Future Proofing is no longer possible... here's why

All right, today we're going to talk

about a topic that is synonymous with

building PCs, and that is the idea of

future proofing. Future proofing is kind

of impossible these days. We're going to

talk about why there has been such

changing landscape over the last 15 or

so years when it comes to PC hardware

and technology sets and feature sets.

We're going to explain why the idea of

future proofing is impossible, but

things that you can consider when

upgrading your system or building a new

system or buying a pre-built or whatever

to try and be as future ready as

possible.

But it's becoming more and more

impossible these days.

Now, we're not talking about the idea of

pricing being the reason why it's

impossible. It's because of just the

changing dynamic of what PC components

are, the way they interact with each

other and feature sets that are making

their way in that's kind of being gated

behind hardware. So, the old problem

was, is your hardware going to be fast

enough for future games? Right?

resolution scaling was something we saw

that was kind of like the major future

proofing thing people had to sort of arm

against. For instance, the 1080 Ti

Pascal series was an absolute beast of a

graphics card. Yeah, I forgot we have

one behind us right there. So, the 1080

that's why it's back there. The 1080 Ti

though was a beast of a graphics card.

It was capable of playing 4K games at

its time, like at its era. Um, it wasn't

the highest FPS at 4K, but it was

capable of it. And when it came to

future titles, the card was able to run

the game. But what you had to consider

with future proofing was, can your

system last a good five years, seven

years, or 10 years? 10 years seems to be

the real number a lot of people kind of

wait to make a major platform change or

upgrade when it comes to their system.

And all you had to really worry about

was game resolution and the actual

difficulty to run a game going to

outpace the raw horsepower of your

components, whether it be CPU, GPU, or

potentially system RAM, you know, DRAM.

But the new problem now is the fact that

we have feature sets that are coming out

that are newer than older hardware

that's being gated behind the newest

hardware. So what do I mean by that?

Specifically, DLSS. So, if you remember

the 1080 Ti was the last period of the

GTX series of graphics cards from

Nvidia. It moved over to RTX because of

ray tracing. That's what the R stands

for, ray tracing, right? And obviously

the RTX graphics cards were able to do

real-time ray tracing significantly

faster than, you know, CUDA cores could

because they were built from the ground

up to be accelerators to do one job, ray

tracing. Now, there was a lot of uproar

of going why is it behind a why is it

behind hardware? Why is it behind a

hardware wall? So Nvidia said, "Fine,

we'll unlock it. Go ahead and run it on

your Pascal card and watch what

happens." And it was a terrible

experience. And it's one of those things

where somebody who might have bought a

1080 Ti when it was new thought that

they were truly futurep proofing their

system for maybe 7 years, but the next

generation made the obsolescence and

really the writing on the wall of where

hardware was going really, really

obvious. The other thing that the future

has really sort of gone towards when it

comes to graphics cards is DLSS or deep

learning super sampling. That is another

hardware feature set that can't be

turned on on something like Pascal or

older cards because it requires the

tensor cores that are built in to the

GPUs. So that was a perfect example of a

major shift in design when it comes to

hardware that was impossible to

futureproof for. Now here's the other

thing. If you bought a 20 series card or

you bought a 30 series card and you were

like, "Okay, I'm probably futurep

proofed now. How long will it be before

they change, you know, the tensor core

architectures or the RT core

architectures and obviously the, you

know, CUDA corores are still around, but

now you're starting to see feature sets

become locked behind hardware again.

