Why is the tech slowing down?

Graphene has to be the next big step in technology. As soon as it becomes cheap enough to mass produce the quicker we will have new tech.
Plus consoles are really holding us back in form of technology as they aren't state of the art when released and don't change for three-five years so games companies become lazy.

How long until amd/ Intel, nvidia or at I start investing in ge developers to produce games that require new technology to run them?
 
Consoles do promote novel programming though to get the very most out of hardware. GTAV on PS3/360 was an amazing achievement for such modest hardware.

Leaps in tethnology aren't just about throwing more transistors and clock speed at a problem.
 
I don't think it is slowing down.
You just generally don't notice how fast technology moves until you look back and see how much it has changed.

As to gfx cards specifically, games requires hundreds of millions of CGI to make them look good. Cards can handle it, but the budget isn't there. As computers get faster the cost to utilise it will only get more expensive.
Just think how much it costs in artists to make realistic scenes, let alone for a game that can last 20+hrs, or MMOs that would requires something like the size of the moon being rendered down to the smallest detail.
 
I was talking about this with a friend the other day, although more generally rather than PC specific.

We were saying nothing is really slowing down, there's just nothing revolutionary coming along any time soon. I don't think we'll get more game changers like mobile phones and the Internet for quite some time, for example. Doesn't mean technology is not progressing though.
 
Things are slowing down though. CPUs have barely improved since Ivybridge, mainly because of the physical limitations of silicon and die shrinks taking longer and longer.
 
I don't need to upgrade because there's this thing I heard about called overclocking which makes the same pc go much faster.

Never need to upgrade now :)
 
I suppose we are seeing a massive increase in generation efficiency of our tech. Gone are the days of needing a heat exchanger the size of a fridge.
 
Minstadave said:
Things are slowing down though. CPUs have barely improved since Sandybridge,
Click to expand...

Fixed ;)

Yeh, the CPU world had been a bit boring for years now. I wont be upgrading from my i7 3770k until we get something that gives a genuine leap in terms of performance.
 
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It's mainly to do with the cost of making a game and lack of any new game engine features i.e any new lighting techniques, sound quality etc...

For a AAA game you need to employ many artists, sound engineers, programmers, writers, mappers, level designers, QA staff and many more people, GTA V had over 1000 people working on it.

With all the available game engines, the markets have become saturated . It's about balancing the books, no point in striving for the next graphical masterpeice if it can't make a profit so sacrifices are made. 5 - 10 years ago this could be done as games were more guaranteed to make a profit, nowadays there is much more competition(especially in the mobile markets), cheap game engines and modeling tools.
 
I know what the OP means, and tbh, were I to upgrade tomorrow, I'd probably have something similar to what he's currently running, given my ancient heap copes just fine with all that I do and play, including BF4....
 
I thought it was all about market. The 360 and PS3 had been around for 10 years. So there was no real need to push on gaming tech as the hardware was so outdated. But now with the new consoles, we will likely see a push again as developers start building new engines.
 
Massive improvements in efficiency. Battery life is king nowadays, so that's where all the CPU research is going, rather than raw power.
 
I'm not sure it is slowing down, it's just that progress is being made in different areas now.

Not many people need massively powerful PCs, but if you look at the progress made in mobile computing over the last 5 years it's huge.
Intel is trying to compete with ARM chips now, so the focus is more on improving efficiency rather that outright speed.
 
im kinda glad its slowed down, my i7 920 @ 3.6 along side a 7950 is rocking along quite nicely,
my next upgrade will more likely be because something broke, rather than needing more grunt.
 
As has already been said, the tech isn't slowing down it just seems to be advancing in other areas. PC's and laptops have pretty much all the hardware grunt they need except in a few extreme circumstances. Phones and ultra-mobile computing, however, have advanced significantly in the last 10 years. A plot of compute power (CPU/GPU) in leading mobile phones over the past 10 years will be very interesting to see. The graphics that an iPhone/S4 can achieve right now are phenomenal considering the power and thermal budget of the chips being used.
 
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