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#1
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where goes processors these days?
It's Spring, and the desire to do a major upgrade of my pc is growing
:-) What is the current thinking about the processor and its place in desktop computers? Around 2010, all the buzz centered around multi-core (4, 6, 8+) CPUs, and an expectation that the idea of a CPU in a personal computer was obsolete with the shift to manufacturing APUs. ISTR reading that eventually even those would be supplanted by GPUs becoming the only processor a personal consumer computer would need because the processing power of a GPU was so much greater than traditional CPUs of the time and doing so would enable more innovative hardware. But as I look at ads for motherboards, video cards and, yes, CPUs :-), there doesn't seem to have been any bold, significant jump in what's offered out there. Is that due to me having become habituated to small incremental changes in the tech world or has there not been any dramatic change over the past several years? John |
#2
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where goes processors these days?
On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 13:00:45 +0000 (UTC), "Yes"
wrote: It's Spring, and the desire to do a major upgrade of my pc is growing :-) What is the current thinking about the processor and its place in desktop computers? Around 2010, all the buzz centered around multi-core (4, 6, 8+) CPUs, and an expectation that the idea of a CPU in a personal computer was obsolete with the shift to manufacturing APUs. ISTR reading that eventually even those would be supplanted by GPUs becoming the only processor a personal consumer computer would need because the processing power of a GPU was so much greater than traditional CPUs of the time and doing so would enable more innovative hardware. But as I look at ads for motherboards, video cards and, yes, CPUs :-), there doesn't seem to have been any bold, significant jump in what's offered out there. Is that due to me having become habituated to small incremental changes in the tech world or has there not been any dramatic change over the past several years? Last I looked, I'd say an entry point might be 4 cores and nothing less. Mixed GPU/CPU platform offerings were then available, but I couldn't say what greater part convenience might now play for boards available without integral G/CPU (gamer support, perhaps, for MBs for various flavors of AGP slots). Not that I really see any issues. I have to go to the same places I've been that sell computer parts and spend some time drilling them over. For such as how might UEFI BIOS extensions meet my expectations. OS driver support would be another I'd personally be looking hard at. It's not really going to make a difference, though, in the end. If one or both my quadcore/vidchipped Gigabyte MBs blows up, into a million pieces today, that's all that's out there left. What else is there that matters -- you take what they give you, or so that's the plan, as they say -- for any sense I may personally entertain about obsolescence? |
#3
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where goes processors these days?
Yes wrote:
It's Spring, and the desire to do a major upgrade of my pc is growing :-) What is the current thinking about the processor and its place in desktop computers? Around 2010, all the buzz centered around multi-core (4, 6, 8+) CPUs, and an expectation that the idea of a CPU in a personal computer was obsolete with the shift to manufacturing APUs. ISTR reading that eventually even those would be supplanted by GPUs becoming the only processor a personal consumer computer would need because the processing power of a GPU was so much greater than traditional CPUs of the time and doing so would enable more innovative hardware. But as I look at ads for motherboards, video cards and, yes, CPUs :-), there doesn't seem to have been any bold, significant jump in what's offered out there. Is that due to me having become habituated to small incremental changes in the tech world or has there not been any dramatic change over the past several years? John I think the spirit of what you say is correct. I think the liquid CPU coolers are an improvement--easy installation, so issues with dust. I'm not sure, however, that I'm willing to call that "dramatic". My CPU cores of my 4790K are running about 23 to 25-degrees C; GPU at about 32-degrees, according to Fan Speed. Problem is there not quite enough competition for Intel to "heighten" its offerings dramatically. Bill |
#4
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where goes processors these days?
