Apple Expects Users To Replace Their iPhone, Apple Watch After Three Years 175
Apple says it expects its users to replace their iPhone and Apple Watch after (more like, every) three years. The company adds that it expects a Mac user to replace their computer after four years. The iPhone maker shared the expectations in a recently released document as part of its latest environmental push. In the document, Apple underscores how much its products contribute to the greenhouse gas lifecycle. The Guardian reports: Within a new question and answer section Apple said: "Years of use, which are based on first owners, are assumed to be four years for OS X and tvOS devices and three years for iOS and watchOS devices." That assessment doesn't take into account the recycling of devices, their reconditioning and their resale, of course, but when you buy a new iPhone 6S for $649 (starting price, off-contract), Apple expects it to last three years, something many suspected. Apple has been accused of intentionally slowing down iPhones every time a new one is released, although there is little evidence to support the theory.Also see: Apple's Recycling Initiatives Recover $40 Million In Gold
Makes sense (Score:1)
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
Unless it breaks, I see no reason to replace my phone.
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Why?
Because you can replace it with something faster, lighter, with more memory, a better battery, and greater screen resolution. People often use their phones for hours everyday, and for many people their phone is their main computing device. It is silly to use something inferior if you can easily afford to upgrade. Eventually, phone technology will plateau, but the difference between a phone from 2013 and today is still significant.
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Just because one 'can afford to upgrade' does not mean that one should upgrade to the latest and shiniest.
If you have a reason to upgrade do it, but just saying 'shit gets better buy a new one cheap ass' is not an argument.
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Why?
Because you can replace it with something faster, lighter, with more memory, a better battery, and greater screen resolution. People often use their phones for hours everyday, and for many people their phone is their main computing device. It is silly to use something inferior if you can easily afford to upgrade. Eventually, phone technology will plateau, but the difference between a phone from 2013 and today is still significant.
Lighter with better battery? That hasn't been happening for some time now, those damn "phones" just keep getting bigger and more power hungry. Why don't we just start calling them PDAs with a phone module as that is what they really are now.
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A Galaxy S4 released in April 2013 with a quad core CPU, 2GB RAM and a 1080 screen is still a perfectly capable device, even if you say the latest flagship has a nicer screen and double the RAM.
Power users will always fuel upgrades but I think we're already in the era where 3 year old technology is *adequate*. Yes a new phone will naturally perform better but for many users, replacements
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Why?, My 5 yr old andriod phone is still functional with better than avergae voice quality, (replaced the battery naturally.)..
It assumed the duties of handling my old home phone #(~25 years).. I.E. Tracfone's BYOD program, they have plans for Iphones (as low as ~8$/mo).
For addiotional future proofing, I use a bluetooth gateway(Xlink BTTN) to coonect all my cell phones, (while they're at hone recharging), to my home's cordless phones. Reusing my still functioning higher end cell phones sure beats bein
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
My thoughts, exactly. I don't care if there's newer-and-better-and-faster out there. My 6-yo iPhone on the same iOS it came with are more than enough for my mobile computing and communication needs.
'Why spend more energy to replace what I don't need to' is my argument for not upgrading. This applies to myriad items, such as cars, clothes, etc.
MY advice: spend your extra money on excellent-quality food.
Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
Unless it breaks, I see no reason to replace my phone.
I read this data driven: people DO this, not they want people to do this. They WANT people to buy a new one every year. So, for one reason or another people choose to replace their smart phone within 3 years. This seems right to me, by the 2nd year most of my smartphones have either been obsolete by OS (orig Moto Droid) or the battery life has decayed into impossibility (My Samsung Galaxy Something, or my wife's LG Google Nexus). My iPhone is going strong after 2 years, but I will probably replace it when iPhone++ comes out because I suspect there will be enough new features to justify, and the GPU is getting dated.
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It's technological obsolescence. After about 3 years, any computer, tablet or phone will be outclassed by some manufacturer's newest model. And I have heard the "they're intentionally slowing the old ones down with OS updates" argument used against every manufacturer in the market.
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Newer is not better.
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Exactly. I have a 7 year old Mac, and it still works great. Apple has done nothing to force me to buy a new one. I'm sure they would like it if I did, but they're continuing to support it with OS upgrades and the like. Contrast that with my 3 year old Android phone that already has been abandoned for OS upgrades.
