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Comment by phainopepla2 | Hacker News Reader

That's not the experience of owning a PC I remember from the 90s at all.

"Within a year" is a bit of an exaggeration but it's true that the pace of PC tech during the 90s was much, much faster than it is now. CPU power was doubling every two years, and today we're at roughly eight years. Add onto that the rise of video cards in the late 90s.

It was both. 90% of people never needed nor purchased a bleeding-edge computer. The mid-tier was "good enough" and far closer to affordable for most people; though, that bar also moved upward every year.

If you bought a mid-tier computer that was good enough for what you needed, then you probably didn't shop/compare for the next few years and didn't notice. But if you shelled out $7-10k for a top-of-the-line system and paid attention to progress, you'd easily see that become the mid-tier $1000 option within two years or less. This is how it was in the 90's PC boom, at least. Likely the same for the decades before, not sure how it went in the 2000's.

if you shelled out $7-10k for a top-of-the-line system and paid attention to progress, you'd easily see that become the mid-tier $1000 option within two years or less

This is not how I remember that period at all. Do you have any examples?

My first PC 386 was in todays money easily $5000+ (basic 2d GPU + screen)... A lot of hardware in our family was handed down to my folks, because you lost so much on selling, that it was better to keep using them as they had less demands.

386 to 486 to the first Pentium (with the bug!)... You did not upgrade in place, it was often a new system. Sure, you maybe kept your screen, keyboard etc but ... The only upgrade we had on the same MB, was a coprocessor upgrade. Remember those? Each new generation of CPU was a new motherboard. Upgrading CPUs in the same MB really became a thing only later on.

GPUs had a shelf life of barely a year. Its been 35 year but i remember TNT to TNT2 having like 9 month in between. Moving from 2D to 3D involved a constant cost as GPUs evolved fast and the latest games required latest hardware.

We have not talked about the ISA, AGP, and PCI fun ... The “bus wars”.

DOS to Windows 3.1 (and OS/2 somewhere in between) to 95 ... with software being pushing hardware, just like games did.

This is why people are spoiled with cheap PC hardware where its cheap, and easily lasts 4+ years. Even with the bad memory price and more expensive GPUs, your can stil buy a $1500 system that will last you years (with maybe some lower game settings later on ... or the catalog of 10.000s games that will easily run on a mid tier GPU).

PC hardware has become boring but extreme stable. You can run GPUs for year, switch MBs without issues while keeping large amounts of old hardware. That was NOT the 80s and 90s that i remember.

Sorry, I’m specifically talking about the claim that a cutting edge $10k system cost $1k just 24 months later (or less).

The 386 and 486 were 3.5 years apart, weren’t they?

Really depended when you bought them .. 386 is like the point where people really started to buy PCs. My 386 was more to the end period, so the jump to 486 was very short. Do not forget there was a ton of 386's and 486s released also. I remember the SX, DX, ... the coprocessor that you plugged into the socket and then the CPU into it.

The problem is that your too focused on the CPU only. There was GPU improvements (2d) then 3D, the constant improvements in sound cards. Printers ...

There was very strong depreciation in that time. I think that the poster before with his $10.000 > 1000 is somewhat exaggerating but like i said, my $5000 range system was not worth reselling. So did several other systems we acquired at the time, it simply became hand-me downs (for family who needed a PC for Lotus or WP but not a "advanced" PC).

Maybe my memory is off, but hardware in that time was way more expensive, then it is today. While todays hardware lasts WAY longer. The wife is still on a 8250u/8GB laptop, from like 8 years or so, and i can not pry it out of her hands. Needed a new battery lol ...

There really is rarely pressure to upgrade these days. That is not how i remember the 90's... Where upgrades tended to have much bigger impacts. Especially as gamers. But even on side equipment like CD players, CDRs and later DVDs.

Todays PCs is like ... raytracing, no interest. 4k? 1440p is perfectly fine. CPUs? Over powerful for most folks. The only new thing is AI and that is a totally different issue.

tbh this is how i remembered that time as well. If you look at recommended system requirements for something like Max Payne (in 2001) vs Unreal Tournament 2003, everything had basically doubled

Yeah, but the claim was that the specs for a $10k system cost $1k in 24 months or less.

In 1990 a Scottsdale 486 w/ 4MB of Ram and a 211 MB hard drive cost $6737 (plus tax).

In 1992 a Solidtech 486 w/ 4 MB of RAM and a slightly-smaller 125 MB hard drive sold for $2195

Both advertised in Computer Shopper and you can find their catalogues(?) online.

My numbers were slightly off apparently, but is that enough to change the point?

It is how I remember it.

I remember CPUs moving relatively fast back then, some years in the 90s had relatively big jumps, much bigger than we saw today. The classic graph, : https://i.extremetech.com/imagery/content-types/03zc6ghfKswe...

I remember memory size going up by a factor of 8 at every PC upgrade for the same price.

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