[colejohnson66]

Modern software benefits from increased computational power because it allows new features and speeding up older ones. Sure, “office” apps don’t benefit much, but you’re ignoring many fields where they do benefit.

For example, the field of 3D graphics. Games and animated movies have become a lot more realistic and feature filled thanks to more powerful graphics cards. In fact, Disney specifically puts a lot of effort into making hair realistic. That was impractical a decade ago, and impossible a decade prior.

[ant6n]

Meh. Are the stories being created with games getting better? For example, Half Life and Portal are pretty modern and immersive and run on some 20-year-old hardware.

[colejohnson66]

The story lines and the graphics are orthogonal. It’s possible to immersive and fun games with “poor” graphics (Portal) and it’s possible to have bad storylines with amazing graphics.

Even if you’re fond/nostalgic for older hardware and games, that doesn’t mean you can’t recognize that things have improved.

[ant6n]

Well if the overarching point is that nowadays we have so much computing power, and it doesn’t really result in better experiences, and that most things one would want to do could’ve been done on much older hardware, then it’s kind of the point that the graphics are orthogonal to a fun gaming experience.

[falcor84]

Meh. Are stories being created in books getting better? For example, The Decameron and Canterbury Tales are pretty impressive and were written before the printing press.

[bombcar]

Stellaris and Cities Skylines have incredibly detailed models that I basically never see because I always play zoomed out.

[ivraatiems]

You're absolutely right about 3D graphics, but how much time does the average desktop computer user spend rendering hair?

Even if you need bigtime compute power for video games, there are game streaming services where someone else's computer will do that for you.

I have a high-end graphics card and all the processing power I need to play games... but I am still wasting all of that whenever that isn't what I'm doing, aren't I?

[umanwizard]

> I am still wasting all of that whenever that isn't what I'm doing, aren't I?

How is this different from owning anything? I have a bike, but I’m not riding it literally all the time. But I still don’t think owning it is a waste.