7 ms·

I'm happy that I put off upgrading my pc long enough to skip a RAM generation.

by morceauxdebois 6y ago

satisfaction 6y ago
Same here, I'm running an FX-8370 and DDR3 now, going to build a Threadripper + DDR5 late next year, hopefully.
- nullifidian 6y ago
  You are very patient. I'm not sure about skipping this generation, because who knows when we will get ECC UDIMMs for AMD cpus. It could be late 22 or or even mid 23.
  - satisfaction 6y ago
    I've been waiting for DDR5, I knew it was coming and my PC runs the games I play just fine on DDR3. I do have a Thinkpad p51 that has Xeon/DDR4, so I didn't completely skip DDR4.
  - pedrocr 6y ago
    ECC on AMD seems quite hard in practice even though the CPU support isn't artificially limited like with Intel. Making sure the motherboard supports it is hard and then the RAM options are extremely limited and generally quite slow and expensive. Threadripper is maybe better but that's quite a jump in cost. It would be so nice to finally be able to assemble low-cost home servers and workstations with ECC but it remains a niche where you have to give up a lot to get it.
Spooks 6y ago
I like to grab RAM towards the end of the generation, so far it has been the best bang for my buck (for my personal computer). From the production estimates, looks like I'll jump into DDR5 at the end of 2023 or most likely 2024
- gambiting 6y ago
  Yeah, when DDR4 came out first, the early modules were easily outperformed by good DDR3 modules on every metric except power consumption. DDR5 will be king in a few years.
  - rosege 6y ago
    It will be interesting to see if history repeats. I'm holding off buying a new PC until this is known.
- ww520 6y ago
  That's a good idea. Haven't thought of that. The price of the ending generation would be great while the maturity has peaked.
speeder 6y ago
I have a 4690K and my RAM is a 32GB EVGA DDR3 ram that I suspect was made by hynix or the other manufacturer of fast rams, that runs at speed up to par with the slowest DDR4 but with DDR3 latency, it is very awesome. I wonder if DDR5 will be fast enough to compensate for the slower latency (or maybe they improved latency this time?) To be honest I didn't felt yet any need to move off my current machine, I would only upgrade its GPU, but I can't do that because I can't afford a new GPU AND a new Monitor (I use a CRT monitor with VGA cable... it is a very good monitor so no reason to replace it, but newer GPUs don't support it).
- Retric 6y ago
  Latency is significantly impacted by the physical distance between RAM and CPU’s. Which combined with modern cache sizes means they get diminishing returns trying to minimize it and thus make different tradeoffs.
  - formerly_proven 6y ago
    Is that so? I don't think it is. Core-to-RAM latency is in the neighborhood of 50 ns (well-tuned Intel system with low-latency memory) to ~80 ns (bottom-of-the-barrel system). At propagation speed, that's about 10 meters. A big chunk of this latency is internal to the CPU (so is not influenced by distance to the memory at all), another big chunk is the inherent slowness of accessing a DRAM array (10+ ns, independent of the location of the memory). It's worth pointing out how little this has changed over the past decades. A 2006 AMD CPU is 100 % competitive in regards to memory latency with Intel's 2020 flagship desktop CPU.
    - Retric 6y ago
      10 meters one way = 5 meters round trip. Trace the longest physical path a signal travels from your CPU to a memory chip on the DIMM and back, it’s likely longer than you think. And yea on it’s own plenty of overhead, but everyone making latency tradeoffs bashing their design as part of a larger system with a single unavoidable limit.
  - 6y ago
pjc50 6y ago
That reminds me, I was going to buy a PS4.
- overcast 6y ago
  PS5 is backwards compatible FYI.
  - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    Not really. They plan to try to make "as many PS4 games BC as possible" which means they are actively porting games they deem worth porting, versus it being natively supported
    - dragontamer 6y ago
      PS5 is an x86 CPU + AMD RDNA GPU. PS4 was an x86 CPU + AMD GCN GPU. A huge amount of games will be portable from the get-go. GCN and RDNA have extremely similar assembly languages. The only major assembly language change from GCN -> RDNA is DPP / cross-lane operations (kinda like pshufb from x86). But I'm not even sure if the PS4 had those instructions.
      - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
        That isn't the original point. The PS4 is not natively backward compatible, the base game needs to be ported. Native BC would be 1. It runs native hardware (PS2 EE on Early PS3) 2. It runs without updates required (PS2 running inside emulator on later PS3) This requires actual updates by the dev for individual games to work
        monocasa 6y ago
        Or it's _really_ close, but the systems are complex enough that they feel they need to QA/cert the games again even if the vast majority of games require no changes.
josmala 6y ago
I was planning on same thing, until I estimated how much faster modern PC was at single threaded compilation tasks compared to my old one, and how it impacted my productivity. I should of upgraded earlier.
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  What did you move from and then to? As near as I can tell IPC haven't increased that much in the last little bit. Or was your CPU pretty old?
  - josmala 6y ago
    I thought so also, but decade of small improvements do accumulate to a large number. Something like 20% improvement 4 times would be doubling the IPC, but single threaded compilation is where I got more than that. The after purchase testing was even better than expected. i7 920 compiled a specific compilation unit in 14 seconds. 3900x in 3.5 seconds. And that was before any tuning, I had done some bios tuning for i7 920, while 3900x I just limited the power to make it quieter. The IPC is more than double, the larger caches are probably the thing that pushes IPC beyond expectations. (I got more cores to improve scaling of multithreaded code.) Both times were recompilations where there was enough ram to have all the files cached and the the folders used where on ssd:s with modern CPU used nvme and older one SATA. Even if the nvme matters that upgrade wouldn't of been possible without getting modern MB. The make system was make, and what I used was LLVM tutorial code in single file that included many LLVM headers. The software wasn't upgraded between those runs, just moved disks from old system to new system and copied the data. I did look before the purchase if there was IPC improvements that would of made more sense to buy new than buy some Westmere 6 core to upgrade my system. Results made it clear to me that getting any cheap new CPU would of been preferable over wasting time with getting the westmere. The IPC improvements for compilation were way higher than average IPC improvements. But even sandy bridge was weak enough in the benchmarks that it would of made sense to upgrade from that. Before purchase I just looked from phoronix benchmarks/open benchmarking database a compilation benchmark that had worst CPU scaling for more cores and used that as approximation for single threaded compilation. My own results were much larger than what I assumed it would of been based on comparing the sandy bridge to modern CPU:s and then multiplying that with clock speed advantage and IPC advantage of sandy bridge vs i7 920. Oh, when I got i7 920 I decided not to upgrade until I got 8 cores. Then it was AVX-512 happened I knew I must have that so that I could play around optimizing code with it, Intel just could get it's 10nm very soon so that I could get those 8 core AVX-512 parts in reasonable price and power envelope. I just did the math, and realized wasted time because slow CPU would cost me more over next 2 years than upgrading.
gnarbarian 6y ago
I try to refresh when a new ram gen launches with a new socket. That gives me a good shot at long term upgradability. Waiting on zen 4 now for my next complete build.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
robohydrate 6y ago
i7-4790k and 16gb DDR3-2400 from early 2015 here, really can't wait to upgrade to something newer with DDR5

