Hey, mine is from 2014 too! runs linux and is fast enough for minecraft at 30fps and the sims 4.
4770/1060 gang over here. Upgrading to a free 9600 this weekend.
I genuinely dont understand this. On time my friend bought an rtx 3060 (was using rx580).
I asked “oh cool, whay new games are you gonna play?”. She said “none, I’m just gonna play the same ones”. I asked “what was wrong with the old card?” And she said “idk just felt like I need a new one.” We play games like tf2…
I just don’t get this type of behaviour. She also has like 14 pairs of sneakers.
I’ve been rocking a 1080ti since launch. Upgraded my 4th gen i7 to a 9th gen i9 on a sale a few years back. SSD upgraded when I got some that were going to be recycled.
Eventually I want to move to team red for linux compatibility. Other than that, I am sticking with what I have. (Doesn’t help that I have 2 small children that all my money goes to. )
i just upgraded this year, to an r9 5900x, from my old r5 2600, still running a 1070 though.
I do video editing and more generally CPU intensive stuff on the side, as well as a lot of multitasking, so it’s worth the money, in the long run at least.
I also mostly play minecraft, and factorio, so.
ryzen 5000 is a great upgrade path for those who don’t want to buy into am5 yet. Very affordable. 7000 is not worth the money, unless you get a good deal, same for 9000, though you could justify it with a new motherboard and ram.
I’m rocking a 5800X and see no reason to go to 7000 or no 9000 anytime soon. It’s been great since I built the PC.
My PC was made in 2014 and i upgraded it but it died in 2022 due to mishandling. If you keep your PC clean and don’t move it it can last even longer!
If you don’t upgrade to Windows 11, you can’t use Recall, which is a great reason not to upgrade to Windows 11.
I upgraded to Linux. It worked out well for me since I mostly pay retro games and games from yesteryear.
I upgraded a Chromebook to Linux recently. That was a huge bump in performance that I wasn’t expecting, not even just for gaming.
What OS was it running before? ChroomeOS is Linux right?
Technically yes, and so is Android. But neither work the way you’d expect a typical Linux distro to work.
Yeah it was ChromeOS. It is sort of linux, but google is an advertising company. You can’t ask them to not collect your data and recently they gave up pretending like they cared about user privacy. Linux is none of that. Complete opposite.
If you compare it to linux side by side, chromeOS is basically the alternate reality evil twin with the goatee
What distro? Did you follow a guide?
installed Lubuntu 24 on it using a guide that loosely applied to the low end chromebook I have. Link here
Using chrome browser on ChromeOS was snappy but any other browser I used with addons was an awful and laggy experience. The difference in performance was an unexpected win, but I primarily did it to ditch SpywareOS.
Going forward I’m probably going to just look for chromebooks to convert to linux for a daily driver laptop because you dont have to pay a premium for the spyware like you do with a windows laptop
I upgraded to Linux and can still play every game I’ve tried to play
If you want to stay with Windows for whatever reason, even 11, I can recommend Revision Playbook. It locks your installation and scrapes out the crap like unwanted updates and features like AI bullshit, Edge, Telemetry and whatnot. You can even manually install Apps from the Store without the Store if you like to. Security patches and selective updates come only via manual download from MS catalogue in my case, but you can automate this too with some tools.
People want shiny new things. I’ve had relatives say stuff like “I bought this computer 2 years ago and it’s getting slower, it’s awful how you have to buy a new one so quickly.” I suggest things to improve it, most of which are free or very cheap and I’d happily do for them. But they just go out and buy a brand new one because that’s secretly what they wanted to do in the first place, they just don’t want to admit they’re that materialistic.
Can I have some tips too?
Appreciate the meme but yea that is one way to probably improve performance. Or upgrade the RAM, clean the fans, reapply thermal compound, clear out temporary files, disable unused services or reinstall Windows if they really need it just to run Chrome and Zoom which is all they do.
