Do ye really need all that power!?

Lu Tze

Howdy all,

When i see all the builds recommending overclocking or in some case 8 thread/core processors i often wonder what people are running that can make use of this or make a significant difference in time saved etc.

Most of what i do now runs perfectly fine on pentium dual core, where as i used to run some heavy duty hydraulic models and could imagine they would have benefited from a hefty overclock and more cores- used to take 5-6 days to run a model on a core2duo e6750 and the result files were ~20GB in size!

So lads, do ye actual run stuff to make use of this extra power or is it just the thrill of getting more or less free extra performance?

game4it70

Lu Tze wrote: »

Howdy all,
So lads, do ye actual run stuff to make use of this extra power or is it just the thrill of getting more or less free extra performance?

My e-peen needs the extra power :P

Tbh though i like overclocking and getting as much out of a cpu/gpu as possible.
Its more of a hobby than out of need that i do it.

cherryghost

Depends on the application. Video editing is sped up greatly with increased clock speeds and obviously games yield better FPS. For the most part for basic office work etc, clock speeds yield more negible results.

I personally overclock so I can keep my BF3 over 60fps all the time.

NTMK

Lu Tze wrote: »

Howdy all,

When i see all the builds recommending overclocking or in some case 8 thread/core processors i often wonder what people are running that can make use of this or make a significant difference in time saved etc.

Most of what i do now runs perfectly fine on pentium dual core, where as i used to run some heavy duty hydraulic models and could imagine they would have benefited from a hefty overclock and more cores- used to take 5-6 days to run a model on a core2duo e6750 and the result files were ~20GB in size!

So lads, do ye actual run stuff to make use of this extra power or is it just the thrill of getting more or less free extra performance?

Its a hobby for most of use. i love taking things apart, modifying them.

I dont run a lot of programs that will require 4/8 cores but when i do i like to have the power there. i also play CPU bound games that perform a lot better with an overclock

as regards recommending specs, its very hard to recommend something when you have no idea how much it will be used. the only thing we know is the budget so most will build to that

Monotype

SSDs definitely make a difference in time saved.

Most of the time people are recommended powerful builds so that they'll last a long time even if they don't need it now and so they're not left disappointed and find that they can't run something.

I think that we're usually realistic with the builds in saying that XYZ will run smoothly with perhaps just a little over-estimation. When looking at card benchmarks, real-life builds are often better with driver improvements.
When I'm recommending builds, I'll always aim for upgradeability, often if it means sacrificing a little now. If there's a motherboard with a newer socket/SATA 6Gbps/overclocking etc., it's worth it, IMO, over a slightly more powerful CPU if you think that you're going to be upgrading 1-3 years down the road.

As for me, I survived quite a while on a sempron a year or two ago. I tend to spread out my technology rather than concentrate it though. Multiple builds serving different purposes as opposed to one all-powerful, so I'm not usually at the bleeding edge. I'll be upgrading to a Haswell soon though, so this'll be my first time at the edge in a while. I need some power behind the 1440p screen!

It's all about focusing the funds on the right components. In an office computer, you can use a sempron or a celeron paired with an SSD and it will appear to be blazing fast.

Lu Tze

I run cad ocassionally and transcoding video, they are about the only two things that stress the system (dual core) and thata only if im doing 3d work in cad. Most games arent cpu bound.
I just see a lot of people getting very high spec machines for Photoshop and video editing etc., And between everybody on here there is a lot of high end equipment but hardly anybody is using it for these purposes so cant really advise performance wise how much an improvement an i7 will make in real world usage. Feck it there are hardly any benchmarks available for this stuff! Would be good if we could do some benchmarks of our own where possible to see the benefits and where spending extra makes a difference

NTMK

Lu Tze wrote: »

I run cad ocassionally and transcoding video, they are about the only two things that stress the system (dual core) and thata only if im doing 3d work in cad. Most games arent cpu bound.
I just see a lot of people getting very high spec machines for Photoshop and video editing etc., And between everybody on here there is a lot of high end equipment but hardly anybody is using it for these purposes so cant really advise performance wise how much an improvement an i7 will make in real world usage. Feck it there are hardly any benchmarks available for this stuff! Would be good if we could do some benchmarks of our own where possible to see the benefits and where spending extra makes a difference

i do quite a lot of 3d cad on an i3 dual core at woork and its painful once you get to a certain level of complexity esp when you have to carry out FEA

Video editing i saw a 50% decrease in encoding times with an 2500K at stock vs 4.8GHz

I saw an increase of ~40FPS on SC2 (CPU Bound) and ~20FPS in BF3 (GPU bound comparing stock to 4.8ghz

multithreaded games will be coming into play from next year onwards so watch the amount of cpu bound games increase

I was building a benchmarking list last year but that has been lost

marco_polo

Right at this moment in time, that dual core FX4300/i3 may not hamper something like a HD 7850, but what about in 2-3 GPU generations time when you go for the next graphics card upgrade? For me graphs like these are the main reason to recommend a quad core over a dual core now.


http://www.techspot.com/review/642-crysis-3-performance/page6.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/670-metro-last-light-performance/page6.html

It is definately true that most people don't really need an i5-4670K (immediately) even left at stock, but if they have already budgeted for it then when not as you would expect it to last at least 4 years or so.

I'm still rolling with a late 2009 965BE (now @3.9GHz), it wasn't even the best gaming CPU on its release but it was still a bigger investment that it strictly needed to be at the time, and should hopefully see me through to next year at the very least. I think I will have got pretty good value out of it by then, and there's no reason why anyone getting an i5 now wouldn't have similar longevity expectations.

