4 ms·

i used an fx-6300 for years and it was fine. for most use cases the practical need for desktop cpu performance plateaued 10 years ago. during that time adding m

i used an fx-6300 for years and it was fine. for most use cases the practical need for desktop cpu performance plateaued 10 years ago. during that time adding more memory and moving from hdd to ssd made a much larger difference in user experience than increasing the cpu performance. the biggest problem for amd was not the architecture of the cpu, but the lack of integrated graphics on high end parts, and power efficiency on mobile. both of which were caused by being stuck on an older process. it's also worth remembering that internally amd had a grand vision of unifying the cpu and gpu (HSA) which would have added a bunch of fp compute to the integrated chip, but that vision required a lot of other things to go right, and a lot of them went wrong, so it never happened.

jcelerier 4y ago
> for most use cases the practical need for desktop cpu performance plateaued 10 years ago This drives me insane, literally every day my computer spends minutes - likely hours in total in a day - blasting at 100% CPU and it's not a ten years old one. Hell, I got access to a threadripper 5990X and even that one I sometimes end up in situations where I have to wait for CPU operations to finish, even for basic life things such as uncompressing archives or editing pictures so I really cannot understand
- MobiusHorizons 4y ago
  Good for you, you actually use a workstation for its intended purpose. You would be surprised how rare that is.
- projektfu 4y ago
  High memory use will still peg a CPU at 100%. They don't get many opportunities to do other things while waiting for cache refills. Increasing core speed/single thread performance will not help much in memory-bound tasks.
  - Accujack 4y ago
    Putting the memory dies on a substrate die alongside the CPU and GPU dies will, however.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  A lot of core functionality like dealing with zip files hasn't been updated for modern times, and doesn't support multiple cores. So it's likely you're using just one core to uncompress stuff.
- metalspot 4y ago
  sure, if you have a modern system with plenty of ram and ssd, then cpu will still be a bottleneck. what i am saying is that if given a choice of a brand new cpu with 8gb ram and a hard drive (common specs for 10 years ago) or a 10 year old cpu with 16gb ram and an ssd, then i would definitely take the 10 year old cpu. case in point, i recently bought this super cheap dell laptop, which has a really nice brand new cpu (i5-1135G7) but only 8gb ram and a crappy ssd. i will upgrade those things when i have the time, but right now if i am running too many things it will start swapping out, and that is far worse than maxing out the cpu.
cptskippy 4y ago
I agree and I also think the timing of it's release helped as well. It came out about a year before the new Xbox and Playstation consoles were released and which were both using AMD silicon. So from a gaming perspective it was passable. It could run last gen console ports well and didn't struggle much with next gen. I had a FX-8320E that was used almost exclusively for gaming and it was fine.
- fomine3 4y ago
  It was fine because both consoles have underpowered CPU (but 8 cores) for manufacturing reason, so PC gaming also don't need strong CPU
- Narishma 4y ago
  I'm assuming you're talking about PS4 and Xbox One. If so, they used a much simpler and lower-power architecture than Bulldozer that was initially intended for netbooks and tablets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_(microarchitecture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_(microarchitecture)

jcelerier 4y ago

> for most use cases the practical need for desktop cpu performance plateaued 10 years ago This drives me insane, literally every day my computer spends minutes - likely hours in total in a day - blasting at 100% CPU and it's not a ten years old one. Hell, I got access to a threadripper 5990X and even that one I sometimes end up in situations where I have to wait for CPU operations to finish, even for basic life things such as uncompressing archives or editing pictures so I really cannot understand

MobiusHorizons 4y ago
Good for you, you actually use a workstation for its intended purpose. You would be surprised how rare that is.
projektfu 4y ago
High memory use will still peg a CPU at 100%. They don't get many opportunities to do other things while waiting for cache refills. Increasing core speed/single thread performance will not help much in memory-bound tasks.
- Accujack 4y ago
  Putting the memory dies on a substrate die alongside the CPU and GPU dies will, however.
dale_glass 4y ago
A lot of core functionality like dealing with zip files hasn't been updated for modern times, and doesn't support multiple cores. So it's likely you're using just one core to uncompress stuff.
metalspot 4y ago
sure, if you have a modern system with plenty of ram and ssd, then cpu will still be a bottleneck. what i am saying is that if given a choice of a brand new cpu with 8gb ram and a hard drive (common specs for 10 years ago) or a 10 year old cpu with 16gb ram and an ssd, then i would definitely take the 10 year old cpu. case in point, i recently bought this super cheap dell laptop, which has a really nice brand new cpu (i5-1135G7) but only 8gb ram and a crappy ssd. i will upgrade those things when i have the time, but right now if i am running too many things it will start swapping out, and that is far worse than maxing out the cpu.

cptskippy 4y ago

I agree and I also think the timing of it's release helped as well. It came out about a year before the new Xbox and Playstation consoles were released and which were both using AMD silicon. So from a gaming perspective it was passable. It could run last gen console ports well and didn't struggle much with next gen. I had a FX-8320E that was used almost exclusively for gaming and it was fine.

fomine3 4y ago
It was fine because both consoles have underpowered CPU (but 8 cores) for manufacturing reason, so PC gaming also don't need strong CPU
Narishma 4y ago
I'm assuming you're talking about PS4 and Xbox One. If so, they used a much simpler and lower-power architecture than Bulldozer that was initially intended for netbooks and tablets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_(microarchitecture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_(microarchitecture)