7 ms·

CPU gains for the last few gens have mainly been in perf/watt and, now, core count in lower-class chips thanks to AMD. The biggest benefit of a system upgrade f

by NamTaf 9y ago

CPU gains for the last few gens have mainly been in perf/watt and, now, core count in lower-class chips thanks to AMD. The biggest benefit of a system upgrade for the last few gens, from a user perspective, has been for the chipset's gains - NVMe, USB3, USB-C, etc. more than raw performance. That's slowly trickled up but the real-world gains in many tasks haven't been enough to really justify it. I know many people still sitting on anywhere from a 2xxx gen to a 5xxx gen and just don't feel compelled to upgrade from a CPU perspective. Those that eventually do, do so for the motherboard features more than the CPU - that's just a necessary cost for a small benefit. This is marginally different for laptops where perf/watt becomes more important, of course. However for desktops, I certainly wouldn't be troubled by a 4xxx gen. I upgraded last year and it was from a 920 to a 6600K. Even the 920 did much of what I wanted, honestly, it was more a luxury upgrade.

Nition 9y ago
Similarly, I only just upgraded from an i7 860 (2009) to a 6700K at the end of last year. In performance benchmarks, it's only twice as fast as my old one, and that's over seven years. Big difference to how things felt in the past. Imagine if your 66Mhz Pentium still ran well enough that you weren't sure it was worth upgrading to a 500Mhz Pentium III. Same time span.
- ido 9y ago
  This was mostly only true in the 90s tho, when we saw the hockey stick part of the S curve: between 1981 and 1987 your comparable choice would have been upgrading a 5mhz 8088 to a 10mhz 286. a 386 machine would be ~$10k (in 80s $s!) and more like a high end multichip Xeon system or something today - they actually had a compaq 386 of that vintage in my first job and it was still in active service in 2001.
  - Nition 9y ago
    In that case I guess my problem is we bought our first computer in '95, so my kind of baseline experience is that super fast world.
    - ido 9y ago
      Oh it's a common (& valid) comparison :) Just wanted to add a little historical context.
    - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
      Try and imagine since 1980. Kind of hard to explain to my boy actually. He has my old computer from about 7 years ago. At least i think it was 7. Intel 2600k? Still works a treat. It's almost as old as he is.
      - Kenji 9y ago
        I also got Intel 2600K. Yes, it's still going very strong. No reason to switch until my motherboard breaks. Speed gains would be minimal, yet getting a new processor would be quite expensive.
        ido 9y ago
        i had an i5-2500k that my nephew got a couple years ago simply cause we moved to a different country and i didn't want to lug a big-ass desktop with me. I suspect most people wouldn't notice the difference between it and a brand new CPU.
        dsr_ 9y ago
        I just replaced my work desktop i5-2500 with an i5-4570. Same SSDs, 16GB RAM instead of 24GB. (Not a voluntary move.) There's no perceivable difference. If you have enough RAM to avoid swapping and cheap SATA SSDs, all the requirements for fast/large CPUs or graphics cards are special applications of some sort. Browsers and editors and terminal windows and video playback don't count.
        paulmd 9y ago
        Even with a very intense overclock, Sandy Bridge is starting to fall behind the pack in gaming. Not obsolete by any means but 5 years of even incremental IPC gains do add up, and Sandy Bridge is still running PCIe 2.0. The 2500k is starting to come out 30-50% behind the 7600K in many titles let alone a 7700K, which is a very perceptible difference. http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2773-intel-i5-2500k-revisit-benchmark-for-2017/page-3 http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2773-intel-i5-2500k-revisi... http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-is-it-finally-time-to-upgrade-your-core-i5-2500k http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-is-it-... For "work" workloads, Sandy Bridge is still quite potent though. Honestly in that segment the gains have mostly been coming from moving to more cores. A hexacore or octacore with hyperthreading/SMT knocks the stuffing out of an i5.
