(07-28-2023, 11:28 PM)MayImilae Wrote: [ -> ]Good. Memory errors suck and RDIMM (now that it is also fast) is kind of the only good solution. I still recommend running MemTest on it though, so you can catch any bad sticks early and potentially RMA them during the warranty period. I wish I did that on the 5975WX system.
I bought a used workstation (dual socket), it came with 64GB of DDR4 2400. I'll upgrade it one day to 128GB (maybe more!) 2933 and put in some newer CPU's with more cores too.
Memory is cheap right now, it's a good time for an upgrade
My rule of thumb for upgrading used to be "must at least double capability and for less than $250". So for cpu/gpu this meant double benchmark scores. For monitors this meant double resolution or refresh rate. Memory would simply be upgraded alongside the cpu/gpu when it was time to upgrade those.
This used to result in me upgrading about every 2 years. But these days has resulted in me sitting on midrange hardware for 6 years because the stuff available today at that pricepoint is barely faster than what I bought back then.
I've had the double-whammy of Brexit basically doubling hardware prices here before all the global problems kicked in, so nothing's good value unless it's about Arduino sized and comes from AliExpress. It's a pretty good time to accidentally blow up your 3D printer mainboard, though. Still, don't trust the people telling you it's easy to solder new wires onto the unused pins of the microcontroller - they're missing out that when you drip a drop of solder across six of the pins you weren't working on, it'll take over an hour to remove it, and the microcontroller will be mortally wounded in the process.
(07-31-2023, 10:03 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]My rule of thumb for upgrading used to be "must at least double capability and for less than $250". So for cpu/gpu this meant double benchmark scores. For monitors this meant double resolution or refresh rate. Memory would simply be upgraded alongside the cpu/gpu when it was time to upgrade those.
This used to result in me upgrading about every 2 years. But these days has resulted in me sitting on midrange hardware for 6 years because the stuff available today at that pricepoint is barely faster than what I bought back then.
Yeah, that sounds about like what I do. Been pretty good about following it.
Currently running a ryzen 1700, 16GB DDR4 3200 MHz, and a GTX 1070.
Today for the same money that I payed back then I could get a 7600x, a 3050, and 32GB of ram. The ram doubling would make zero difference for most workloads, the 3050 is about the same speed as a 1070 in most games, and the 7600x would be around 2/3 faster in single threaded workloads and 1/3 faster in multithreaded ones. Mainly because it's a 6 core cpu instead of 8 core. To get an 8 core these days you need to spend over 300. So either I need to raise my budget or keep waiting.....
Raising my target prices to $350 would open up a lot more options. A 3060 for the gpu and a 7700 or 5800x3d for the cpu. Both of which would actually be double the speed of what I'm currently using.
Currently I'm thinking I will do my next build in 2025. 8 years is a pretty decent amount of time to get out of your hardware and by 2025 I will need to upgrade to win 11 with tpm anyways which my current rig doesn't support.
Edit:
For historical reference
2005 build: Pentium D 3.4GHz, 7900GS, 2GB DDR2 1333MHz
2 years later
2007 build: Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz, 8800GT, 4GB ddr3 1600MHz
2 years later, gpu upgrade only
2009 build: core 2 quad 2.4GHz, gtx 260, 4GB ddr3 1600MHz
3 years later
2012 build: i5 3570k 4 core 3.8GHz, gtx 660, 8GB ddr3 1600MHz
5 years later
2017 build: Ryzen 1700 8 core 3.5GHz, gtx 1070, 16GB DDR4 3200MHz
6 years later and still waiting....
ALL of these builds followed that rule of cpu and gpu each being under $250 and more than double the speed of the previous build. And you can see the timescale between builds increasing. This is a clear demonstration of how the rate of technological improvement year to year (in terms of performance per dollar) is slowing down. Which normally I would say is not such a bad thing since it means we can keep our hardware longer. Except that the software support side of things has not changed and is effectively forcing us to upgrade out hardware every 8 years or so regardless of whether it's any faster.
When I eventually switched from my overclocked 4670K to a 5900X, I realised that actually, my own rules for when a hardware upgrade was justified were probably satisfied years earlier. I went from compiling OpenMW in about fifty minutes to less than two and a half. That's partially explained by the much larger core count, but I think I'd not been taking into account how much spectre mitigations in the OS were hurting older Intel parts.
NaturalViolence Wrote:and the 7600x would be around 2/3 faster in single threaded workloads and 1/3 faster in multithreaded ones.
That doesn't sound right - Zen 1 was quite weak. Like, it was a huge leap for AMD, sure, but Zen 2 left Zen 1 and Zen+ in the dust. And of course they have iteratively improved since. So if I look up some benchmarks...
Cinebench R23 Singlecore Result
Ryzen 7 1700 - 954
Ryzen 5 7600X - 1976
Core i5 13600k - 2488
Cinebench R23 Multicore Result
Ryzen 7 1700 - 8065
Ryzen 5 7600X - 15315
Core i5 13600k - 14937
It looks like you're already at the point where the same amount of money would be double the performance, for the CPU anyway. More than that in fact, with Intel it is 2.64x the single threaded performance!
IMO, with those results, I would not recommend staying on Zen 1 for much longer. But that is up to you.
NaturalViolence Wrote:the 3050 is about the same speed as a 1070 in most games
You are bang on, they get almost identical scores! However, the prices of GPUs have fallen considerably in the past few months, and $300 ($70 less than the original price of the 1070!) can get you a 4060 now. Assuming you don't exceed 1440p (4060 quirks), you'd see a nice uplift. Though not a doubling. For that, you need to go a smidge over $370 to $400, which can get you a 4060 Ti 8GB at today's prices.
Firestrike 1080p (not extreme or ultra)
GTX 1070 - 17557
RTX 4060 - 26723
RTX 4060 Ti 8GB - 34153
A 4060 Ti would double your GPU performance, but it does require you to exceed the 1070's budget by ~8%. But you could pull it off at budget if you snag a good deal. Considering how fast 4060 Tis are selling... you may not have to wait long. Alternatively, a 5060 should do the trick.
Admittedly the only reason I got the gtx 1070 for less than $250 was because a friend sold me his. I would have gotten a gtx 1060 instead if I had to buy one new. And compared to the 1060 the 4060 is indeed about twice as fast. So it appears we are actually now right at that point where performance per dollar has doubled since my last build.
As for staying on zen 1. The thing is my 1700 still does everything I require perfectly. Pretty much all my games maintain a stable 120 fps and all of the basic tasks one might do on a computer are essentially instant. The only thing a newer cpu would really help me with is when I do video editing after a vacation. The re-encoding would be a bit faster. But that would at most save me a few hours a year and most of that is "idle time" where I am letting my computer do its thing in the background while I go spend my time elsewhere.
I gotta say I really appreciate that this forum is still around. It's so nostalgic to have a community of familiar faces on a myBB forum. I know it will inevitably die out one day just like everything but it's cool to see this one little piece of my past still around. As I get older more and more of the things I have fond memories of disappear from the world forever.