Obviously, when it comes to like DLSS

3.0, DLSS 4.0, no DLSS 4.5. You'll find

that older RT RT cards that are not more

than anywhere between 5 to 6 years old

are incapable of running the latest

feature sets because once again they are

locked behind hardware. So when it comes

to DLSS though it's still not in cut and

dry. Like you can't just say well FSO FS

or again now when it comes to upscalers

like DLSS and FSR it's still not super

cut and dry. Like you you can't just go

well my card says it or DLSS3 is out so

I'm getting all the DLSS3 features. So

what I mean is like if you have an RTX

card, you have access to all the

upscaler tech as it comes out, but

there's other technologies that launch

with a major version change. So for

instance, DLSS 1 and DLSS2 and three and

four and 4.5. If you have an RTX card,

you get the upscaler that's that's part

of the hardware, the tensor cores and

all that, but there's other feature sets

that can get locked behind there. Like

we just talked about a moment ago with

frame gen 30 series cards were the first

cards that were truly locked out of a

DLSS feature set for again. And I know

you guys don't care about frame gen, but

as an example, just hear me out. So 30

series cards don't get frame gen. 40

series cards had frame gen 2x, which is

just frame gen on, right? That means

every other frame is an AI rendered

frame. It's a fake frame. We know how

that works. 50 series was the first card

now that we saw that locked 40 series

out of a feature set in DLSS. For

instance, multiframe gen. So we're

talking about 2x, 3x, 4x, and I think

there's five and 6x now. But you see

what I mean? where there could be future

technologies that are locked behind an

overall like naming scheme like DLSS,

but if you don't have the hardware that

supports it, you're locked out of those

feature sets. AMD is kind of under fire

right now because FSR4 is the first FSR

feature set that's actually based on

machine learning where you have to have

a 9000 series, so a 960 to 9070 XT

graphics card to actually utilize that

and turn it on. And this is from the

brand that has been notoriously

backwards compatible and doing things

via software rather than hardware to

make it as widely available to their

users. And even people that don't have

AMD graphics cards could still run FSR

because it was a softwarebased thing.

But now you can't even run FSR4 on an

Nvidia card if you wanted to because of

the fact it's locked to hardware on AMD

side with 9000 series GPUs. But with

that said, modders have actually been

getting FSR4 to work on older series

graphics cards from AMD 7000 series and

whatnot. um showing that that's really

less of a hardware lockout and more of a

policy forced obsolescence of a graphics

card for AMD users to try and get them

to buy more, but it's an example of

hardware gating when it comes to new

technology, which is something that is

nearly impossible to plan for today. So,

you're starting to see the ability to be

futureproofed

more and more difficult because of the

fact that it's not just a horsepower bet

anymore. It is a horsepower and feature

bet on whether or not the features are

going to be something that's available

to you in the future. Now, you have to

ask yourself, are these features that

are important to you? Are these features

that are absolutely musthaves for you?

And if they are, well, now you're stuck

in this conundrum. Do you buy the

highestend graphics card that you can

personally afford right now to hope that

future titles that come out that maybe

are relying on feature sets like DLSS is

something games heavily rely on today?

It's unfortunate that developers have

really leaned on the efficiency of DLSS

to kind of shortcut some of the

optimizations of their own titles and

relying on something like DLSS or even

Frame Gen at this point, which isn't

something you should really consider

with future proofing. I think most most

PC enthusiasts and gamers these days

just know frame gen is not a solution.

It's not a solution to a horsepower and

or an optimization problem. It's a

band-aid. And I think we could all agree

it's it's not something we should be

that excited for, especially when they

keep upping the amount of frame gen. We

had frame gen which was every other

frame was alternating a a fake frame

essentially AI rendered and then 2x and

then 3x and 4x and now 5x and I think

even 6x or something like that. Nobody's

running that and going look at how good

my frames are. Everyone knows it's a

it's a terrible band-aid. Anyway, I

digress. It's an example of a future

feature set that again is locked behind

hardware where if you had a 30 series

graphics card or a 40 series graphics

card, you were locked behind 2x or or

less, right? Or off. And then obviously

50 series allowed it to go all the way

up to these crazy X numbers that exist

now. But it DLSS and feature sets like

that have become band-aids to where

games developers are not optimizing as

well as they should. Now, that also

means if you're on older RTX hardware,

let's say you bought a 3090 Ti, an

extremely expensive graphics card for

its time, although cheap by today's

standards, is something that is not

going to be capable of running the

future versions of DLSS that come out,

right? It's already locked, I think,

DLSS 3.0 or older. It can't run 4.0 or

4.5. And so what's happening now is game

developers are going to start relying on

this new technology that's coming out

from the, you know, FSR for AMD and DLSS

for Nvidia because they're sending their

engineers to these developers, right?

