Are High-End CPUs Worth The Money? 289
Rampaging Goatbert (aka Jeff Feld) has posted a story at Newsforge about something you may want to argue about with your boss or significant other. Specifically, whether high-end CPUs are worth their high prices. Personally, I look even lower on the processor food chain, but watching those price-curve inflection points makes the runner-up chips pretty tempting. Your mileage will almost certainly vary.
Never has been (Score:1)
Buy a 486dx100 at $80, or a P1-166 at $600?
Buy a P120 at $80, or a P233MMX at $600?
Buy a P300-CelebA at $80, or a PII-450 at $600?
Buy a Ath800 at $80, or a P4-1.3g at $600?
You're always paying a premium, its the premium of boasting, and since the actual performance increase merits at max 50% (probably far less unless you're using max-cpu apps, and the rest of the kits not bottlenecks).
So, No. Unless someone else is paying...
Smid
these are not really "high-end" (Score:1)
This article is about the "high-end" of a low-performance architecture...
When I saw the headline, I thought "At last, a real comparison of x86 v. UltraSparc, Mips, Alpha, et al. .."
... but no. Same old crap about Athlon and Pentium.
Not even a mention the Itanium, let alone a date.
Is the plural of Pentium "Pentia"?
Is the plural of Itanium "Itania"?
Are High End CPU's Worth all the money (Score:1)
it's called the law of diminishing returns (Score:1)
It's all bout bragging rights (Score:1)
It's like having a new Porsche compared to your neighbors new Camaro
Forget your workstation, powerup the server! (Score:1)
This may have mattered 4 years ago (Score:1)
Now the 1.4g Athlon I just bought (to replace my aging p2-400 which incidently goes for $58 now) cost just over $150. Sure I could have saved $30 and gone with the next one down, or even saved $80 and gotten a 1g. But come on, $80 only fills my gas tank 3 times.
Now I totally understand if you are talking about spending $568 for a P4-1.8g, or $326 for a P4-1.7g, ($242 markup for
google (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:google (Score:5, Informative)
Re:google (Score:3, Funny)
Take Mozilla for example....
Re:google (Score:1)
(ducks thrown tomatoes)
Re:google (Score:4, Insightful)
How many fps does Google get?
The article is in the context of buying a PC for personal use, and benchmarks using FPS, ray-tracing, kernel-compiles, etc. The idea is to pay attention to incremental performance (1.33 Mhz to 1.4 Mhz, .07 Mhz) versus incremental cost ($33? $100), and make sure it's worth it. Bottom line, buy cutting edge, get screwed on price.
Performance (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Performance (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree.
Well, one nitpick, it is generally cheaper in terms of hardware cost, but this option is more expensive in terms of operational costs. Also, the rent associated with rack space at a commercial provider can start to be prohibitive.
So, three things start to add up here:
For some tasks, say a very large database with millions of transactions, it makes sense to pay the premium for even an extra iota of horsepower. For other task, such as web servers, it sometimes makes more sense to have many smaller machines. Also, if someone wants to start using this approach it usually pays to be able to autmatically configure a machine; otherwise, maintaining machines start to become unrealistic.
Re:Performance (Score:2, Insightful)
Who's paying the bills? (Score:2)
One crucial point (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, some people just like to brag, and ego can be worth $25
Re:One crucial point (Score:2)
To answer your other point, why market the 1.4 to everyone if only a small market needs it? To encourage conspicous consumption (another in my series of references to Econ 101), the motivation of almost every American consumer.
Re:One crucial point (Score:2, Funny)
To answer your other point, why market the 1.4 to everyone if only a small market needs it?
Because those penile-enlargement products aren't working as well as advertised, so they must look for other ways to over-compensate.
Re:One crucial point (Score:2)
I'm not sure that you're correct. Assume, for a moment, that the 5% MHz advantage only translates into a 2% advantage in rendering speed, but costs $33. That still means that it's worth spending the extra money if the complete system costs more than $1650 for a uniprocessor system of $3300 for a dual processor system. Considering that a rendering box is probably going to have a serious motherboard, case, lots of disks, fast memory, etc., those prices don't look unreasonable. Factor in a 2% reduction in installation and support costs, a 2% reduction in space requirements, etc. and maybe it's actually worth it. If you're using commercial rendering software with an expensive per-instance license cost, using the fastest available processor looks very smart.
