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I was still happily running a 2009 Phenom II until last year, when I was forced to upgrade when the motherboard started acting up. The thing is, performance-wis

I was still happily running a 2009 Phenom II until last year, when I was forced to upgrade when the motherboard started acting up. The thing is, performance-wise it was just fine. In 2009 it would be unthinkable for a 1998 CPU to be anything but a paperweight, but the performance plateau of today is real

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
I still have a hexa-core Phenom II as my primary desktop workhorse. I'm not looking forward to the day the motherboard or CPU flakes out. It really does fulfill most of my needs. The only real advantage I can see by upgrading to something more modern is lower power usage. From an environmental perspective, I'm guessing I'd have to run the new system for a long time to make up for the impact of manufacturing the new motherboard and CPU.
Sunspark 5y ago
It's more anachronistic than that.. people don't really use that much paper anymore that they need paperweights. Maybe a keychain ornament.
npteljes 5y ago
I agree about the performance plateau, I'm using an FX-8350 for gaming, and I'm fine. Even handled Cyberpunk 2077 well, and that only came out not even a year ago.
aksss 5y ago
I don’t know, I had a phenom running for years as a server that was running a Linux vm for automated torrenting, a Linux vm running the ubiquiti NVR, and the host itself serving as a media server. But that’s about all it could do. ;) I realize that sounds a bit like a Monty Python critique of the Romans, but there’s no way I would/could use the platform as a daily workstation professionally. It served its last days as a home servant droid well, but just. It’s longevity in a low-demand role was only possible by augmenting it with an array of SATA SSDs and a hypervisor. I finally put it down a while back (and still had one backup mobo NIB for it). All the above relatively lightweight functions it was performing can be done with better performance on a far smaller footprint for size/power consumption/noise today. Those attributes are part of an improving performance profile. People talk about a performance plateau, which I’ve pushed back on in other posts as really being a demand plateau for many of its advocates. Case in point, using the phenom platform as a daily workstation. If one can even think about pulling that off, it can only be because their expectations have dropped very low for performance or their needs haven’t changed since Phenom was in its prime. Yeah it runs the old workloads like it always did (and why would it not? Even better when augmented with more modern hw/sw), but no way under the sun would I be able to overlay my current demand profile on a phenom platform and have anything but swamped resources and interminable delays. I say this as someone who fully appreciates the awesome power we have in a 5v/2A RPi smaller than a deck of cards, and what can be done a larger platform drawing less than 60w today, let alone what can be done with 1000w. The phenom platform is highly inefficient in comparison to the tools now at your disposal.
astrange 5y ago
Newer CPUs have better security (hardware encryption, better virtualization, etc). Not nearly as much better as it should be, even compared to ARM, but better.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

I still have a hexa-core Phenom II as my primary desktop workhorse. I'm not looking forward to the day the motherboard or CPU flakes out. It really does fulfill most of my needs. The only real advantage I can see by upgrading to something more modern is lower power usage. From an environmental perspective, I'm guessing I'd have to run the new system for a long time to make up for the impact of manufacturing the new motherboard and CPU.

Sunspark 5y ago

It's more anachronistic than that.. people don't really use that much paper anymore that they need paperweights. Maybe a keychain ornament.

npteljes 5y ago

I agree about the performance plateau, I'm using an FX-8350 for gaming, and I'm fine. Even handled Cyberpunk 2077 well, and that only came out not even a year ago.

aksss 5y ago

I don’t know, I had a phenom running for years as a server that was running a Linux vm for automated torrenting, a Linux vm running the ubiquiti NVR, and the host itself serving as a media server. But that’s about all it could do. ;) I realize that sounds a bit like a Monty Python critique of the Romans, but there’s no way I would/could use the platform as a daily workstation professionally. It served its last days as a home servant droid well, but just. It’s longevity in a low-demand role was only possible by augmenting it with an array of SATA SSDs and a hypervisor. I finally put it down a while back (and still had one backup mobo NIB for it). All the above relatively lightweight functions it was performing can be done with better performance on a far smaller footprint for size/power consumption/noise today. Those attributes are part of an improving performance profile. People talk about a performance plateau, which I’ve pushed back on in other posts as really being a demand plateau for many of its advocates. Case in point, using the phenom platform as a daily workstation. If one can even think about pulling that off, it can only be because their expectations have dropped very low for performance or their needs haven’t changed since Phenom was in its prime. Yeah it runs the old workloads like it always did (and why would it not? Even better when augmented with more modern hw/sw), but no way under the sun would I be able to overlay my current demand profile on a phenom platform and have anything but swamped resources and interminable delays. I say this as someone who fully appreciates the awesome power we have in a 5v/2A RPi smaller than a deck of cards, and what can be done a larger platform drawing less than 60w today, let alone what can be done with 1000w. The phenom platform is highly inefficient in comparison to the tools now at your disposal.

astrange 5y ago

Newer CPUs have better security (hardware encryption, better virtualization, etc). Not nearly as much better as it should be, even compared to ARM, but better.