It's probably true that on average, their customers buy a new computer every four years and a new phone every three. But that's usually because they want the newest technology, not because thei
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My 2006 MBP still works just fine from a hardware perspective - I replaced the HDD when I got it in 2010 with a hybrid drive (Seagate XT) and replaced the battery once. Unfortunately, it's usefulness is limited by what the hardware can do - 2GB of RAM gets eaten up pretty fast, and the video card (ATI Radeon X1600) cannot handle modern codecs, so modern video is out of the question. And the Intel Core Duo CPU feels pretty slow compared to its successors too I suppose, but there are still quite a lot of th
Re:Makes sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Other people find reasons. They want a faster CPU, new OS features, a better camera, more storage, access to new LTE channels, a better screen, longer battery life, maybe even a new color. These are reasons to upgrade. You don't have to if you don't want to. Other people do want to. Ok?
Posts on this topic are very strange.
Do you (and the rest of the "no upgrades, yuck!" crowd) experience physical pain when other people get a new phone because they want new features? No? So ... what's the problem?
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I wish I could go back to my old Nokia. The sound quality was better than any new phone, and the battery could last more than a week before recharging. It only died because they changed the protocols. New phones don't have any useful features beyond what a feature phone or tablet could have, and the features I do want have been degraded and don't work as well.
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My iPhone 4 is not broken, but aging, so I replaced it with an iPhone SE now (no way I was going to get a 6, I don't live in the Bronx, I don't have baggy pants). Touch ID was a main thing I wanted, and a better camera.
Sometimes, upgrading is a reason for replacement, the same way you sometimes get a new car even though your old one still works - better safety, more efficient fuel consumption, etc.
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Why?
Unless it breaks, I see no reason to replace my phone.
Planned obsolescence, non replaceable batteries die in the 4th year. Give me me back a device with an easily replaceable battery. With that model, I could get 10 years or more from suca a device
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To be fair, the OS argument doesn't apply to iOS devices - Apple actually provides OS updates for a few years after the device stops being rolled.
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So it makes sense to get a new phone every three years because they forcibly slow down your old one despite the fact that it always worked just fine.
Makes sense.
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Not intentionally slow down as a design though, it is rather feature creep and lack of control over impulse app installs. I use an iPhone 4S, have for the past two years (first smart phone) with minimal apps, and in fact one of the most recent iOS updates added a great feature that doubled my functional battery life (low power mode). I got through a college environment fine with that, but now starting graduate school and full-time work my battery demands (16+ hours) are beyond what the 4S can support withou
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This is exactly the problem. I still use a first gen iPad and have had 2 iPhones over the course of the last 5 years as well. They don't "slow down" when using the Apple apps and other well-designed apps although some of the apps (especially games) simply "update" their games by putting in things like bigger textures without (the well documented feature) gracefully downgrading textures for older devices causing the older devices to slow down while playing the 'same' game. Same goes for online stuff, the web
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Cpu, gpu, ram do you not realize how much smartphone processors have changed in the last 5 years?
Now I change my iPhone about every 3.5 years. I do that because the battery wears down, the screen starts losing pixels, I probably deopped it a couple of dozens times etc.
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Re:Makes sense (Score:5, Insightful)
CPU,GPU,OS, ??? That is not an answer to the question. Sure these things change over time, sometimes improving. Phone features also go backwards from time to time. No removable storage, No replaceable battery. These are part of a trend to planned obsolescence that manufacturers use to force consumers to buy new phones and recycle or discard the old one. Truly a tragedy given the nature of scarce non renewable resources like rare earths from third world countries with broken governments.
But fundamentally this misses the point. As long as a phone, computer or other device continues to serve the need that it was intended to serve I see no need in replacing it.
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As long as a phone, computer or other device continues to serve the need that it was intended to serve I see no need in replacing it.
Most of the time it's not needs being served, but desires. As such, if a newer device does that better, then it's more desirable. We find new things to do with our devices over time, and new devices are better for doing some of those things.
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While computing power in PCs have sort of hit a peak, the mobile CPU are still advancing. There still is some optimization to be done with power/power consumption.
Yes, and most of them have a lot to do with the shitty software ecosystem we have to work with. Replacing it is unlikely to require you to throw away your phone.
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**If not for cell tower incompatibility I'd still be using it; a phone is a phone. My newer phone works fine all around and has an IPS LCD screen that looks great from most angles, but I miss the true blacks and absolute viewing angle of my AMOLED -- which has a lower brightness setting and looks better in low-light than any of my LCD displays.
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This may have made sense in previous years, when there were a lot of new and innovative features being added each year, security was dramatically improving, and hardware speeds were climbing rapidly. That's no longer happening. Year to year, there's very little difference between phones except for modest, incremental improvements, and new styles and colors.
