what in the world, no solid CPU gains lately? Upgrades?

[krumme]

Welcome to the cpu neanderthal cave buddy.

Did you bring some fire?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Welcome to the cpu neanderthal cave buddy.

Did you bring some fire?

LOL! AMD = Neanderthal?

 

[mizzou]

You'd be surprised. The 2 GB of memory would be killer but you could probably do med 30ish fps @ 1080p.

I play most games very well. I have a few games that are CPU bound though, and it's killing my framerate. Both games need strong single threaded performance unfortunately. Looking around, it seems single threaded performance has been pretty much stagnated while cores have increased and bandwidth has increased.

 

[Yuriman]

I play most games very well. I have a few games that are CPU bound though, and it's killing my framerate. Both games need strong single threaded performance unfortunately. Looking around, it seems single threaded performance has been pretty much stagnated while cores have increased and bandwidth has increased.

That's true of AMD. Intel's cores have a greater than 60% IPC advantage compared to AMD's, but are still quads (at least on the mainstream platform, 1150).

 

[mizzou]

Just looked at the benchmarks for Attilla. It is pathetic how terrible of a relationship there is between software and hardware performance.

"Check out our new extreme A#IX processor, with 16 cores! Don't mind the performance is pretty much in line with the 4 core CPU from 2012...just look at how many cores you get! Core core core!!"

that's what I feel like lol

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Indeed. A 5850 is faster than a 260X (I think), which runs most recent games at 1080P medium settings.

The 260x is 10-20% faster than the 6870 (my old card), which is 3-10% faster than the 5850. The 2GB framebuffer is extremely important as a minimum now as well. I'd recommend 3GB or more to be honest. I just bought the 270 2GB but I know I'm already close to running into framebuffer limitations when my games are maxed out.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

LOL! AMD = Neanderthal?

LOL!

/sarcasm

 

[Soulkeeper]

On the positive side, atleast us enthusiasts can keep more money in our pockets.
No impressive "gotta have that!" things lately. Even SSDs and video card progress has slowed to the point of not being enticing.

Lately I just feel like they don't want my money, and i'm starting to become ok with that tbh.

 

[Tuna-Fish]

Even ... video card progress has slowed to the point of not being enticing.

That's entirely about how there hasn't been a new better high-end foundry process since TSMC's 28nm became available in freaking 2012. It's now been more than three years.

Once TSMC's 16nm finally ramps up we will see a proper generation difference. Sadly, we might have to still wait a while, especially as Apple now wants to manufacture as much of their chips as they can on TSMC's finest and they are probably willing to pay more to be first than AMD or nV.

 

[Idontcare]

On the positive side, atleast us enthusiasts can keep more money in our pockets.
No impressive "gotta have that!" things lately. Even SSDs and video card progress has slowed to the point of not being enticing.

Lately I just feel like they don't want my money, and i'm starting to become ok with that tbh.

Ha ha, true true. I've personally reached the "SSD saturation point" having accumulated quite a bevy of 256GB, 512GB, and a couple 1GB SSDs at this point. Until M2 makes its mainstream debut, I'm done with the SSD investments.

But what about 4K? I'm sitting here in Taiwan just envious of all you folks who can easily purchase and take delivery of cheap 4K LCDs right now. Sure I can go buy one locally, but everything about it is going to be in chinese characters with unknown warranty and unknown history (if you thought buying "used rebadged as new" was a problem in the USA, good luck in Asia where it seems there is no concept of "open box"...everything is/was/will be open box, you just deal with it as a customer and hope it wasn't abused too badly before your "new retail" item got to your hands).

Anyways, I'd have thought 4K system upgrades were this year's SSD upgrade. Is that not the case?

I could so use dual 4K monitor, in portrait mode, for programming.

But it'll be at least another year before I'm in a position (geographically) where I would trust the hardware I was buying to make it worth the risk to buy it. And unlike all other hardware I can buy in the USA and take with me in luggage to Taiwan, a 28" or 32" 4K LCD is not going to travel well in my suitcase

 

[ClockHound]

Ha ha, true true. I've personally reached the "SSD saturation point" having accumulated quite a bevy of 256GB, 512GB, and a couple 1GB SSDs at this point. Until M2 makes its mainstream debut, I'm done with the SSD investments.

Exactly, who needs more than a couple 1GB SSDs. Data? Pffft. Overrated.

(if you thought buying "used rebadged as new" was a problem in the USA, good luck in Asia where it seems there is no concept of "open box"...everything is/was/will be open box, you just deal with it as a customer and hope it wasn't abused too badly before your "new retail" item got to your hands).

D: :'( - So this is where the Frys got their inspiration from...

I could so use dual 4K monitor, in portrait mode, for programming.

But it'll be at least another year before I'm in a position (geographically) where I would trust the hardware I was buying to make it worth the risk to buy it. And unlike all other hardware I can buy in the USA and take with me in luggage to Taiwan, a 28" or 32" 4K LCD is not going to travel well in my suitcase

You're closer to Korea than many of us, just zip over on the weekend and pickup a couple of those 'new-in-box' folding 4K oleds.

