3 ms·

I did read the article thank you very much, which is why I said that performance measurements without specifying the hardware is useless. I think the 5 GHz i9

I did read the article thank you very much, which is why I said that performance measurements without specifying the hardware is useless. I think the 5 GHz i9 with fast desktop memory (hardly a big investment for a company paying programmer salaries) would absolutely demolish the average laptop CPU with slower memory and bus speed. Yes, even in single thread; probably factor of 2+. Moreover, even though parallelism is limited in this case, it surely will use more than one thread, and in other cases it's less limited and you still have this real issue to confront: why pay more for a slower system? Seriously, what are the overriding considerations?

reitzensteinm 7y ago
Why are you comparing a top of the line workstation with an average laptop? They're different markets. The fastest laptop chips are extremely fast at executing lightly threaded programs. I'd own a workstation if it sped up my tools. But it won't.
- pixelpoet 7y ago
  > Why are you comparing a top of the line workstation with an average laptop? Because it's something you can absolutely do to improve your computing life with a simple, rational calculation, which I will outline now for expensive (relative to US hardware prices) Germany. PC dev box parts, prices sourced from geizhals.de: * Ryzen 9 3900x, 490 euros: https://geizhals.de/amd-ryzen-9-3900x-100-100000023box-a2064391.html https://geizhals.de/amd-ryzen-9-3900x-100-100000023box-a2064... * Top end X570 mobo, 200 euros: https://geizhals.de/gigabyte-x570-aorus-elite-a2078208.html https://geizhals.de/gigabyte-x570-aorus-elite-a2078208.html * 32 GB DDR4-3200, 144 euros: https://geizhals.de/g-skill-ripjaws-v-schwarz-dimm-kit-16gb-f4-3200c16d-16gvkb-a1327025.html https://geizhals.de/g-skill-ripjaws-v-schwarz-dimm-kit-16gb-... It's missing other stuff, but those can be quite cheap and don't need upgrading as often, and you maybe don't need the fanciest motherboard. (Going with Intel at this point is a complicated topic due to security issues and mitigation performance hits, to be balanced against having the most obscenely fast performance possible for a bit more money.) Anyway, let's call it ~2k euros for a truly badass 12c24t 32GB memory dev box. Compare this to, say, the common and much-loved Macbook Pro: that's 1.5k to 3.2k euros (just checked). The former for a super weak computer, the latter is 2.3 GHz 8c(16t?), 16 GB 2666 MHz memory. That's really weak computing power for the amount you're spending (yes, I understand you're not buying pure performance, but that's what's being compared here), and you don't even really "want to do better" with higher clocks etc because, speaking in purely physical terms, you need more volume and cooling to get the higher throughput. Laptops also start to throttle way sooner than computers with big coolers (that needn't cost much- I'm using a 15 euro cooler on my i7 8700k at 4.7 GHz which is passive without significant load). So that's it really; for about the price of a weak Macbook Pro, you could have an ultra powerful dev or build box. You can get some really amazing screens for little money these days, and re-use it between upgrades, along with several other components; how much of your laptop do you usually re-use when upgrading? I've now spent a truly excessive amount of time justifying my point of view, in the hope that I don't sound completely delusional. 1.5-2k euros once every few years for your developers to have peak dev performance is IMO an easy sell; if your laptop is a thin client you can have it additionally and it won't need upgrading for ages, because it doesn't need to do any heavy lifting. > They're different markets. False dichotomy, they can be (and usually are) additive, because you can rdesktop and use remote CI. What I'm questioning is the relevance of laptops as primary build computers.

reitzensteinm 7y ago

Why are you comparing a top of the line workstation with an average laptop? They're different markets. The fastest laptop chips are extremely fast at executing lightly threaded programs. I'd own a workstation if it sped up my tools. But it won't.

pixelpoet 7y ago
> Why are you comparing a top of the line workstation with an average laptop? Because it's something you can absolutely do to improve your computing life with a simple, rational calculation, which I will outline now for expensive (relative to US hardware prices) Germany. PC dev box parts, prices sourced from geizhals.de: * Ryzen 9 3900x, 490 euros: https://geizhals.de/amd-ryzen-9-3900x-100-100000023box-a2064391.html https://geizhals.de/amd-ryzen-9-3900x-100-100000023box-a2064... * Top end X570 mobo, 200 euros: https://geizhals.de/gigabyte-x570-aorus-elite-a2078208.html https://geizhals.de/gigabyte-x570-aorus-elite-a2078208.html * 32 GB DDR4-3200, 144 euros: https://geizhals.de/g-skill-ripjaws-v-schwarz-dimm-kit-16gb-f4-3200c16d-16gvkb-a1327025.html https://geizhals.de/g-skill-ripjaws-v-schwarz-dimm-kit-16gb-... It's missing other stuff, but those can be quite cheap and don't need upgrading as often, and you maybe don't need the fanciest motherboard. (Going with Intel at this point is a complicated topic due to security issues and mitigation performance hits, to be balanced against having the most obscenely fast performance possible for a bit more money.) Anyway, let's call it ~2k euros for a truly badass 12c24t 32GB memory dev box. Compare this to, say, the common and much-loved Macbook Pro: that's 1.5k to 3.2k euros (just checked). The former for a super weak computer, the latter is 2.3 GHz 8c(16t?), 16 GB 2666 MHz memory. That's really weak computing power for the amount you're spending (yes, I understand you're not buying pure performance, but that's what's being compared here), and you don't even really "want to do better" with higher clocks etc because, speaking in purely physical terms, you need more volume and cooling to get the higher throughput. Laptops also start to throttle way sooner than computers with big coolers (that needn't cost much- I'm using a 15 euro cooler on my i7 8700k at 4.7 GHz which is passive without significant load). So that's it really; for about the price of a weak Macbook Pro, you could have an ultra powerful dev or build box. You can get some really amazing screens for little money these days, and re-use it between upgrades, along with several other components; how much of your laptop do you usually re-use when upgrading? I've now spent a truly excessive amount of time justifying my point of view, in the hope that I don't sound completely delusional. 1.5-2k euros once every few years for your developers to have peak dev performance is IMO an easy sell; if your laptop is a thin client you can have it additionally and it won't need upgrading for ages, because it doesn't need to do any heavy lifting. > They're different markets. False dichotomy, they can be (and usually are) additive, because you can rdesktop and use remote CI. What I'm questioning is the relevance of laptops as primary build computers.