Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

blog.howardjohn.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 522 posts

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#381

Post by Spooky23 »

svantana wrote: post #319
joshka wrote: post #315

At my former job at a FAANG, I did the math on allocating developers machines with 16GB vs 64GB based on actual job tasks with estimates of how much thumb twiddling waiting time that this would save and then multiplied that out by the cost of the developer's time. The cost benefit showed a reasonable ROI that was realized in Weeks for Senior dev salaries (months for juniors). Based on this, I strongly believe that if…

No doubt the math checks out, but I wonder if developer productivity can be quantified that easily. I believe there's a lot of research pointing to people having a somewhat fixed amount of cognitive capacity available per day, and that aligns well with my personal experience. A lot of times, waiting for the computer to finish feels like a micro-break that saves up energy for my next deep thought process.

There’s also the time to market and bureaucracy cost. I took over a place where there was a team of people devoted making sure you had exactly what PC you need.

Configuring devices more generously often lets you get some extra life out of it for people who don’t care about performance. If the beancounters make the choice, you’ll buy last years hardware at a discount and get jammed up when there’s a Windows or application update. Saving money costs money because of the faster refresh cycle.

My standard for sizing this in huge orgs is: count how many distinct applications launch per day. If it’s greater than 5-7, go big. If it’s less, cost optimize with a cheaper config or get the function on RDS.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#382

Post by malfist »

nazgul17 wrote: post #354
svantana wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt the math checks out, but I wonder if developer productivity can be quantified that easily. I believe there's a lot of research pointing to people having a somewhat fixed amount of cognitive capacity available per day, and that aligns well with my personal experience. A lot of times, waiting for the computer to finish feels like a micro-break that saves up energy for my next deep thought process.

This is true, but I find my train of thought slips away if I have to wait more than a handful of seconds, let alone two minutes. Tying this back to your point, those limited hours of focus time come in blocks, in my experience, and focus time is not easily "entered", either.

One person's micro breaks are another person's disruption of flow state

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#383

Post by scotty79 »

AtlanticThird wrote: post #186
dcrazy wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it “soft fraud” when a manager at an investment bank regularly demands unreasonable productivity from their junior analysts, causing them to work late and effectively reduce their compensation rate? Only if the word “abuse” isn’t ambiguous and loaded enough for you!

Lying about a laptop being stolen is black and white. I'm not sure how you are trying to say that is ambiguous. I don't know what the hell you mean by the term unreasonable. Are you under the impression that investment banking analysts do not think they will have to work late before they take the role?

> Lying about a laptop being stolen is black and white.

Well, it was stolen. The only lie is by whom.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#384

Post by malfist »

bullen wrote: post #352
chupasaurus wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could buy a SSD with SLC cache that is bigger than in 2011 pure SLC one, and probably cheaper.

We have gone through this if you look at my comment history. Yes you can do everything, but not without added complexity, that will end up failing faster. We have peaked in all tech. Nothing will ever get as good as the raw peak in longevity: - SSDs ~2011 (pure SLC) - RAM ~2013 (DDR3 fast low latency but low Hz = cooler = lasts longer) - CPUs ~2018 (debatable but I think those will outlast everything else)

What metric are you using to determine peak? Just long life?

I don't know about most people, but how long a wafer of silicon keeps working past its obsolescence, is just not that important

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#385

Post by mvdtnz »

joshka wrote: post #315

At my former job at a FAANG, I did the math on allocating developers machines with 16GB vs 64GB based on actual job tasks with estimates of how much thumb twiddling waiting time that this would save and then multiplied that out by the cost of the developer's time. The cost benefit showed a reasonable ROI that was realized in Weeks for Senior dev salaries (months for juniors). Based on this, I strongly believe that if…

> it rarely if ever makes sense to buy anything but the top spec Macbook Pro available

God I wish my employers would stop buying me Macbook Pros and let me work on a proper Linux desktop. I'm sick of shitty thermally throttled slow-ass phone chips on serious work machines.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#386

Post by snvzz »

fmajid wrote: post #78
juped wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I would say, do get a better CPU, but do also research a bit deeper and really get a better CPU. Threadrippers are borderline workstation, too, though, esp. the pro SKUs.