You see this happening *right now* with the PC. The market is "stagnating" (I say it's just stabilized) in part because there's absolutely no point to
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Not quite true. I bought a mid-line PC in 2012. I replaced it 2 weeks ago with a high end laptop. The PC had an i3, 8 GB ram, and 1 TB raid magnetic disks. The new one has an i7, 64GB ram, and a 1TB SSD. It is screaming fast. Loading games and apps takes under 10% of the time it did on the 4 year old PC.
Now the 4 year old was still usable. But it was by no means a good experience. Anyone who uses the PC for work will make up the cost of a desktop in productivity in a few months easily. Now if you j
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I guess I'd consider gaming or development work as "exceptionally demanding requirements", although given that the typical slashdot reader is likely a developer and/or gamer, I probably should have phrased that better. PC gaming in particular tends to demand cutting-edge hardware, so a four-year old machine probably won't be able to play today's cutting-edge titles. And developers are often running multiple VMs, driving multiple monitors, compiling lots of code, and that means money spent on fast processo
Misleading headline (Score:5, Informative)
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apple is planning its sales, marketing, production, design, and even recycling, based on replacement of majority of iphones every three years. some of these things require investing money and time well in advance. given all that, there is no much difference between "assuming" and "expecting", since in this case thought and opinion is and necessarily needs to be backed by action.
it also means they would be in trouble if their assumptions/expectations backed with action/money are wrong.
Re:Misleading headline (Score:5, Informative)
To model customer use, we measure the power consumed by a product while it is running in a simulated scenario. Daily usage patterns are specific to each product and are a mixture of actual and modeled customer use data. Years of use, which are based on first owners, are assumed to be four years for OS X and tvOS devices and three years for iOS and watchOS devices. More information on our product energy use is provided in our Product Environmental Reports.
Based on their best estimates, they think consumers replace every 3 years. Not "expects" but "assumes". It's like every lifetime estimation I've seen. Civil Engineers assume a 30year lifespan on roads, etc.
Very different things (Score:2)
How often Apple expects people to keep a device before eating a new one, and how long Apple expects devices to last, are very different things...
And the summary even hints at that by noting the refurbishment program.
I think it's absurd to claim Apple's simply analyzing how long people generally keep things means anything more than understanding the consumer.
Difference between want and need (Score:4, Insightful)
Marketing will tell you that you want to change the product. Technologically you probably do not need to change it every three years. The product will probably work for ten to twenty years before it fails (excluding batteries) and it will in many cases still function as it does now in ten to twenty years. Software is the limiting factor these days and the majority of walled garden products can and will be disabled by their marketing departments. If you think that this is a scam to screw more money out of the customer then you are right. There is a reason why Goldman Sachs refers to customers as "Mugs".
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The product will probably work for ten to twenty years before it fails
Given the state of a typical phone after 3 years people don't upgrade due to technology, they upgrade because their phones are otherwise a scratched, dented, damaged, covered in food, and have grime in the crevices.
And that's the careful ones who aren't holding their shattered screens together with tape or haven't attempted to flush their phones down the toilet, or had their father drop it in a jug of beer at the pub (thanks dad!).
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I think I enjoy how the smartphone trend went. There is standard casings everywhere, Standard screen films everywhere. The biggest issue is battery, as it always has been.
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Marketing will tell you that you want to change the product.
No. Marketing tells technical to make you have to change the product, then they tell you that you want to change the product.
Technologically you probably do not need to change it every three years. The product will probably work for ten to twenty years before it fails (excluding batteries)
Odds are it won't. These devices aren't built for longevity. They use fiddly little connectors internally that can corrode and fail. They use bonding technologies that will eventually fail and destroy inter-PCB connections, or even connections 'twixt package and die. They are built on delicate little processes and cosmic rays will eventually murder their RAM, which does not have erro
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Phones and tablets are rapidly improving, so like in the earlier days of PCs there is at least an excuse for why newer software runs badly on older devices. However, PCs reached a plateau years ago and Windows 10 runs well on nearly decade old hardware.
It will be interesting to see if phones plateau and then start to last longer, or if manufacturers keep screwing us.
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15-20 years like what? Who still uses their phones and computers that long especially with the softwares on them? Old CRT TVs, vehicles, etc. are understandable though since they can last that long.
