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I am continually astounded that the quad core sandy bridge core-i7 I bought in January 2011 is still completely serviceable for pretty much all tasks outside of
by kevstev 5y ago
I am continually astounded that the quad core sandy bridge core-i7 I bought in January 2011 is still completely serviceable for pretty much all tasks outside of gaming. The bezel and overall form factor is clownishly large by todays standards, and the screen is starting to look a bit faded, but as a portable but mostly stationary PC it still works great alongside my main laptop I use for work.
I knew back in 2011 I was buying something that was going to be pretty future proof, but 10 years... I would have laughed at you.
- cptnapalm 5y agoI got a 2009 Mac Pro with dual sockets at a state auction and put in a couple of inexpensive hexcore Xeons. The sum total after 2 graphics cards and 48 GB of RAM was less than $750 and it runs everything pretty well.
- KMnO4 5y agoI think that’s because 99% of regular computer tasks don’t need 24 cores operating at 5 billion cycles per second. The differences between an i7-4xxx and i7-11xxx are more about hardware acceleration, eg HEVC and SIMD. That’s why they look so much better in benchmarks that are designed with that in mind. My main desktop is an unRAID server that hosts multiple VMs. Only yesterday I discovered that I accidentally only gave Windows four (of my 16) cores. Literally 3/4 of the processor was unused for months, and I didn’t notice any slow performance the entire time.
- thehnguy 5y agoThis is perhaps the real genius of the M1. It's a great chip and all. But when you make it the only choice, people are finding the only choice is more than sufficient. And now Apple only has to produce one piece of silicon for their iMacs, iPad Pro, and Laptops. What a boon for logistics.
- fragmede 5y agoThe success of the M1 is a boon for Apple, but I'm not sure that only having to produce one CPU to be used across all devices is where the optimization lies, especially considering that Apple is selling the iPhone SE with an older CPU and not simplifying by not selling it.
- pranavjoneja 5y agoJust because it's being sold today doesn't mean it's actively manufactured still. They could have stockpiled the older processors or have spare inventory to continue meeting demand
- chrisco255 5y agoSpeak for yourself. Me personally? I would like one core per Chrome tab.
- rjzzleep 5y agoYeah, 2500 cores per CPU sure would be nice.
- sillysaurusx 5y agoMy new M1 constantly freezes, and I’m pretty sure it’s because of chrome. Or the secret SSD thrashing design flaw that Apple is hoping nobody talks about till they quietly fix it. Was a bit disappointing. I was like, finally! A new thing! I’m freeeeeee..... wait no it still freezes, I miss sandy bridge, etc.
- vesrah 5y agoIs the the 8GB model? I had the same issue with my workload and found that it was always under high memory pressure, upgrading to a 16GB model fixed it for me.
- sillysaurusx 5y agoIt’s the 16GB. The memory pressure is indeed the issue. I find it hilarious that Apple accidentally inverted their LRU into an MRU and constantly swaps for no reason, yet it’s still so fast that nobody even noticed during QA. Mine has already read/wrote 48TB in the first three weeks; at this rate the SSD will be dead in three years. (If you haven’t looked into SSDGate yet, be sure to check your smartmon to see whether you’re affected.)
- msie 5y agoThis guy seems to have pinpointed the problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyMCoQmsv-I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyMCoQmsv-I The problem is unoptimized apps running on Rosetta2.
- mh8h 5y agoI have a 15" retina MacBook Pro from 2012, and another from 2018. The one from 2012 is fine for everyday use. But the difference in single core performance, and also IO, is substantial. That's really important when it comes to a lot of typical development work. For example Rails starts at least 2x faster on the newer laptop.
- ynik 5y agoTwo years ago when I got the Lenovo e590 (Intel Core i5-8265U), I benchmarked running the unit tests of my project on it. (though I didn't really intend on using the e590 for development) I compared against my old desktop from 2010 (1st-gen Core i5-750). Turns out that the old desktop won by a solid 10% margin! A whole decade of new Intel generations still can't make up for the disadvantage of using a mobile CPU. P.S. The e590 barely survived 2 years and is dead now (broken USB-C charging port).
