The pace of obsolescence.

[NoxiousOdor]

3 minutes ago, ImadKnight said:

The (single CPU) board I have is really nice cause its got crossfire/sli support, USB3.0, overclocking support... I think that the overlocking problem for might just be bad luck with the silicon lottery. And it also looks like 2 of my RAM slots arent working (possibly due to bent pins on my MOBO?...). 

Yeah I had to get a usb3.0 adapter but that was pretty cheap. lga 1366 boards can be a pain in the butt to find, I would recommend you look for one though if you do find one they usually arent very expensive and that way you have all of the parts working

[IKnight]

Just now, WhisperingKnickers said:

Yeah I had to get a usb3.0 adapter but that was pretty cheap. lga 1366 boards can be a pain in the butt to find, I would recommend you look for one though if you do find one they usually arent very expensive and that way you have all of the parts working

Honestly going to roll with this really soft overclock for now. If something goes catastrophically wrong with the board then it's either going to be eBay scavenging for a similar one or I'm moving to Kaby/Coffee lake and getting something like an i3 (which would suck massively considering my current system is waaaay better)...  

The main thing I need is a new GPU though. Thermi ain't too great.  

[NoxiousOdor]

4 minutes ago, ImadKnight said:

Honestly going to roll with this really soft overclock for now. If something goes catastrophically wrong with the board then it's either going to be eBay scavenging for a similar one or I'm moving to Kaby/Coffee lake and getting something like an i3 (which would suck massively considering my current system is waaaay better)...  

The main thing I need is a new GPU though. Thermi ain't too great.  

How well has the 460 been working? I bet it would get toasty

[IKnight]

9 minutes ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

How well has the 460 been working? I bet it would get toasty

After some lighter 1.5 hour gaming, it's at 46c (just shut off the game). Honestly, I give the card too much crap. It runs GTA V at 1080p low at like 60fps. Assetto Corsa on high at 50ish. So it's pretty capable even after all this time. Just nothing new thats AAA. 

The Xeon hovers at 40c no matter what. I'm pretty sure I could passively cool it  

[NoxiousOdor]

4 minutes ago, ImadKnight said:

After some lighter 1.5 hour gaming, it's at 46c (just shut off the game). Honestly, I give the card too much crap. It runs GTA V at 1080p low at like 60fps. Assetto Corsa on high at 50ish. So it's pretty capable even after all this time. Just nothing new thats AAA. 

The Xeon hovers at 40c no matter what. I'm pretty sure I could passively cool it  

Hey that's not bad! That is better than I expected. 

 

Aren't the xeons great? They are old now but they are by no means bad. Mine also stay quite cool even at full load for 8+ hours they hardly work they way up to 80c and that is because the room gets warm and the cool air runs out. For normal tasks like gaming they stay around 40 or 50

[IKnight]

1 minute ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

Hey that's not bad! That is better than I expected. 

 

Aren't the xeons great? They are old now but they are by no means bad. Mine also stay quite cool even at full load for 8+ hours they hardly work they way up to 80c and that is because the room gets warm and the cool air runs out. For normal tasks like gaming they stay around 40 or 50

I love the Xeon (when it works properly....). Its just incredible value for money considering it was 1000usd new. Mine never gets above 50c cause of the size of my CPU cooler itself (basically a rebranded Noctua NH D15).

[NoxiousOdor]

1 minute ago, ImadKnight said:

I love the Xeon (when it works properly....). Its just incredible value for money considering it was 1000usd new. Mine never gets above 50c cause of the size of my CPU cooler itself (basically a rebranded Noctua NH D15).

Exactly! And they still are really quite good. I have similar coolers on mine I forget which ones exactly I have a mismatched pair but they are in my signature

[IKnight]

11 minutes ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

Exactly! And they still are really quite good. I have similar coolers on mine I forget which ones exactly I have a mismatched pair but they are in my signature

Your system is really sweet, pretty much what I'd want mine to be. The S340 looks like a pretty good case, and the 1060 seems to be a great 1080p card. And lucky you can use cheap ECC REG ram.

