That depends on how you define more powerful computers . Could we have kept creating more powerful processing arrays doing that narrow band of math ? Probably with a paradigm shift but there is very little need . The average person has little use for faster and more powerful traditional processors and neither does the average business . Additionally , energy efficiency is of paramount importance for consumer facing processing because many of our devices are mobile now . The processing power per watt in my new smart phone would have been considered absolutely impossible in 2010 . If you look at the supercomputers of the world where raw computing speed is still valuable for limited applications the insane growth is still there . We hit a petaflop in 2008 and that was an insane accomplishment , and just 8 years later we are planning exascale 1 , 000 petaflop supercomputers . Exascale in 2010 was science fiction and today it is considered possible . Traditional processors also are not good at neural networks , which are the future of consumer facing tech . Remember , if you are on rpcgaming , you are not a normal person on this planet . We like to push boundaries , but most people just want a working computer that does what they need for an affordable price , and we simply do not need that much more traditional processing power for that . Even with the limited demand in consumer processing power , the jump to 4 k from 1080 was a huge technical hurdle we have overcome in the last decade for pcgaming . Realtime 4 k drawing of an scene of even moderate complexity was science fiction for graphics cards in 2006 . Your premise just doesn ' t stand to scrutiny .