Is this a good or bad time to rebuild the computer? I have the relatively ancient hexacore Gulfstream CPU with only 24GB of RAM and other annoying mainboard limitations. It is probably the longest I've ever had the same basic computer. My choices are to build now or perhaps in Q3. What shall I do?
New Computer
- Thread starter LunarMist
- Start date
ddrueding
Fixture
Even if you want to go ballistic with a 10-core Xeon you won't get much more than you have. What is the clock speed? I'm assuming the 24GB is a limitation in your workflow?
4.2GHz only. I thought there were some new CPUs over the holidays. So there has not been much progress in almost four years? Is that due to the Intel monopoly?
The RAM can be an issue, but also the lack of native 6Gbps SATA is not good.
ddrueding
Fixture
Start here for the CPUs. I have a 990X and was able to get it to 4.6GHz stable on air. There is a slightly better IPC on this architecture depending on application, IIRC.
Doubling the RAM might help, changing the board to have the faster SATA might help.
Coug will need to chip in on what is coming, as I don't track the stuff that isn't out yet.
Doubling the RAM might help, changing the board to have the faster SATA might help.
Coug will need to chip in on what is coming, as I don't track the stuff that isn't out yet.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
I mainly focus on server-grade hardware nowadays. The next consumer CPU that will come out will be Broadwell in Q2 IIRC. Those will be 4-core/8-thread chips. Haswell-E (6-core, perhaps 8-core) won't be available before September. I don't know about the top frequency at which they will operate, but the IPC improvement compared to the current Ivy Bridge-E will be marginal (as was the difference between the i7 3970X and the i7 4960X). Only a few multimedia applications will see some kind of significant boost due to a few additions in the instruction set, but it will be bland for the most part.
If you want to experience a real boost in performance, then you need to shift your applications to those that benefit a lot from multi-threading. Then, you can get HUGE improvements, right now. Either a fully-populated HP Z620 workstation or Super Micro SYS-7047A-T will obliterate any consumer-grade platform, current or coming in the next two years, for multi-threaded applications. It will cost you about 10 grands too, but you pay for what you get.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
The short answer is that there really hasn't been that much progress on the performance front. I don't wanna say that Intel doesn't care about desktop CPUs any more, but Intel doesn't care about desktop CPUs any more. They're rapidly becoming a niche market.
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
Intel seems to be more concerned about changing socket size every 6 months; changing (Improving??) the internals of the CPUs they are already making so they can't be used in any existing motherboard; reducing the power consumption so you need to buy multiple CPUs with multiple cores if you want to do any real work; and they believe that the only 'computers' that are available any more are phones, tablets, and the other assortment of "kiddie" gadgets.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
I was a bit optimistic about my Broadwell in Q2 prediction. More like late Q3 or Q4.
Stereodude
Not really a
Why do you need a new computer? What are you doing that the current one is unable to do?
I'm hoping for more speed. This will be my last new main computer. I could do a Bridewell in Q3 if it will be better than the current CPUs. Also, the chipsets and boards may have better and more advanced Ports.
I would probably bug a Mac in that case of the Xenon. However, everything is not all multithreaded, even in the PS. From what I understand a single thread is not particularly fast.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
$20k would get you in a 40-core, 80 thread Xeon E7 with 64GB RAM...
Doesn't Photoshop offload a bunch of stuff to the GPU now anyway? Does moving to something with ever more CUDA cores represent any sort of real-world improvement?
Doesn't Photoshop offload a bunch of stuff to the GPU now anyway? Does moving to something with ever more CUDA cores represent any sort of real-world improvement?
ddrueding
Fixture
I think your best move is going for more clock speed. Just upping the cooler and doubling the RAM is probably the most effective performance boost for the photo processing workflow. I'm shocked at how often a single thread is the bottleneck; you need each core to be as fast as possible.
Stereodude
Not really a
Didn't you say that about this one?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Clock speed is a dead horse right now. Everything you get north of 4.2GHz or so is a gift and even if you buy the most ridiculous LGA2011 CPU and strap a Frigidaire to the heat sink, you're still not even going to make it to 5GHz on more than six cores. Evem with whatever-blah-something new instructions or caching techniques, that still amounts to blowing thousands of dollars on what's probably less than a 10% single-thread performance differential. I'm sure DDR4 and another bump in core frequencies will help, but Intel's focus is clearly on improving power efficiency and on-die graphics these days, so that probably is the last hurrah for desktop performance gains for the foreseeable future.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
Well, it's round and has a hole in the center, so in theory, you could help yourself with one. What a strange idea though.
Bozo
Storage? I am Storage!
There doesn't seem to be any difference in the i7 and the Xeons, not that I could find with a quick search.
Is there something internal to the Xeon that I'm missing?
