Mark Knecht wrote:


On Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 7:35 AM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
<SNIP>
> Another question.  My rig is getting a bit aged.  I have a AMD FX-8350 8
> core CPU running at 4GHz.  I also have 32GBs of memory.  I've read that
> Intel currently has the best bang for buck on CPUs nowadays.  I'm open
> to the idea of switching.  As far as speed goes, if I built a new rig
> that is using a reasonably cost CPU and memory, would I see any real
> improvements?

I think it all depends on what you're going to use the machine for and
whether you really use all your CPU for extended periods of time. 

For all the hours my machines run they are mostly idle, in the sense
that even if I'm keeping the machine busy watching a movie, doing 
backups, browsing the web, even on my older machines none of those 
use more than 10-15% of my older machines. The only two things I do
which drove the purchase of my new machine were:

1) Studio level audio recording using Mixbus32C (the for-pay version
of the Open Source project called Ardour)

2) Astrophotography photo processing using the for-pay program
called PixInsight.

Mixbus32C issues are more based around real-time performance
and use of both the Linux and Windows versions, and being able
to transfer projects back and forth between both platforms. I've
never heard you talk about using Windows, nor doing anything 
that takes real-time capabilities so that probably doesn't apply.

PixInsight is the processor hog. It can use all my 32GB memory
(and more) and it can run for hours using 100% of my CPU so
it's the one that drove my eventual purchase of a Ryzen 9 5950X.

PixInsight has a benchmark program built in and all the results
are open to look at:

https://pixinsight.com/benchmark/index.php?sort=cpu&os=all

Interestingly I didn't find your processor even on the list and
the top says it covers about 3000 CPU models. You might
take a look at this when you boil your processor choices down
to 2 or 3.

Note that for the specific processor type you can open up the
group and look at individual machines. Most/many include what
motherboard they were running so that can assist you making 
choices also.

Hope this helps,
Mark


One of my concerns isn't just speed, it's the age of things like caps and such on the mobo.  This mobo is around a decade old.  While it is supposed to be a top of the line board, it's still got caps which tend to be a weak spot.  I seem to recall looking when I bought this mobo that it does have Japanese caps which are the best.  Thing is, even they go bad sometimes.  While this machine is old, it is still pretty fast.  I really wish I knew the life expectancy of a Gigabyte mobo like this.  It claims to be 'ultra durable' and given it is in a Cooler Master HAF-932 case with those large fans, it does run pretty cool, heat tends to age caps and make the stink get out. 

The other reason, I'm just curious if I build a new rig if I should be looking to really upgrade by a lot or just get parts that are newer and less likely to fail due to age.  When I went from previous rig which was single core to current rig which originally had a 4 core CPU, it was about 6 to 7 times faster.  When I upgraded to a 8 core, it speed up some more.  It was a noticeable improvement both times over original single core rig.  Thing is, it seems CPU frequencies have pretty much maxed out.  I think pushing above 4.5GHz or so is difficult to do.  Dang, that is fast.  Over twice the frequency of a microwave oven for goodness sake.  They seem to be making them more efficient, adding cores/threads and such as that.  We had a long thread several years back talking about reaching the max on frequency of CPUs and such.  It's almost like we need a whole new technology now to make things faster as far as the CPU frequencies go. 

In the past, I used a list on Tom's Hardware to pick CPUs.  I usually started about 4 or 5 CPUs down the list, from fastest to slowest, and started checking prices.  Sometimes a CPU that costs $500 can only be just a fraction faster than a $200 CPU.  Given that my rig, as you point out, sits here and waits on me to do something most of the time, that's a lot of money for something I won't see much time savings on.  I might add tho, I do sometimes convert videos from 1080p to 720p.  That makes the CPU max out pretty good.  Compiling Libreoffice, Firefox etc also maxes out the CPU but those are what, once a month or so???

I was also wondering what a mobo/CPU/memory combo would cost nowadays.  Maybe someone who recently built a decent rig recalls how much they paid for those three.  I don't go cheap on power supply but I don't require a lot for a video card or anything.  Some spend half their money on a video card alone but I just don't need anything that fancy.  I got a Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 that drives both my monitor and my TVs through a splitter and it does just fine.  Heck, the video card fan is pretty much at idle and the temps cool most all the time so I can't be pushing it to hard.  Usually, mobo and CPU is the main part of my cost.  Power supply right behind that.

This is some good info tho.  Maybe someone who built a rig recently can chime in on costs, US dollar would be nice.  ;-)

Thanks.

Dale

:-)  :-)