On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 15:00:17 -0400, Flasherly
wrote: It's not really going to make a difference, though, in the end. If one or both my quadcore/vidchipped Gigabyte MBs blows up, into a million pieces today, that's all that's out there left. What else is there that matters -- you take what they give you, or so that's the plan, as they say -- for any sense I may personally entertain about obsolescence? Curious...and checked. [MSI H81M-P33 LGA 1150 Intel H81 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard] Military spec'd $40 MB MSI - solidcaps, fast boot/skip bios screen, hi-temp/humidty -- all cool;- "IntelĀ® Smart Connect * Automatically pull data from cloud services for always updated content" -- dunno waz'up wid dat ****. Looks like there's Win XP drivers from MSI. 2 HDs sucks, 1 PCI sucks, onboard vid *Supported only by CPU with integrated graphic, buy an AGP card that's basically going to overpriced for the MB price...or else Micro not mini factor, hold on to your socks they'll be shipping MBs the size of a deck of cards next year. ** When things get Really Weird, really, the Really Weird get going ** Where I said a basic quadcore, guess I should have said "read my lips" first -- !!! $200... (holy moley mary and jesus rolled into one hot poker) Intel Core i5-4430 Haswell Quad-Core 3.0GHz LGA 1150 84W Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics BX80646I54430 where do they get off on that price (I bought both pulls, my quads from Fleabay, at about $25 each) I can tell I'd need to do some more homework, lots, were I looking to build on the shy. Hey, I only know one way how to assemble - cheap. |
#5
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where goes processors these days?
Yes wrote in part:
It's Spring, and the desire to do a major upgrade of my pc is growing :-) What is the current thinking about the processor and its place in desktop computers? Always a good question. From a users perspective, hardware is dependant on software (purchase hw to run sw) and software is in turn dependant on tasks to be done. Not much new. Around 2010, all the buzz centered around multi-core (4, 6, 8+) CPUs, and an expectation that the idea of a CPU in a personal computer was obsolete with the shift to manufacturing APUs. ISTR reading that eventually even those would be supplanted by GPUs becoming the only processor a personal consumer computer would need because the processing power of a GPU was so much greater than traditional CPUs of the time and doing so would enable more innovative hardware. Yes, GPUs are tremendously powerful. Mostly by very wide parallelism -- 16x - 256x cores. These are very good for structured input like image rendering but very inflexible and horrid at general-purpose computing. There appears to be plateau'ing (stagnation) with the clock limit around 4 GHz and advancing only slowly from 3.0 GHz a decade ago (after advancing from 0.2 GHz in the previous decade). Likewise IPC (instructions-per-clock) has not advanced much -- the basic Intel core is the same triple-issue as the PPro, improved with new instructions (XMM2) and larger caches/buffers. ARM has different targets (subwatt) with lower clocks and IPC. Parallelism is an obvous advance, and it works well for servers which naturally have many tasks. But a single human has only a single focus no matter how fast they think they can shift it ("Multitasking"). And I notice even an advanced browser like chrome or firefox really cannot keep more than two threads running per page. (Perhaps more if there are multiple distracting animated elements.) HTML would appear to have limited parallelism. But as I look at ads for motherboards, video cards and, yes, CPUs :-), there doesn't seem to have been any bold, significant jump in what's offered out there. Is that due to me having become habituated to small incremental changes in the tech world or has there not been any dramatic change over the past several years? This is also my impression. Software has not advanced much, nor has hardware. Apart from games or specialised uses, a 2-4 core machine will suffice for current user software. -- Robert |
#6
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where goes processors these days?
On Mon, 16 Mar 2015 11:59:28 +0000 (UTC), Robert
wrote: Parallelism is an obvous advance, and it works well for servers which naturally have many tasks. But a single human has only a single focus no matter how fast they think they can shift it ("Multitasking"). Those capable apps apart servers or video can make the quad+core an obvious choice advantage over innocuous duals, mainstream almost a decade ago -- all else being approximately equal to duals for $10 on Ebay -- whereas for a quad similarly positioned at $20, now, that's what I call the real deal in trickle-down effects. (Metadata containers to audio processing, for instance gain/track processing, makes a difference, I think is great, when heating up four cores over half the thruput of two.) |
#7
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where goes processors these days?
I do some stuff that requires single-threaded speed, so I look for
quad-cores with greatest MHz, turbo mode, big L1 L2 cache. The hex/octa offerings are not useful for me. Neither are GPUs. If they were still making dual-cores that went faster than a quad-core, I would actually buy some. |
#8
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where goes processors these days?
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