Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, Flying Fox, morphine
jossie wrote:
Entroper wrote:Depending on your case and your operating system, a compromise may be in order. I have a 120 GB SSD for my Mac OS boot drive, and a 3 TB WD Green for my data drive. A bit of under-the-hood tweaking means the 3TB drive is mounted on /Users, and everything is sweet.An SSD is definitely in my future, I just don't think 256 GB is enough, and $500 is too much.
Entroper wrote:An SSD is definitely in my future, I just don't think 256 GB is enough, and $500 is too much. I'm very practiced at playing the waiting game. I'm just not sure what I'm waiting for at this point. Another quad core mid 3 GHz CPU?
rookiebeotch wrote:jossie wrote:
So... between 50% to 100% improvement in performance between a 950 and a 4670k. OP is on the right track. I think that turns out to be less than a tenth of one percent of performance gain per day over the last 4 years. Unacceptable.
On a serious note, I'm in the same boat as OP: I am on a 920 and I am itching to do a new build. Although the CPU performance gains are more than significant, what I am really yearning for is the SSD caching and lower wattage that a new intel system would give me. I don't have a budget to deck out my system with a large array of SSDs because I spent all my money on energy @0.40-0.44 $/KWh. In addition to this, newer intel chipsets have support for HDDs >2TB in raids, PCIe 3, USB3, sata3, and the mobos allow for much more options in fine tuning cpu voltages. Tuning my 920 feels like Im hammering it with a wrench while tuning my dad's 2500k feels like I am calibrating a fine scientific instrument. Maybe my short list of features that I am looking forward to will help OP make a decision.
Entroper wrote:An SSD is definitely in my future, I just don't think 256 GB is enough, and $500 is too much. I'm very practiced at playing the waiting game. I'm just not sure what I'm waiting for at this point. Another quad core mid 3 GHz CPU?
Phaydren wrote:Entroper wrote:It's a fairly snappy drive...
Entroper wrote:Four years ago, I bought a Core i5-750, 2.67 GHz base, I'm not sure what with the clock boost, quad core. TR's most recent guide recommends a Core i5-4670K @ 3.4GHz, or the 4770K @ 3.5 GHz.
Now I know it's not just clock speed that's improving, and the newer chips are getting more done per cycle. But how much more, really? I'm starting to think about building another computer this year or next, but I don't really know that it's worth it. I'll definitely need a graphics card to replace my GTX 460, but I just don't know what a new CPU and RAM are going to do for me.
Nec_V20 wrote:My main machine comprises of an i7-990x and I recently built a NAS box based on an A8-5600K and when just doing the normal stuff I do every day I don't notice any difference between them.
Welch wrote:I think one thing being overlooked in all of this is the argument for Sandy bridge and beyond is (not overclocked) RAM speeds. Most first gen Intel Core series CPUs are 1066 whereas 2nd, 3rd nd 4th are 1333. In applications that are more memory intensive you gain performance there.
Welch wrote:I think one thing being overlooked in all of this is the argument for Sandy bridge and beyond is (not overclocked) RAM speeds. Most first gen Intel Core series CPUs are 1066 whereas 2nd, 3rd nd 4th are 1333. In applications that are more memory intensive you gain performance there.
I bought my Sandybridge system a little late to the show and don't regret it at all. However I do regret not having bought an SSD even yet for my system. I've built a few dozen machines for people with an SSD since my rig was built and let me tell you that its night and day different. If your waiting for SSD prices and capacity to be more favorable... Then don't buy a new computer until your ready to outfit it with one. Typical HDDs degrade the performance enough to make it feel like it negates any benefits you'd have from a CPU or RAM upgrade.
Hope this helps.
Star Brood wrote:The newer Intel CPU's have roughly twice the single-threaded performance of my CPU's....IMO every single CPU benchmark that involves games should include a StarCraft 2 +mothership usage benchmark. There never was a better test of single threaded performance
Star Brood wrote:I mostly play StarCraft II, which is the only game I get performance issues on.
Now, I haven't tried FRAPS, but I haven't had stuttering problems in the following games (single-player only):
Battlefield 3 Ultra settings.
Tomb Raider Ultra (getting rid of TressFX Hair makes any other setting combo smooth as butter).
Bioshock Infinite.
Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon Ultra with 4x MSAA and I think I had to drop the depth of field to 89 (the value "90" doesn't take, for some reason).
These are some popular games, and my CPU's are really old (2006). Basically my 2 Xeon 5160's perform like an overclocked Q6600.
StarCraft II is an insanely-programmed, heavily-single-threaded game that doesn't tax video cards quite so much as it does pretty much any CPU ever made. The newer Intel CPU's have roughly twice the single-threaded performance of my CPU's, so even then I'd be stuck at 20FPS in a worst-case scenario (2v2 with motherships involved). Currently my FPS never dips below 10, but is usually 30-40 (2v2 average FPS) and 50-60 (1v1 average FPS). This is with V-sync turned on, so I don't know how much beyond 60FPS I get during weak times. Maybe I should turn V-sync off.
IMO every single CPU benchmark that involves games should include a StarCraft 2 +mothership usage benchmark. There never was a better test of single threaded performance. And replays make consistent benchmarks very easy to reproduce, and tax the CPU even more when you fast forward them.
Star Brood wrote:Thanks - if I were to use that, I would probably assign the system processes to my upper processor (which gets hotter due to air-cooled heat sinks and thermodynamics) and assign StarCraft II to my lower processor. That way I dedicate the best resources to the game. I may try that later today just to toy around with it and see if it improves performance, and get back to you with the results.