Re:One crucial point (Score:1)
But space, licensing, support, these are all real concerns -- power too.
Re:One crucial point (Score:1)
Assuming that disks are non-local, power is probably not the really big concern. After all, faster processors made on the same process are going to consume more power, require more cooling, etc. in rough proportion to their speed. Since processors and disks are easily the biggest primary power consumers in a box without a big graphics card, that means that power consumption is going to scale reasonably closely with processor speed.
Getting back to the choice of lots of wimpy processors or a few powerful ones, ISTR that the rule of thumb is that more processors is better if interprocessor communication is limiting and faster processors is better if communication is not limiting. That seems counter to naive intuition- if interprocessor communication is important it seems like you'd want to minimize the number of processors- but turns out to be correct because communication is so slow compared to number crunching. In communications intensive tasks, fast processors just wind up idling a lot waiting for high latency communications. I'm not sure where rendering fits in, but if it doesn't require fast local disks to be efficient that suggests that it's not particularly communications intensive and is probably best suited by faster processors.
They can be (Score:3, Informative)
Still going on my P2-233 (Score:2)
I think you can divide the world into two categories...people who play 3D games on their computers and people who don't. If you play mostly RTS games like I do (I still enjoy StarCraft) then I think you tend to fall to the bottom of the upgrade cycle.
If you play mostly 3D games...it seems like you get sucked into ever increasing spiral of hardware needs. A new game comes out with a whole new bag of tricks (bump-mapped poly-textured fuzzy-logic nosehair) and you either need a good CPU to enable them or toss out your nVidia GollyGeeWhizForce and get whatever is the latest version.
- JoeShmoe
Re:Still going on my P2-233 (Score:2)
You forgot engineers, video editors, etc. Speed does count there. However, I used to do the same sort of engineering jobs on a 386 -- just had to schedule my work so autorouting would run overnight, if I picked the right settings. 500 MHz will autoroute a similar board in 10 minutes, so scheduling is a little easier, and I can try more different settings to try to get the best routing. 1.4GHz might or might not get it done in 5 minutes (CPU cycles aren't the only limiting factor!). So if I was doing that everyday, a few hundred extra for the fastest system would improve productivity be cost effective. Two 500MHz boxes and a keyboard-monitor-mouse switch would improve productivity far more...
Anyway, routing circuit boards is not my main job, and 500MHz is essentially instantaneous for everything else I do. But I remember when home computers were 8-bitters running games like the text-only D&D, and engineers got $50,000 Unix workstations, or else just a dumb terminal and a logon to the mainframe. Now the gameplayers need more power than most engineers...
Re:Still going on my P2-233 (Score:2)
Now maybe there are people out there who do these kinds of things as a hobby, but then letting things run overnight isn't really a problem because you should have the same time demands with the hobby as you would with a job.
I do a lot of MPG/Divx/MP2/etc encoding and I often have to let things run overnight (or in the background all day while I do other things). Again, not job critical so my slower processor is sufficient. If I had to make a living doing this and I was being paid per job (as opposed to per hour which would be QUITE profitable) then I definitely would pony up for a 1+ Gz system.
- JoeShmoe
Re:Still going on my P2-233 (Score:2)
Anyway, one of the reasons I was going to drop Windows games is that it would be much cheaper to get a console, and ignore the buy, upgrade, repeat cycle of 3d cards.
Things worked well. Until I bought Black and White. My poor SLI Voodoo2 setup was no longer sufficient. (of course, the 600mHz proc. might have had something to do with that as well:) So, out went the Voodoo, in went a GeForce MX (or whatever the bottom of the line, cheap shit GeForce is) and it works. Quite well for B&W. But that won't be for long.
Which is also okay. Turns out that I can use some of that ancient 3dfx crap in a Mame box. And if that doesn't work... Hell, for as much as the GeForce3 costs, I could at least one actual arcade game. Throw in a new motherboard, processor, etc. and I can get one of the pins that I've been wanting.
