> > People who like to play 3d arcade games from the 2000's emulated in MAME still find
> > x86 performance relevant, but even for them, it's only a handful of games that
> don't
> > already play at 100%.
>
> Not quite. Pure performance still matters for a lot of "workstation" type stuff,
> including programming, scientific work and 3D content creation.
I would expect the sum total of all programmers, scientists, and 3d content creators for whom PC performance is not adequate 99% of the time is less than 1 per 1000 PC users, which puts that squarely in the remaining 0.1% that I mentioned before.
I can't speak for scientists and content creators but as a programmer, PCs have already reached that point for me. MAME is one of the most demanding things I compile, and it takes 2.5 minutes on my now aging (1.5 years old) computer and I don't need to do it that often so I don't mind so much. Even at work, where compilation speed was a productivity problem for years, this issue has been reduced considerably to the point where for the first time in 10 years, I am not desperately wishing I had a newer workstation.
> And I think next year you'll start seeing new PC games that no longer support XP and
> hit CPUs a lot harder as a result (because machines with Vista or 7 on them are
> essentially guaranteed to be at least 2007 spec).
The PC gaming market is shrinking and will continue to do so, and I think that gamers who play games with such high performance demands will also be in that 0.1% if not there already.
It's pretty clear that PC performance improvements are slowing, I remember the time when every 6 months performance was noticeably better than 6 months prior, this just isn't true anymore. I see so few video card reviews any more and I suspect it's because the number of new video card releases has slowed also. The whole thing is slowing down as we asymptotically reach "good enough for 99.9% of people 99.9% of the time", and we're pretty close to there now.
Of course, this probably just means that the world of software is ripe for some new ultra-demanding technology to come along and shake things up.
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