- simonh 5y agoI have to admit this is right. Even my old 2012 i7 Mac mini is still a perfectly serviceable machine to this day.
- officeplant 5y agoLate-2012 ivy bridge i5 Mac Mini here. For a dual core machine it's really not all that bad of a daily driver experience. Makes me sad that I have to spend a crazy amount of money to get 16GB of ram and 1TB of SSD in a M1 Mini to match what I currently use. (although I understand the 1TB of SSD in the M1 is vastly superior)
- nemacol 5y agoJust for the fun of it, I tried to play WoW classic on my late-2012 mac mini and it ran like a toaster oven, but it worked just fine. Pretty fun. After putting the SSD in it, of course.
- officeplant 5y agoYeah smcfancontrol is a must. I keep the fan around ~3000rpm during moderate use and bump it up to 5000rpm or max it out if I'm going to game or render something. I've been tempted to look into TB2 to TB3 adapters and eGPU's but its a janky solution to extending the life of an 8+ year old machine.
- kergonath 5y agoI used to play WoW on a G4 PowerBook! To be honest, it was decent, but the resolution was not great. I remember vividly having to look at the ground and zoom in all the way just to be able to go from the bank to the AH at IF. Hopefully whatever Intel GPU you have in your Mini is better than the Radeon 9700 in my old laptop.
- reaperducer 5y ago11-inch 2011 MacBook Air here. It's my main machine. I'll turn it into a media server once Apple comes out with an Mx machine with a screen of at least 15 inches.
- MrFoof 5y agoI'm also staring at a Mid-2011 Sandy Bridge quad-core iMac that's been on my desk since May 2011. It'll be replaced come August-ish with a 32-core Zen 3 Threadripper (with 256GB of ECC). Though in a few years I'll likely put an M3 Mac Mini alongside it to figure out when I'll feel comfortable going to ARM full time, as all my customers (and their applications) are still native x86 only... for now.
- pdimitar 5y agoMy gaming PC is almost 10 years old and is with an i7 3770. Only upgrade was a GTX 980 five or six years ago. That thing flies for anything and everything I put it through. One day I'll retire it as a gaming machine and convert it to a Linux server or a casual workstation and I am sure it's going to be even faster than Win10.
- strictnein 5y agoYeah, I'd like to upgrade my gaming system (4970k and a GTX1080ti) but past wanting to play at 4k and experience ray tracing there is almost no reason to do so. Now, if the 3080 was actually available at MSRP I'd probably have upgraded, but that's at least a year away from happening.
- pdimitar 5y agoIMO go big or go home in this case. For a gaming machine I'd aim for some of the Ryzen 5000's (likely even the 5700 is an overkill) and an RTX 3090 so I can play 3440x1440 @ 144FPS (or maybe even 4K @ 120FPS). As it is, I almost have no reason to upgrade my gaming machine right now. Playing on a 21:9 wide display (2560x1080) and never go below 70-80 FPS in any game. Usually it's 100-120 FPS.
- notJim 5y agoThe problem with these cards is actually being able to get one. Even if you've got the $2k to spend for a 3090, good luck with finding stock.
- pdimitar 5y agoTrue. Right now I could only buy an RTX 3090 for 3100 EUR (~3740 USD) and I am not willing to pay that much. But I am happy to wait. Upgrading my gaming machine is a very low prio.
- bayindirh 5y agoMy primary desktop is a 3770K running Linux. That CPU's the unexpected beast. Just churning through what you throw at it with incredible speed even for today. I process RAW photos, encode some audio and develop high performance scientific software on it (testing it lowers my heating bills, somewhat). I want to try one of the new Ryzen CPUs, but I have no reason to upgrade.