And the people in the neighborhood (okay, the kids) much prefer the arcade games when they drop by. (No, I'm not a molester. I'm just immature. Arcade games are in the garage, and the door is open if any neighborhood kids are playing. And I have their parents' numbers.)
Re:No - the 2 kinds of people (Score:2)
But, in the spirit in which it was asked, lets deal with linear speed.. Assume a scale of 0 to 2, normalize to 10, gets W6.65 and W7. One is 95% of the other.
Not a huge difference, out of a month-long trip you'll get there two days faster. Not enough to really make a difference in non-emergency cargo prices.
But, factor in pirates, and treat the faster engines as insurance. They might make a negligible difference most of the time, but will make 100% of the difference some of the time.
Now, assume a bell-curve of top-speeds among the various races pirates belong to (because in Trek, whole species use the same ships). Obviously, every step away from the center of the distribution will offer diminishing returns, but if the returns are great enough.... If an upgrade will take you from middle-of-the-road, faster than 50% of pirates, to being faster than 80%, that's worth it.
However, you need to weigh a few factors... Slower pirates tend to be less technilogically advanced as well, and thus less dangerous. Replotting the speed distribution after removing all enemies you could defeat easily will yield different numbers.
Also, some enemies will never be beaten. Normally, just being faster than the rest of the targets is good enough... pirates will attack the straglers. However, if you annoy 'Q', you're toast, regardless of engines.
Then there's philosophy. You may feel that death happens, and shouldn't be worried about. In this case, buy slower engines and live it up, after all, being pirated isn't a financial setback, but a permanent end.
If you have investors, they may take this decision out of your hands, opting either for the quick payoff (ie, the cheapest ship that can do the job) or a stable investment (a fast, well-armed ship that'll still be doing the job years from now.)
I hope that helps.
Worry about more important things... (Score:5, Informative)
Even if the machine is to be used for gaming, the money is still better spent on a nice video card with a boatload of RAM, to compensate for the extreme sluggishness of a PC's system bus.
Re:Worry about more important things... (Score:2)
Someone brought up computational fluid dynamics - I'll bring up large statistical analysis problems, where large mainframes take a week, never mind many days to do a subset of the problem on a PC
Re:Worry about more important things... (Score:2)
Even with games its not worth it.
Most games are targetted to a certain level of machine expected to be the norm when released.
The higher the requirements the smaller the size of buyers. This is bad in the eyes of publishers.
Internet connection and video cards are more important than cpu in almost any game.
Re:Worry about more important things... (Score:2)
So buy a monster now and still be able to play games in 3 years.
Pete
Re:Worry about more important things... (Score:1)
Porn making plans? "Insert slot A into tab B..."
Re:Worry about more important things... (Score:2)
Wow.. now there's an exaggeration if I ever heard one. Let's be honest: three years ago I dropped $1500 on a P2-400 with a TNT2 vanilla and an Aureal 4-channel soundcard. If you think that setup can play today's games, you are either out of your mind or haven't installed Max Payne :) I'm lucky to get 1.5 years outta my box before the games start looking like slide shows. I'm not really sure what the original poster was talking about anyways: games are the only category of software that actually push the performance envelope, and no, games aren't targeted at the current middle-end machine. They will run acceptably on such, but true gamers want all the bells and whistles, and for that you need the absolute high end. Think back to when Quake 3 was released: could the "middle of the road" do 32bpp on High Quality at 1600x1200. I think not; only some really powerful shit could. True gamers are hardly satisfied with their hardware 6 months down the road, to say nothing about years. So your partially right, you gotta buy that monster CPU. But it ain't gonna last you 3 years.
Its not the size that matters.... (Score:2)
Of course if you buy intel they should say "ahaha you are stupid." The advantage of this scenerio, however, is that they know you broke the bank with an intel proc so they won't hit you up for a 20 spot.
$33 to be the best? Hell yeah (you 1.33Ghz losers) (Score:5, Funny)
If your decision is between a 1.33Ghz athlon and and 1.4Ghz athlon, and the price difference is only $33, then of course it's worth it to get the 1.4Ghz! Otherwise, every time your friends use the system and say, "Wow, that's really fast! What is it, a 1.4Ghz?" you have to bow your head in shame and say, "No...it's a 1.33Ghz." You might as well throw Windows ME on it! When you're getting the hot rod of systems, it's not about bean-counting, it's about style.
