 generations after now will be named)
1TB SSDs, plus some old "moving" HDDs and external storage boxes for all those movies and stuff
PSU: Let's hope it doesn't require to be bigger than todays PSU's
No optical drive (I have one in my half year old PC and I honestly think I never even pushed its "open tray" button)
"Retina" monitor: it'll be normal then!
Same internet speed as today - it's not like they're gonna magically change the wires in the street here

In your opinion, is this what you think an average mid-high end gaming PC will be like in, say, 2015?

Intel Ivy Bridge processor
32gb RAM
x2 Nvidia GeForce GTX 880
8tb HDD
1tb SSD
1000W PSU
Blu-Ray Drive (with games that come on Blu-Ray, if discs are still around, but I don't think retailers will let them phase out)
1920x1080 monitor
some odd input device in addition to the mouse/keyboard
1gb/s internet

I was just curious, and I think that this is a pretty good prediction. What about you?

[quote name='ChaosEngine' timestamp='1353273443' post='5002104']
[quote name='MrJoshL' timestamp='1353250401' post='5002048']
[quote name='Gavin Williams' timestamp='1353215744' post='5001963']I think Korea currently has an average connection speed of about 17 Mbps, making them #1 in the world.

But Korea is so small, so that really isn't a fair comparison.
[/quote]

Eh? Korea (assuming you mean South), is the 25th largest country in the world by population and about about the median value in terms of area. It's not China, but I wouldn't call it "so small".
[/quote]

I think the point was rather that they have a high population density. It's one of the biggest hurdles for US infrastructure development. We're so damn spread out
[/quote]
That line of reasoning doesn't work out. If it was true you'd expect all cities to have an average of 20 mbps or something. That isn't the case though.

In 3 years time, a lot of people will have the same PC they have right now, so don't get too optimistic.

This is the build I'm looking to converge towards throughout the next two-three years:

Ivy Bridge i7 (or better family)
HD 7970 (or equivalent GTX) + HD6950
2-4TB hard drive
200GB SSD
1000W PSU
16-32GB memory
5760x1080 (triple 1080p)
[/quote]


My current build:

Sandy Bridge i5
HD 6950
1TB hard drive
120GB SSD
750W PSU
12GB memory
1920x1080
[/quote]



can play essentially any game I throw at it on maximum settings, even the most recent ones, so I'll probably only update the graphics card in a year's time (and even then, I will keep the old one if it's still working and use it as a secondary card for GPGPU - I mean, if there's enough room in my case ) I've already saved up for the extra terabyte and second monitor for christmas. As for the internet, it is what it is over here - can't change that.


All that to say, I don't find games are really pushing the limits of hardware right now. Even an 6-year-old PC with its old 8800GT can comfortably play most recent releases on at least medium quality, so I don't feel the need to upgrade that much. But I feel game developers are neglecting the "gameplay" aspect of games, which makes technological advances rather moot (apart from the "wow, that looks lifelike" first impressions).

That's what I thought. 1000w PSUs for reasonable high end PCs? That's a disaster.[/quote]
Components only draw what they need from the PSU, and you want to be on the "too much" side than the "not enough" one. Though obviously getting a 3kW PSU is overkill, but even good-quality PSU's typically cannot sustain the advertised power, so you want to keep a bit of leeway. My build is only using 65% of my PSU's total capacity, but I'd rather that than cheapening out on the PSU and using 95% of its capacity, where plugging in my external hard drive would risk overloading everything.

yeah 1080p will remain dominant for atleast a few more years, they are optimal for HD video and are being mass produced which pushes prices down on them so if we're just looking at the average mid-high end gaming PC then it is likely to use a 1080p monitor in 2-3 years as well, the next good step for the average consumer(Who most likely will still want to watch 1080p vidoes at high quality then) would be 3840x2160 (Those monitors should be available at the high end by then but are unlikely to drop enough in price to really become common)

I'm very doubtful. People watch 1280x720 content on 1920x1080 monitors without being upset about the non-factor-of-2 scaling (in fact it's a factor of 1.5; the same ratio of 1920x1200 to the current "retina" macbook displays which are 2880x1800). I have no reason to believe that 2880x1800 or even 4k isn't going to be a very popular resolution in the next couple of years. Even if this somehow doesn't happen, I still think people will probably shift toward 1920x1200 as opposed to 1920x1080. For watching movies the vertical resolution is wasted, but for just about everything else it's very nice to have.

Frankly I'd be amazed if 1920x1080 lasted another three years as the dominant computer screen resolution. Computer resolutions almost invariably lead TV resolutions and people are already getting excited about 4k TVs.

128GB RAM at least.

Either that, or something that revolutionizes technology that we no longer own PCs.

In 3 years time, a lot of people will have the same PC they have right now, so don't get too optimistic.

This, or an iPad.
I'm more concerned about PC becoming less and less common than what silly specs it will have. Who needs 32GiB for a game? Few present games truly need something bigger than a single mid-class graphics card and few use the major part of memory on present day machines.
Few people really have a need for running Skyrim with maximum settings on dual WQUXGA stereo displays at 600fps. For something kind of "reasonable", a present-time $150 graphics card, a 2-3 year old CPU, and 4-8GiB of RAM work just fine.

1000W PSU[/quote]This is what the 17 year old experts in specialized builder shops are trying to sell to you right now, if you have them build a PC having a CPU with a TDP of 77W, a graphics card with a TDP of 110W, and a SSD with a TDP of 2W.
Obviously typical mainboards consume upwards of 700W, because hey, the experts tell you that you need this. Or that's what you need for charging your mobile on USB...