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I bought a Sandy Bridge CPU in 2011. 4 cores, 8 threads, 3.0 ghz. Last year I went looking through consumer-class CPUs looking to upgrade. They are more or les

I bought a Sandy Bridge CPU in 2011. 4 cores, 8 threads, 3.0 ghz. Last year I went looking through consumer-class CPUs looking to upgrade. They are more or less all a very unimpressive 4 core, 8 thread, 3.0 ghz. Maybe they have a tiny bit more cache. There is absolutely no reason to upgrade. Progress on consumer-class CPUs this decade has been utterly anemic. The only one I've seriously been wowed by is the Ryzen Threadripper. Now all of a sudden, Intel is readying better CPUs. Entirely coincidental, I'm sure.

krylon 8y ago
> They are more or less all a very unimpressive 4 core, 8 thread, 3.0 ghz. Maybe they have a tiny bit more cache. There is absolutely no reason to upgrade. In a way, that was good thing, though. For the first time in my memory, a five-year-old PC is not a piece of junk I am just too lazy to get rid off, but a machine fully capable running current software (at least after install more RAM and an SSD). (Within reasonable limits, of course, I am not talking about high end games or such.) The fact that CPUs did not get faster (not much, at least) also meant that software could not afford to get slower, which greatly extended the useful lifespans of older machines.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- cdelsolar 8y ago
  Yeah, I'm on my 2013 Macbook Pro right now and it still runs like a dream (within reason). I don't see myself changing it anytime soon.
ajross 8y ago
That 2600K you bought in 2011 was a premium part. The ones you're looking at now are low end. If you look in the same price range you find 6-core Coffee Lake CPUs at 4.4GHz, which has 50% more cache, about 2x the GPU performance, maybe 15% better IPC on typical workloads, and draws about 30% less power under load. No, it's not the mid 90's anymore where we were tripling performance every time we upgraded. There's still progress.
balls187 8y ago
How are you ascertaining that there is no reason to upgrade? I went from a Nehalem i7 3.20GHz extreme hex core, to a kabylake i7 7700k 4-core, and it's a night and day difference. In every one of my use cases my 7700k outperforms the older CPU.
- WhiteOwlLion 8y ago
  Depends what you are doing and whether the upgrade justifies the cost and productivity gain. I just bought several i5 quad core 3.2Ghz Dell Optiplex 3010 for our church for $35 ea. They run Windows 10 and LibreOffice just fine on a HDD. Now, if I'm crunching for distributed computing, I might want that quad XEON 24-core 1U server off eBay instead. Just depends on your workload and use case.
bzbarsky 8y ago
A lot of the consumer-class CPU focus this decade has been on power consumption and the GPU part. A Sandy Bridge 4-core, 8-thread, 3.0 ghz CPU from 2011 would be something like a i7-2960XM. It's actually 2.70 ghz base frequency, but 8MB cache and 55W. A comparable modern CPU (same cores, threads, base frequency, cache) is a i7-8559U. This has a TDP of 28W. The old processor would scale up to 3.7 ghz while the new one scales up to 4.5. And the new processor has 1.5 times the memory bandwidth. And I expect the GPU is a lot better. The new processor probably has somewhat better instruction throughput at the same clock rate. All that said, I agree this is not the 90s and we're not getting 10x or more improvements in speed over the course of 7 years here... The new processor _is_ better; just not enough better to be worth paying $400 for unless you're getting a new computer anyway for other reasons. (Note that these are both "mobile" processors, fwiw; I assume that's the comparison point if we're talking consumer-class, because consumers don't really buy desktops.)
civilitty 8y ago
You need to understand how CPUs are made to understand the progress in the last decade. When Intel releases a new generation of i3/i5/i7 processors, they aren't different designs - in fact, they're the exact same chip. The only difference is how many errors were present on each chip and the final product is extremely sensitive to the smallest errors like scratches, missing or misplaced dopants, and other material impurities. In order to maximize their yield and make consumer processors an economic reality, Intel tests every single chip that goes off the assembly line and cut the "fuses" of the regions that don't pass quality control. A perfect chip becomes an i7 (or an i9 or even sometimes a Xeon) while the less perfect chips become i5s and the ones with the most errors become i3s with most of their cores disabled. As other posters have noted: that 2600K CPU part you bought in 2011 is the Intel Extreme line, which are the top of the line i7s that have not only passed QC on their cores but have also been "burned in" or tested for stability at the higher end of possible operating frequencies for that generation. You're literally comparing the best of the best from 7 years ago to stuff that just barely missed the dumpster. For example, out of the dozens of desktops I've built for my friends, family, and me, all of the -K processors that I've used are still alive today - including an i7-965 Extreme that's almost ten years old now. My experience with i3/i5 is much worse.
- grouseway 8y ago
  Lets not exaggerate the premium level of his 2600K chip. It was $317 when he bought it. Higher than average but hardly some $2k xeon monster.
- loeg 8y ago
  It's true both Intel and (especially) AMD sell fused-off core CPUs as downmarket models, it's not true that Intel only uses a single die from their 4 core i3 models all the way up through their, e.g., 28-core models (as mentioned in TFA). AMD's Zen arch is an 8 core die, and they get very high yields out of it. Even the downmarket parts mostly or entirely had 8 working cores before fusing off. Intel's big 28 core parts are (at least historically) a huge single die, with very very low yields. They charge a huge dollar amount for the parts because they cannot afford not to — the manufacturing costs are very high. There is some speculation that this 5GHz part is actually a bridged smaller die design, like AMD's Zen platform. Intel's bridge design is called "EMIB," if you want to google that speculation further.
loeg 8y ago
Haswell+ has much better IPC than the SB generation. AMD's Zen platform has a bit better IPC than SB, a lot more cores, and generally clocks above 3 GHz. I'd consider upgrading. (FWIW, TR is a very upmarket part compared to a 4-core SB and you will pay a large premium for that, especially for the motherboard. However, even an 8-core Ryzen 1700X would be a huge upgrade over a 4-core SB and the 4- and 6-core Ryzens look very affordable.)
z3t4 8y ago
Don't just compare cores and ghz, look at cpu benchmarks and also power consumption.