Re:$33 to be the best? Hell yeah (you 1.33Ghz lose (Score:4, Funny)
Well Duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the top of the line stuff is too expensive. What the hell is there even to discuss with this article?
(At home, I have a Celeron 466 or so on my Linux box. a PIII 600 or so on my 'doze box for games. Big frickin' deal, right? For the price of a processor upgrade, I can be running 1GB of ram in both systems. Through in another 100 bucks, and I've got more disk space than on the file server here at work (which is no slouch for what we do)).
Guess what? Processors don't really matter anymore. Neither does any of that hardware. What in the hell is anybody doing with computers that requires all of this horsepower? Yeah, something will come out. But what, and from whom? Don't we have enough cycles to have incredible voice interfaces? No, because everybody (and by that, I mean Joe Six Pack, aka, my mom) needs M$ bloatware to do anything. It's because Quicken wants to do so much that it takes many megs of RAM to load. Why???
Slashdot latest headline:
Top of the line stuff gives marginal improvements for mega price increase.
Christ, we knew that back when it was a 486-20 mHz vs a 486-25 mHz (and probably earlier). Christ on a crutch, how is this news?
I think I know how stories are picked: each one is printed out. One of the editors grabs a stack and wipes. Whatever story isn't covered in it gets posted.
Excuse me, I must go beat my head against the wall.
(And please, anybody who wants to mod this down, I would much prefer it if you answer my question: why the fuck does this matter?)
Re:Well Duh! (Score:1)
The difference between a 750Mhz Duron and a 1.2G Athlon isnt perceptable in most programs, even Q3Arena.(With the same hardware)
RAM makes a difference to 256MB, above 512MB you can get problems.
Hard drive speed is now the major bottleneck.
Try a KT7A-RAID (Cheap,now) with an array of 7200RPM fast drives, and you will be amazed at the boost! Be careful about shutting down, as those heavily cached harddrives don't get to write their info when you shut down! And the windows fix for that problem doesn't work.
Re:Well Duh! (Score:1)
Re:Well Duh! (Score:2)
* history = The marginal cost of a 386DX-33 over a 386DX-25.
Re:Well Duh! (Score:4, Interesting)
The point is, though, a lot of people simply don't. A lot of my housemates, for example, have been having an informal rivalry of who can get the fastest system, and one of my housemates decided he'd win in a hurry by buying two >1GHz systems and 2 19" monitors at a cost of well over CAD4000 (about US$2600). Was it a smart move? No. He claims he needs the faster computers for his genetic algorithm work, but the 450MHz system he had before did the job fine. It still takes most of the night for his programs to run, the only difference now is he's a long way from waking up when they're finished instead of just about to wake up.
Think about it this way, if this article didn't need writing, the hardware companies would not get away with the high prices they charge for their newest goods because everyone would be smart enough to see through the thin veil of little blue men dancing around a giant '4'.
For the record, I am typing this on a 233MHz P-MMX which does everything I need it to do and then some, and continues to thrive as my primary system, allowing my money to go to more important things like eating lobster.
Re:Well Duh! (Score:2)
Good point. But is the slashdot audience the type for whom this is news?
Nope. Says it on the masthead "news for nerds".
(But yes, for the average manager/consumer, it is news. But why post on
Re:Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones (Score:2)
How about "Night of the Living Clones"?
Or maybe "Clones in Spaaaaaace". :-)
A Chain Is As Strong As Its Weakest Link (Score:2, Insightful)
Is hardware growing faster than software? (Score:2)
If I was to buy a new machine now, I wouldn't touch anything above 1GHz... I'd go, preferably, for slower with multiprocessors....
Even games, which are always bleeding edge (although that ruins the gameplay, but I digress) aren't running with the top processors. I say buy what you can afford - 1 level.