I'm happy that I put off upgrading my pc long enough to skip a RAM generation.

satisfaction 6y ago

Same here, I'm running an FX-8370 and DDR3 now, going to build a Threadripper + DDR5 late next year, hopefully.

nullifidian 6y ago
You are very patient. I'm not sure about skipping this generation, because who knows when we will get ECC UDIMMs for AMD cpus. It could be late 22 or or even mid 23.
- satisfaction 6y ago
  I've been waiting for DDR5, I knew it was coming and my PC runs the games I play just fine on DDR3. I do have a Thinkpad p51 that has Xeon/DDR4, so I didn't completely skip DDR4.
- pedrocr 6y ago
  ECC on AMD seems quite hard in practice even though the CPU support isn't artificially limited like with Intel. Making sure the motherboard supports it is hard and then the RAM options are extremely limited and generally quite slow and expensive. Threadripper is maybe better but that's quite a jump in cost. It would be so nice to finally be able to assemble low-cost home servers and workstations with ECC but it remains a niche where you have to give up a lot to get it.

Spooks 6y ago

I like to grab RAM towards the end of the generation, so far it has been the best bang for my buck (for my personal computer). From the production estimates, looks like I'll jump into DDR5 at the end of 2023 or most likely 2024

gambiting 6y ago
Yeah, when DDR4 came out first, the early modules were easily outperformed by good DDR3 modules on every metric except power consumption. DDR5 will be king in a few years.
- rosege 6y ago
  It will be interesting to see if history repeats. I'm holding off buying a new PC until this is known.
ww520 6y ago
That's a good idea. Haven't thought of that. The price of the ending generation would be great while the maturity has peaked.

speeder 6y ago

I have a 4690K and my RAM is a 32GB EVGA DDR3 ram that I suspect was made by hynix or the other manufacturer of fast rams, that runs at speed up to par with the slowest DDR4 but with DDR3 latency, it is very awesome. I wonder if DDR5 will be fast enough to compensate for the slower latency (or maybe they improved latency this time?) To be honest I didn't felt yet any need to move off my current machine, I would only upgrade its GPU, but I can't do that because I can't afford a new GPU AND a new Monitor (I use a CRT monitor with VGA cable... it is a very good monitor so no reason to replace it, but newer GPUs don't support it).