Re: Difference between want and need (Score:2)
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Communication standards do not evolve that fast. My iPhone first gen still works like a charm - I used it a few weeks ago for a few days when I forgot my 4S in my parent's car. Sure it's Edge and an antiquated version of Wifi and bluetooth, but all of them still work like a charm. SMS, Calls, data, wifi and bluetooth all work just fine on a phone that's 9 years old.
little evidence to support the theory. (Score:5, Insightful)
Said someone who has never had two same model devices side by side with a full version number difference of 2 or greater.
Just try an ipad 2 on ios 6 then try it on ios 8 or 9.
That old unupdated ipad can run circles around the one that someone has been trying to keep up to date.
There is no question that the newer os's are slower on older hardware. Which makes it all the more of a pita they don't allow you to downgrade the os to versions that were actually designed to run on that hardware.
Re: little evidence to support the theory. (Score:2)
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Somehow I think that newer hardware will handle many newer versions just fine. If you have early hardware with say 1GHz CPU, 256MB RAM and slow flash then sure version n+2 will suck. If years later your hardware has a 2GHz CPU that's 3x faster than the old one, 2GB RAM and much faster flash, software version m+3 is more likely to run smooth.
So ipad 2 is fucked, but you can e.g. run Windows 10 on a 2006 PC, whereas you can't run Vista on a 1997 PC.
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Expects = slowing iOS on old devices to the point (Score:2)
Dear apple.... (Score:2)
I would LOVE to replace my 17" macbook pro..... BUT YOU FUCKERS dont make a 17" to replace it with. Some of us do need a portable workstation and NEED a 17" screen with more screen real estate as well as a quad i7 at 3+ghz 32gig of ram and over 1tb of storage space... so fucking give me a choice other than holding onto my 6 year old laptop.
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I would LOVE to replace my 17" macbook pro.....
Many people would _love_ to buy a 17" MacBook. The problem is that very few people actually did. When they stopped selling the 17" MacBook, "refurbished" ones were available for almost a year (in the UK, didn't check elsewhere) at very good prices, so they can't have sold well at all. (Whenever Apple starts selling a product, it will soon after appear as "refurbished". I very much suspect that many of those are brand new).
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Here is what I'm typing this on:
http://www.titancomputers.com/... [titancomputers.com]
I am not affiliated. I am a *very* happy customer. I bought one for my son and I liked it so much that I bought one for me. You can deck it out nicely. I went way overboard and even ended up buying the most expensive GPU with it too. Yeah, it was a bit pricey but it was worth it. I gotta tell you, it's like a portable supercomputer. It's also just the right size and getting a laptop with dual drives is getting hard these days.
I don't know exac
Re:Dear apple.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Your 17" MacBook Pro had a 1920x1200 screen. The current 15" MacBook Pro can be set to use that resolution.
I'll be impressed when you tell me how to set a 15" MacBook Pro to have a 17" screen.
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It Just Works (Score:2)
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Jobs was right, you WERE holding it wrong
Obsolescence as a business model (Score:3, Insightful)
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my macs typically get between 8-10 years of use. Much more than the 3-5 years of use I get from my PC's.
The decade old PC I'm writing this reply on disagrees with your PC lifecycle claim. Granted being a Mac owner you probably rely on pre-configured hardware. I build my PC's so I have finer control over hardware selection.
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Much more than the 3-5 years of use I get from my PC's.
I've always suspected that Microsoft does the same thing with Windows as Apple does with iOS, because I sometimes receive donated hardware that won't run Windows anymore, but run Kubuntu like a champ.
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Phone and tablet technology are advancing pretty fast still. This means that the year X iPhone is much less capable than the year X + 3 iPhone. If apps and the OS change to take advantage of the X + 3, the X is going to have trouble keeping up. At some point, phone performance is going to level off more, much like desktop performance has, and the X iPhone is going to run the X + 3 OS and apps just fine.
In the meantime, there is no requirement to update iOS. When my iPhone gets to be about two years o
Remember the three R's (Score:1)
Reduce - Reuse - Recycle
Reduce - Follow practices that reduce the number of new products that must be made in the first place.
Reuse - When possible, reuse old products to reduce the number of new products that must be made in the long term.
Recycle - When all else fails, recycle old products in order to reduce the effect of making new products.
There is a reason they are presented in this order, it is more environmentally friendly to *not* make something than to make something.
Unfortunately, both industry and
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My sister-in-law is using my wife's old iPhone 4. Reuse is possible.
Why would you need to replace the battery? The batteries still seem to be going strong on 3-year-old iPhones, and having to get something repaired every four years or whatever isn't normally a problem.
