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It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

blog.howardjohn.info

431–440 of 522 posts

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand paying more for fast processors and so on but a standing desk just goes up and down. What features do the high end desks have that I am missing out on?

I went with Uplift desks which are not $150 but certainly sub $1000. I think what I was paying for was the stability/solidity of the desk, the electronics and memory and stuff is probably commodified.

$300 electronic leg kit from Amazon + Ikea top is pretty solid and has memory etc

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really depends on your use case. I personally still run my 17 year old 2.4GHz Core 2 duo with 4GB of RAM as my daily runner. I simply do not hit the walls even on that thing. Most folks here simply would not accept that and not because they are spoilt but their works loads demand more.

Nothing older than Nehalem and Bulldozer got microcode mitigations for Spectre, so I'd say running a C2D online would be a liability by now.

I am still waiting to hear about a proven exploit in the wild for all that stuff we’re mitigating against.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really 2x or is it 2x at max load ? Since, as you say, you're not peggig the CPU - would be interesting to compare power usage on a task basis and the duration. Could be that the 3D cache is really adding that much overhead even to idle CPU. Anyway I've never regretted buying a faster CPU (GPU is a different story, burned some money there on short time window gains that were marginally relevant), but I did regr…

I recently had some fun overclocking my old i5 4690. IIRC, running the base frequency at 3.9Ghz instead of 3.5GHz, yield a very modest performance boost but added 20% more power consumption and temperature. I then underclocked it to 3.1Ghz and the thing barely ran at more than 40°C under load and power consumption was super low! The performance was more than mediocre though...

Devil's Canyon and Haswell-E were great overclockers. I had an i7-4790K re-lidded with liquid metal stable at 4.7GHz all-core and (a bit later) an i7-5960X stable at 4.5GHz all-core. But yes power consumption and thermal output were through the roof.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#434

Tangential: TIL you can compile the Linux kernel in < 1 minute (on top-spec hardware). Seems it’s been a while since I’ve done that, because I remember it being more like an hour or more.

I suspect that's a very slimmed-down .config and probably only e.g. `make bzImage`, versus something like a Debian kernel .config with modules, headers, etc. A full Ubuntu kernel takes quite a bit longer on my 5950X, which is admittedly quite a bit slower than a 9950X but still no laggard. I'll time it and update this comment later...

ETA: After dropping caches it took 18m40s to build Ubuntu mainline 6.16.3 with gcc-14 on my 5950X, with packages for everything including linux-doc, linux-rust-lib, linux-source, etc. I'd expect the same operation to take about 11m on a 9950X.

It's also not clear whether OP used Clang or GCC to build the kernel. Clang would be faster.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#435
post #187

I find it crazy that some people only use a single laptop for their dev work. Meanwhile I have 3 PCs, 5 monitors, keyboards and mouses, and still think they are not enough. There are a lot of jobs that should run in a home server running 24/7 instead of abusing your poor laptop. Remote dedicated servers work, but the latency is killing your productivity, and it is pricey if you want a server with a lot of disk space.

I dunno, alt+tab works as fast for me as moving my head to look at another monitor. And I'm not particularly concerned with "abusing" my laptop. I paid for its chips and all of its cores, I'm not going to not use them...

it is not about the chips or cores. it is about the pcie ssd that you torture it with high temperature for a long period of time due to a laptop poor cooling.

or the battery, it does not like high temperature either.

you only regret it when it happens. and it will happen.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might come as a bit of a surprise to you, but most (really all) employees are in it for money. So if you are astonished that people optimize for their financial gain, that’s concerning. That’s why you implement rules. If you start trying to tease apart the motivations people have even if they are following those rules, you are going to end up more paranoid than Stalin.

> This might come as a bit of a surprise to you > So if you are astonished that people optimize for their financial gain, that’s concerning. I’m not “surprised” nor “astonished” nor do you need to be “concerned” for me. That’s unnecessarily condescending. I’m simply explaining how these generous policies come to and end through abuse. You are making a point in favor of these policies: Many will see an opportunity for…

I find your tone commendable, and I hope I can extend you the same courtesy of being respectful while disagreeing.

The idea that a company offering food in some capacity can be seen as generous is, at best, confusing and possibly naïve. A company does this because it expects such a policy will extract more work for less pay. There is no benevolence in the relationship between a company and an individual — only pure, raw self-interest.

In my opinion, the best solution is not to offer benefits at all, but simply to overpay everyone. That’s far more effective, since individuals then spend their own money as they choose, and thus take appropriate care of it.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#437
post #421
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't care about power efficiency, sure ;)

When it comes to: "is it better to throw away the 6600 and replace it with a 5600, than keep running the 6600" I'm torn but: you probably need to use the 5600 for maybe 20 years to compensate for it's manufacturing energy cost (which is not directly linked to $ cost) and I think the 6600 might last that long with new RAM 10 years down the road, not so sure the newer 5600 motherboard and the CPU itself will make it th…

This is a little confusing because you were referring to a Core i5-6600 and presumably an i5-7500T or i7-7700T above but now you mention a 5600. Are you referring to a Ryzen 5 5600?

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#438

Tangential: TIL you can compile the Linux kernel in < 1 minute (on top-spec hardware). Seems it’s been a while since I’ve done that, because I remember it being more like an hour or more.

I remember I was blown away by some machine that compiled it in ~45 minutes. Pentium Pro baby! Those were the days.

Painful memories of trying to build the kernel on my 486DX2/50, letting it run overnight and waking up to a compile-time error or non-booting kernel...

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really depends on your use case. I personally still run my 17 year old 2.4GHz Core 2 duo with 4GB of RAM as my daily runner. I simply do not hit the walls even on that thing. Most folks here simply would not accept that and not because they are spoilt but their works loads demand more.

a 17 year old core 2 duo machine is definitely less powerful than a raspberry pi 5 that is going to use 1/7th of the power.

Absolutely, but until I can get that easily in a battle harden Thinkpad design, I will probably still be using this. I aam not against upgrading at all, just haven't needed it yet. That said this last year, a lot of applications have finally grown to the point that I can see the horizon creeping closer.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#440
post #92
post #11

I generally agree you should buy fast machines, but the difference between my 5950x (bought in mid 2021. I checked) and the latest 9950x is not particularly large on synthetic benchmarks, and the real world difference for a software developer who is often IO bound in their workflow is going to be negligible If you have a bad machine get a good machine, but you’re not going to get a significant uplift going from a goo…

5950x is such a great platform. I can’t see replacing mine for several years at least.

The combination of the twin Matisse I/O dies (one on the CPU package, one serving as the X570 chipset), Zen 3 chiplets, and overall maturity of the AM4 platform is still unmatched. I'm waiting for AM5 to "get good" before upgrading my 5950X (even though Zen 4 and Zen 5 chiplets are already quite good). I hope the next gen brings a core count bump, better DDR5 stability at higher speeds in 2DPC configurations, and USB4V2.
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