Marshall Brain's Blog

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Prepare to Upgrade!

It would appear that, about a year from now, it will be time to upgrade in a big way. Some of the things coming down the pipe and converging in 2005 include:

• 64-bit chips for the masses - About a year from now, inexpensive 64-bit chips and motherboards should be commonplace. AMD and Intel will be fighting for dominance. The performance boost should be impressive. The last time we had a major change like this, it was when we moved from the 16-bit 8088 and 80286 chips of the old IBM PC and AT to the 32-bit Pentium.
  
  
• 64-bit Windows XP - Windows XP will be available in a 64-bit version in late 2004 or early 2005, opening the doors for software that can really take advantage of the 64-bit platform..
  
  
• High speed RAM - RAM will see a major (factor of 5 to 10) speed boost in 2005. For example, Toshiba plans to ship XDR memory running at 3.2GHz in about a year. Attach 2 gigabytes of it to a 64-bit processor and that should be an impressive gaming and video editing platform.
  
  
• New DVD format - The new DVD format will be appearing, able to put 20GB or so on a single disk. See also this.
  
  
• Terabyte hard drives - 2005 will probably be the year of the terabyte hard drive. Running on the high-speed buses of the new 64-bit motherboards, performance should be improved as well.
  

Having all of this happen at about the same time should make the "standard desktop machine" of 2005 quite impressive.