Say you built a computer in late 2009 with AMD Radeon HD 5870, Intel Core i7 975, Intel's X25-M SSD and 16 GB RAM.
That computer would still feel pretty snappy today for desktop tasks, running dual 2560x1440 screens. Although new AAA games would probably have issues, either low frame rates or not running at all. Most indie games would work just fine.
I think the change will be even less in next 10 years. 2019 hardware will perform just fine in 2029.
Unless something dramatically different pops up, we're in the era of diminishing returns.
That's more or less the result of having already waited. There was a time, not very long ago in the grand scheme of things, when the computer you wanted would cost $5000 and be essentially obsoleted by the $5000 computer coming in 60-90 days. (Perspective: PC review magazines of the day would usually include the time for a Gaussian blur on a 1MP image as a meaningful test.) When you were talking about cutting minutes off of a large spreadsheet recalc, the immediate gain from upgrading today had to be measured carefully against the even greater gains possible next quarter.
If you need to run a computation that is going to take 100 years with today’s computers, you probably should wait a bit to start it with faster computers.
But then you've spent more money. You could have just bought more hardware in the future.
For a fixed budget, assuming that Moore's Law still holds (dubious, these days), you should wait until the computation will take 26 months on hardware purchased within that budget [0].
More like "why start walking now when I can wait for a bus." In the case of a trip to the corner store, like, Saturn, get walking. If you're crossing the city, like, Alpha Centauri, wait for the faster transport
That computer would still feel pretty snappy today for desktop tasks, running dual 2560x1440 screens. Although new AAA games would probably have issues, either low frame rates or not running at all. Most indie games would work just fine.
I think the change will be even less in next 10 years. 2019 hardware will perform just fine in 2029.
Unless something dramatically different pops up, we're in the era of diminishing returns.