Lippy

With this and the 5800X3D being manufactured again and Raptor Lake being spun up for yet another refresh, I wonder how long it will be before we see something like the Core 2 Quad Q6600 being resurrected along with the P35 chipset and DDR2.

I jest, but with much of a farce the industry has become lately, it does make me wonder how much further backwards we’re going to go.

I tend to stagger my platform and GPU upgrades. It tends to be about 3-4 years between something being upgraded. So I’d technically call the platform upgrade a new build, even though it inherits some older components.

My last build was used for 10 years, and the one before that 4 years. I was planning to have my previous build last for about 5-6 years, but those were the days when Intel stagnated with 14nm++++ and AMD wasn’t really showing up, so I ended up prolonging its life a bit more. My current build should last me well into the 2030s since it’s an AM5 platform. So this is the timeline:

2008: New build. 2012: New build, plus old hard drives inherited as data drives. 2015: GPU, PSU and SSD upgrade. 2018: GPU, CPU and heatsink upgrade, retired old data drives from previous build and replaced with new ones. 2022: Platform upgrade (motherboard, CPU, RAM), case upgrade and new SSD to use as the main drive. 2025: GPU and PSU upgrade. 2028: Most likely going to be another CPU and SSD upgrade (provided that prices come back down to sane levels), and retirement of older drives.

A laptop from 2015 probably has an Intel 4th or 5th gen CPU. If 8 GB of RAM is an issue, then you could upgrade it to 16 GB in theory, provided that it isn’t soldered down. That could keep it going for a bit longer if 8 GB is the only problem that keeps it from daily use. I’d say that 8 GB is about borderline these days. It’s still perfectly fine for basic web browsing but not much more.

Even though RAM prices are in the stratosphere, DDR3 prices aren’t as badly affected, so you could get 16 GB relatively cheaply. I’d look for 2x 8 GB DDR3L-1600 SO-DIMMs. Just ensure that the laptop can accept it.

Upgrading the hard drive to an SSD will make a huge difference for performance as well if that hasn’t been done already. Unfortunately, 2.5" SATA SSDs today are even more of a ripoff than M.2 SSDs at their current elevated prices because they aren’t really being produced anymore. At that point then yeah I agree with the sentiment that putting the money towards a new laptop will go much further.

I’ve found WPA2/WPA3 mixed mode to be very hit and miss for a few legacy devices unfortunately. They can see the SSID, but they simply won’t connect even though it’s supposed to be ‘backwards compatible’.

I’ve basically done what was mentioned here and went with 2 SSIDs on my network. One for modern devices that uses WPA3 exclusively and allows for all 3 bands along with Wi-Fi 7 features such as MLO. And a second one for legacy devices which uses WPA2 exclusively and only supports the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands.

Even then, Wi-Fi 6E devices are in an awkward middle ground. While they all support WPA3 and can use the modern SSID, they don’t support MLO so they can sometimes hang on to the 6 GHz band which drops off more quickly at a distance instead of switching to one of the other two bands when appropriate.

The entire GPU market has gone to shit.

It’s unacceptable that there’s new cards for sale (if you can even find one) that cost more than I paid for my 1080 Ti 8 years ago and have essentially the same amount of VRAM (12 GB vs 11 GB).

I thought that maybe the 9070 XT would be at least a reasonable option if I could get it for MSRP. Of course that launch ended up being another farce.

At this point it looks like I’m going to be riding my 1080 Ti until the bitter end. Sure, newer cards will wipe the floor with it, but I can’t justify the current prices.