krylon 8y ago

> They are more or less all a very unimpressive 4 core, 8 thread, 3.0 ghz. Maybe they have a tiny bit more cache. There is absolutely no reason to upgrade. In a way, that was good thing, though. For the first time in my memory, a five-year-old PC is not a piece of junk I am just too lazy to get rid off, but a machine fully capable running current software (at least after install more RAM and an SSD). (Within reasonable limits, of course, I am not talking about high end games or such.) The fact that CPUs did not get faster (not much, at least) also meant that software could not afford to get slower, which greatly extended the useful lifespans of older machines.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
cdelsolar 8y ago
Yeah, I'm on my 2013 Macbook Pro right now and it still runs like a dream (within reason). I don't see myself changing it anytime soon.

ajross 8y ago

That 2600K you bought in 2011 was a premium part. The ones you're looking at now are low end. If you look in the same price range you find 6-core Coffee Lake CPUs at 4.4GHz, which has 50% more cache, about 2x the GPU performance, maybe 15% better IPC on typical workloads, and draws about 30% less power under load. No, it's not the mid 90's anymore where we were tripling performance every time we upgraded. There's still progress.

balls187 8y ago

How are you ascertaining that there is no reason to upgrade? I went from a Nehalem i7 3.20GHz extreme hex core, to a kabylake i7 7700k 4-core, and it's a night and day difference. In every one of my use cases my 7700k outperforms the older CPU.