Re:Is hardware growing faster than software? (Score:2)
Of course, when what I can afford is in the vicinity of an Athlon 1.2...well, I'd be a fool not to take that. The way I figure, 1.2 gigahertz will run any game from now until they come up with holographic projectors for virtual reality. Or perhaps even now until the singularity, whichever comes first. :)
Depends, but usually not (Score:2)
Nowadays it really doesn't matter that much. Intel chips are still more expensive, but nowhere near what they used to be, and there's only a tiny difference between the top-end Athlon and the next one down - and even the fastest AMD chip is less than $200. It's just so cheap now as to not make a difference anymore on the desktop.
Intel still gets a premium for the Xeon processors, since AMD isn't really competing fully in the MP apace yet, but those will fall, too, over the next year or so as AMD competes in the server market.
So if I'm building a system today, I'd buy the top-end AMD processor and build a nice system around it. But by the time all the parts arrive, there'll be a newer, faster, and cheaper processor out anyway, and I'll just have to cry over it. Such is the way of Moore's Law.
Not on Intel boxes (Score:2)
Re:Not on Intel boxes (Score:2)
SCSI is most important when you're dealing with a smaller number of drives that need to be very fast. When you're just dealing with mass storage with a 98% read/write ratio, a huge cluster of IDE drives with an appropriate RAID controller is often best.
I saw a decent system that uses four 15k SCSI drivers (just 9GB each) in a RAID 0+1, with a drive array (RAID 5, or a comparable proprietary standard) of two terrabytes in a few cabinets filled with 40GB drives. It was a quad CPU P3 (I think) with 8GB of RAM, I was told.
The caching was properly setup, and all the temporary tables, and index files, were on the fast drives, and very few (comparatively) requests had to go to the drive array.
Not that the array was slow though... maybe 60% of the speed of 10k drives (15k ones are too expensive for a huge array) and that like 1/3 or less price.
Treadmilling (Score:3, Funny)
Wouldn't that be nice.
Just Computer Hardware (Score:4, Flamebait)
This is what happens when you have a capitalist government. The thing is, the companies know they can get a high price for the latest and greatest because there will be a certain percentage of us who will pay that price. Then, when prices "slump" a little, they will release a new chip that's faster and lower the price of the other chip. So now the "general public" gets those older processors at cheaper prices and that same group of gurus/morons will go out and buy the newest and greatest again. And the cycle of life continues...
One reason a company makes the premium product higher is because they need to recover R&D on that product, however I don't see why this is in the chip market. I honestly feel that Intel and AMD "milk" the market for these gurus/morons knowing they will always buy the greatest. So they release a 1.0ghz and these people get that, then they release 1.1ghz and they get this one, etc etc. Although AMD has the 1.0 and 1.1 developed at the same time, they strategically release the products to the general pulic to maximize their profits. Of course, again, this isn't anything new... but it's painfully obvious.
Re:Just Computer Hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just Computer Hardware (Score:2)
Really?
So it's got nothing to do with the fact that people who buy less-expensive cars are often looking for good value-for-money and competition (remember that ?) amongst car manufacturers mean they have to keep prices low if they want to sell cars.
So why do companies sell less-expensive cars at all if they don't make money out of it ? Please, don't make out that by driving a Merc you're doing poorer people a favour.
Re:Just Computer Hardware (Score:2)
Re:Just Computer Hardware (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, your car comparison doesn't fly when put in the same context of the article. If you buy a 1.4 Athlon vs a 1.33 Athlon you'll end up saving about 6 second of kernal compile time (read the article). If you buy a Lexus instead of a Toyota you're buying status.
Pete
Re:Just Computer Hardware (Score:2)
I'd also like to point out that you're not buying status, you're buying perceived status. Your personal echelon of society may be wowed, but there are those above and below you (not you personally, the hypothectical you) who will be completely unimpressed or (as the ads will have you believe) completely wowed.
Personally, I can't imagine being wowed by a lexus, anymore than I would be unimpressed with a toyota.
Re:Just Computer Hardware (Score:2)
My main point was that percieved brand status doesn't translate to computer stuff (for the most part, there are still brand zealots out there), therfore his entire arguement is invalid.
Pete
Milking the market? (Score:2)
It's quite possible that they _need_ to do this continuously to recover the R&D costs and other overhead costs.