 

[NoxiousOdor]

7 minutes ago, ImadKnight said:

Your system is really sweet, pretty much what I'd want mine to be. The S340 looks like a pretty good case, and the 1060 seems to be a great 1080p card. And lucky you can use cheap ECC REG ram.

 

Thanks! The 1060 has been great I have been able to max out every game I've tried with the exception of Ark survival but that is kind of expected. I really like the S340 for this motherboard because it is an extended atx board and it hardly fits in the case, I might be getting a slightly fancier board but that is eeatx (enhanced extended atx) which is an inch longer and I don't know if I will have room for it in this case. Yeah the ram is cheap but surprisingly hard to find. I would love to populate all of my dimms but even with chap ram that would get expensive

[IKnight]

4 minutes ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

Thanks! The 1060 has been great I have been able to max out every game I've tried with the exception of Ark survival but that is kind of expected. I really like the S340 for this motherboard because it is an extended atx board and it hardly fits in the case, I might be getting a slightly fancier board but that is eeatx (enhanced extended atx) which is an inch longer and I don't know if I will have room for it in this case. Yeah the ram is cheap but surprisingly hard to find. I would love to populate all of my dimms but even with chap ram that would get expensive

I'm planning on building a case out of wood, but if I wasn't, I'd probably be getting the s340. How many dimms do you have (I'm presuming it's 16/32?).

[NoxiousOdor]

1 minute ago, ImadKnight said:

I'm planning on building a case out of wood, but if I wasn't, I'd probably be getting the s340. How many dimms do you have (I'm presuming it's 16/32?).

I highly recommend it it is a great case. Right now I have 12 dimms but the board I am hoping to get has 18

[IKnight]

1 minute ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

I highly recommend it it is a great case. Right now I have 12 dimms but the board I am hoping to get has 18

Oh nice. Though honestly, I think that even 16gb is overkill for me. 

[NoxiousOdor]

3 minutes ago, ImadKnight said:

Oh nice. Though honestly, I think that even 16gb is overkill for me. 

Yeah I have 56 (would have 64 if that one stick was working) but I don't think I've seen it go above 12. It is fun to have more but at a certain point there is no point

[IKnight]

6 minutes ago, WhisperingKnickers said:

Yeah I have 56 (would have 64 if that one stick was working) but I don't think I've seen it go above 12. It is fun to have more but at a certain point there is no point

Exactly. It's more just fun to build/upgrade something then actually have it serve a purpose. 

[GOTSpectrum]

 

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mooreslaw.asp

 

"Most experts expect Moore's law to continue for another two decades"

 

Interesting, Moore's law also has no specific mention of performance, rather only transistor density. It has held true for the most part for quite some time. 

 

I think we need to look beyond x86 to see the progression, look at the new 10nm processors that will be coming to market soon. These have much smaller die areas, if they kept the same die area, theoretically they would be able to fit twice as much performance as they could 2-3 tears ago.

[elkenrod]

Necessity is the mother of invention.

 

Storage solutions are seeing advancements now as much as they ever have.  This makes sense because average consumers have the need for TBs of fast access storage.

 

CPU advancements seem marginal, until you look at what the average consumer needs.  What games or programs are being released that require vast improvements to consumer CPU power?  The user case that comes up the most often that I see is, "I want to game and stream on the same box".  You can do that currently without the need for cutting edge hardware.

 

You've to find ridiculous LTT setups to find a real need for better CPUs (20 gamers 1 CPU).

 

Video editing is is the one area I can see consumers really lacking for vast improvements, but that market is still smaller than the gaming market that tends to drive demands for more performance.

[GOTSpectrum]

20 minutes ago, elkenrod said:

Necessity is the mother of invention.

 

Storage solutions are seeing advancements now as much as they ever have.  This makes sense because average consumers have the need for TBs of fast access storage.

 

CPU advancements seem marginal, until you look at what the average consumer needs.  What games or programs are being released that require vast improvements to consumer CPU power?  The user case that comes up the most often that I see is, "I want to game and stream on the same box".  You can do that currently without the need for cutting edge hardware.

