7 ms·

Also, for 99% of the users performance is good enough. People basically use PCs for browsing, email, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and some phot

by TsomArp 10y ago

Also, for 99% of the users performance is good enough. People basically use PCs for browsing, email, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and some photo retouch.

pimeys 10y ago
I think the PC gamers are a bit more than 1% of the users.
- TsomArp 10y ago
  Lets say what? 10% of PCs sold are for high performance gaming? Any other number?
  - darpa_escapee 10y ago
    I would be very surprised if it was that high.
- alkonaut 10y ago
  Perf is good enough for gamers too (in the sense that the next dollar spent should always be on the graphics card). The perf difference between my 2500K and my 6600K is not noticable.
  - drzaiusapelord 10y ago
    Depends what your work-load is. For VR, CPU heft is becoming important again. I have an OC'd 2500K and that's the minimum for more advanced VR games. CPUbench 2500k: 6400 6600k: 7921 That's a 20% improvement which doesn't sound like much on paper, but in real world testing that means about double the FPS for higher-end video cards at high res due to the older 2500k design lacking optimizations and other issues holding back those cards. http://forums.joinsquad.com/topic/5973-my-2500k-vs-6700k-upgrade-fps-results-hefty-fps-increase/ http://forums.joinsquad.com/topic/5973-my-2500k-vs-6700k-upg... Lastly, gamers would most likely opt for the i7 6700k which benches at 11000, so almost double that of the 2500k.
    - alkonaut 10y ago
      Yeah the step from 2500k to today isn't nothing, but 2500K was also released in Januray 2011 making it six years, which is about a million years old in CPU terms.
    - gsnedders 10y ago
      At the same time, i7-2700k is around 8900: quicker than the 6600k. A generation later, and socket compatible, is the i7-3770k, around 9500. On CPUbench, there's a big difference between i5 and i7 parts, and going to a i7 that's generations old gets you better scores than a current top-of-the-line i5.
    - vardump 10y ago
      Well, 2500k doesn't have AVX2 instructions (for 256-bit width), so integer stuff needs to use 128-bit wide SSE2+. In some [1] cases that can make quite a bit of difference, up to almost 2x. [1]: Real improvement is of course anywhere between none and 2x. A lot of software (most even?) is still not using AVX2 at all. Sorting, memory block operations (strlen, memcpy, etc.) and operations that need to do integer math on big chunks of data can benefit significantly. Some real world code I wrote saw up to ~1.9x improvement on systems with sufficient memory bandwidth.
- abiox 10y ago
  what makes you think that? also: my 2011 sandy bridge (2600k or 2700k, at work so can't check) does fine. these days the gpu is the major arbiter of gaming performance.
  - tomc1985 10y ago
    Actually.... While GPU is a MAJOR arbiter, CPU can bottleneck you too and it can hit you in the FPS. Years ago my gaming PC had inexplicably low FPS for the GPU it was using, and GPU utilization wasn't anywhere near 100% but CPU was... pop in a new chip+mobo and gaming was waaaay more enjoyable. There are subtle differences in how bottlenecked GPU vs CPU acts in most games, but they're there.
    - Vadoff 10y ago
      CPU can be a bottle-neck, but only if the game happens to be very CPU-heavy (rare) and you happen to have a poor CPU. In most modern games, a better CPU may yield a 10 FPS improvement, while a better GPU for the same price would yield 3x that.
      - mos_basik 10y ago
        Dwarf Fortress would like a word with you. :) Probably also Factorio. But I suppose it's accurate to say, in general terms and given the kinds of games that are currently most popular, GPU bottlenecking is much more common.
        gspetr 10y ago
        Dwarf Fortress was discussed on HN a few times and even the author admitted that the code quality is bad and it's unoptimized. I don't think it's a compelling argument for CPU being the bottleneck when your example is an unoptimized game with a sloppy codebase.
        tomc1985 10y ago
- Sir_Substance 10y ago