Chip cad/simulation tools cost $0.5M-$1M per _seat_. Prototyping runs cost $300k+ each. The test gear and special-purpose simulation rigs aren't cheap either. A fabrication plant costs over $1B to build, which must be amortised over all chips manufactured there until the next major fab overhaul (typically only 2-3 years away).
Chip design and manufacture is _expensive_. I seriously doubt that they're gouging as badly as you seem to feel they are.
(In case you're wondering how smaller low-end x86-makers survive - they outsource their fabrication, which saves on amortized fab costs and capital at the cost of not having a fab process optimized for their chips (taking a performance hit). If they're wise, they'd also design their chips to either be more robust, or more easily tested, or both, to cut down on simulation/testing costs at the expense of performance.)
Re:Milking the market? (Score:2)
Again, just like software debugging, this sucks up a vast amount of time and effort and resources for the manufacturer.
Nope, just marginal costs going up. (Score:2)
Welllll, I don't think it's an evil cabal of government officials and captains of industry hoodwinking the poor consumer. While this does happen in other cases, there's a much simpler explanation for this.
Costs do not scale linearly. At the low end the fixed costs are dominant, which is why you don't see 2GB hard disks anymore -- it's just as cheap to make them 10GB or more. Conversely at the high end of cost or performance the marginal cost of just a bit more performance or capacity is great.
Like the guy who mated the helicopter jet engine to a motorcycle frame. The amazing thing is that it isn't that much faster than a high end conventional motorcycle, something like 210mph vs. 190s. But building a bike that will go 210 vs. 190 is a much bigger leap than going from 90 to 110, even if it is smaller in relative terms.
I expect that if you're aiming to produce a 1.4Ghz processor, a lot fewer will check out OK at the rated speed than if you are aiming for a 1.33 GHz processor, all other things being equal.
The case for High end CPUs (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh great (Score:2, Funny)
Like I need anything else [slashdot.org] to arge with my significant other about. We fight enough about [redhat.com] other [slackware.com] things [goatse.cx], but she just doesn't understand. Oh well.
Bureaucracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Typing this on a blazing fast P5-233, and this is the _fast_ machine in my office.
Re:Bureaucracy (Score:1)
Re:Bureaucracy (Score:2, Interesting)
My boss pointed out that she didn't know when the next time she was going to get to buy machines was, and so she figured she'd try and fight obsolesence as long as possible.
Obvious answer: (Score:5, Informative)
No.
Now, for a better question. Are high-end motherboards worth the money?
Every penny.
In the many, many computers I have built and fixed (I don't know how many hundred..I never counted), one thing became crystal clear: don't skimp out with a cheap motherboard in order to buy that next higher-up processor.
Motherboards are not created equal, not even close. In fact, from my experience, they are either the cause of good reliability or they are to blame for crashes and instability (in terms of hardware). Buying a good chipset put together by a good hardware manufacturer (Abit, Asus, etc.) is key to building a reliable system that will last several years of hard use.
A good review site for motherboards will describe not only the features it has but how those features are laid out. A well designed motherboard has shorter interconnects and well placed components. Also, a motherboard should have a nice array of capacitors that keep maintain the electricity going to the processor. There should be ample room around the processor to stick the larger and better cooling cpu fans (another things never to skimp on). A heatsink and fan on some of the chipsets helps to improve reliability.
But from my experience the best part about going with a better name is a reduced likelihood of getting a dud. I ordered a cheap Soyo motherboard to fit a K6-2 450 Mhz processor I had sitting around - I wanted a cheap computer. The first one was a dud, the second one was a dud. I ended up going with a different manufacturer and getting a 750 Mhz Duron. I had previously purchased an Abit with a Duron 700 Mhz and had no problems whatsoever. You pay about $20-$30 more for the motherboard, but it's definately worth every penny.
In short, don't bother spending that extra $30 to get however many more Mhz, or even to get the difference between a PIII and Celeron or Athlon and Duron. More important than speed in most systems in reliability, and for that you should plunk your spare dollars into the motherboard and a decent heat sink/fan.
Soyo motherboard my best (Score:1)
anything more reliable.