AMD and Nvidia to optimize for those

feature sets and get them implemented

into their games. So what'll start

happening is now you're going to feel

like you're on a 1080 Ti again because

games are going to rely on hardware and

features that are you're locked out of

because they don't physically exist on

your card. At least that's a story we're

being told.

still not entirely believing the fact

that these are feature sets that are

truly locked behind hardware, but that's

the story that's being told. Now, when

we talk about CPUs, it's the same sort

of thing. When it comes to future

proofing, people that adopted maybe say

Zen 3 architecture or you know like a

5950 CPU which was a a beast of a CPU on

AM4 immediately found themselves at a

dead end of a platform because if you

adopted it then you adopted it at the

end of its life cycle because remember

Ryzen and AM4 came out back in 2016. So

you might have gotten yourself a beast

of a system but you also jumped on the

train at the last stop. So now you

aren't necessarily futurep proofed at

that point because you don't have an

upgrade path. You have hopefully a high

enough CPU that it's going to be

relevant when it comes to uh what games

are demanding in the future. Now when we

look at titles like GTA 6 and some of

these other future titles that are

coming out, it's getting a little scary

at how high the horsepower requirements

are for your systems these days. And I

think people that are still running 3000

series Ryzen, maybe 4,000 series Ryzen,

are going to start feeling the pinch a

little bit when it comes to CPU

bottlenecks starting to creep up into

these titles that are going to be

heavily CPU dependent. As we deal with

more openw world and sandbox type

titles, it becomes really, really

apparent that your CPU can quickly

become the bottleneck. But I bring up

AM4 because what happened right after

that? A socket change to AM5. A DDR

change to DDR5 being required. And now

we're already hearing rumors about AM6.

We're hearing rumors about DDR6. We're

hearing rumors about PCIe 6. Although I

don't I'd be surprised if PCIe 6 for

graphics and, you know, full 16x slots

would happen so quickly around the heels

of PCIe 5.0. But what's also happening

here uh when we talk about these these

major changes when it comes to sockets

is the fact that if you have to change

the entire platform to adopt the newer

technology then you're definitely not

future proofed at that point. Right? The

idea of future proofing first of all is

a lie. There's no such thing as future

proof. Your system will become obsolete

at some point. So let's just go ahead

and get rid of the word proof to begin

with. I like to call it future ready as

best as possible. Now, Intel although

they are struggling in many ways kind of

did it right where they had that interim

period where uh you know the 12th gen,

13th gen and 14th gen were able to

utilize either DDR4 or DDR5 which was

which was kind of nice. Uh giving you a

little bit of a buffer buffer period

where if you were coming on an older

platform and you had DDR4 RAM that you

wanted to use, you could throw it into

the newer platform getting the

appropriate motherboard and have more

longevity and lifespan to your system.

AMD didn't do that. that it had a hard

cut off and required DDR5 uh from the

start. And the same thing is going to

happen when DDR6 comes out. Now, when

that's going to be, given all the RAM

stuff going on right now, it probably

got pushed out a little bit, but it's

the kind of thing you have to consider

when we talk about uh our future

proofing or future readying our system.