Seems off (Score:2)
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Well, then she does not spend much time using the smartphone features besides calls and messaging. The less than five year old iPhone 4S was truly painfully slow since iOS8. In fact, the 5+ year old iPhone 4, whose updates stopped at iOS7, is slightly more responsive than 4S. Still, both are pretty slow..
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I've used my iPhone 3GS for 6 years from 2009-2015. Only replaced it because I wanted 4G support and a better camera.
Sure it was a little slower than my current iPhone 6+, but it was still fast enough. I used it a lot during those years, and was really happy I got the 32GB model in 2009, as especially TomTom took a lot of my space (I travel a lot, I have Europe, US&Canada, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East offline maps on my phone.)
I still used my iPhone 3GS when I go to a festival or o
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When an iOS update comes along a couple of years or so after an iPhone was new, you don't have to upgrade. Check Google for a few reviews first.
Wrong summary (Score:2)
Apple doesn't expect it's users to replace devices every 3 years. The users do this. Apple merely provides the product release cycle and uses these figures as a basis of its environmental report.
12-year-old HW not ready to retire (Score:1)
I have to wonder how Apple viewed this turnover/replacement rate earlier in their lifetime as a company. My current G5 DP PowerMacs have been run HARD since they were new in 2004; they were made well, were *meant* to last, and they still perform like champs, considering their age.
The problem is that I'm brickwalled. My OS version, Pro-level apps (Adobe Suite, Logic, Final Cut, and browsers, plus ancillary apps & utilities) are all as updated as far as the hardware will possibly allow.
The HW is s
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Try TenFourFox.com
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Woohoo! MBP 3,1 here--2007. Definitely on its last leg though. Ist been dropped so many times that I have to hold the screen together with clamps. SSD and ram upgrades make it a totally viable computer, though.
3 years for a watch? (Score:2)
I routinely hold onto Macs 5 years. (Score:2)
Both personal and on campus. 3 years on Applecare, 2 years fingers crossed. I ditched the last two MacBooks only after they were about to go on the obsolete list, they still worked fine. Resold for about $300 each, so net $700 on a laptop over 5 years. Price premium? Not if you do it this way. The phones I do every two years with whichever one is free, to keep the coverage. The rebate on the old one helps pay for the Applecare.
7 years and counting (Score:1)
The new iMacs look the same, but "may" have better screens and processors. Mine screen and processor are good enough. I can pass on the new models.
What isn't good is Apple Software. It is seriously behind Windows 10 IMHO.
El Capitan introduced problems with USB and the SDHC card reader, problems only slightly improved with release 10.11.4.
It is not just the El Capitan update, OS X has lost its appeal. The only changes have been slight improvements, improvements that
My G4 is probably older than many Slashdotters (Score:1)
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Oh I loved my G4 - maxed out with OS X 10.4 (and I had Classic mode too! Plus at some point I had installed Ubuntu 10.04 on there, as a fourth (original install of 10.1 was saved on the original HDD) boot option), 1.5GB RAM, and mine sadly had its first real issue just two weeks ago - sounds like the PSU fan is quitting (it's rattling pretty bad when it runs). But for a 2001 model, that's a pretty nice run!
Calm down (Score:2)
iOS 9.3.1 still runs "OK-ish" on my iPhone 4S.
My 2008 iMac is still supported in OS X El Capitan. After reinstalling El Capitan (wiping the disk) it actually performs remarkably well.
It would benefit from an SSD, but for far the HD hasn't given in and I'm afraid ruining it, so I let it as it is ;-)
This is policy not expectation (Score:2)
>> Apple says it expects its users to replace their iPhone and Apple Watch after (more like, every) three years. ...and by not making the batteries user-replaceable they are ensuring you have to.
was thinking about this just yesterday.... (Score:2)
Mid-2012:
2.0ghz Intel Core i7
Intel HD Graphics 4000
8 GB DDR3 RAM
512 GB SSD
13.3" 1440 x 900 LED back-lit display
802.11n wireless
OS X 10.11.4
April 2016:
2.2ghz Intel Core i7
Intel HD Graphics 6000
8 GB DDR3 RAM
512 GB SSD
13.3" 1440 x 900 LED back-lit display
802.11ac wireless
OS X 10.11.4
The CPU is a newer generation so is marginally faster. Maybe 20%
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I had a similar view when I bought my current MBP (mid-2012, with the replaceable parts). When I was in Microcenter, for about $100 more I could have bought a 2014 model, but the CPU and GPU were only one generation newer, plus I would have lost the ability to replace/upgrade parts, so the only real gain would have been the retina display. Sure, it's very nice, and if my display ever breaks I may look into a while to wire in a retina display (wouldn't be the first laptop that we've re-wired the display con
Replace a watch in three years? (Score:2)
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I congratulate you on not being mugged for 34 years.