Look at total system cost (Score:3, Insightful)
It's rather silly in a case like this to look at just the price of the processor, disk, etc. You have to look at the price of the whole system and decide what kind of tradeoffs you need to make. Is $33 worth it for a 5% increase in processor speed? That depends on how much the whole system costs; if the system costs more than about $700 then the $33 is less than 5% of the system price and it may be worth it to pay more for the extra speed.
The case when this really kicks in is with expensive proprietary software licenses. I've seen various programs that I might want to use in my work that have license fees in the thousands of dollars. In some cases that's the price per box, but in others there's actually a per-CPU license. If you're running somthing that costs $5000 per CPU, it makes sense to spend some fairly serious cash on getting the fastest possible processor.
Re:Look at total system cost (Score:2)
Cheers,
Tim
It depends... (Score:2)
Then, of course, there's always the option of simply overclocking your hardware. Put the motherboard in an insulated styrofoam case, flood it with mineral oil (making sure there's no air or water droplets remaining), and then hook up to a decent-sized compressor. You should be able to get the system cooled reliably to very low temperatures.
A lot of people will pay the price for the best... (Score:2, Insightful)
A little perspective (Score:5, Insightful)
a second to employ. So, if a CPU costs 40
dollars more, a mere 17 minutes saving to my
time pays for the difference.
C//
Re:A little perspective (Score:2)
You cost $300,000 a year? (Score:2)
Are you saying that your employer pays you 4 cents a second? Or are you a contractor hired out by your true employer to your customer?
Regardless, 4 cents a second (times 3600 seconds per hour times 2000 work hours per year) adds up to about $288k per year. At that rate, I'd sure as hell hope your employer was maximizing every second of your productivity.
That'd be a good justification for installing workstations in the bathrooms. Or maybe toilets at the cubicles.
Re:You cost $300,000 a year? (Score:3, Funny)
Hehe. Nice idea... But how well would it go with the "paperless office" ideas? About the first idea... umh... having work stations with Internet access in restrooms sounds kind of kinky.
Price?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Depends what you do.. (Score:2, Informative)
Compressing 3 hours of video and adding subtitles on my dual p3-450 was 18-20 hours.
On a 1.4ghz athlon it's about 6.5 hours.
YOW...definately worth the upgrade!
but my K6 isn't slow enough yet. (Score:2)
obviously I'm not running windows 2000.
building a new system? always get a the low end of the curve CPU (currently a 1ghz athlon) and a high end motherboard plus lots of ram, you'll be much happier with everything but your dnetc bechmarks.
if that cpu isn't long enough for you you can upgrade it later to a 1.5ghz model when those are old and cheap one year from now.
When you wait an HOUR to compile your game code .. (Score:2)
High end cpus are a waste of money (Score:3, Insightful)
For a DB system the rule is 'fast disks, fast memory, fast buses, fast controlers', for heavy network traffic (lots of web hits), get the fastest networking you can afford.
And remember, MHZ is only part of the equation on processors. If you really need (and few people really do) a fast chip, good and large L1 cache is a bigger win than raw MHZ.
My $.02
What are you waiting for? (Score:2)
I personally wait for my internet connection most; secondly I wait for the system to boot up/shutdown (that's a lot more to do with disk throughput); third I wait for my graphics card (I've got an ancient Matrox G400); last of all I wait for my processor.
And that's the order I would upgrade for performance, given the choice. But if I spent all day burning processor cycles doing some compute intensive operation, then I'd upgrade my processor.
The RAM speed doesn't make a lot of difference, only a couple of percent. Not having enough RAM can have a much bigger effect- I recently added 256 meg- and the system is now noticeably faster- I was using up my RAM and the system was swapping stuff out. (RAMs at 20c/Megabyte it's a good time to buy. [Also, Quake III was able to use the extra RAM and gives a higher framerate
What is your time worth? (Score:2)
You will find that it will take a very high price difference, not to justify a faster processor in such cases.
However most people do not run anything CPU bound so they should find a cheaper model.
Where I work we generally buy the fastest (dual) CPU workstations we can get simply because it makes finacial sense. We constantly run simulations or calculation heavy software. It only takes a saving of 1 designer day over the lifetime of a machine to justify a $100 price increase.
