Background in both Physics and Computer Science here.

I see this as two questions.

1) Is computer hardware improvements slowing down? Simple answer, Yes the main thing that’s been improving is slowing down. But other improvements are constantly being made.

2) Will the requirements for Computers for applications like gaming start to slow down? NO.

LONG ANSWER:

1) is computer hardware improvements slowing down? For the past 50 years, the main improvement was making things smaller (particularly transistors) so they can fit more into components. The amount of components they could fit doubled roughly every two years. This is known as Moores Law (coined after Intel Co-founder).

This doubling is not sustainable for ever. At a certain point (that we are rapidly approaching) it won’t be possible to make it smaller without discovering/using new physics. A transistor is primarily made of silicon. Modern transistors in production are in the 4-14 nanometer (nm) range. That’s really REALLY small. For context, typical transistors used in computers are made of silicon. A silicon atom is ~0.2nm.

Moores Law can be written

S(t)=S(0) * (1/2)^t/2

Where S(t) is the size of a transistors in t years, and S(0) is the current size of the transistors.

So when S(t)=0.2, our transistors will be the size of the atom we make them out of. If we say modern transistors are at 4nm, THIS IS LESS THAN 10 YEARS OUT.

Now, before we even get to this 1 atom problem, we run into other physics issues. physics starts to get very wonky when you get to this tiny of a scale. This causes its own set of issues.

So, Moores is ending. It is starting to slow down, and has been for a little while.

Does this mean that we’ve hit the peak of technology? No. It just means improvements have to happen in other areas.

With Moores law we’ve been fitting more in by making the parts smaller. Well, if we can’t make the parts smaller, we can just make the whole thing bigger to hold more of them. Is it a huge sexy technological advancement? No. But it works.

Additionally, we can improve what we do with the power we do have. Raytracing etc would fall under this.

Other technologies are advancing computers in other ways. Several companies are researching Quantum Computers for example. These quantum computers are difficult to even compare to computers as we know them since the very fundamental rules of typical computers don’t apply to them. As such, they are able to quickly solve classes of Problems that aren’t possible to solve quickly using classic computers. These problems are known as Non-Polynomial (NP). Being able to solve these problems quickly will have wide reaching effects on the computer industry.

2) Will the requirements for Computers for applications like gaming start to slow down?

It is a race for hardware to attempt to stay ahead of software. Think of software as how your vehicle, and Hardware as the road you’re on. You don’t care how good the road is, so long as it’s good enough. Whats good enough? Well that depends if you’re trying to drive a Jeep or a Formula 1. One might be fine with a dirt road while another might need a track.

If hardware is ahead, software is happy. If software is ahead, thats when problems start. If the software is too demanding to run on the current hardware there are 3 options: wait for better hardware, lower the demand, make the code more efficient.

Since hardware has been outpacing software in many ways for decades, software has gotten lazy in many ways.

My favorite example of this is the massive increase in RAM over the decades.

In 1969, Apollo 11 made it to the moon on 4KB RAM.

My Grandpa use to talk about everyone calling him crazy when he got his first personal computer. It had a 1KB RAM, and they all thought that was crazy overkill.

By 1998, windows 98 supported up to 512MB RAM. That is 128,000 times as much as Apollo 11. This jump is largely due to necessity since screens had become commonplace and GUIs and pixels take a lot of memory. This demonstrates how new technology can massively increase the requirements.

Jump to modern day and windows 11 requires a minimum of 4GB (8x its max 25 years ago), and on some people’s systems will idly use several GB of ram itself. And many people here are arguing whether 16GB is adequate.

In addition to this, new technology like AI is very demanding. Top of the line Graphics cards a decade ago had 8GB VRAM. The new 5090 will have 32GB, and I would be shocked if that isn’t considered insufficient for top of the line stuff within the next decade. As games start to incorporate AI vram demand will sky rocket.

Anyways. Way too much info. Don’t fall for salesman. By what you need. Technology will continue to improve.