The 3950x will likely maintain its position in 2030, continuing to serve its intended functions effectively.
The 3950x will likely maintain its position in 2030, continuing to serve its intended functions effectively.
The question remains whether Moore's Law continues to hold true.
10 years old X58 LGA1366 6/12t CPUs are still decent for everyday tasks. When boosted, they feel a lot like a Ryzen 5 1600. It's tough to predict how much they'll change in the next decade. Between 2010 and 2017, most CPUs were still 4 cores/4 threads or 4 cores/8 threads (except special high-end models).
I notice a sense of anticipation regarding CPU advancements. It seems progress has slowed around 2011-2016, whereas I’m hoping for a more rapid improvement from about 1990 to 2000. Among the highlights are a couple of local magazine advertisements—one from December 1990 and another from March 2001. The one from 2000 is from January, while the December 1990 issue is my oldest copy from that series. I previously owned some models dating back to 1987, but they appear to be missing now.
I’m currently using an i7-4790K, which I bought for around $330 in January 2015. It took me roughly four days to convert a four-minute video into H.265 4K using Handbrake during one test. My goal is to see meaningful upgrades in just five years at most. If a chip like the Celeron G9920Y or Athlon 9000GY doesn’t completely surpass high-end options such as 8 Xeon Platinum 8380s or Epyc 7743s, I’d be quite disappointed.
I’m also considering upgrading to a Ryzen (or potentially Threadripper or Epyc) when DDR5 and the next socket release arrive, possibly around Black Friday. My aim is to have my next CPU perform at least as efficiently as encoding audio to 320kbps MP3 on my 4790K—something that took about two minutes for a two-hour audio file using maximum settings.
In the meantime, I’d like to avoid having multiple generations overlap within the same family. For instance, a mobile version of the Rocket, Tiger Lake, or 11,000-series i7 should outperform a comparable desktop model from the same generation, offering better performance and more features.
I was born in 1990 and the years 1990 to 2000 felt wild, then 2000 to 2010 were decent, but 2010 to 2020 seemed pretty dull compared to Quake 3 from 1999. Those times are behind me—I hope VR is finally improving but GPUs are still too slow for smooth 120fps in VR, especially at 120Hz like on Index Valve.