Per CPU licenses (Score:2, Informative)
Never buy the newest, never buy the cheapest (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think Joe Average consumer goes wrong with any technology buying somewhere to either side (or on) the middle of the road. Taking the leading edge or the trailing edge is the sure way to get taken as a consumer.
1.2.. (Score:2)
I saved money on the cpu to spend on memory, and hard drive. Which is used more than raw cpu power. Fact is that most people could get by pretty well with 600Mhz cpus. Even most gamers would be fine with 600Mhz systems. Unless you are doing some serious heavy duty gaming, or super intense graphics or scientific number cruntching then 600 is plenty fast. (or some type of emulation)
I find this quite hillarious (Score:2, Funny)
State of the Trailing Edge (Score:2)
The subject sortof sums up how I buy motherboard/processors/etc. for my home systems. When Intel (or whoever) brings out their latest chip, I find great deals on the previous generation chips. I buy those chips at the higher clock speeds and then, lately, I'll use them in an SMP configuration. By the time I feel a need to upgrade again my systems are about 4-5 years old. However, I might just break with tradition soon and jump into a dual-Athlon board. Even doing that, it looks like I'd still save money over the latest Intel offering.
And since Windows only gets used for (infrequent) games, why would I want or need to have the latest and greatest Intel space heater sitting under my desk?
I go for half the speed of the highest speed chip (Score:2)
YES! (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not a question of price/performance, it's of price/happiness. If the dollars make you happier, then keep them; if the megahertz makes you happier, then buy them!
-B
The Rule of thumb for CPU's (Score:3, Insightful)
Upgrade your SO before the processor (Score:2)
slightly misleading comment (Score:2)
CONSPIRACY! (Score:2)
Unless you believe in conspiracy theories of course.
Re:NO (Score:3, Insightful)
But to stay on-topic, when I bought my A-Bit BP6 a couple years ago (jurassic computing, I know), I got it with two 366s, considering their value was good and the price was more or less middle-of-the road. It didn't take all that long of a period, maybe 6 months or so before I was able to get a couple of 550s to replace them...all without breaking the bank.
So getting the faster chip isn't worth it initially, but the motherboard that handles it is worth every cent. After all, prices will fall as the newer, better, faster hardware items come out.
Re:there is always a price break in the curve (Score:3, Informative)
900 - - - - -$65 - 13.85 Mhz/$
1000 - - - - $85 - 11.76 Mhz/$
1200 - - - - $100 - 12.00 Mhz/$
1333 - - - - $130 - 10.25 Mhz/$
1400 - - - - $175 - 8.00 Mhz/$
It seems to me the best value for the dollar is the 900 Mhz CPU, followed closely by the 1.2 Ghz.
I look to buy the one just below the major increase in slope. there is ALWAYS this trend.
You say this, but then you say "It only makes sense" to opt for the 1.3 Ghz when in actuality the 900 Mhz and the 1.2 Ghz are much better values.
Re:More to it (Score:2)
We are not talking about a difference between PI and PI-mmx. Heck, it's not even as different as the two types of PI's.
The reliability, speed, etc. of the higher clock speed chips is actually more suspect. Remember that the 1.33 and the 1.4 chips are coming out of the same fab. But one is a little faster than the other, so they call it a PIV.
Re:More to it (Score:2)
Spoken like a true salesman!
Seriously though, for the bulk of us, the P2-450's are *still* awesome machines. Plays all the games, displays all the graphics and all that. Lately, I simply don't crave more power. Everything works fine for me. (Is this a sign of age?)
Re:More to it (Score:2, Interesting)
It still ran the new games I played, it still compiled my apps as quickly as I needed.
It did NOT however, lend itself to DV editing.
I finally broke down and bought a Athlon 1.4 with a new mb and memory (bundled got better deal).
No more funny audio quirks in rendered DV.
But I'm all for staying with the max speed you need.
3+ years on one processor made sense for me.
Kind of interested to see if this 1.4 will hold its own for another 3 years.
Re:More to it (Score:2)
Hahaha... I know what you're TRYING to say, but I was just imagining that my old AMD processors will suddenly become more reliable as a benefit of its age. In a sense, they are... because they are no longer in use... they sit there...reliably.