Even just blowing out all the dust from a passive cooler (under the CPU fan) can make your system run a good 10°C cooler.
hardware isn’t as impactful to performance as software imo, just getting rid of bloat services can improve the perceived performance for every day tasks a ton.
btw I don’t really get why increasing the amount of ram is thought of as the first step by most normie consumers, if you have enough it’s enough and even my 2gb machine runs everything fine
You’d be amazed at the startup and program opening time gains on older computers’ when you change in the HDD that is stuck at read/write speeds of 5MB/s for a SSD
oh yeah SSDs are great, but RAM, thermals, etc don’t matter much
If RAM upgradable to dual channel it could still make a big difference
Clean the fans.
Reinstall the os clean. That’s usually why a new computer feels snappy: it’s just fresh.
Also dont forget to reapply thermal paste. Might help with overheating.
No chance I’m advising normies to mess with thermal paste on their own.
Free:
- clean fans and heatsink - others mentioned, and the reason is better cooling so it doesn’t throttle
- kill unnecessary services - that’s why reinstalling works
- install Linux - not reasonable for everyone, but Linux uses far fewer resources
- delete old files - as disks get full, it takes longer to find somewhere for files to go; try to leave 10-20% free
- try a small overclock - many older CPUs can give a little more without upgrading cooling; only do it if temps look good
Relatively cheap (<$200 each):
- upgrade drive to NVMe - huge difference if running an HDD, still noticeable of running a SATA SSD
- add more RAM (only if you’re constantly running out)
- upgrade CPU - esp if AMD since they release lots of CPUs for the same socket
It really depends on what’s making it slow though.
NVMe
This part was huge you for me. Almost same as from HDD to SSD.
i didnt notice as much difference
for deleting files qdirstat/windirstat are insanely good pieces of software
Maybe your relatives don’t like you. It’s a petty but valid reason to ignore perfectly good advice.
I have heard that Windows underclocks your CPU over time, to make you buy a new computer, and so Microsoft can get money from the new PC’s preinstalled Windows license.
I am not really sure if that’s true though.
I have heard that Windows underclocks your CPU over time
I would say this is half true. Microsoft is known for pushing lots of software updates with unwanted features, so it’s probably that a computer will feel slower over time.
However that’s not an underclock it’s just that the CPU can’t keep up with that much bloatware.
People live in times of historic standstill. Society barely develops in a meaningful and hopeful way. Social relationships stagnate or decline. So they look for a feeling of progress and agency in participation in the market and consuming.
They don’t realize this because they aren’t materialistic enough, in a sense that they don’t analyse their condition as a result of political and cultural configuration of their lives so that real agency seems unavailable
They’re invested in PC gaming as social capital where the performance of your rig contributes to your social value. They’re mad because you’re not invested in the same way. People often get defensive when others don’t care about the hobbies they care about because there’s a false perception that the not caring implies what they care about is somehow less than, which feels insulting.
Don’t yuck others’ yum, but also don’t expect everyone to yum the same thing.
Very well put! I’d also add that most people aren’t even really conscious that that’s the reason that they’re mad. There’s ways to express your negative opinion without stating it as a fact or downplaying the other person’s taste.
I’m very certain Anon isn’t just saying “nah, my rig works” to them when asked.
Maybe closer to “LMAO normies wasting money. fuckin coomsumers, upgrading for AAAA slop! LMFAO” into conversations they weren’t invited to.
I use a gaming laptop from 2018. Rog Zephyrus.
fan started making grating noise even after thorough cleaning, found a replacement on Ebay and boom back in business playing Hitman and Stardew.
Will I get 120 fps or dominate multiplayer? nah. But yeah works fine. Might even be a hand me down later on.
Absolutely it totally depends on what you got originally. If you only got an okay ish PC in 2018 then it definitely still won’t be fit for purpose in 2025, but if you got a good gaming PC in 2018 it probably will still work in another 5 years, although at that point you’ll probably be on minimum settings for most new releases.