Retric 6y ago
Latency is significantly impacted by the physical distance between RAM and CPU’s. Which combined with modern cache sizes means they get diminishing returns trying to minimize it and thus make different tradeoffs.
- formerly_proven 6y ago
  Is that so? I don't think it is. Core-to-RAM latency is in the neighborhood of 50 ns (well-tuned Intel system with low-latency memory) to ~80 ns (bottom-of-the-barrel system). At propagation speed, that's about 10 meters. A big chunk of this latency is internal to the CPU (so is not influenced by distance to the memory at all), another big chunk is the inherent slowness of accessing a DRAM array (10+ ns, independent of the location of the memory). It's worth pointing out how little this has changed over the past decades. A 2006 AMD CPU is 100 % competitive in regards to memory latency with Intel's 2020 flagship desktop CPU.
  - Retric 6y ago
    10 meters one way = 5 meters round trip. Trace the longest physical path a signal travels from your CPU to a memory chip on the DIMM and back, it’s likely longer than you think. And yea on it’s own plenty of overhead, but everyone making latency tradeoffs bashing their design as part of a larger system with a single unavoidable limit.
- 6y ago

pjc50 6y ago

That reminds me, I was going to buy a PS4.

overcast 6y ago
PS5 is backwards compatible FYI.
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  Not really. They plan to try to make "as many PS4 games BC as possible" which means they are actively porting games they deem worth porting, versus it being natively supported
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    PS5 is an x86 CPU + AMD RDNA GPU. PS4 was an x86 CPU + AMD GCN GPU. A huge amount of games will be portable from the get-go. GCN and RDNA have extremely similar assembly languages. The only major assembly language change from GCN -> RDNA is DPP / cross-lane operations (kinda like pshufb from x86). But I'm not even sure if the PS4 had those instructions.
    - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
      That isn't the original point. The PS4 is not natively backward compatible, the base game needs to be ported. Native BC would be 1. It runs native hardware (PS2 EE on Early PS3) 2. It runs without updates required (PS2 running inside emulator on later PS3) This requires actual updates by the dev for individual games to work
      - monocasa 6y ago
        Or it's _really_ close, but the systems are complex enough that they feel they need to QA/cert the games again even if the vast majority of games require no changes.

josmala 6y ago

I was planning on same thing, until I estimated how much faster modern PC was at single threaded compilation tasks compared to my old one, and how it impacted my productivity. I should of upgraded earlier.

SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
What did you move from and then to? As near as I can tell IPC haven't increased that much in the last little bit. Or was your CPU pretty old?
- josmala 6y ago
  I thought so also, but decade of small improvements do accumulate to a large number. Something like 20% improvement 4 times would be doubling the IPC, but single threaded compilation is where I got more than that. The after purchase testing was even better than expected. i7 920 compiled a specific compilation unit in 14 seconds. 3900x in 3.5 seconds. And that was before any tuning, I had done some bios tuning for i7 920, while 3900x I just limited the power to make it quieter. The IPC is more than double, the larger caches are probably the thing that pushes IPC beyond expectations. (I got more cores to improve scaling of multithreaded code.) Both times were recompilations where there was enough ram to have all the files cached and the the folders used where on ssd:s with modern CPU used nvme and older one SATA. Even if the nvme matters that upgrade wouldn't of been possible without getting modern MB. The make system was make, and what I used was LLVM tutorial code in single file that included many LLVM headers. The software wasn't upgraded between those runs, just moved disks from old system to new system and copied the data. I did look before the purchase if there was IPC improvements that would of made more sense to buy new than buy some Westmere 6 core to upgrade my system. Results made it clear to me that getting any cheap new CPU would of been preferable over wasting time with getting the westmere. The IPC improvements for compilation were way higher than average IPC improvements. But even sandy bridge was weak enough in the benchmarks that it would of made sense to upgrade from that. Before purchase I just looked from phoronix benchmarks/open benchmarking database a compilation benchmark that had worst CPU scaling for more cores and used that as approximation for single threaded compilation. My own results were much larger than what I assumed it would of been based on comparing the sandy bridge to modern CPU:s and then multiplying that with clock speed advantage and IPC advantage of sandy bridge vs i7 920. Oh, when I got i7 920 I decided not to upgrade until I got 8 cores. Then it was AVX-512 happened I knew I must have that so that I could play around optimizing code with it, Intel just could get it's 10nm very soon so that I could get those 8 core AVX-512 parts in reasonable price and power envelope. I just did the math, and realized wasted time because slow CPU would cost me more over next 2 years than upgrading.

gnarbarian 6y ago

I try to refresh when a new ram gen launches with a new socket. That gives me a good shot at long term upgradability. Waiting on zen 4 now for my next complete build.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

robohydrate 6y ago

i7-4790k and 16gb DDR3-2400 from early 2015 here, really can't wait to upgrade to something newer with DDR5