General Computer Thread

[Marc]

Yeah, I was Intel last time, and switched to AMD this time around. One of the best decisions I've ever made.

haven't watched the videos yet but just going the by the youtube thumbnails for Level1techs, LTT and Jayz2cents, the high end might still have issues.

Intel is doing away with hyperthreading in the new core series and they have to make sure there's no performance issues so perhaps they'v broken something.

Or maybe the software needs to catch up.

A few months back, Craft Computing had a review on lower end Xeon server where the E-cores had been disabled and the performance was abysmal.

Though as it was server there's a chance it could run ESXi and ESXI doesn't play nicely with a mix of P&E cores and not sure that Broadcomm is interesting in fixing the issue.

/* edit yep the performance increase is disappointing compounded by the need to get a new motherboard and to get the best new ram.
Plus AMD have a new high end chip out next Month. */

 

[Owain Taggart]

It feels like Intel has been playing catch-up for awhile now.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

It feels like Intel has been playing catch-up for awhile now.

Oh, they have.

They just debuted their new "Xeon 6" Server CPU's.

AMD swooped in a few weeks later & OBLITERATED them.

Here are the Phoronix Reviews:

AMD EPYC 9755 / 9575F / 9965 Benchmarks Show Dominating Performance
Intel's Xeon 6980P (2 Socket Processor) was matching 1x EPYC 9755 in Performance in the GeoMean Performance Test.

AMD EPYC 9965 "Turin Dense" Delivers Better Performance/Power Efficiency vs. AmpereOne 192-Core ARM CPU

On a geo mean basis across all the benchmarks, the 192-core EPYC 9965 was delivering 1.6x the performance of the AmpereOne A192-32X flagship processor in the benchmarks conducted. So while the average power use of the EPYC 9965 was around 1.2x that of the AmpereOne A192-32X, it more than makes up for it in power efficiency with 1.6x the performance.

Doesn't matter if you're Intel or making a ARM Server CPU, both got "Obliterated" by AMD's new EPYC 9005 series with "Turin" & "Turin Dense".

 

[Santaman]

Ha! They all fall for the might of my Sempron 145! (1 core 2,8 Gigglyherzz!) YEAH!!!
Using that machine now to test Bodhi Linux, seems rather lightweight so if the Sempron can run it then most other machines can do so too..

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

When DVD drives were brand new I had a home pc running on a shitty mb with Pentium II onboard and remember watching movies on that with the pc hooked up to a crt screen.

Speaking of which neat little timeline here of cpu development.

Computer Processor History

The complete history of the computer processor or CPU (Central Processing Unit) and major events and releases of computer processors.

www.computerhope.com

 

[John Clark]

When DVD drives were brand new I had a home pc running on a shitty mb with Pentium II onboard and remember watching movies on that with the pc hooked up to a crt screen.

Speaking of which neat little timeline here of cpu development.

Computer Processor History

The complete history of the computer processor or CPU (Central Processing Unit) and major events and releases of computer processors.

www.computerhope.com

Going off that, I think I'd have been running one of the k6 processors by the time of my first dvd player.
(If I was still running an older one, it might have been a pentium 2 233 but I can't remember when I swapped that out)

 

[Santaman]

Was making a pretty penny when CD-Writers weren't all that common, my brother and I invested in the latest and greatest Plextor SCSI model and put that into a special only for burning PC, ran a Pentium 166MMX with the most barebone Win98SE possible..
That was the late 90's, around that time DVD drives weren't all that common and the best card for playing DVD stuff on the computer were the ATI Rage family because those had a decoder for that.

 

[John Clark]

Going off the graphics card need, then I'd almost certainly swapped to AMD by the time I got the dvd drive then. For a while there, I was running a Matrox G400 Max with twin Voodoo2 cards in the background and at that point was running AMD fo the chips and that seems to have mostly lasted so far.

 

[Santaman]

I have a bunch of G400's lying around, they came with two Compaq machines, P-II 400, one of those casings from 1998 is housing that Sempron 145, just needed to cut a little metal away at the back so normal PSU's will fit.

My brother and I used to have a K6 233 Mhz machine, later on we got a P-II 233 which we updated all the way up to the P-III 450, after the Pentium II's we both built our own machines, one of them was a Duron 750 and after that one I didn't use Intel CPU's again for my main machine until 2020, my current office/main machine is a Pentium Gold 6400, game machine only AMD from the good old Athlon to a Ryzen 5700X now.