Would I still be happily gaming with the same CPU if I had gotten an Athlon II X2 240 instead?

uncle_sam_ie

Lu Tze wrote: »

Most games arent cpu bound.

Some are though. MMO's where there is a lot going on the screen do benefit from more CPU power.

deceit

Arma 3 on max settings on 3 screens is why i need more power. It cripples machines and I'm going to trade up to a 3930k to overclock it for this game.

Lu Tze

NTMK wrote: »

i do quite a lot of 3d cad on an i3 dual core at woork and its painful once you get to a certain level of complexity esp when you have to carry out FEA

Video editing i saw a 50% decrease in encoding times with an 2500K at stock vs 4.8GHz

I saw an increase of ~40FPS on SC2 (CPU Bound) and ~20FPS in BF3 (GPU bound comparing stock to 4.8ghz

multithreaded games will be coming into play from next year onwards so watch the amount of cpu bound games increase

I was building a benchmarking list last year but that has been lost

This was the kind of thing i was looking for, running software that will see a huge benefit from multi core / over clock. Totally justified! But of somebody puts up they want to run cad for example, if its all 2d draughting there will be no benefit to going beyond dual core. I ran cad on a ULV pentium single core chip running at 1.2 ghz and it was perfect for 2d cad. Even the Latest version runs fine on Slow dual Cores if you have An Ssd. When people come on with non gaming requirements, i just reckon a lot of budget may not be spent in the areas which will see greatest improvement - Purely due to a lack of info on how well the specific software scales with cores/threads/clockspeed etc.

NTMK

Lu Tze wrote: »

This was the kind of thing i was looking for, running software that will see a huge benefit from multi core / over clock. Totally justified! But of somebody puts up they want to run cad for example, if its all 2d draughting there will be no benefit to going beyond dual core. I ran cad on a ULV pentium single core chip running at 1.2 ghz and it was perfect for 2d cad. Even the Latest version runs fine on Slow dual Cores if you have An Ssd. When people come on with non gaming requirements, i just reckon a lot of budget may not be spent in the areas which will see greatest improvement - Purely due to a lack of info on how well the specific software scales with cores/threads/clockspeed etc.

I will when i get my rig together do a set of real world tests on my stock vs overclocked cpu and put them up here

the guys here do there best to find out what the rig is being used for but they can only go on what information is available, the budget is usually the only known factor. i've seen it here a couple of times where people have been told that their budget is overkill for what they want.

marco_polo

Lu Tze wrote: »

This was the kind of thing i was looking for, running software that will see a huge benefit from multi core / over clock. Totally justified! But of somebody puts up they want to run cad for example, if its all 2d draughting there will be no benefit to going beyond dual core. I ran cad on a ULV pentium single core chip running at 1.2 ghz and it was perfect for 2d cad. Even the Latest version runs fine on Slow dual Cores if you have An Ssd. When people come on with non gaming requirements, i just reckon a lot of budget may not be spent in the areas which will see greatest improvement - Purely due to a lack of info on how well the specific software scales with cores/threads/clockspeed etc.

It can be very hard to say without have a good working knowledge of the execution characteristics in question, and for some products there isn't much information out there so you just can't know for sure unless you have use it previously. The other problem is that as you say above, for any given piece of software, how you are using it would have a big bearing on the optimal rig like the CAD example above, or the Adobe suite of products. You might needs a decent GPU for certain task and none at all for others.

The video editing rig is an good example as well, it is highly dependent on the software somebody intends to use and what sort of files the will be working with, the optimal rig for professional video editing is likely to be worlds away from, and much more expensive than, one for sticking a few videos up on youtube.

For the most part here I guess it is mostly budget driven, and at the end of the day it is better to overestimate rather than underestimate somebody's requirements.

At the very least around here, you will often see somebody gets talked out out of putting an i7 and 16GB RAM into a gaming build from time to time.

ED E

Still using an OC'd Q6600, does me fine for now

Wouldnt mind a 4470K but practically itd make little difference.

BloodBath

To be honest most of the recommendations here are spot on for peoples requirements. You can never tell exactly how someone is going to use their pc. You can only base it on what they say they will use it for and their budget.

If it's only gaming then there's never 16gb's of ram recommended. It's focussed on the gpu with as a powerful a cpu that will go with it. If it's video editing it's focussed on the cpu, with 16gb's of ram and more storage space. If it's both you try and find a balance with their budget.

Some of the recommendations may be overkill but it's better to have too much power than too little. I will often build to someones budget and then say this may be overkill and mention they could knock 100-200 off the price by changing a couple of parts and they won't lose much power. A 3770k or 4770k vs a 8320 for something like video editing or photoshop is a prime example of this.

While you may not need the power a good processor will last you 4-5 years unless you're an upgrade freak. Ye know who ye are

Serephucus

BloodBath wrote: »

While you may not need the power a good processor will last you 4-5 years unless you're an upgrade freak. Ye know who ye are

Not me!

Monotype

Good point there by Marco with the Crysis 3 benchmarks. I think that this is one of the most interesting games this generation for CPUs as it's showing a shift towards multicore use in games.
With the new x86 8 core consoles, this is going to only become more profound.
This is turning around for AMD too, making their CPUs better buys.

I think that the dual core i3s are running quickly towards their end. Hopefully, the upgrades won't dry up too fast for 1155 upgraders. It's a pain in the hole when prices increase after they become 'obsolete'.

Basically, I'm just echoing back to making sure you have an upgrade path that's alive, if possible and it's worth building your base on solid ground.