Is there something internal to the Xeon that I'm missing?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Support for multi-socket configurations, ECC and more RAM.
sedrosken
Florida Man
Sounds like you guys all have a lot of money to blow. No offense, just an observation. You guys seem like giants with your i7's and GTX TITANS and HOLY CRAP 10 CORE XEONS.
Meanwhile I'm running less than a Celeron G. Also, think my HDD is going, I can actually hear read and write noises from it. Well, good thing I got ahold of Macrium Reflect Free. Yayyy, now I don't have to reinstall everything from scratch (which actually doesn't take too long, because I do this so wearily often I have all the setup files for pretty much everything on my external HDD, heck if I could get an offline installer for Chrome I would).
Back to the topic at hand though...
HOLY CRAP 10 CORE XEONS! ... $20,000 will get me a 40-core beast of a machine with 64GB RAM?
By the time I'd have a use for that much PC, it'd be way obsolete. What the heck do you guys do that warrant a 10 core Xeon anyway? Photo editing shouldn't take that much power! Although I wouldn't know...
Meanwhile I'm running less than a Celeron G. Also, think my HDD is going, I can actually hear read and write noises from it. Well, good thing I got ahold of Macrium Reflect Free. Yayyy, now I don't have to reinstall everything from scratch (which actually doesn't take too long, because I do this so wearily often I have all the setup files for pretty much everything on my external HDD, heck if I could get an offline installer for Chrome I would).
Back to the topic at hand though...
HOLY CRAP 10 CORE XEONS! ... $20,000 will get me a 40-core beast of a machine with 64GB RAM?
By the time I'd have a use for that much PC, it'd be way obsolete. What the heck do you guys do that warrant a 10 core Xeon anyway? Photo editing shouldn't take that much power! Although I wouldn't know...
ddrueding
Fixture
64GB of RAM is the top end of "normal". Normal motherboards can take it, and DIMMs are easily available in densities to make it happen.
And the first time I had proper money to blow on such things is about 4 years ahead of you, so you still may have some time to go. Before then it was dumpster-diving behind OfficeMax and CompUSA.
And the first time I had proper money to blow on such things is about 4 years ahead of you, so you still may have some time to go. Before then it was dumpster-diving behind OfficeMax and CompUSA.
Chewy509
Wotty wot wot.
Sedrosken, a lot of the guys here do a lot of image editing, video editing and some doing heavy software development work. (The guys with Titan GPUs also tend to do F@H as well, so that accounts for those cards).
Myself, I'm spending more time on my netbook (Atom N270 w/1GB RAM running Arch Linux) than my main desktop these days, and about the only area I see issues is lack of RAM. (my desktop at work has 16GB of RAM, and that becomes a problem when running 4+VMs and debugging Java applications, but that's another issue altogether).
Myself, I'm spending more time on my netbook (Atom N270 w/1GB RAM running Arch Linux) than my main desktop these days, and about the only area I see issues is lack of RAM. (my desktop at work has 16GB of RAM, and that becomes a problem when running 4+VMs and debugging Java applications, but that's another issue altogether).
Well, you could look at an Oracle X2-8 server, 160Thread/80cores (8x 10core E7-Xeon), 2TB RAM (128x 16GB DIMMs), and a dual 600GB 15K SAS HDD for just under US$120K. Add in 4x nVidia K40 cards, and you have a number-crunching monster... (Or if you want to look at SPARC systems instead of x86, the Oracle M6-32, boasts up to 384 cores, 32TB of RAM, redundant FC connections, etc). Note: These are single servers, not blade systems. Coug and Doug both do a lot with higher-end blade servers, and you can get really nice performing systems at that level as well...
I prefer an ATX case, but my point was about the Macs having the Xenon CPUs.
Some activities are a bit slow, but the single most time-consuming one is saving a file (a single-threaded process). Some of my plugins are single-threaded as well. RAM is only a significant issue with large, complex images from panos.
Sure, but how does 4.2GBz on the 2010 hexagonal (Extreme) CPU compare to the 2013 Extreme CPU or late 2014 Extreme CPU? Is the latter 50% faster?
jtr1962
Storage? I am Storage!
Most PC users wouldn't see much of a difference between a 10-core Xeon and something like a 4-core i5. This is one of those cases where you'll know if you need it or not. My decade-old XP3200 was actually adequate for 95% of the stuff I did on a PC. I needed more 3D horsepower and better multithreading capability for some apps, so I upgraded in late 2012 to an A10 Trinity APU, F2A85V-PRO MB, 16 GB RAM, and 240 GB SSD. Now I'm probably good for another 5 years at least. I have enough RAM and CPU power to run several VMs at once, and more than enough 3D horsepower for the applications I use. I doubt I would notice a significant difference between my system and a 10-core Xeon. My only regret is getting 4 4GB DIMMs instead of 2 8GB DIMMs. The latter would allow an eventual upgrade to 32 GB should I need it without removing all my existing RAM.