Now, here's another trend that we've

seen obviously over the last 6 years or

so is the incredible increase in power

requirements. The only parts of your

system that I think you can truly

futureproof, and I'm just going to say

the word proof, as much as I hate that

word because it's it's simple and we

know what we're talking about here, is

your power supply and your case. That's

about it. And the reason why I say that

is even monitors for a while there to

use features like freync and G-Sync and

all that had require they had

requirements to to be able to be ready

for that technology. So, there became a

point where even your monitor, which you

might have bought that was a super

high-end 4K or something like that,

right before these technologies came

out, well, you're locked out of those

techs too because of the fact that your

monitor isn't isn't Freync ready or

G-Sync ready or certified or compatible,

whatever you want to call it. But a

power supply just does one thing. It

delivers power. Delivers 12vt, delivers

5 volt and 3.3 volts. That's all it

does. Whether or not you have the right

cables or not for say ATX 3.1 or any of

that can be remedied by getting an

adapter or plenty of cable companies are

making native cables to plug directly

into your power supply even if it's an

older type to convert it to the new

cable. So you can kind of be ready

hardware wise like that. But with the

increasing demand of the power that

these parts are requiring I mean we've

got 250 to 300 watt CPUs. We've got 600

watt to now 1,000 watt 5090s,

which means that an 850 watt power

supply just 5 years ago, which might

have seemed like more than enough to

survive several iterations and upgrades

of your system, is now not enough for

even something like a 5080 to be

comfortable. So, you got to start

thinking about that now. Now, you got to

start building in even more headroom if

you're buying a power supply because you

might find yourself, who knows, nextg

having to buy a new power supply because

we're seeing these incredible jumps in

power. For instance, the 2080 Ti, which

was a 250 W card, kept the same TDP as

the 250 W 1080 Ti. So, that jump from

one generation to the next meant your

power supply was safe. Then we saw the

350 watt 3090. Then we saw the 450 watt

4090. Don't forget overclockable up to

600 watts because of the cable spec. Now

the 5090, if we're talking enthusiast

grade hardware, right now is requiring a

600 watt PCI Express delivery, which

means 1,200 watt power supply is really

the real requirement here for safety. If

we saw a 250, then a 350, then a 450,

and then a 600 jump from just those few

generations,

and now we're seeing custom card

builders making cards with dual plugs,

which we all know should have always

been the standard for anything running

450 or more. If that becomes the new

norm for the next gen of graphics cards,

are they now going to be 800 W out of

the box? Because if you have two of

those cables, the graphics card

companies are going to say, "Hey, now we

can push the power limit even more. It's

a little bit safer." Who knows what the

Nvidia spec is going to be. Nvidia has

clearly endorsed these crazy jumps in

hardware power requirements. Your power

supply is going to start feeling

underspected very, very quickly. Doesn't

mean you should run out and immediately

buy a 1500 watt power supply if you're

not an enthusiast buying that level of

hardware. But if you even look at like

the 80 tier or the 70 tier of graphics

cards, we've seen big jumps in power

requirement even for those graphics

cards because now a 5070 is pulling the

exact same power wattage or power draw

as a 2080 Ti was. So that is the writing

on the wall of what power demands in the

future are going to be. Things like

Moore's law are kind of like those rules

are being bent and broken these days.

Right now we're kind of in this era

where it's just give us and by give us I

mean the the engineers are saying all

the performance possible damned be the

power draw. Just let it be what it is

and let the system the integrators and

the motherboard manufacturers and the

graphics card manufacturers um build

their power delivery systems and their

VRMs to handle the power requirements.

So, we're seeing this crazy scaling of

power draw where a high-end gaming

system just seven years ago would have

pulled maybe 600 watts from the wall.

We're pulling more than that from the

wall just to feed the graphics cards

these days. So, you can see where uh it

really becomes difficult to try and have

the idea of future proofing. The only

reason I'm really telling you this right

now isn't to try and doom and gloom you

to say, "Well, future proofing is dead."

I've made this video numerous times over

my YouTube career. And the the argument

has always been the same that future

proofing is not possible. It's just how

long will your your PC stay relevant or

stay within the requirements of the

titles that you want to play and be

ready for future titles. That's all it

is that you're hoping to do here when

you build a quote unquote future proof

system is knowing that you can play

titles well into the future without

being forced to upgrade your system.

Remember, being forced to upgrade your

system is truly what makes you not

future ready. And not all of these

titles and these future technologies are

something that you have to run. I think

DLSS is one that if you haven't

experienced, you're running really old

hardware and you don't have DLSS turned

on and you you're really missing out.

It's a tech that a lot of people pushed

back against in the early days because

it kind of was a hot mess. It was noisy.

