Live data from Hacker News

It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

blog.howardjohn.info

451–460 of 522 posts

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#451
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…

To put a massive spanner in this, companies are going to be rolling out seemingly mandatory AI usage, which has huge compute requirements .. which are often fulfilled remotely. And has varying, possibly negative, effects on productivity.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#452
post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I do lot's of sport and can sit comfortable on hard ground meditating for quite some time. I still enjoy a good chair way more than something "normal" for any longer computer sessions.

If a chair is too comfortable, I just fall asleep in it. It doesn't make me work better. A chair isn't any answer to poor posture. The answer is exercising your core muscles, being aware of your posture, and constantly correcting it.

Well, I found a good chair helps me, with keeping a good posture. Otherwise good advise.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#453
post #419
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…

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

I bought a geforce RTX 3080 at launch and boy was I surprised at the power draw and heat/noise it pumps out. I wonder why anybody bothers with the 90 series at all.

I actually run it ~10% underclocked, barely affects performance, but greatly reduces heat/noise. These cards are configured to deliver maximum performance at any cost (besides system instability).

My next GPU I am probably going mid-range to be honest, these beefy GPUs are not worth it anymore cost and performance-wise. You are better off buying the cheaper models and upgrading more often.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#454
On a different note. I just bought a Sienna-series EPYC, which is a 48-core Zen 4c chip capped at 200W. AMD 8434PN at 1200 EUR price-point. My understanding is it's a two- or three years out-of-date CPU, but I was simply blown away! I contemplated purchasing a 9005-class CPU, but even 32-core variant would cost more than 3000 EUR... at sommat crazy like 400W. Thank you, my PCIe stuff alone draws a kilowatt; no way I'm putting in a 400W CPU on top.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#455

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.

Efficiency costs development time and thus money. Computers getting faster is what made software development cheaper and possible to use for solving problems.

Usually software gets developed to be so fast that people just barely accept it with the computers of their time. You can do better by setting explicit targets like the RAIL model by google. Optimizing any further usually is just a waste of resources.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#456
post #66

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.

They shouldn't work on a slower machine - however they should test on a slower machine. Always.

Even better is to measure real performance at your customers.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#457
post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this meant to be a gotcha question? Yes, unpaid overtime is fraud, and employers commit that kind of fraud probably just as regularly as employees doing the things up thread. none of it is good lol

The overtime is assumed and included in their 6-figure salaries.

Overtime can't be assumed by definition. If it's an expectation, it should be written into the contracted working hours, and then it's not overtime. (Or if there are no contracted working hours, then overtime could only be defined in relation to legally required maximum working hours, in which case it can't be an expectation for employees to exceed these without appropriate compensation.)

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got my boss to get me the most powerful server we could find, $15000 or so. In benchmarks there was minimal benefit and sometimes a loss going with more than 40 cores even though it has 56. (52? - I can't check now) sometimes using more cores slows the build down. We have concluded that memory bandwidth is the limit, but are not sure how to prove it.

If that's true than have you looked at the threadripper or the new Ryzen AI+ 395? I think it has north of 200gbps

i have not (above machine was a intel), someone else did get a threaeripper though I don't know which. He reborted similar numbers though I think he was able to use more cores still not all.

The larger point is the fastest may not be faster for your workload so benchmark before spending money. Your workload may be different.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#460
post #441
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…

When I worked at a FAANG, most developers could get remote virtual machine for their development needs. They could pick the machine type and size. It was one of the first thing you'd learn how to do in your emb^H^H^H onboarding :) So it wasn't uncommon to see people with a measly old 13" macbook pro doing the hard work on a 64cpu/256GB remote machine. Laptops were essentially machines used for reading/writing emails,…

Ah so the coding was done locally but run remotely?

I nearly went insane when I was forced to code using Citrix.

Post reply on HN