 

You've to find ridiculous LTT setups to find a real need for better CPUs (20 gamers 1 CPU).

 

Video editing is is the one area I can see consumers really lacking for vast improvements, but that market is still smaller than the gaming market that tends to drive demands for more performance.

 

 

This video is the one that comes to mind whenever I get someone talk about Moore's law and performance increases. We see more improvement from things like SSDs then we have on the last 5-10 years of CPUs for the most part. When I boot my windows 7 from my old HDD it's so slow! I run Windows 7 on a Pentium 4 HT and have to say for basic usage, web browsing, file storage (it's main use) and the like with a SSD is as fast as my windows 7 on my main system with a HDD. with that said if I tried to game I can soon tell the difference. 

[IKnight]

12 hours ago, Ben Quigley said:

 

 

This video is the one that comes to mind whenever I get someone talk about Moore's law and performance increases. We see more improvement from things like SSDs then we have on the last 5-10 years of CPUs for the most part. When I boot my windows 7 from my old HDD it's so slow! I run Windows 7 on a Pentium 4 HT and have to say for basic usage, web browsing, file storage (it's main use) and the like with a SSD is as fast as my windows 7 on my main system with a HDD. with that said if I tried to game I can soon tell the difference. 

 

13 hours ago, elkenrod said:

Necessity is the mother of invention.

 

Storage solutions are seeing advancements now as much as they ever have.  This makes sense because average consumers have the need for TBs of fast access storage.

 

CPU advancements seem marginal, until you look at what the average consumer needs.  What games or programs are being released that require vast improvements to consumer CPU power?  The user case that comes up the most often that I see is, "I want to game and stream on the same box".  You can do that currently without the need for cutting edge hardware.

 

You've to find ridiculous LTT setups to find a real need for better CPUs (20 gamers 1 CPU).

 

Video editing is is the one area I can see consumers really lacking for vast improvements, but that market is still smaller than the gaming market that tends to drive demands for more performance.

You guys raise good points. Advancements are being made in a different direction than 10-20 years ago. 

I also think we've slowed down slightly because Intel/Nvidia barely have had barely any competition from AMD, so they have had no point to innovate as fast. /Conspiracy theory rant

 

[GOTSpectrum]

2 hours ago, ImadKnight said:

 

You guys raise good points. Advancements are being made in a different direction than 10-20 years ago. 

I also think we've slowed down slightly because Intel/Nvidia barely have had barely any competition from AMD, so they have had no point to innovate as fast. /Conspiracy theory rant

 

Yep, and like I said it's not that advancements have stopped per say, or really even slowed. It's just the noticeable differences have for the most part. You want to see where the advancements lie, look at the fact 1000w PSUs aren't really needed anymore, or the much smaller heatsinks we can use, or the power of mobile devices. Hell, we have phones that can outperform desktops from 10 or so years ago.  Look at Vega Vs Fiji, they are essentially the same architecture, but process node shrink means more performance can be squeezed out of it... Although not really much efficiency was gained.

[Sauron]

Moore's law is already dead in cpus, but recently obsolescence has come more from support for new high speed interfaces and technologies, as well as faster storage support.

[givingtnt]

iv had my 4790k for 3 years

I expect it to last at least another 3

probably more.

 

the true reason to upgrade cpu is for what the motherboard has to offer
m.2
new audio tech (rare)

new ethernet interfaces

new usb 3.0 (type c)

DP

nvme drives... 
ddr4 ram...

[Mira Yurizaki]

3 hours ago, ImadKnight said:

I also think we've slowed down slightly because Intel/Nvidia barely have had barely any competition from AMD, so they have had no point to innovate as fast. /Conspiracy theory rant

The problem I have with this is... what's left to innovate? Getting instructions through is very much like managing a manufacturing facility. Consider that we haven't really had much in the way of an industrial revolution in a long time. The only one I can think of is Toyota's work that set the foundation for the Lean process back in the 1960s, but that's about it. Motorola had Six Sigma, but that wasn't quite the production revolution.  The only thing I can think of these days is to cut off using x86/x64 entirely and instead compile directly to micro-ops. But I doubt that's really going to happen.

