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As others have said, the general rule is simple: if it no longer runs what you want it to run, upgrade.
For example, I have an Nvidia RTX 2060 GPU. It's no longer that new, it's like 5+ years old at this point. But most of the games I play are at least 10 years old—I think the newest, and most graphically intense, game I own is Cyberpunk 2077—and my GPU runs them just fine.
So, why would I spend hundreds of dollars on a new GPU when it's still wholly functional for my needs?
Seems reasonable to me, although I might be lacking perspective since my latest hardware is already 6 years old.
In previous years, my criteria was to upgrade once the hardware was holding back my workflow and productivity. But with Moore's Law coming to a plateau, I've upgraded my RAM, GPU, and SSD not because I have to, but just because I got an very good deal on them.
DDR6? What? Didn't DDR5 just start becoming common?
DDR6 hardware is scheduled to release in 2027. If it does, I'm going to keep my schedule.
Sounds like a good plan. Upgrade if you feel like it and have the dough. The best time is now and/or never.
Speed differences have become more theoretical with every new generation and "mandatory upgrades" have been decades apart lately. Unless win14 is injected into the brain I don't see any changes to the current status quo.
Why DDR6 though? It will be expensive at start and won't bring much to your workstation unless you are really memory perf bound.
There's 6 around already? 5 is not even really established yet, only for gaming rigs relevant so far.
How time flies, eh? I went searching for more info - https://www.techpowerup.com/339178/ddr6-memory-arrives-in-2027-with-8-800-17-600-mt-s-speeds It also mentions an architectural change to increase the speed further.
A few of my applications are bound by memory performance. My idea is that, because DDR standards are only published every 5 years or so, it will have better longevity before technical obsolescence. When in its life cycle, will a DDR platform become cheaper?
Edit: typo.
Not sure, but I assume a couple of years at least - it might be also affected by stupid external factors, like insane tariffs and such. Also it will take some time for DDR6 perf to go up - for both mobos and memory. So even at the start you might be still better off DDR5 and if you go with DDR6 you might need to replace mobo and memory to get better perf. That's my impression on hardware situation, I might be wrong, though.
What is your use case for threadripper, I'm curious? AFAIK it's not a good match for gaming at least. Or is it?
I mainly use my workstation for Image editing (raw development and VFX), 3d animation and video editing. Then there's occasional ML inference for image generation or text generation. And lastly, some video games.
About video games: the 1st gen threadripper platform gained a bad reputation for gaming thanks to windows. I used to use Windows for so long and once I switched to GNU Linux it was like I got a new CPU for free. The reason is, Windows doesn't know how to properly do multi-threading, adding to that, my 1st gen Threadripper is basically 4 CPU dies glued together and for low latency applications like games the performance on windows will be trash and oh boy, it was. But on GNU Linux its fine. But compared to all cores on one die, it will be worse for games, yes.
I was kinda guessing that images, video and such are your use case - yep, those might really benefit from a faster memory and plenty of cores. Not sure if it affect ML much since it'd be calculated on GPU. Thanks for info on gaming.
Can't really advise you on what to do, but here's some conaiderations:
• I still use a 4th gen i7 with 16 GB ddr3 and a gtx970, still going fine in its 10th year. Just recently upgraded to a gtx1060 I found around • 10 years old techbology isn't really any diffetent than today, only slower, but luckily architectural incompatibility is becoming less and less of a problem (except when it's forced upon for no particular reason, see win11) • gpu especially are extremely backward and forward compatible, if you only need more VRAM, you can use a modern gpu with a very old mobo and cpu and chances are you'll be as good, and even if you need to upgradr them later because you are cpu-bottleneck, you can still keep the gpu. I'm guessing in 90% of cases, pci lane speed is relatively unimportant wether it's gen3 or gen5.
Basically, upgradr when you feel you are limited in what you can do, ignore the pressure caused by the generations passing by, as time goes on, I predict we'll need less and less hardware upgrade until a nee revolutionary technology comes about that changes everything.
As someone with a burned out 9800x3D and an equally useless X870 motherboard, I would personally say to maybe wait for benchmarks, user reviews, and such for whatever CPU AMD puts out in 2027.
Did you never get a replacement by the mainboard manufacturer or AMD?
Burned out? How did that happen?
The X3D CPUs are very sensitive to overvolting, and some mobo manufacturers had their boards set to overvolt out of the box before this was discovered. Result: fried CPUs.
Yup. I'm on my 2016 NUC. Next year is its 10th and i MAY upgrade. However, it's still doing well. I'll see what I can get out of it.
My criteria for when to upgrade is simple: when it no longer runs the games I want to play at an acceptable framerate. I have a 30-series card, but I have yet to play a game where I had a problem with framerate, so I have no plans to upgrade. It wasn't until I ran into a game where I was getting 20 FPS at minimum settings on my old GTX 960 that I decided it was time to upgrade.
One could probably say the same about workstation performance if it is taking too long to run and becoming a productivity bottleneck. For something like that, I think it comes down to an assessment of how much you will be spending versus what percentage reduction in processing time you will see out of the upgrade. If it is only a marginal improvement, maybe wait, but if it would be a substantial uplift, then it is probably a worthwhile return on investment.
The final "Gate" so to speak, will end up being your motherboard.
At a certain point, your motherboard just won't support a newer part and you'll have upgraded all the existing parts as far as they can go.
My current rig that I'm still perfectly content with is just under ten years old. I've upgraded the Ram to as much as the motherboard will allow. I've upgraded the Video Card two or three times in that span, where it's now running a 3060. While I still see a huge improvement with that, there's no doubt that the video card is being throttled somewhat by the motherboard throughput limitations, but for I don't mind. I've added extra cooling fans, replaced the drives with SSD and use the old metal spinners for extra storage.
It still runs plenty fast enough to do Blender (nothing complex, just airplane modelling and animation for xplane), video editing with DaVinci Resolve (as long as I use proxy clips and take it a little easy on the motion graphics), and most newer games (though of course not at ultra settings).
The last bottleneck that I'll simply never be able to pass is the fact that the CPU socket will never support an octocore processor or higher. I can upgrade as much as I want, but it will never not be a quad-core.
For now that's fine. But that's the hard limit that I've given myself. Your mileage may vary.