It had all sorts of artifacts and it was

just not a great experience. Today,

everyone on both sides of the fence, AMD

fans and Nvidia fans, I think, can agree

whether we're talking about FSR or DLSS,

it is a an amazing technology because

you can't truly tell the difference

between the upscaled base resolution.

So, that's one thing I think you should

hop on if you have pushed back against

and haven't upgraded yet. That's a

that's a a feature worth upgrading for

and that will make you more future ready

when it comes to titles that are coming

in the future because guess what?

They're all going to be like relying on

DLSS to make the game playable. I think

it's just great features that have made

developers a little a little more lazy

when it comes to truly optimizing for

the hardware. But if you want to truly

be futurep proofed one, I hope you have

deep pockets because you're going to be

upgrading every 2 to 3 years now because

of how feature sets are are popping up

and how often you're getting gated

behind hardware walls to be able to

implement these newer feature sets. uh

you're going to definitely have to

overspec your power supply because I

don't think like we would all love to

hear, let's just use Nvidia as an

example because they are dominating the

GPU space when it comes to gaming AI

stuff on the side when it comes to

gaming graphics cards. They are just

dominating having the most cards

available and the highest performance

that you can buy if you have very very

deep pockets. I don't expect Nvidia with

the 6000 series to go. We've kept the

same performance at 40% more power

efficient. I'm just not expecting that

to be the case. I'm just not. Uh, that

used to be the argument. Remember,

performance per watt used to be

something people were super excited

about. Now, let's let's be fair. Us

gamers really push back against it when

a brand goes, "Look at the performance

per watt." Cuz as much as we like to get

up in arms, we also are all kind of, you

know, we're we're arrogant and we like

to say, "But show me the performance."

And if the performance is the same at

lesser watts, gamers go, "Oh, that's not

an upgrade." So, let's be honest. Let's

be real with ourselves. We as gamers are

very difficult to please, especially PC

enthusiasts. So, we've got to take

responsibility for that as well. And

especially if we've been loud enough to

say, "No one cares about performance per

watt. We just want the performance." And

then they start giving you the

performance at incredibly inefficient

values. We can't then be like, "BUT LOOK

AT THE POWER DRAW." LIKE, you can't have

it both ways, guys, right? Let's just be

honest. It's hard to be retros look in

introspective at our own biases and

such, but I think most PC enthusiasts

would probably say, "I want the

performance over the efficiency." And

that's that's the reality there. But to

truly be future ready, especially with

so many titles right now that have a lot

of unknowns around them, it's probably a

real 2 to threeyear upgrade cycle at

this point. And that is expensive and

very difficult to keep up with your

case. It's just a box that holds your

your stuff that air can flow through,

right? But let's talk about things like

BTF. If BTF becomes a future like

standard, I don't think it will be. But

if it did, and you don't have a BTF

case, now that's back to front or back

to the future, whatever you want to call

it cuz they keep changing the name. Or

project zero from MSI, which is just

where the plugs are on the back of the

motherboard where they don't show it

all. If you don't have a case that

supports that and that somehow becomes

the standard, which I highly doubt, then

you're buying a new case. Now, when it

comes to future proofing, I think I've

given you some examples of as to why

calling anything future proof is

absolutely wrong and impossible. Um,

there's plenty of things that you can do

to try and stay as future proofed as

possible. Like, I already gave you my

recommendation of, you know, case and

power supply are about the only two

things that you could possibly be as

future ready as possible without being

left out. But here's the hard truth.

Future proofing used to mean you buy the

highest hardware that you can today just

to lower settings in the future to make

it last as long as possible as it starts

to age out. But the reality is today you

buy high-end hardware and hope you don't

get locked out behind, you know, pay

walls for feature sets. It's kind of

like hardware DLC. Now we've all we've

all been screwed by by gaming

developers. Now we're getting screwed by

the hardware manufacturers.

So sound off down below if you guys have

built yourself a system that you thought

was future proofed and you got slapped

right upside the face by reality

striking that you absolutely were not

because you got locked out of feature

sets. Thanks for watching guys. As

always, we'll see you in the next one.