- jl6 9y ago
  I'm still on my i7 860 with nothing compelling me to upgrade. Intel's biggest competitor in 2017 is Intel from 2010.
  - danieldk 9y ago
    It really depends on your applications/field. If you are in machine learning or data analysis, AVX can give a welcome performance boost. Also, a maximum of 16GB RAM is quite limiting.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      If you're in ML, can't you just stick a new GPU in the PCIe slot? A GTX 1070 can be had for below 500 €, which would still be a bit less than a new motherboard, new RAM and a new i7.
    - ac29 9y ago
      My i5-750 has run 32GB RAM for years (4x8GB). I haven't had any issues.
chx 9y ago
> NVMe While NVMe benchmarks are stunning I really am curious whether in an ordinary setting the difference to SATA can be felt at all. Not measured -- felt. When the era of swap ended because CPUs / chipsets finally could handle enough RAM and when we went from HDD to SDD, those could be felt for sure. > This is marginally different for laptops In laptop world, the problem is that with the spread of thin craze most laptops are now running 15W CPUs instead of 35W like in the old age and so there is little performance increase, no core count increase.
- TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
  I switched from a 2012 15'' MacBook Pro to a 2017 15'' Macbook Pro and the difference is staggering. The older laptop had a regular SSD, while the newer one is using NVMe. Although it also has a considerably newer CPU, which likely plays a huge role in the performance difference. I sometimes tweak stuff on both laptops at the same time, and doing a side-by-side restart or even waking up from sleep makes the older model's lesser performance painfully obvious
  - ido 9y ago
    Additionally "thin craze" matters - I remember having an old 15" laptop in the mid/late '00s that would actually give me backache after carrying it in my backpack for a while. Today I can't even tell if my 13" dell xps is in it or not.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      Interestingly, I cannot really tell if the notebook is in the backpack, but a water bottle with about the same total weight can totally be felt. Probably the very beneficial weight distribution of a flat slab that's affixed in an upright position directly against my back, vs. a cylindric bottle that's either moving around in the backpack, or stuck to its side and therefore exerting a sideways torque on my back.
- NamTaf 9y ago
  As you say, the thinness craze was enabled by lower-power CPUs that performed no worse than previous gens. They need smaller batteries and less extreme cooling which means smaller sizes. Alternatively, keep the same size and you can enlarge the battery. Either way, perf/watt gains have enabled that in a way that's visible to consumers. With a plugged in PC, that's not visible.
josteink 9y ago
> I upgraded last year and it was from a 920 to a 6600K. Even the 920 did much of what I wanted, honestly, it was more a luxury upgrade. The 920 is a solid performer, but oh my does it need efficient cooling. At launch it almost felt like a return to the Pentium 4 era in terms of power consumption. If I were to upgrade my 920 anytime soon, it would be to reduce the need for cooling fans and to get a quieter system. As a programmer, I don't need more ultra-cores or jigga-hertz.
- tracker1 9y ago
  When I upgraded to my 4790k (from amd FX-8350) the main driver was my electric bill, I actually had a couple hotter computers running, my htpc was similar power usage... went to the newer i7 on the desktop, and a brix (similar to nuc) for htpc, recently to an nvidia shield tv in place of htpc.