Stereodude
Not really a
And they probably still don't need it.
I'm pretty sure I'm into the nitty gritty of video editing and processing more so than anyone else on the forum (in the deep end of AVIsynth and x264 encoding pool). Unless I parallel up "jobs" so they run simultaneously my i7-4770k @4.2gHz w/ 16GB of RAM is rather poorly utilized. Encoding with x264 can saturate my system, but the source has to be able to keep up feeding it frames. If a lot of processing is being done on a video you're lucky to get 3FPS and the encoder sits there mostly waiting for the next frame. So, you can either run multiple encodes at the same time, or use intermediate lossless AVI files. You break up processing the source video into 3 or 4 chunks that you process simultaneously (keeping the CPU utilization up). Then you feed the "merged" AVI files into x264 for encoding. This lets x264 use 100% of the CPU for encoding. If you've done it right the whole process takes less time than doing it in a purely linear fashion with poor utilization of your system.
Long story short, additional RAM and more cores/threads wouldn't really help me much.
Which camera are you using? Is it 4K?
Stereodude
Not really a
I'm not working with live footage, so no camera. I'm dealing with mostly recordings (it's a hobby, not my job).
ddrueding
Fixture
15%? Most of that from clockspeed. I'd get something like a Corsair H100i and see if you can get more speed from your existing hardware. Maybe combine it with a SATA3 controller and some faster drives.
They are IT pros who work for big corps where the cost of the actual hardware itself is usually the least expensive concern they might have regarding a system implementation or upgrade.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
That's true, but part of the advantage of the ridiculous i7 rig is being able to do other things at the same time as video encoding. The CPU utilization for my main home system stays pegged at somewhere north of 90% for days on end from batch video encodes, but when I'm interacting with it (even gaming), it's still fully usable. That's the value that the i7 brings to the table.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
Keep in mind that the yougest forum member other than you is more than twice your age (Blackerwry or Timwhit, can't remember which one is younger). All of us have at least ten years of experience in IT. None of us earns minimum wage, partly because of that. It doesn't mean we aren't tight on cash, but at the very least it means we earn enough to have choices on what to make of it. Don't expect it to be your case during the first years of your career. But it will come, just be a little patient.
sedrosken
Florida Man
I don't know, the PC industry keeps going where I think it is, I may find myself out of a potential job. I'm not even remotely useful for manual labor.
I am nowhere near as useful with a tablet or smartphone as I am with a true PC.
By the way, I read somewhere that a touchscreen that emits tiny enough vibrations to simulate texture is in the works. Like, as in, say you have masonry tiles for a home screen wallpaper. You touch it and it seriously feels like masonry tiles.
I don't buy it, but is it really feasible? Could this happen before I turn 30?
I am nowhere near as useful with a tablet or smartphone as I am with a true PC.
By the way, I read somewhere that a touchscreen that emits tiny enough vibrations to simulate texture is in the works. Like, as in, say you have masonry tiles for a home screen wallpaper. You touch it and it seriously feels like masonry tiles.
I don't buy it, but is it really feasible? Could this happen before I turn 30?
Chewy509
Wotty wot wot.
Not going to happen, you will always need someone to program them, maintain them and help others use them...
ddrueding
Fixture
IMO, the trick to staying relevant is to maintain a combination of people/interaction/interpersonal/communication skills (so they can't outsource you) and technology skills (so you are the one programing the computer to do someone else's job, not the one who's job just got programmed into a computer). And remember, there is always room at the top. The best at something will be the last person employed at that thing.
sedrosken
Florida Man
I don't mean the computers will fix themselves, I meant that they are being replaced with tablets! I am pretty good with a PC if I do say so myself, but put a clumsy touch interface on it and I'm a goner.
ddrueding
Fixture
My suspicion is that tablets are putting computers back to where they were in the 50s/60s. In the hands of professionals to do the real work, while tablets are simply the modern day newspaper. AFAIK, no one has developed an app for a tablet on a tablet. Or designed the circuit board for one. No one runs the "cloud" back-end for these services on tablets.
Don't let the fact that simple peoples simple needs can be filled by a tablet lead you to believe that tablets can do much of anything beyond consume content created on a real computer.
Don't let the fact that simple peoples simple needs can be filled by a tablet lead you to believe that tablets can do much of anything beyond consume content created on a real computer.
This may only matter if you envision yourself as a desktop support technician or doing anything solely related to home consumer PCs. You should think about then entire computer ecosystem and not just the consumer side. There is a whole different world in enterprise IT with larger density servers, switches, sans, etc that are not being replaced by smart phones and tablets (and as far as I can see, won't be replaced by those anytime soon). Those still need engineers, architects, support, etc to run the backbone of businesses. These enterprise labs also need more-complex pieces of software to manage the entire environment as companies like to become more dense in their deployments.