old & busted:
single core CPU and the "speed is everything" philosophy
new hotness: Dual core CPU's and in the future Quad core.
Even though most software hasn't been implemented in software it does increase performance. processes are split between 2 core (in dutch we call this grove granulariteit)) If a proces is made to be executed on 2 cores it is faster( in dutch fijne granulariteit)
Also 64-bit is the future(some say present) but most likely it will be with the release of vista 64 before we see wide spread 64-bit software.
old & busted: DDR1
new hotness:DDR2
It took a while but DDR1 will soon be no more. DRR2 has matured productioncoss have dropped and most of all the latency is better then in the early stages. Intel made uses of DDR2 relatively soon in comparison with AMD. This is because the memory controller is on the AMD CPU while intel puts it on the motherboard. Butr since AMD will soon switch from socket DDR2 will be in the next generation AMD CPU’s (some have even speculated that they will skip DDR2 and go straight to DDR3
http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.aspx?i=24145)If you want more info over memory I will try and find my notes of 2 years ago (had information about sd-ram DDR1 DDR2 rambus…).
old & busted: IDE - PATA
new hotness: SATA
eventough the transfer speeds are the same(at this moment) SATA has several advantages over PATA. SATA is hotplugable and the wires are thin so it doesn't interfere with the airflow (you could use rounde IDE). Also the use of internal cache has increased speed and performance of HD's