- nemacol 5y agoI built my own gaming pc back in Nov 2010 with an i7-970 24g ram. While I have upgraded the GPU twice and upgraded to larger SSD's as prices have come down, I am still using the same machine for gaming. Not that what I am doing is very intense or hardcore intense graphics. I can comfortably play all the Blizzard titles, modern FPS like whatever COD is newest, etc. Maybe not on max settings anymore. Still, I am impressed by how much I have gotten out of my machine.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoYep and take computer from 2001 and run it in 2011, you wouldn't have been nearly as happy with the performance. There have been incremental upgrades but mostly just the core count which is great for handling server stuff but not nearly as noticeable as Hz counts increases
- brewdad 5y agoThe other main improvement in the past 10 years is the power draw. You can get more than 10 hours of battery life in a machine that weighs less than 3 lbs. That would have been unthinkable a decade ago. CPU improvements are only part of the story in making that happen but the are certainly far ahead of where things were in the not so distant past.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago10 hour battery life was achievable 15 years ago on Pentium M provided you under-volted, under-clocked, and had a high capacity battery.
- edvinbesic 5y agoHow far does this goalpost go?
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoThe point is that the technology for long life laptops has been ready for a long time. It's just that Intel marketing calls all the shots and they only wanted to sell multicore space heaters with space heater memory to sweeten the deal. With this burden on chipset side, it was impossible to compensate with extra amp hours and maintain portable weight.
- rualca 5y ago> The point is that the technology for long life laptops has been ready for a long time. You're desperately moving the goal post to ridiculous places. It's like claiming that walking on the moon is supposed to be considered normal just because the technology has been ready for a long time. That claim is irrelevant, isn't it? I mean, what good does a "technically it's possible" claim do if a) no, it's clearly not possible outside exceptionally rare circumstances b) the average consumer device is way behind any of those outlandish claims.
- kitsunesoba 5y agoIf it weren’t for the fact that it’s not good at being a laptop (chunky, heavy, hot), I’d be perfectly happy using my old QX9300 (Core 2 Quad) workstation laptop for day to day. With an SSD and the Bluetooth+Wifi upgraded to Intel AX200 it’s only marginally slower than my newer x86 boxes at most things, and its 15.4” 1920x1200 display is still nicer than what ships on a lot of laptops today. Wouldn’t want to use it as a dev machine, but any less demanding usage would be fine.
- KozmoNau7 5y agoMy desktop is 2010 vintage 6-core Phenom II 1100T with 16GB RAM, the motherboard is officially maxed out, but I've been told it can take 32GB just fine. It has been upgraded with an SSD and more recently a Radeon RX560, and it really does everything I need. Newer games do need lower settings, but it'll motor through most games at 720p. I added a PCIe USB-C interface card, so I'm not even stuck at USB 2.0 anymore. I have considered replacing it with something smaller, now that all of my files are on a NAS and I don't need room for 5-6 drives in this machine. But I just don't feel like I would be getting enough of an improvement over what I already have, even with hefty new parts. My laptop is a 2011 vintage X220i, and that is starting to feel a little bit behind, mostly thanks to the i3 inside. But it connects to 5GHz WiFi and is fast enough for browsing and video playback, so for now it keeps on truckin'. Actually the best upgrade would be a decently powerful 12-14" laptop paired with an eGPU dock. That setup would handily replace both machines, but eGPUs just aren't a mature configuration yet, especially combined with Linux. Maybe in a few years.
- top_kekeroni_m8 5y agoGaming at 720p in 2021? Oh come on, you really need to try some 1440p/144hz gaming ;)
- BeFlatXIII 5y agoThere is only one other popular task that a decade-old CPU can’t handle acceptably well: running a web browser. Outside of that, computers have been good enough ever since HiDPI/Retina screens became standard.
- ska 5y ago> I bought in January 2011 is still completely serviceable for pretty Isn't this essentially what Apple's observation was (and hence their spec choices)?
- brailsafe 5y agoWhich computer are you referring to?
- neycoda 5y agoI have a quad core i7 from 2013 and the laptop still runs just as fast. I had to replace the hard drive and the RAM is maxed at 16GB (not good for virtualization), but it runs like new except for some odd screen recording hiccups with Microsoft's Xbox thing, but really all of the performance problems seem to just be driver bugs in relation to Dell's way of doing things.