I would say 5 to 10 years is probably the lifespan of a gaming PC without an upgrade.
However my crappy work laptop needs replacing after just 3 years because it was rubbish to start with.
It depends on what gaming you do. My 10 year old PC with 6 year old GPU plays Minecraft fine.
My other “new PC” is a mini PC with Nvidia 1080 level graphics and it plays half life Alyx fine.
We replaced my mom’s warcraft machine 3 years ago. It replaced an athlonII from 2k7 at 14 years old. Your tank may be a 74yo grandmother so be nice.
I want to talk about writing 2k7 instead of 2007. It does save a character, but I also had to read it 3 times to understand lol but that might be a me problem
Also: do you only do that for 2000-2009, or do you write 2k25?
Also, Also: hope this doesn’t come across as rude. Ive never seen it written that way & find it interesting and a little funny.
Also, also, also: I think it’s sweet you helped your mom upgrade her computer so she could play WoW more effectively.
Oh yeah that’s what it means, I thought 2k7 was a company I’d never heard of.
my mom’s warcraft machine
We truly are living in the future
And even then, a few strategic upgrades of key components could boost things again. New gfx card, a better SSD, more/faster RAM, any of those will do a lot.
High end gaming laptops are about a 5 year cycle, presuming you want everything ultra or high settings.
If you don’t care, my old laptop with a 7700k and a 1070 still runs almost anything, just not as well as brand new top end.
I built an overkill PC in February 2016, it was rocking a GTX 980ti a little before the 1080 came out, and it was probably the best GPU out there, factory overclocked and water cooled by EVGA. My CPU was an i5-4690k, which was solidly mid range then, but I overclocked it myself from 3.5GHz to 5.3Ghz with no issue, and only stopped there because I was so suspicious of how well it was handling that massive increase. I had 2TB of SSD spaceand like 8TB of regular hard drives and 16GB of ram.
Because I have never needed to think about space, and so many of my parts were really overpowered for their generation, I have always been hesitant to upgrade. I don’t play the newest games either, I still get max settings on Doom Eternal and Read Dead 2 which I forget are half a decade old. The only game where it’s struggled in low settings is Baldurs Gate 3 unfortunately, which is made me realise it’s ready to upgrade.
I use an ultrabook from 2017 to play Minecraft sometimes.
If not playing competitive, there’s very little reason to go latest and greatest. Just buy something with software support, or use Linux where support is practically guaranteed for at least a decade
Linux is actually a problem area here, because various crucial libraries for running games have limited support for hardware that old. I tried for a long time to get it working with stuff from 2012, my problems disappeared after upgrading my cpu recently. Something with Vulkan compatibility I think.
Any idea what? Wine/proton should abstract away all those issues. Or are you talking about old native Linux games?
Wine/proton is specifically what doesn’t work, though most linux native games also did not work. Based on my experience with that I’m confident that everyone saying it just works for them has relatively new hardware.
You get a vulkan error that sounds the same if you have the wrong GPU drivers, some older cards need a different driver eg radeon vs amdgpu
Also possible your card is so old it doesn’t even have a vulkan implementation, what was it?
It is a 3060 but I confirmed this is not a GPU or driver issue because replacing the CPU/mobo fixed it. Had the same issues with an older card also, upgrading it didn’t help, nothing I did with graphics drivers helped.
That is only really a problem for CPUs one would consider today as ancient like a Pentium 3 from 1999 because it doesn’t have e.g. SSE2 support which Wine (and afaik Vulkan) needs. Everything after that should work without any problems.
With older or slower CPUs performance may suffer, of course, but that is not a compatibility question.
Everything after that should work without any problems.
Well it doesn’t, again, 2012, gave errors and doesn’t run, not performance, idk what else to say except maybe to ask if you have tested this yourself
Then it was an software problem. It can’t be the CPU. unless you were using something very old. maybe the problem got solved when you reinstalled the system after you got your new CPU.
maybe the problem got solved when you reinstalled the system after you got your new CPU.
