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It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

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Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#291

Post by gred »

zozbot234 wrote: post #123
bob1029 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Single core performance has not been stagnant. We're about double where we were in 2015 for a range of workloads. Branch prediction, OoO execution, SIMD, etc. make a huge difference. The clock speed of a core is important and we are hitting physical limits there, but we're also getting more done with each clock cycle than ever before.

Doubling single-core performance in 10 years amounts to a less than 10% improvement year-over-year. That will feel like "stagnant" if you're on non-vintage hardware. Of course there are improvements elsewhere that partially offset this, but there's no need to upgrade all that often.

> less than 10% improvement year-over-year. That will feel like "stagnant"...

Especially when, in that same time frame, your code editor / mail client / instant messaging / conference call / container management / source code control / password manager software all migrate to Electron...

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#292

Post by bigstrat2003 »

GloriousMEEPT wrote: post #88
amarcheschi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm forced to use teams and SharePoint in my university as a student and I hate every single interaction with it, I wish curse upon their creators, and may their descendants never have a smooth user experience with any software they use. Except for the ridiculous laggy interface, it has some functional bugs as well such as things just disappearing for a few days and then they pop up again

You're lucky to not have experienced what came before Teams in most corporate environments.

Lync and Skype for Business were far faster and more pleasant to use than Teams, in my experience.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#293

Post by bullen »

Is it worth to keep your old CPU?

I still run a 6600 (65W peak) from 2016 as my daily driver. I have replaced the SSD once (MLC lasted 5 years, hopefully forever with SLC drive from 2011?), 2x 32GB DDR4 sticks (Kingston Micron lasted 8 years, with aliexpress "samsung" sticks for $50 a pop) and Monitor (Eizo FlexScan 1932 lasted 15! years RIP with Eizo RadiForce 191M, highly recommend with f.lux/redshift for exceptional quality of image without blue light)

It's still powerful enough to play any games released this year I throw at it at 60 FPS (with a low profile 3050 from 2024) let alone compile any bloat.

Keep your old CPU until it breaks, completely... or actually until the motherboard breaks; I have a Kaby Lake 35W replacement waititng for the 6600 to die.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#294

Post by bornfreddy »

GloriousMEEPT wrote: post #88
amarcheschi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm forced to use teams and SharePoint in my university as a student and I hate every single interaction with it, I wish curse upon their creators, and may their descendants never have a smooth user experience with any software they use. Except for the ridiculous laggy interface, it has some functional bugs as well such as things just disappearing for a few days and then they pop up again

You're lucky to not have experienced what came before Teams in most corporate environments.

What do you have in mind? Skype was ok, and before that it was mostly e-mail in companies I had contact with.

SharePoint sucked from its inception though.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#296

Post by wqaatwt »

brookst wrote: post #94
wqaatwt wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple doesn’t really make desktop CPUs, though. Just very good oversized mobile ones. For AMD/Intel laptop, desktop and server CPUs usually are based on different architectures and don’t have that much overlap.

What’s the difference between a M4 max and a “real” desktop processor?

It can’t be used as a space heater?

It’s not that it’s worse than a “real” desktop chip. In a way it’s better you get almost comparable performance with way lower power usage.

Also the M4 Max has worse MT performance than e.g. the 14900k which is architecture ancient in relative terms and also costs a fraction

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#297

Post by milch »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #280
LevGoldstein wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and we're back to trying to convince a penny-wise pound-foolish company to buy twice the computing hardware for every developer.

Or just buy everyone desktops. Honestly I think laptops are completely superfluous for every business I've ever worked at. Nobody is truly getting value out of bringing a laptop to meetings, they just like them.

I think whatever companies you were at just didn't have very effective meetings. There's a time for "laptops down" and there's a time for laptops. If we can't prototype, brainstorm, outline ideas... why even have meetings in the first place?

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#298

Post by fleebee »

bfgeek wrote: post #281
userbinator wrote: post #46

I wish developers, and I'm saying this as one myself, were forced to work on a much slower machine, to flush out those who can't write efficient code. Software bloat has already gotten worse by at least an order of magnitude in the past decade.

My biggest pet peeve is designers using high end apple displays. You've average consumer is using a ultra cheap LCD panel that has no where near the contrast ratio that you are designing your mocks on, all of your subtle tints get saturated out. This is similar to good audio engineers back in the day wiring up a dirt cheap car speaker to mix albums.

> This is similar to good audio engineers back in the day wiring up a dirt cheap car speaker to mix albums.

Isn't that the opposite of what's happening?

I have decent audio equipment at home. I'd rather listen to releases that were mixed and mastered with professional grade gear.

Similarly, I'd like to get the most out of my high-end Apple display.

Optimizing your product for the lowest common denominator in music/image quality sounds like a terrible idea. The people with crappy gear probably don't care that much either way.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#299

Post by the__alchemist »

ak217 wrote: post #286
the__alchemist wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was a Radeon 3600x, state of the art 6-7 years ago. Replaced with 9950x. I was surprised by how big of a difference the CPU update had on frame rates. (GPU: 4080) I also do a lot of rust compiling (Which you hinted at), and molecular dynamics sims leveraging a mix of CUDA/GPU, and thread pools + SIMD.

Makes sense, yeah, a 3600x is far behind the curve now. Edit: Took a look at AMD's lineup and realized they did something I got conditioned not to expect: they've maintained AM5 socket compatibility for 3 generations in a row. This makes me far more likely to upgrade the CPU! https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/chipsets/am5.html > all AMD Socket AM5 motherboards are compatible with all AMD Socket AM5 processor…

Oh wow. Didn't save me though. I've never been able to drop a new CPU into a motherboard - it's always CPU + RAM + MB time due to the socket consideration you mention.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#300

Post by tnkuehne »

avidiax wrote: post #10

Employers, even the rich FANG types, are quite penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to developer hardware. Limiting the number and size of monitors. Putting speedbumps (like assessments or doctor's notes) on ergo accessories. Requiring special approval for powerful hardware. Requiring special approval for travel, and setting hotel and airfare caps that haven't been adjusted for inflation. To be fair, I know ple…

What would be a good incentivizing strategy to prevent over spending on hardware? I can think of giving a budget and the amount not spend is payed out to them (but when the salary is that high it might not make sense) or like having a internal dashboard where everybody can see every body’s spending on hardware, so people feel bad when they order to much.
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