I expect Apple... (Score:2)
I expect Apple to use their collective lips to kiss unmentionable parts of my anatomy.
There, now we are even (considering how I've been figuratively and financially bent over every time I've bought an Apple product). My Mac Mini from 2008 is still chugging along after 8 years...I expect nothing less from my other technology. Guess my next phone/watch purchase will not be an Apple product.
Little Evidence? (Score:2, Interesting)
"Apple has been accused of intentionally slowing down iPhones every time a new one is released, although there is little evidence to support the theory."
Come over here. I've got an original untouched iPhone 4S (4.2.1,) and I have one with iOS8 and one with iOS9.
The untouched iPhone is light years faster than the ones with iOS8/9.
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I've got an original untouched iPhone 4S (4.2.1,) and I have one with iOS8 and one with iOS9.
I don't think you do.
Killing off the second hand market (Score:1)
Just because we can't prove they are sabotaging older equipment, doesn't mean they aren't. In this business, just like in politics, it is best to assume the worst to avoid any unpleasant surprises.
Obsolescence... (Score:2)
FYI They aren't the only ones... (Score:2)
I read in Consumer Reports that appliance makes are moving to a three year planned obsolescence model.
Isn't the future just shiny!?
Then why does it feel like they drop support at 2? (Score:2)
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my PC is 6+ years old (one of the original i7s) and short of a GPU and SSD upgrade it's running fine too when I used to do near 2 year updates on my PC motherboard.
I too used to do rapid updates of technology.
That being said, while it still doesn't make economic sense, consider that your old i7-920 consumes double the power of a modern chip while being half the speed.
You could get a slower i3-6100 and consume 1/3 the power while still being 50% faster.
Of course there is cost in doing that and it takes time for the power savings to add up, but they are there.
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The 920 slightly overclocked to the same range as a 950 ( so just over 3 Ghz ) is faster and more powerful than the i3 6100 from what I'm gathering, with all of the many advantages of being an i7. But power-wise it's certainly a pig compared to an i3.
The PC I moved to the front room has a 920 running at 4Ghz. I
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The 920 slightly overclocked
If you're overclocked, that changes things. Most people don't do that, I'm comparing stock clock to stock clock.
The i3-6100 can be overclocked as well, with the right ASRock motherboard and BIOS version, but I don't count that as reasonable.
http://www.cpu-world.com/Compa... [cpu-world.com]
The i3-6100 is 64% faster in single (and dual) threaded applications. Only applications that can properly use all 4 cores and all 8 threads of the i7-920 will show that gap close. But even in those cases the i3-6100 is still just as fa
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Quad core needs have already been a concern, with some games even not launching on dual cores. Fortunately the i3 is a 4-thread CPU, with huge gains next to the dual core dual thread version of the same. In most games it's about the best CPU.
The issue now is that a slow dual core is mostly good for everything, but games need a really fast CPU and preferably a recent version of Windows. A slow quad core will be barely usable.
Those who say it's only about the GPU are wrong. That's a bummer if you otherwise do
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Why in f***'s sake would I even consider replacing it at this point?
If you wanted to play games at 4k, you'd have to, but for 1080p, it will be ok for awhile.
The CPUs haven't changed much in the past 5 years, everything from Sandy Bridge to Skylake is just minor jumps. What Intel has pushed is power efficency, the modern chips use a lot less power than first-gen Core CPUs.
GPUs have still been going up, but at 1080p a 4 year old GPU is likely still fine.
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Try out that new Doom Beta on a four old GPU. Trust me, you'll want to upgrade.
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But it's a beta. Version 1.1 of the final game plus latest graphics driver will likely run well
Upgrading video really extends life ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Umm... You know, you can offload compute cycles and just use it as a dumb terminal, right?
*sighs*
Watching two ACs fight is like watching two retarded fat kids fight over the donut hole.
Re: (Score:3)
I really doubt you built it yourself. On the other hand, I do imagine you have the requisite skills to assemble a computer. Most anyone with opposable thumbs can put a computer together. Very few of us, including myself, have the ability to build a computer worth a damn. Well, I can make a pretty mean abacus.