The Post-PC Era Is Upon Us?

[SteelCrysis]

http://www.eteknix.com/nvidia-partners-i...ly-issues/

The past year has not been particularly good for the PC industry as a whole. Despite the launch of Microsoft’s new Windows 10 OS and various hardware releases, PC shipments have continued to fall, facing heavy pressure from mobile devices and tablets. Some firms have been hit hard, with Micron for instance, reporting poor financials among others. There does appear to be a few bright spots though, with gaming related sales up, and for Nvidia AiB partners such as Asus, eVGA and Zotac in particular, this has meant increased profits.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Home-...nly-135965

"13% of Americans are now “smartphone only” -- meaning they have a smartphone but lack traditional broadband service at home," notes Pew. "And nearly one-third of these “smartphone only” users say that the main reason they don’t have broadband at home is because their smartphone can do everything they wish to do online."

The problem of course is that as those users increasingly use bandwidth-intensive services like streaming video, they're going to find themselves pressed tightly up against wireless industry usage caps. Unlimited data is becoming an increasingly rare dinosaur for smart phone users, with at least one of the final two major carriers offering it (Sprint) hinting it will stop the practice sooner rather than later.

33% of those without traditional fixed-line broadband cite cost as the primary reason, something that's obviously not going to be cured by switching to a more expensive and more heavily capped broadband platform.

[dmcowen674]

I've been retiring family member PC's. They are smartphone only with Multi-terabyte drives for pic and video storage.

[BenSkywalker]

Because of the ages of my kids, the older still use PCs fairly regularly, but my younger kids are exclusively portable with my older children using the PC at all for gaming and homework. If you expand that out, several of my friends and extended family have abandoned PCs altogether. Portables can do damn near everything a PC could for any of them, and a great deal of the time, do it easier.

[RolloTheGreat]

People keep saying this, but in almost all the offices across the country you will find desktop and laptop PCs because you can get more work done in a day with a legit keyboard and larger screen.

For home use handheld devices are fine, but I'd note I'm typing this on an Asus T100 Chi with a physical keyboard because it's easier than the tablet alone.

[SickBeast]

I actually sold off my desktop rig several years ago after my wife spilled miso soup on it thinking I could get by with a laptop and a tablet. I now have an awesome htpc that I use all the time. My son and I play games together on it quite frequently. It's way better than any game console imo. The games are cheaper and they run better with more detail and higher resolution.

Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk

[SteelCrysis]

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/221...6-recovery
This decline is serious.

[RolloTheGreat]

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/221...6-recovery
This decline is serious.

Serious for AMD and a lot of other peripheral firms, we're at "last man standing" time.

No room left for the stuff that doesn't cut it. Plenty of money left for intel and NV though.

[BoFox]

Yeah, personally I find PC to be a bit boring these days.  The 28nm fabbing tech was around for like forever.  The games aren't so exciting while the devs focus on making next-gen console games designed for the consoles first and foremost.  Even Rollo here never really used his GTX 980 Ti...  Perhaps it's just me as I get older and more busy with more kids/babies to take care of, but I'm finding the portable stuff to take a lot of excitement away from the PC.  It's funny how I was nuts about PC gaming during the late 90's and early 2000's, but now a tablet or high-end phone can handle better graphics than say, Star Wars KOTOR and Elder Scrolls Morrowind (although Morrowind had amazing artwork and expansive content for its generation).

[RolloTheGreat]

Yeah, personally I find PC to be a bit boring these days.  The 28nm fabbing tech was around for like forever.  The games aren't so exciting while the devs focus on making next-gen console games designed for the consoles first and foremost.  Even Rollo here never really used his GTX 980 Ti...  Perhaps it's just me as I get older and more busy with more kids/babies to take care of, but I'm finding the portable stuff to take a lot of excitement away from the PC.  It's funny how I was nuts about PC gaming during the late 90's and early 2000's, but now a tablet or high-end phone can handle better graphics than say, Star Wars KOTOR and Elder Scrolls Morrowind (although Morrowind had amazing artwork and expansive content for its generation).

Herein lies the problem.

You'd think with 4K GSync and a 980Ti I'd be in some UHD, lag free gaming nirvana...but I never use it.

I found it more exciting I could play UT, UT2004, and Quake 3 on my T100 Chi and have more time gaming on that than I do the 980Ti.

Computer gaming is definitely on the decline while mobile and consoles are on the rise.

I think NVIDIA's future lies in workstation/supercomputers, SOCs, and custom items like the car screens they do. Will probably always be some computer gaming, but people spending $2000 on a desktop to game? I don't think so.

[SteelCrysis]

At least Intel's i7s and unlocked CPUs sold well: http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/intel-h...arket.html

[BoFox]

Intel is just fortunate to have a near-monopoly in the entire desktop PC x86 CPU market, which is still bigger than in 2006-2007 (also with less competition from AMD).