Does anybody have an idea when this sort of spec will become available Haswell Quad HDMI 2.0 graphics card 4K 24 or 27" monitor Falcon ridge Thunderbolt WiFi ac standard Mini ITX form factor I don't want to buy a computer that will quickly become obsolete; I expect them to last 3-5 years. Are we talking about 2013 or 2014 ? My old Q6600 is now feeling a little long in the tooth ! (just dreaming !) TIA Deag
Haswell is 2013, so that bit is easy. Thunderbolt is also part of ASUS and Gigabyte's lineups, but only very specific boards, but again, it's there if you want it. 4K in a 24/27" monitor isn't going to happen for several years, and when it does, they'll be expensive. So probably late 2014 if not 2015 for introduction and the high price (think £1,000+). HDMI 2.0 will probably arrive late this year and in to 2014, but only on monitors that really need it. 802.11ac should trickle through this year, but mass-deployment in to 2014. All of that in a mini-ITX form factor? Look to 2014 for most of it (CPU, possibly HDMI 2.0 on the GPU, 802.11ac adapters and maybe Thunderbolt), but later for the 4K.
Shame about thunderbolt... it seems to be going the way of firewire. Just can't get reasonably priced peripherals and so the promise is under-delivered.... Looks like the monitor is the long lead time item. Cheers
Thunderbolt will happen, eventually, but I doubt it will reach the prevalence of USB for example. It's a fantastic technology, and with the controller chips getting smaller and cheaper the problems with it are fading (beyond the cost of an Intel licence). It'll remain relatively niche (think Macs, external RAID boxes etc), but certainly more than is happening right now. It's not helped by an almost constant evolution of standards.