'What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away'
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 15th Nov 2007 19:01 UTC, submitted by xpnet.com Research STaff
Benchmarks "'What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away'. Such has been the conventional wisdom surrounding the Windows/Intel duopoly since the early days of Windows 95. In practical terms, it means that performance advancements on the hardware side are quickly consumed by the ever-increasing complexity of the Windows/Office code base. Case in point: Microsoft Office 2007 which, when deployed on Windows Vista, consumes over 12x as much memory and nearly 3x as much processing power as the version that graced PCs just 7 short years ago (Office 2000). But despite years of real-world experience with both sides of the duopoly, few organizations have taken the time to directly quantify what my colleagues and I at Intel used to call 'The Great Moore's Law Compensator'. In fact, the hard numbers below represent what is perhaps the first ever attempt to accurately measure the evolution of the Windows/Office platform in terms of real-world hardware system requirements and resource consumption."
E-mail Print r 1   83 Comment(s) http://osne.ws/elv
Thread beginning with comment 284904
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE[3]: ...
by bm3719 on Fri 16th Nov 2007 21:17 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: ..."
bm3719
Member since:
2006-05-30


I agree, games are a major group of software that profits from computing power.


The vast majority of the so-called improvements in gaming in the same timeframe this article addresses (7 years) has only been in the eye candy area. Delivering good gameplay, a good storyline, or an immersive world seems to be just as elusive as ever.

There's a small crop of good games still being made, of course, just like there always has been. But whether a game is really good is independant of the available hardware of the time. The only exception to this is the all too common "casual gamer" that only wants to play his games for a few hours before they're lured away by the next game of the week.

Reply Parent Score: 1

RE[4]: ...
by Doc Pain on Fri 16th Nov 2007 22:50 in reply to "RE[3]: ..."
Doc Pain Member since:
2006-10-08

"Delivering good gameplay, a good storyline, or an immersive world seems to be just as elusive as ever."

You are right, I think you're talking about the fine (but important) difference between pure graphics quality and overall gameplay. Immersive effects are not a simple product of most realistic image floods. Storyline etc. are more important than this, I think. It's the only way to explain why "old fashioned games" (classics, if you want to call them this way) like DooM or Quake are still fun to play (if you don't know them too good, of course). It's the same relationship as the assumption: You make a good movie if you use the latest special effects only.

"There's a small crop of good games still being made, of course, just like there always has been. But whether a game is really good is independant of the available hardware of the time. The only exception to this is the all too common "casual gamer" that only wants to play his games for a few hours before they're lured away by the next game of the week."

These are one of the important groups that update their hardware very fast. In order to play the latest games, you need to have up to date hardware, of course. On older hardware, you just need to wait in order to play the games, maybe one or two years later it's no problem to play a former newest game on today's common hardware.

Reply Parent Score: 2