AMD bougfht ATI in 2006 and discontinued the name in 2010, HD 5xxx was still ATI, with HD 6xxx they started to use AMD.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

My very first gou had a red metal heatsink and no fan. It was AGP and that was 2009. My first brand name gpu was an RX 480

 

[Marc]

memory from facebook for this day back in 2012.

Running Windows 8 for the first time. Was use an Phenon X3 (which you could actually an run as 4 under there a bios update nuked that ability).

Seems I've been using SSDs for 12 years now.

still got some spinning rust in use for backups and media cos $ per TB can't beat them for bulk storage.

 

[Kraig]

I'm still using Windows 7. My computer won't run on Windows 10. I'll keep using 7 until the computer craps out.

 

[Santaman]

I have a few Windows 8.1, 7, XP machines, wouldn't connect to the Internet anymore though, 10 is done October next year, if you don't want to run 11, which I can understand, then maybe a Linux Distro would work for you? For all my none gaming I use Linux Mint which does everything I want/need and then some while having no built in spyware etc, it's lighter than Windows 10 as well.

 

[Kraig]

I have a few Windows 8.1, 7, XP machines, wouldn't connect to the Internet anymore though, 10 is done October next year, if you don't want to run 11, which I can understand, then maybe a Linux Distro would work for you? For all my none gaming I use Linux Mint which does everything I want/need and then some while having no built in spyware etc, it's lighter than Windows 10 as well.

I will probably wind up switching to Linux if Windows 7 stops working.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I think windows 7 will keep working, only MS won't be supporting it via updates and patches, that kind of thing

 

[Marc]

I think windows 7 will keep working, only MS won't be supporting it via updates and patches, that kind of thing

that should be pretty pretty obvious from the post just above.

I have a few Windows 8.1, 7, XP machines, wouldn't connect to the Internet anymore though, 10 is done October next year, if you don't want to run 11, which I can understand, then maybe a Linux Distro would work for you? For all my none gaming I use Linux Mint which does everything I want/need and then some while having no built in spyware etc, it's lighter than Windows 10 as well.

I've largely moved to Linux for day to day now (Tuxedo OS 3 cos I can run KDE Plasma 6.x) but still have some windows app that will get a look in - a media conversion tool for combining MP3 files (and no copy and paste with audacity isn't the same), an MP3 tag editor and the software I use to do our taxes.

Should see if they'll play nicely with Wine.

Gaming still needs Windows (I don't play online but know that game manufacturers are still giving major fuck you to Linux with with their kernel mode) anti-cheat.

Not sure that I'm prepared for the fight of moving my wife to Linux. Just got her a new laptop which is probably over kill for what she does but I don't like the build in obsolescence of Chrome books or the crap screens on lower price laptops (though it's not as nice as the screen on the old Asus. But when I got the Lenovo on special for just over $CA700 (15.5" IPS, panel, Ryzen 7 7730u, 16GB, 512SB storage).

Paid just over 12000 for the Asus with an i5-8500u, 8GB,256GB

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

What would be a good recommendation for a laptop, just for writing, emails, no gaming, but they do want to store things like pictures and music? What sort of specs should I look for, buying for a relative.

 

[rivkah]

What would be a good recommendation for a laptop, just for writing, emails, no gaming, but they do want to store things like pictures and music? What sort of specs should I look for, buying for a relative.

Recently, I recommended my sister go for higher RAM whenever possible, to be sure the speed of the laptop would be good. A big hard drive is less important if you have an external drive or cloud backup, but your application speed will be something you'd notice even without gaming needs.

I like Dell and HP, but other brands may be good nowadays. I still need to learn about processors and graphics cards, but those might also not be a big issue for the low-key needs of your relative.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Recently, I recommended my sister go for higher RAM whenever possible, to be sure the speed of the laptop would be good. A big hard drive is less important if you have an external drive or cloud backup, but your application speed will be something you'd notice even without gaming needs.

I like Dell and HP, but other brands may be good nowadays. I still need to learn about processors and graphics cards, but those might also not be a big issue for the low-key needs of your relative.

Well they are not concerned too much about speed but do want ports for external storage and also a decent sized internal storage . I have a few models in mind I even offered to give my 2 year old Acer to her it's got two internal drives so tons of storage and 3 usb 3 ports, 2 on the left, 1 on the right HDMI and ethernet