The i7-8700 is heckin' fast, but if you look at it over time, the rate of improvement has slowed down quite a bit. The 4770 is six years old. The Core 2 Duo E6600 is its price-comparable equivalent from six years before that. An E6600 has a PassMark score of 1553. An i7-4770 has a PassMark score of 9780. An i7-8700 has a score of 15155.
And we shouldn't miss that that's way faster! But the slope of that curve is a lot shallower than it has been historically, and a 2x improvement probably doesn't move the needle in the way that a 6x improvement does.
We're spoiled, in that we can say such an improvement no longer moves the needle. But it also means that hardware stays viable for much, much longer.
And we shouldn't miss that that's way faster! But the slope of that curve is a lot shallower than it has been historically, and a 2x improvement probably doesn't move the needle in the way that a 6x improvement does.
We're spoiled, in that we can say such an improvement no longer moves the needle. But it also means that hardware stays viable for much, much longer.