 

[Idontcare]

Exactly, who needs more than a couple 1GB SSDs. Data? Pffft. Overrated.

Ha ha! Meant 1TB but that was a pretty funny typo! What is this, 1989?

D: :'( - So this is where the Frys got their inspiration from...

Oh no! Don't tell me Fry's has gone the way of such evilness I loved the Plano Frys on I78 in Dallas, but admittedly that was nearly 10yrs ago. /tear

You're closer to Korea than many of us, just zip over on the weekend and pickup a couple of those 'new-in-box' folding 4K oleds.

That's just not right...but it would fit in my suitcase a whole lot easier!

 

[Abwx]

That's true of AMD. Intel's cores have a greater than 60% IPC advantage compared to AMD's, but are still quads (at least on the mainstream platform, 1150).

Thoses 60% are completely wrong, it s 35% in chess games and 7 ZIP, two integer coded tasks.

With 35% advantage and with the module scaling at say 85% the apparent advantage will be 60% per thread when extrapolating single thread performance from a multi threaded bench.

 

[Yuriman]

Thoses 60% are completely wrong, it s 35% in chess games and 7 ZIP, two integer coded tasks.

With 35% advantage and with the module scaling at say 85% the apparent advantage will be 60% per thread when extrapolating single thread performance from a multi threaded bench.

I was referring to against a Phenom II, not Kaveri.

 

[myocardia]

Exactly, who needs more than a couple 1GB SSDs. Data? Pffft. Overrated.

One of these days, I'll have an SSD that big!

You're closer to Korea than many of us, just zip over on the weekend and pickup a couple of those 'new-in-box' folding 4K oleds.

Pfft, 4k is so 2014. 2015 requires 5k res., as seen in this video, which is from an AT VC&G poster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYIFDm9iyKk

 

[krumme]

Ha ha! Meant 1TB but that was a pretty funny typo! What is this, 1989?

Naa 1989 was about 40MB lol. 1996 was more like 1GB.

Hey no wonder its difficult today.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

I upgraded from a Phenom II X4 @ 3.6 GHz to my current 4770K. Massive difference even at the stock 3.5 GHz. Well worth it. Same with my old GTX 460 vs the 670 OC.

Well, seriously.... You are comparing a 4 thread chip to an 8 thread chip. Had you compared your Phenom II X4 to an Haswell i5 (also a 4 thread chip), it really isn't much of a jump (only about 3000 points for passmark).

There really hasn't been a massive improvement over the past 5 years.

Most modern games will still play fine even now on a Phenom II X4.

 

[Abwx]

I was referring to against a Phenom II, not Kaveri.

I just checked Hardware.fr since they use a genuine 3.2 Phenom II X4 as well as a rebadged 3.2 Athlon X4, the L3 cache make quite a difference to the point that overall the Phenom II has largely as good Integer IPC than a Kaveri unless there s an ISA related advantage, clock/clock a 4670K is 31-32% better in 7 ZIP or Houdini 2 (the latter is a chess game more modern than Fritzchess ISA wise).

According to AT 7 Zip is a good tool to check the integer IPC of CPUs.

Indeed people look too much at FP performance that increased on a bigger scale, but in Integer performance there has been limited improvements, and still this was often due to extended ISAs like SSE4 and BMI in Houdini 4 that brought 3% and 2% respectively for HW, and BDW will make no exception, just look at the slide, the 5.5% are conditioned by the use of the new instructions, it s not an improvement on legacy apps...

 

[Enigmoid]

According to AT 7 Zip is a good tool to check the integer IPC of CPUs.

Indeed people look too much at FP performance that increased on a bigger scale, but in Integer performance there has been limited improvements, and still this was often due to extended ISAs like SSE4 and BMI in Houdini 4 that brought 3% and 2% respectively for HW, and BDW will make no exception, just look at the slide, the 5.5% are conditioned by the use of the new instructions, it s not an improvement on legacy apps...

AT said that 7-zip is a good tool for file server tasks. Not overall integer IPC.

7-zip is very low IPC and only taps a very small fraction of theoretical FLOPS.

The LZMA compression benchmark only measures a part of the performance of some real-world server applications (file server, backup, etc.). The reason why we keep using this benchmark is that it allows us to isolate the "hard to extract instruction level parallelism (ILP)" and "sensitive to memory parallelism and latency" integer performance. That is the kind of integer performance you need in most server applications.

This is more or less the worst-case scenario for "brawny" cores like Haswell or Power 8. Or in other words, it should be the best-case scenario for a less wide "energy optimized" ARM or Atom core, as the wide issue cores cannot achieve their full potential.

 

[soccerballtux]

Yes. You could use 8 gigs RAM in your PC. The extra 4 gigs will make a difference in gameplay.

