Eh...I gave up on the idea of "future proofing" about 10 years ago.

General rule of thumb is hardware comes out supporting a feature, but by the time the software catches up to where it is useful the hardware is too slow to use it. The first generations of DX10 cards, for example, ran DX9 great but the DX10 games ran like mud.

How long it lasts depends on how much you spend. Spend a little and upgrade more often, spend a lot and upgrade less often.

The exception was my i7-2600k. That CPU lasted me far longer than I expected, but I think that is more due to business realities--AMD wasn't threatening Intel's spot, so they failed to make CPUs that much faster, so after awhile most CPUs ran about the same, so the games all were designed to run on CPUs about that fast. As a result, a 4 yr old CPU ran just as well a brand new one, provided the video card was capable.

If Ryzen shakes Intel out of its hookah-induced haze, maybe we'll start seeing some speed progress again.


The Jedi Master