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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

#361

Post by kelnos »

margalabargala wrote: post #265
appreciatorBus wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah the laptop and the dinner are exactly the same, they only differ in timing. You can steal $2000 by lying about a stolen laptop or lying about working late. The latter method just takes a few months.

We're not discussing lying about working late, we're discussing actually working late.

The person way upthread said:

> people started staying just late enough for the food delivery to arrive while scrolling on their phones and then walking out the door with their meal.

That doesn't sound like actually working late?

(I still agree with you, though, that this isn't the equivalent of stealing a laptop, even if you do it enough to take home $2,000 worth of dinner.)

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#362

Post by kelnos »

SCLeo wrote: post #302
Aurornis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every well funded startup I’ve worked for went through a period where employees could get nearly anything they asked for: New computers, more monitors, special chairs, standing desks, SaaS software, DoorDash when working late. If engineers said they needed it, they got it. Then some period of time later they start looking at spending in detail and can’t believe how much is being spent by the 25% or so who abuse the p…

Where do you even get the $3,000 standing desk? I am don't even compare prices and I got mine from Amazon for $200-$300. Sure the quality might not be the best but I just can't see there are people buying $3000 standing desks.

Early in the pandemic I bought a decent motorized standing desk for $520. It's nice, but I could very easily imagine a desk that costs 6x that. I would never buy that desk, but some people go for that sort of thing.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#363

Post by lukan »

kelnos wrote: post #357
WalterBright wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using the same $25 chair I bought 45 years ago. I've always thought the "ergonomic chair" was a scam.

I think ergonomic chairs are good for people who have poor posture. If you have a strong core and sit up straight all the time, you can probably sit on just about anything and be fine. (I'm not saying you're wrong. I think the real solution is that people should take better care of their physical selves. Certainly there are also people with particular conditions and do need the more ergonomic setup, but I expect that…

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.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#364

Post by WarOnPrivacy »

There are peaks in long-term CPU value. That is, CPUs that are 1) performant enough to handle general purpose computing for a decade and 2) outperform later chips for a long time.

The i7-4770 was one. It reliably outperformed later Intel CPUs until near 10th gen or so. I know shops that are still plugging away on them. The first comparable replacements for it is the i7-12700 (but the i5-12400 is a good buy).

At 13th gen, Intel swaps E for P cores. They have their place but I still prefer 12th gen for new desktops.

Past all that, the author is right about the AMD Ryzen 9950x. It's a phenomenal chip. I used one in a friend's custom build (biz, local llm) and it'll be in use in 2035.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#365

Post by kelnos »

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.

I'll agree with one modification: developers should be forced to test on a much slower machine.

My final compiled binary runs much faster than something written in, say, python or javascript, but my oh my is the rust compiler (and rust-analyzer) slow compared to the nonexistent compile steps in those other languages.

But for the most part the problem here isn't developers. It's product management and engineering managers. They just do not make performance a priority. Just like they often don't make bug-fixing and robustness a priority. It's all "features features features" and "time to market" and all that junk.

Maybe make the product managers use 5-year-old mid-range computers. Then when they test the stuff the developers have built, they'll freak out about the performance and prioritize it.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#366

Post by moffkalast »

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)

I'd expect every new generation of computers to not last as long as the last one, we keep reducing the transistor size and that means more fragility. I'm half surprised modern GPUs make it through shipping without melting from static.

My guess is that the most long lived computer gen could be one that still uses through hole components. Not a very useful machine by any metric though I bet.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#367

Post by jcelerier »

SlowTao wrote: post #323
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…

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.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#368

Post by Paianni »

SlowTao wrote: post #323
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…

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.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#369

Post by kelnos »

npn wrote: 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.

Hah, I find your setup crazy! I don't need or want that much stuff. To me it would get in the way, and increase my maintenance burden.

I also like having things Just So; and keeping windows and browser tabs and terminals etc. all in the same place on several different machines would drive me nuts.

I have one 3:2 aspect ratio 13" laptop, and I do everything on it. My wife had two large external screens for work that she doesn't use anymore, but I never use them. I like the simplicity of staring at one single rectangle, and not having extraneous stuff around me.

> There are a lot of jobs that should run in a home server running 24/7 instead of abusing your poor laptop.

Not sure I buy that. My laptop has 20 cores and 64GB of RAM, and sure, maybe a full build from scratch will peg all those cores, but for incremental builds (the 99% case), single core perf is what really matters, and a home server isn't going to give me meaningful gains over my laptop there.

And my laptop can very easily handle the "strain" of my code editor with whatever developer-assistance features I've set up.

Sure, CI jobs run elsewhere, but I don't need a home server for that; the VPS that hosts the git repository is fine.

Re: It is worth it to buy the fast CPU

#370

Post by aftbit »

moffkalast wrote: post #366
bullen wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I'd expect every new generation of computers to not last as long as the last one, we keep reducing the transistor size and that means more fragility. I'm half surprised modern GPUs make it through shipping without melting from static. My guess is that the most long lived computer gen could be one that still uses through hole components. Not a very useful machine by any metric though I bet.

On the flip side, a lot of those old through-hole memory chips have failed. I'm not sure what the mechanism of action is, but it likely leads back to some kind of (at the time unknown) manufacturing defect. Every new generation requires higher purity and better quality control (because those tiny transistors are less tolerant of defects). If we optimized for longevity rather than flops per dollar or per watt, we would likely keep making the same hardware for a very long time, optimizing the process along the way and learning about the pitfalls. Maybe you can see such things in the military or industrial computing spaces.
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