The 5850 with a bandwidth of 128.0 GB/s is still OK but getting long in the tooth. Should still be able to play all games on high. Ultra will be a problem with some new games. Will your MB let you have 2 gpu's in crossfire? You should be able to pick up a second card cheap. Don't do this if it reverts to x 4, only x8/16 is acceptable.

Bottom line:
Ram----Yes
GPU-----Not needed yet unless you get a great deal. That card balances your system with the AMD...you could wait for the next build you do

it's always better to single-card solution and ebay the old. but is 4x really that bad?

there are numerous studies where the bandwidth utilized on the card is regularly like 5-10% of what's available-- load up the VRAM, good to go.

the GPU is your problem in Battlefield 3, the CPU is your problem in ARMA II. Your CPU will be able to hold 45FPS solid no problem even in 64 player battles on BF3. I had a 965@4ghz and it was great for BF3 with the GTX670 I had.

By the way, make sure you overclock the CPU-NB. I gave +0.2v (putting it at 1.4v) on my C2 stepping (what you have) x3-720BE unlocked to quad. I was only able to hit 3.5ghz on the cores but the CPU-NB I took to 2.6ghz. That'll give you another 10-13% performance. It's nothing to sneeze at on the Phenom2.

I sold my AM2+ mobo and 8GB RAM for $80+shipping
I sold my 965 x4 BE for $85
I sold my 500GB WD HDD from 2006 for $35

I got an Asus M5A97-R2.0 + FX-6300 for $144 from microcenter.
I sold the FX-6300 for $85
I bought an FX-8310 for $100-$25 ($80 after shipping) paypal bonus deal on TigerDirect
and I got 2x8GB RAM for $50 AR from TigerDirect

so basically I doubled my RAM, doubled my CPU performance, and got onto AM3+ for...basically free.



for you I would start with 2x8GB ddr3-1600 RAM or even a 1x8GB stick so you can upgrade down the road for more, and then a GPU upgrade when we see what the AMD 3x0 cards have. I would OC the CPU-NB to 2.6ghz, and if you still have trouble in ARMAII then you could consider a CPU upgrade.

But you definitely need a GPU upgrade for BF3.

 

[soccerballtux]

not for arma and bf3 multiplayer, those games definitely need fast single threaded performance

BF3 is heavily multithreaded and one of the few titles where single-thread performance isn't nearly as important.

 

[soccerballtux]

Phenom II X2 555 black edition oc 3.2 to 3.6

I bought it December of 2010 D:


yeah I think I'm going to drop in some more RAM and wait it out

wowwwwww!!!! getting a quad of out those was such an awesome deal.

 

[soccerballtux]

Ha ha, true true. I've personally reached the "SSD saturation point" having accumulated quite a bevy of 256GB, 512GB, and a couple 1GB SSDs at this point. Until M2 makes its mainstream debut, I'm done with the SSD investments.

But what about 4K? I'm sitting here in Taiwan just envious of all you folks who can easily purchase and take delivery of cheap 4K LCDs right now. Sure I can go buy one locally, but everything about it is going to be in chinese characters with unknown warranty and unknown history (if you thought buying "used rebadged as new" was a problem in the USA, good luck in Asia where it seems there is no concept of "open box"...everything is/was/will be open box, you just deal with it as a customer and hope it wasn't abused too badly before your "new retail" item got to your hands).

Anyways, I'd have thought 4K system upgrades were this year's SSD upgrade. Is that not the case?

I could so use dual 4K monitor, in portrait mode, for programming.

But it'll be at least another year before I'm in a position (geographically) where I would trust the hardware I was buying to make it worth the risk to buy it. And unlike all other hardware I can buy in the USA and take with me in luggage to Taiwan, a 28" or 32" 4K LCD is not going to travel well in my suitcase

man those 1GB SSDs must be awesomeeeeee

4k is more like no way. not for a long time for me. I really could care less about pixel size, and AA for that matter, I just want something that's 30".

1440p at 32" will be this years upgrade. I think it will for most people too, there's been a flurry of activity in the comments section of the AT article about the freesync. I think a 1440p 27-32" freesync capable will be most peoples' upgrade.

 

[ehume]

. . . SSD's were a huuuuge improvement. . . .

Add a modern low-price/large-capacity SSD, then sit back and observe. You may not want to upgrade cpu/mobo/ram/gpu for a time. Only if you are not satisfied with performance of your system with SSD's should you consider some other upgrade.

 

[Abwx]

AT said that 7-zip is a good tool for file server tasks. Not overall integer IPC.

So Fritz wasnt relevant because too old, and now that s 7 Zip that is not that good after all.

I guess that whatever bench doesnt produce the results that you re imagining as being the good ones cant be a real, a true, a reliable bench...

An integer version of 3D Particle Movement would suit perhaps.?.

7-zip is very low IPC and only taps a very small fraction of theoretical FLOPS.

There s no such thing as FLOPS in a task using integer code only, for this reason in 7 ZIP the metric is in MIPS.