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Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

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Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#121

Post by wlesieutre »

Spooky23 wrote: post #28
johansch wrote: post #8

I built a desktop PC almost exactly five years ago. - Intel Core i5 2500K, 3.3 GHz, quad-core (200 USD) - 8B (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz C9 (100 USD) - 120GB 2.5" SSD Intel X25-M G2 (200 USD) - GeForce GTX 460 1GB (200 USD) It's sad that a full five years later, CPU performance/USD has barely moved at all. RAM is half the cost now, SSDs a quarter the cost. Not sure about how GPUs have developed? (Edit: The GTX 960 which tod…

You represent the 5% of PC consumers. The average person goes to Walmart/Bestbuy/BJ's/Staples and spends $475 on some shitbox laptop. The 25th percentile user (ie. millions of people) probably spent $275-325. That average person who bought that average PC in 2011 has an aging HP/Dell/Asus laptop with a failing battery, $30 Celeron or AMD processor, 2GB memory, integrated graphics, a 500GB 5400rpm disk and integrated…

Don't forget the 1366x768 screen! They were selling those as standard on 15.6" laptops with the good old "It's a good screen because it has more inches" line.

Only in the last year or two has anything better than that become remotely common.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#122

Post by paulmd »

cheald wrote: post #107
paulmd wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Clock-for-clock, Skylake is about 10-20% faster than Sandy Bridge, IPC improvements have been 4 GHz, which is extremely reasonable, then it keeps up just fine with a Skylake in most tasks. CPU performance is largely "good enough" for most users. OS bloat has finally stopped: Win8.1 is just as fast as Win7 (and is more stable) and Win10 is faster and skinnier. Most users don't do anything intensive and probably w…

> Yup. Clock-for-clock, Skylake is about 10-20% faster than Sandy Bridge Sorry, can you elaborate on this? Is Skylake somehow performing multiple instructions per core per clock cycle somehow?

Sometimes - there's multiple types of execution units in a CPU core (even multiples of the same type), and a thread can dispatch to multiple units at once (superscalar execution). It can also reorder the instruction stream to keep all the units occupied (out-of-order execution), preemptively execute along the most likely direction a branch will take (speculative execution), etc.

Basically, it's all a massive game to keep all the units of a core busy to execute the desired instruction stream as fast as possible. Over time, successive CPU architectures have gotten better at playing the game: better occupancy, more execution units, and more powerful units (SSE, AVX, etc), which translates into a greater number of instructions executed per clock cycle (IPC).

That's why a Skylake is much faster than a Pentium 4, even though the P4 might run at a higher clockrate. The Skylake has better IPC.

And as a side note: what Hyperthreading does is duplicate the part of the core that manages registers and instruction dispatch for a thread. So you have a second thread that can utilize any execution units that the first thread left unoccupied.

Bulldozer works somewhat similarly: two threads share a single core, and each core has a pair of integer execution units but they share a floating-point unit. So kinda like a Super-Hyperthreading, where they include a duplicate of (what they hope is) the most needed execution unit. Doesn't always work out in reality though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_cycle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superscalar_processor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-order_execution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_execution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyper-threading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulldozer_(microarchitecture)

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#123

Post by massysett »

slantyyz wrote: post #90
apatters wrote: post #16

If there's something sad about that fact, it's that the industry has delivered so little value in the past 5 years that not many people feel compelled to upgrade!

> If there's something sad about that fact, it's that the industry has delivered so little value in the past 5 years that not many people feel compelled to upgrade! The glass half-full response? The industry has delivered so much value in the past 5-8 years that not many people feel compelled to upgrade!

Exactly. I haven't upgraded my washing machine or refrigerator in the last 5 years either. The people Schiller was sneering at view PCs as appliances, and they don't watch Apple press conferences anyway.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#125

Post by flyinghamster »

As someone who just picked up a reconditioned six-year-old, i7-equipped ThinkPad for a hell of a lot less money than what it would have cost brand-new, I have to laugh. It may not be the Latest and Greatest, but it's still speedy enough to handle anything I'm going to throw at it. The CPU performance curve has flattened out in the last few years, to the point that it's not worth spending lots of money for a modest performance gain.

I'll let someone else take the depreciation hit.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#126

Post by basch »

flyinghamster wrote: post #125

As someone who just picked up a reconditioned six-year-old, i7-equipped ThinkPad for a hell of a lot less money than what it would have cost brand-new, I have to laugh. It may not be the Latest and Greatest, but it's still speedy enough to handle anything I'm going to throw at it. The CPU performance curve has flattened out in the last few years, to the point that it's not worth spending lots of money for a modest pe…

considering cpu speed has been "good enough since around core 2 duos (late 2006?) the only major improvements since then have been battery life and ssd cost.

anyone with a computer from the last 10 years that can support an ssd and 8+gb ram, is probably fine. travel being the exception.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#128

Post by agumonkey »

paulmd wrote: post #113
agumonkey wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an odd fact about markets. You have the high rate of progress phase where technological advances almost sell themselves. I didn't have to wonder for long to want a Pentium 200 MMX instead of my Pentium 75. Nowadays it's really tough to convince someone naturally and strongly. They have to push for new 'needs' (4K ?) or allow for crapware and subpar software to trigger the religious reflex newer = better = fast…

4K monitors are a little marginal. 27" is really too small, most people need some DPI enlargement to feel comfortable. The bigger panels increase significantly in price, but I think 32-36" would probably be about right in terms of ppi. 27" 1440P monitors are fantastic though, they strike the perfect balance between resolution, size, and price. If you're used to 22-24" monitors I really encourage you to give it a try,…

I never used something above 21/22 IIRC, but as a secondary monitor. I'll give it a shot, although nowadays I'm having a retro fetish, give me a 10" orange / black CRT and I'll be happy.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#129

Post by tdkl »

bitJericho wrote: post #59
aetherson wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that it means "LOL poor people" either. But I do think that it's bullshit marketing talk. Apple is perfectly happy to be proud (rightly, I think) of the enduring utility of older pieces of Apple hardware -- but if some other company's hardware continues to be perfectly serviceable for 5 years, that's sad? Also, if you have a 5 year old PC that's genuinely not serving your needs any more, sure, you could…

Bought a dual CPU workstation with 12gb ram and two quad core 12 mb cache xeons for under 400 bucks. It's about 5 year old tech and its awesome!

Yep, eBay is booming with second hand workstations like this. Cousin bought a HP Z210 Quad Core E3-1270 3.40GHz with 16GB RAM for 320€. Added a SSD and cheap GPU and is an awesome 500€ machine that can last for years.

Re: Dear Apple, there’s nothing ‘really sad’ about using a 5-year-old PC

#130

Post by mrbill »

I said this in the other thread..

I just bought a "new to me" laptop.

Refurb Thinkpad T420s from 2011.

I added 16G RAM, two Intel SSDs, an Ultrabay battery, and an 802.12ac wifi card.

Grand total: less than $325.

This will be my primary portable for at least 2-3 years, and it's already four years old.

Just because I can afford Apple doesn't mean I can justify the 2x price premium, or that "old" hardware isn't capable.

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