WhiteOwlLion 8y ago
Depends what you are doing and whether the upgrade justifies the cost and productivity gain. I just bought several i5 quad core 3.2Ghz Dell Optiplex 3010 for our church for $35 ea. They run Windows 10 and LibreOffice just fine on a HDD. Now, if I'm crunching for distributed computing, I might want that quad XEON 24-core 1U server off eBay instead. Just depends on your workload and use case.

bzbarsky 8y ago

A lot of the consumer-class CPU focus this decade has been on power consumption and the GPU part. A Sandy Bridge 4-core, 8-thread, 3.0 ghz CPU from 2011 would be something like a i7-2960XM. It's actually 2.70 ghz base frequency, but 8MB cache and 55W. A comparable modern CPU (same cores, threads, base frequency, cache) is a i7-8559U. This has a TDP of 28W. The old processor would scale up to 3.7 ghz while the new one scales up to 4.5. And the new processor has 1.5 times the memory bandwidth. And I expect the GPU is a lot better. The new processor probably has somewhat better instruction throughput at the same clock rate. All that said, I agree this is not the 90s and we're not getting 10x or more improvements in speed over the course of 7 years here... The new processor _is_ better; just not enough better to be worth paying $400 for unless you're getting a new computer anyway for other reasons. (Note that these are both "mobile" processors, fwiw; I assume that's the comparison point if we're talking consumer-class, because consumers don't really buy desktops.)

civilitty 8y ago

You need to understand how CPUs are made to understand the progress in the last decade. When Intel releases a new generation of i3/i5/i7 processors, they aren't different designs - in fact, they're the exact same chip. The only difference is how many errors were present on each chip and the final product is extremely sensitive to the smallest errors like scratches, missing or misplaced dopants, and other material impurities. In order to maximize their yield and make consumer processors an economic reality, Intel tests every single chip that goes off the assembly line and cut the "fuses" of the regions that don't pass quality control. A perfect chip becomes an i7 (or an i9 or even sometimes a Xeon) while the less perfect chips become i5s and the ones with the most errors become i3s with most of their cores disabled. As other posters have noted: that 2600K CPU part you bought in 2011 is the Intel Extreme line, which are the top of the line i7s that have not only passed QC on their cores but have also been "burned in" or tested for stability at the higher end of possible operating frequencies for that generation. You're literally comparing the best of the best from 7 years ago to stuff that just barely missed the dumpster. For example, out of the dozens of desktops I've built for my friends, family, and me, all of the -K processors that I've used are still alive today - including an i7-965 Extreme that's almost ten years old now. My experience with i3/i5 is much worse.

grouseway 8y ago
Lets not exaggerate the premium level of his 2600K chip. It was $317 when he bought it. Higher than average but hardly some $2k xeon monster.
loeg 8y ago
It's true both Intel and (especially) AMD sell fused-off core CPUs as downmarket models, it's not true that Intel only uses a single die from their 4 core i3 models all the way up through their, e.g., 28-core models (as mentioned in TFA). AMD's Zen arch is an 8 core die, and they get very high yields out of it. Even the downmarket parts mostly or entirely had 8 working cores before fusing off. Intel's big 28 core parts are (at least historically) a huge single die, with very very low yields. They charge a huge dollar amount for the parts because they cannot afford not to — the manufacturing costs are very high. There is some speculation that this 5GHz part is actually a bridged smaller die design, like AMD's Zen platform. Intel's bridge design is called "EMIB," if you want to google that speculation further.

loeg 8y ago

Haswell+ has much better IPC than the SB generation. AMD's Zen platform has a bit better IPC than SB, a lot more cores, and generally clocks above 3 GHz. I'd consider upgrading. (FWIW, TR is a very upmarket part compared to a 4-core SB and you will pay a large premium for that, especially for the motherboard. However, even an 8-core Ryzen 1700X would be a huge upgrade over a 4-core SB and the 4- and 6-core Ryzens look very affordable.)

z3t4 8y ago

Don't just compare cores and ghz, look at cpu benchmarks and also power consumption.