by NamTaf 9y ago

Nition 9y ago

Similarly, I only just upgraded from an i7 860 (2009) to a 6700K at the end of last year. In performance benchmarks, it's only twice as fast as my old one, and that's over seven years. Big difference to how things felt in the past. Imagine if your 66Mhz Pentium still ran well enough that you weren't sure it was worth upgrading to a 500Mhz Pentium III. Same time span.

ido 9y ago
This was mostly only true in the 90s tho, when we saw the hockey stick part of the S curve: between 1981 and 1987 your comparable choice would have been upgrading a 5mhz 8088 to a 10mhz 286. a 386 machine would be ~$10k (in 80s $s!) and more like a high end multichip Xeon system or something today - they actually had a compaq 386 of that vintage in my first job and it was still in active service in 2001.
- Nition 9y ago
  In that case I guess my problem is we bought our first computer in '95, so my kind of baseline experience is that super fast world.
  - ido 9y ago
    Oh it's a common (& valid) comparison :) Just wanted to add a little historical context.
  - Frogolocalypse 9y ago
    Try and imagine since 1980. Kind of hard to explain to my boy actually. He has my old computer from about 7 years ago. At least i think it was 7. Intel 2600k? Still works a treat. It's almost as old as he is.
    - Kenji 9y ago
      I also got Intel 2600K. Yes, it's still going very strong. No reason to switch until my motherboard breaks. Speed gains would be minimal, yet getting a new processor would be quite expensive.
      - ido 9y ago
        i had an i5-2500k that my nephew got a couple years ago simply cause we moved to a different country and i didn't want to lug a big-ass desktop with me. I suspect most people wouldn't notice the difference between it and a brand new CPU.
        dsr_ 9y ago
        I just replaced my work desktop i5-2500 with an i5-4570. Same SSDs, 16GB RAM instead of 24GB. (Not a voluntary move.) There's no perceivable difference. If you have enough RAM to avoid swapping and cheap SATA SSDs, all the requirements for fast/large CPUs or graphics cards are special applications of some sort. Browsers and editors and terminal windows and video playback don't count.
        paulmd 9y ago
        Even with a very intense overclock, Sandy Bridge is starting to fall behind the pack in gaming. Not obsolete by any means but 5 years of even incremental IPC gains do add up, and Sandy Bridge is still running PCIe 2.0. The 2500k is starting to come out 30-50% behind the 7600K in many titles let alone a 7700K, which is a very perceptible difference. http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2773-intel-i5-2500k-revisit-benchmark-for-2017/page-3 http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2773-intel-i5-2500k-revisi... http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-is-it-finally-time-to-upgrade-your-core-i5-2500k http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-is-it-... For "work" workloads, Sandy Bridge is still quite potent though. Honestly in that segment the gains have mostly been coming from moving to more cores. A hexacore or octacore with hyperthreading/SMT knocks the stuffing out of an i5.
jl6 9y ago
I'm still on my i7 860 with nothing compelling me to upgrade. Intel's biggest competitor in 2017 is Intel from 2010.
- danieldk 9y ago
  It really depends on your applications/field. If you are in machine learning or data analysis, AVX can give a welcome performance boost. Also, a maximum of 16GB RAM is quite limiting.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    If you're in ML, can't you just stick a new GPU in the PCIe slot? A GTX 1070 can be had for below 500 €, which would still be a bit less than a new motherboard, new RAM and a new i7.
  - ac29 9y ago
    My i5-750 has run 32GB RAM for years (4x8GB). I haven't had any issues.

chx 9y ago

> NVMe While NVMe benchmarks are stunning I really am curious whether in an ordinary setting the difference to SATA can be felt at all. Not measured -- felt. When the era of swap ended because CPUs / chipsets finally could handle enough RAM and when we went from HDD to SDD, those could be felt for sure. > This is marginally different for laptops In laptop world, the problem is that with the spread of thin craze most laptops are now running 15W CPUs instead of 35W like in the old age and so there is little performance increase, no core count increase.

TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
I switched from a 2012 15'' MacBook Pro to a 2017 15'' Macbook Pro and the difference is staggering. The older laptop had a regular SSD, while the newer one is using NVMe. Although it also has a considerably newer CPU, which likely plays a huge role in the performance difference. I sometimes tweak stuff on both laptops at the same time, and doing a side-by-side restart or even waking up from sleep makes the older model's lesser performance painfully obvious
- ido 9y ago
  Additionally "thin craze" matters - I remember having an old 15" laptop in the mid/late '00s that would actually give me backache after carrying it in my backpack for a while. Today I can't even tell if my 13" dell xps is in it or not.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    Interestingly, I cannot really tell if the notebook is in the backpack, but a water bottle with about the same total weight can totally be felt. Probably the very beneficial weight distribution of a flat slab that's affixed in an upright position directly against my back, vs. a cylindric bottle that's either moving around in the backpack, or stuck to its side and therefore exerting a sideways torque on my back.
NamTaf 9y ago
As you say, the thinness craze was enabled by lower-power CPUs that performed no worse than previous gens. They need smaller batteries and less extreme cooling which means smaller sizes. Alternatively, keep the same size and you can enlarge the battery. Either way, perf/watt gains have enabled that in a way that's visible to consumers. With a plugged in PC, that's not visible.

josteink 9y ago

> I upgraded last year and it was from a 920 to a 6600K. Even the 920 did much of what I wanted, honestly, it was more a luxury upgrade. The 920 is a solid performer, but oh my does it need efficient cooling. At launch it almost felt like a return to the Pentium 4 era in terms of power consumption. If I were to upgrade my 920 anytime soon, it would be to reduce the need for cooling fans and to get a quieter system. As a programmer, I don't need more ultra-cores or jigga-hertz.

tracker1 9y ago
When I upgraded to my 4790k (from amd FX-8350) the main driver was my electric bill, I actually had a couple hotter computers running, my htpc was similar power usage... went to the newer i7 on the desktop, and a brix (similar to nuc) for htpc, recently to an nvidia shield tv in place of htpc.