Threadrippers are workstation processors and support ECC, Epycs are servers and the 9950X is HEDT (high end desktop).

Standard Ryzen chips also support ECC (minus the monolithic G models).

I run 2x48GB ECC with my 9800x3d.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#387

Post by mnahkies »

svantana wrote: post #319
joshka wrote: post #315

At my former job at a FAANG, I did the math on allocating developers machines with 16GB vs 64GB based on actual job tasks with estimates of how much thumb twiddling waiting time that this would save and then multiplied that out by the cost of the developer's time. The cost benefit showed a reasonable ROI that was realized in Weeks for Senior dev salaries (months for juniors). Based on this, I strongly believe that if…

No doubt the math checks out, but I wonder if developer productivity can be quantified that easily. I believe there's a lot of research pointing to people having a somewhat fixed amount of cognitive capacity available per day, and that aligns well with my personal experience. A lot of times, waiting for the computer to finish feels like a micro-break that saves up energy for my next deep thought process.

For me the issue is at work with 16gb of ram, I'm basically always running into swap and having things grind to a halt. My personal workstation has 64gb and the only time I experience issues is when something's leaking memory

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#388

Post by donw »

Spooky23 wrote: post #381
svantana wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt the math checks out, but I wonder if developer productivity can be quantified that easily. I believe there's a lot of research pointing to people having a somewhat fixed amount of cognitive capacity available per day, and that aligns well with my personal experience. A lot of times, waiting for the computer to finish feels like a micro-break that saves up energy for my next deep thought process.

There’s also the time to market and bureaucracy cost. I took over a place where there was a team of people devoted making sure you had exactly what PC you need. Configuring devices more generously often lets you get some extra life out of it for people who don’t care about performance. If the beancounters make the choice, you’ll buy last years hardware at a discount and get jammed up when there’s a Windows or applica…

Also worth factoring in that top-spec hardware will have a longer usable life, especially for non-power users.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#389

Post by seabrookmx »

bullen wrote: post #293

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 exception…

E5-2650v2 in a Chinese mATX motherboard for me. Got the cpu years ago for like $50 as an eBay server pull. 970 Evo SSD. 24GB of mismatched DDR3. Runs all my home server junk and my dev environment (containerized with Incus). Every year I tell myself I should grab a newer Ryzen to replace it but it honestly just keeps chugging along and doesn't really slow me down.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#390

Post by LeifCarrotson »

mvdtnz wrote: post #385
joshka wrote: post #315

At my former job at a FAANG, I did the math on allocating developers machines with 16GB vs 64GB based on actual job tasks with estimates of how much thumb twiddling waiting time that this would save and then multiplied that out by the cost of the developer's time. The cost benefit showed a reasonable ROI that was realized in Weeks for Senior dev salaries (months for juniors). Based on this, I strongly believe that if…

> it rarely if ever makes sense to buy anything but the top spec Macbook Pro available God I wish my employers would stop buying me Macbook Pros and let me work on a proper Linux desktop. I'm sick of shitty thermally throttled slow-ass phone chips on serious work machines.

Just Friday I was dealing with a request from purchasing asking if a laptop with an ultra-low-power 15W TDP CPU and an iGPU with "8GB DDR4 graphics memory (shared) was a suitable replacement for one with a 75W CPU (But also a Core i9) and NVidia RTX4000 mobile 130W GPU in one of our lead engineer's CAD workstations.

No, those are not the same. There's a reason one's the size of a pizza box and costs $5k and the other's the size of an iPad and costs $700.

And yes, I much prefer to build tower workstations with proper thermals and full-sized GPUs, that's the main machine at their desk, but sometimes they need a device they can take with them.

Post reply on HN