 

Plus I believe we're at a point where optimizations, hardware or software, are reaching the intersection where trying to squeeze even more out of them costs a disproportionate amount of effort for the same amount of gain.

 

However I would argue NVIDIA hasn't been totally slacking off and I believe it's a little unfair to try to compare them to AMD with regards to how their respective architectures are built. Both are doing different things, and both still see the same performance increases throughout the generations. Also one should look at what NVIDIA has done outside of PC gaming. NVIDA tried a radical approach to CPUs with Project Denver (I'm not sure if they plan on continuing down that road though) and they've managed to squeeze something better than a WiiU into a 7" tablet. Not to mention the AI and deep learning areas they've been working on. Just because you don't see it or care about it, doesn't mean it's not important.

 

And if I want to go back to Intel, their progress since Sandy Bridge has been more or less the trend in the past ten years for both Intel and AMD before Sandy Bridge, save for Conroe.

Edited September 6, 2017 by M.Yurizaki

[IKnight]

11 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

The problem I have with this is... what's left to innovate? Getting instructions through is very much like managing a manufacturing facility. Considering that we haven't really had much in the way of an industrial revolution. The only one I can think of is Toyota's work that set the foundation for the Lean process back in the 1960s, but that's about it. Motorola had Six Sigma, but that wasn't quite the production revolution.  The only thing I can think of these days is to cut off using x86/x64 entirely and instead compile directly to micro-ops. But I doubt that's really going to happen.

 

Plus I believe we're at a point where optimizations, hardware or software, are reaching the intersection where trying to squeeze even more out of them costs a disproportionate amount of effort for the same amount of gain.

 

However I would argue NVIDIA hasn't been totally slacking off and I believe it's a little unfair to try to compare them to AMD with regards to how their respective architectures are built. Both are doing different things, and both still see the same performance increases throughout the generations. Also one should look at what NVIDIA has done outside of PC gaming. NVIDA tried a radical approach to CPUs with Project Denver (I'm not sure if they plan on continuing down that road though) and they've managed to squeeze something better than a WiiU into a 7" tablet. Not to mention the AI and deep learning areas they've been working on. Just because you don't see it or care about it, doesn't mean it's not important.

 

And if I want to go back to Intel, their progress since Sandy Bridge has been more or less the trend in the past ten years for both Intel and AMD before Sandy Bridge, save for Conroe.

Exactly what I've been thinking. What is there (groundbreaking) left to do that we already haven't?

That a good point, considering I've been focusing this thread on consumer computer hardware, rather than server/AI level stuff. 

39 minutes ago, givingtnt said:

iv had my 4790k for 3 years

I expect it to last at least another 3

probably more.

 

the true reason to upgrade cpu is for what the motherboard has to offer
m.2
new audio tech (rare)

new ethernet interfaces

new usb 3.0 (type c)

DP

nvme drives... 
ddr4 ram...

Yeah, my Xeon is still going strong, even without features like SATA 3. You really don't notice the difference between DDR3 and DDR4 ram, new ethernet etc.etc. 

[Coaxialgamer]

19 hours ago, Terryv said:

Silicon has a theoretical minimum size f about 5-6 nanometers. Intel, nvida and AMD will have 7nm in the next 12-24 months. We're very close to the limits. Only way to cheat that is to increase core counts, but that only goes so far and CPU's get larger in the process.

Except that nothing in the "7nm" transistors used by either company is 7nm wide . you could argue that the fin pitch is only a few nanometres wide , but that's a finfet limitation .

Intel's 14 nm node transistor is actually 52*70nm (MMP*CPP ).

[GOTSpectrum]

28 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

Except that nothing in the "7nm" transistors used by either company is 7nm wide . you could argue that the fin pitch is only a few nanometres wide , but that's a finfet limitation .

Intel's 14 nm node transistor is actually 52*70nm (MMP*CPP ).

Why is called 14nm then? Genuinely curious here