Hardware Hardware we'd have killed for 10 years ago

We've never had it so good...

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/04/20/hardware-we-d-have-killed-for/1

 

im suprised multi-core CPU's didn't get in there. still, good article, an enjoyable read

edit: oh, and motherboard overclocking too, for how much easier its become for the average joe to be able to overclock rather than a dark art like it used to be

 

USB BIOS Flashing? You don't even need to turn a board on to flash the BIOS in 2012!

Totally agree about watercooling and SATA though - it makes so much difference!

Needs more multi-core though

What about fresh case layouts? Also what have we lost in the past 10 years - reasonably priced Aluminium, as it's now 3x the price of steel

 

we've lost the small heatsinks. although processors are becoming more and more powerful, the heat density has been increasing exponentially.

also love how we no longer need to fill all RAM slots. remember the old days where unfilled RAM slots require filler sticks.

 

I'd have happily taken a modern gfx card back then, although would have needed a lot of related hardware just to run it. Basically a whole PC from 10 years into the future then!!

 

10 years ago? MONITORS! What we look at everyday makes the biggest difference, and my eyes are so much better of for using LCD screens (and an LED on order). And the increase in screen resolution - now I can comfortably use multiple apps at the same time because I have 2 x 1080p screens at work...

 

TFT monitors! 10 years ago, most of us were still rocking CRTs.

[edit] ninja'd

 

Watercooling compression fittings are the work of the devil and I hate them with a burning, unbridled passion.

 

Sorry my friend but resolution has gone DOWN not up. To think of the great resolutions that we used to have on CRT's and the crap that is 1080 now, its like shooting your self in the foot. 2600xXXXX was normal back then.

 

modular power supplies anyone?

 

oh god yes!

 

Nice article..... although I struggle to pinpoint that period in time to present anything relevant beyond whats already beed said.

We cant get too hung up on monitor resolutions - the reality was that (for regular people) screens were too small (21" max) the footprint too big and 3d grunt of a 16mb 3dfx banshee could not manage resolutions beyond 1280x1024.... I think it's fair to say that we now have mainstream monitor resolutions that can be matched (or exceeded) by the GPU and it would of been great to have that back then.

 

Maybe, but extreme resolutions didn't seem as useful back then as they do now. In those days, screen sizes weren't so big and UIs tended not to scale well with higher resolutions, so you ended up with tiny unclickable icons and unreadable text. As for games, textures never matched such high screen resolutions and for 3D games there wasn't a graphics card on the planet that could keep up.

Today, extreme resolutions make so much more sense when they are stretched across fabulous 27" or 30" screens, with UIs that can maintain icon and text size independently of the resolution.

 

120mm fans! Everything used to come with 80mm fan mounts and fans that used to whine like a ghoul!

Now we live in 120mm silence.....ahhh.

 

Optical/Laser mice! Ball mice were awful.

 

oh and this! I remember I bought an issue of PC Gamer in about 1995 that came with a mouse cleaner attachment, it was a ball on the end of a stick with golf ball like indentation!

Oh how far we've come.

 

USB 2.0 / 3.0...
Onboard NIC's
gpu/cpu in one chip
and affordable 100/100

 

Why?

I think they're brilliant, and a far sight better looking than the old jubilee clips.

 

And those ugly bland cases... We really got an (r)evolution

 

Not just the multi-core processor, but the ridiculous overclocking potential of these modern chips. Who'd've thought in 2002 that we'd have four or eight-core processors that would hit 5ghz on even air cooling in some circumstances?