  Honestly though, I think even in PC gaming, the processor is not where the bottleneck is at. In the early 2000's, buying a new processor every year would yield noticeable returns in gaming performance. Once we entered the console port life cycle (circa 2008), where the performance of the dominant consoles defined what developers put in games, I found that from 2010-2014 I was able to use the same processor (and not a top of the line one) with no trouble, and only an intermediate graphics card upgrade. I'm now on the core that I bought in 2014, and I honestly expect it to be good until 2020. We'll see a bit more get juiced out of graphics cards, but we're nearing a stage where the cost of making graphics good enough to overwhelm modern graphics cards will be so high that it won't make sense from a cost/benefit perspective. At that point, I expect CUDA applications to be the driving force behind graphics card R&D.
  - potatolicious 10y ago
    This bears out in benchmarks too - you can find sites that benchmark games against multiple generations of Intel CPUs and find that the performance difference is minimal to nonexistent. I'm running a Haswell i7 in my gaming machine and looking at the numbers I'll maybe get a ~3% bump by "upgrading" to Skylake. No thanks.
  - untoreh 10y ago
    considering the fact that most AAA titles are glorified visual experiences it is no surprise cpu is not the bottleneck, requiring probably very little logic and not having to render more than a 60dg first person FOV. However, when you try any game that has some flavor of RTS to it, they start trudging, I remember reading RTS games target 20fps as optimal performance in general, because of lots of polygons but also because they need to track a lot of stuff compared to your average scripted experience. Free roamers a la gta/arma/watch dogs also cpu bound, just like most MMOs which have to display lots of stuff and track of lots of things. The gaming segment is definitely something that would benefit from beefier cpus I would say. Another factor to take into consideration is that people change gpu more often than cpu (I would blame intel and their sockets policies but I dont know) so it is obvious you target the lower common denominator which is gonna be the cpu therefore games that don't use lots of cpu to begin with. Last argument, cpu usage in games can't really be scaled like gpu usage, you can turn down shadows at best but a game is gonna always use that much cpu, being again thelowest common denominator.
adwn 10y ago
Performance is tolerable, not "good enough". Booting to desktop could be faster, rendering websites is too slow sometimes, and most applications still don't start instantaneously. The problem is not raw performance – it's that too many developers don't really give a shit about their user's experience as long as they can save even a couple of minutes of their oh so precious time. Computers got more powerful? Great, that means we can use an even slower dynamic programming language and add another layer of abstraction on top of our framework! Faster CPUs won't change that, same as in the last 20 years.
- darpa_escapee 10y ago
  Front-end frameworks are the bane of mobile web surfing. > Faster CPUs won't change that, same as in the last 20 years. In the last 20 years we've been throwing more and more hardware at the problem, eventually we'll hit a wall and start conserving those precious cycles.
- Swarthog 10y ago
  >it's that too many developers don't really give a shit about their user's experience as long as they can save even a couple of minutes of their oh so precious time. Really? The developers' fault? Whose time are we talking about here? The company's time? In workplace development, it's managers putting down on the development effort that goes towards optimization / performant design - and not for crazy reasons, simply because in many market conditions and applications, it looks like throwing money away on the balance sheet. If you're talking about open source projects, any of a developers' time we get is gratis; this would be a pretty good example of looking a gift horse in the mouth.
  - adwn 10y ago
    > [...] and not for crazy reasons, simply because in many market conditions and applications, it looks like throwing money away on the balance sheet. Would you use this argument to excuse software bugs? What about security holes and data leaks? Besides, the 80/20 rule applies, i.e., a little more effort spent on performance goes a long way towards a better user experience. > If you're talking about open source projects [...] Interestingly, this problem is less prevalent in the OSS world, because C and C++ is still very widespread there.
xiaoma 10y ago
I know about an order of magnitude more people who play games than people who retouch photos.