I didn’t reinstall the OS after getting the new CPU, but had done so multiple times before that.
It can’t be the CPU. unless you were using something very old.
You’re welcome to elaborate on your reasoning for this but I get the impression you haven’t tested it yourself, and I am saying, based on my experience, that you are wrong about it. Why exactly you’re wrong, I don’t know, but it’s wrong.
My point is this: someone with 10+ year old hardware should not be expecting to be able to run most games on linux because it likely won’t work. Something like that is the cutoff, not 20+ years. If you’re not yourself playing games on such a system you shouldn’t be advising people otherwise, because you don’t know.
You were claiming that some libraries had limited support for CPUs from 2012, which is simple said absolute and utter nonsense.
You are also trying to pin Vulcan problems on CPUs. Which is nonsense as well, since Vulkan has absolutely nothing to do with CPUs since it is a graphics API using the GPU. The only thing that may be is that you were using the integrated GPU built in your CPU, which was not compatible with Vulkan instead of using your dedicated GPU.
In that case, it could explain why changing the CPU fixed the problem, but it was actually never a problem of the CPU itself but a configuration error on your part.
And as said, Wine will run on absolutely anything that came after a Pentium III, so it is very much impossible that your CPU that was from 2012 could not run Wine. But it would be of course very helpful if you would actually tell us what CPU you had.
And yes, i tested it. My old CPU was a Phenom 2 from 2010 and Wine ran just fine with it and still does . And i very clearly gave you the reason in my first post. Which is Wine requiring SSE2.
Man, i even can play some older games with Wine on my Dell XPS M1330 Laptop which came out in 2007. That thing runs an ancient Dual-Core. This needs some tinkering though.
You were claiming that some libraries had limited support for CPUs from 2012, which is simple said absolute and utter nonsense.
You are also trying to pin Vulcan problems on CPUs. Which is nonsense as well
Well ok, I apologize as that was bullshit, that stuff in particular I’m less confident about and is mostly just a guess based on vague memories. I also have an older laptop from the same era with linux that also won’t run games, and now that I think about it I might have been getting things mixed up with that re the Vulkan errors, where that laptop also has an older graphics card.
What isn’t a guess is that I tried many things over the years with the idea that it could be a software issue, most games did not work with errors, until the CPU upgrade after which games I’ve tried work with steam/proton. The specific cause is unknown to me. But since I spent so much time on it, and because I had similar issues with that other laptop I mentioned, I feel confident this is a general problem of older hardware and Linux gaming.
But it would be of course very helpful if you would actually tell us what CPU you had.
I still have it somewhere, I will check. It says AMD Athlon X4, and that it’s from 2011.
Wine ran just fine with it and still does . And i very clearly gave you the reason in my first post. Which is Wine requiring SSE2.
First of all, I’m saying there’s problems running most games, especially modern games, not that Wine doesn’t run at all, it did. I was mostly trying with proton/lutris since Wine by itself needs more tinkering. Second, it’s flawed logic to point to a compatibility issue that exists with very old hardware and say that because that particular compatibility issue would not apply, that no issue can exist. A case that no issue exists would need way more than that. How can you be sure that there are no dependencies in the software used to make games compatible, on CPU features introduced more recently?
some older games with … some tinkering
This being possible has of course been the case for a very long time. What hasn’t is, a large portion of modern games being playable on linux with minimal tinkering, which is a recent development. But I did not have that experience, until I got new hardware, and I think that’s also how it would go for other people.
Did you try cleaning your PC and replacing the thermal paste before upgrading? Linux struggles with CPU temperature
The computer I built in 2011 lasted until last summer. I smiled widely when I came to tell my wife and my friend, where my friend then asked why I was smiling when my computer no longer worked.
“Because now he can buy a new one” my wife quickly replied 😁
This makes me wonder how long my build from last year should last me.