by TsomArp 10y ago

Also, for 99% of the users performance is good enough. People basically use PCs for browsing, email, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and some photo retouch.

pimeys 10y ago

I think the PC gamers are a bit more than 1% of the users.

TsomArp 10y ago
Lets say what? 10% of PCs sold are for high performance gaming? Any other number?
- darpa_escapee 10y ago
  I would be very surprised if it was that high.
alkonaut 10y ago
Perf is good enough for gamers too (in the sense that the next dollar spent should always be on the graphics card). The perf difference between my 2500K and my 6600K is not noticable.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  Depends what your work-load is. For VR, CPU heft is becoming important again. I have an OC'd 2500K and that's the minimum for more advanced VR games. CPUbench 2500k: 6400 6600k: 7921 That's a 20% improvement which doesn't sound like much on paper, but in real world testing that means about double the FPS for higher-end video cards at high res due to the older 2500k design lacking optimizations and other issues holding back those cards. http://forums.joinsquad.com/topic/5973-my-2500k-vs-6700k-upgrade-fps-results-hefty-fps-increase/ http://forums.joinsquad.com/topic/5973-my-2500k-vs-6700k-upg... Lastly, gamers would most likely opt for the i7 6700k which benches at 11000, so almost double that of the 2500k.
  - alkonaut 10y ago
    Yeah the step from 2500k to today isn't nothing, but 2500K was also released in Januray 2011 making it six years, which is about a million years old in CPU terms.
  - gsnedders 10y ago
    At the same time, i7-2700k is around 8900: quicker than the 6600k. A generation later, and socket compatible, is the i7-3770k, around 9500. On CPUbench, there's a big difference between i5 and i7 parts, and going to a i7 that's generations old gets you better scores than a current top-of-the-line i5.
  - vardump 10y ago
    Well, 2500k doesn't have AVX2 instructions (for 256-bit width), so integer stuff needs to use 128-bit wide SSE2+. In some [1] cases that can make quite a bit of difference, up to almost 2x. [1]: Real improvement is of course anywhere between none and 2x. A lot of software (most even?) is still not using AVX2 at all. Sorting, memory block operations (strlen, memcpy, etc.) and operations that need to do integer math on big chunks of data can benefit significantly. Some real world code I wrote saw up to ~1.9x improvement on systems with sufficient memory bandwidth.
abiox 10y ago
what makes you think that? also: my 2011 sandy bridge (2600k or 2700k, at work so can't check) does fine. these days the gpu is the major arbiter of gaming performance.
- tomc1985 10y ago
  Actually.... While GPU is a MAJOR arbiter, CPU can bottleneck you too and it can hit you in the FPS. Years ago my gaming PC had inexplicably low FPS for the GPU it was using, and GPU utilization wasn't anywhere near 100% but CPU was... pop in a new chip+mobo and gaming was waaaay more enjoyable. There are subtle differences in how bottlenecked GPU vs CPU acts in most games, but they're there.
  - Vadoff 10y ago
    CPU can be a bottle-neck, but only if the game happens to be very CPU-heavy (rare) and you happen to have a poor CPU. In most modern games, a better CPU may yield a 10 FPS improvement, while a better GPU for the same price would yield 3x that.
    - mos_basik 10y ago
      Dwarf Fortress would like a word with you. :) Probably also Factorio. But I suppose it's accurate to say, in general terms and given the kinds of games that are currently most popular, GPU bottlenecking is much more common.
      - gspetr 10y ago
        Dwarf Fortress was discussed on HN a few times and even the author admitted that the code quality is bad and it's unoptimized. I don't think it's a compelling argument for CPU being the bottleneck when your example is an unoptimized game with a sloppy codebase.
        tomc1985 10y ago
Sir_Substance 10y ago
Honestly though, I think even in PC gaming, the processor is not where the bottleneck is at. In the early 2000's, buying a new processor every year would yield noticeable returns in gaming performance. Once we entered the console port life cycle (circa 2008), where the performance of the dominant consoles defined what developers put in games, I found that from 2010-2014 I was able to use the same processor (and not a top of the line one) with no trouble, and only an intermediate graphics card upgrade. I'm now on the core that I bought in 2014, and I honestly expect it to be good until 2020. We'll see a bit more get juiced out of graphics cards, but we're nearing a stage where the cost of making graphics good enough to overwhelm modern graphics cards will be so high that it won't make sense from a cost/benefit perspective. At that point, I expect CUDA applications to be the driving force behind graphics card R&D.
- potatolicious 10y ago
  This bears out in benchmarks too - you can find sites that benchmark games against multiple generations of Intel CPUs and find that the performance difference is minimal to nonexistent. I'm running a Haswell i7 in my gaming machine and looking at the numbers I'll maybe get a ~3% bump by "upgrading" to Skylake. No thanks.
- untoreh 10y ago
  considering the fact that most AAA titles are glorified visual experiences it is no surprise cpu is not the bottleneck, requiring probably very little logic and not having to render more than a 60dg first person FOV. However, when you try any game that has some flavor of RTS to it, they start trudging, I remember reading RTS games target 20fps as optimal performance in general, because of lots of polygons but also because they need to track a lot of stuff compared to your average scripted experience. Free roamers a la gta/arma/watch dogs also cpu bound, just like most MMOs which have to display lots of stuff and track of lots of things. The gaming segment is definitely something that would benefit from beefier cpus I would say. Another factor to take into consideration is that people change gpu more often than cpu (I would blame intel and their sockets policies but I dont know) so it is obvious you target the lower common denominator which is gonna be the cpu therefore games that don't use lots of cpu to begin with. Last argument, cpu usage in games can't really be scaled like gpu usage, you can turn down shadows at best but a game is gonna always use that much cpu, being again thelowest common denominator.

adwn 10y ago

Performance is tolerable, not "good enough". Booting to desktop could be faster, rendering websites is too slow sometimes, and most applications still don't start instantaneously. The problem is not raw performance – it's that too many developers don't really give a shit about their user's experience as long as they can save even a couple of minutes of their oh so precious time. Computers got more powerful? Great, that means we can use an even slower dynamic programming language and add another layer of abstraction on top of our framework! Faster CPUs won't change that, same as in the last 20 years.

darpa_escapee 10y ago
Front-end frameworks are the bane of mobile web surfing. > Faster CPUs won't change that, same as in the last 20 years. In the last 20 years we've been throwing more and more hardware at the problem, eventually we'll hit a wall and start conserving those precious cycles.
Swarthog 10y ago
>it's that too many developers don't really give a shit about their user's experience as long as they can save even a couple of minutes of their oh so precious time. Really? The developers' fault? Whose time are we talking about here? The company's time? In workplace development, it's managers putting down on the development effort that goes towards optimization / performant design - and not for crazy reasons, simply because in many market conditions and applications, it looks like throwing money away on the balance sheet. If you're talking about open source projects, any of a developers' time we get is gratis; this would be a pretty good example of looking a gift horse in the mouth.
- adwn 10y ago
  > [...] and not for crazy reasons, simply because in many market conditions and applications, it looks like throwing money away on the balance sheet. Would you use this argument to excuse software bugs? What about security holes and data leaks? Besides, the 80/20 rule applies, i.e., a little more effort spent on performance goes a long way towards a better user experience. > If you're talking about open source projects [...] Interestingly, this problem is less prevalent in the OSS world, because C and C++ is still very widespread there.

xiaoma 10y ago

I know about an order of magnitude more people who play games than people who retouch photos.