Question Buying / building Haswell, for some older ITX boards I had laying around. Bad idea? (It's built.)

[VirtualLarry]

Is this basically the worst idea in the world, given the recent disclosure of Intel Gen7/7.5 iGPU vulnerabilties, and the mitigations of such (in Linux), that cuts performance in half, or worse.

I was toying with the idea of building some G3258 browser-boxes, for some people I know. If this iGPU exploit / vuln hadn't reared it's head, I might have used the iGPU, save that I want to have an HDMI output. (Have to check the board.)

I guess I can use a dGPU, I have some (precious few, at this point) passively-cooled DDR3-using GT630/730 (Kepler) cards.

Or I could buy some GT710 cards. (I do have some GT730 GDDR5 cards, have to track those down too, before I mis-place them semi-permanently.)

Maybe a really "low-end Gaming Box" with the GT730 2GB GDDR5 cards? Might be able to play GTA V @ 25FPS on Low, like, really low.

I find it interesting that ebay vendors are unloading these for a song. Woke up today and went to ebay, found "Seller Offers" with decent discounts, off of the already fairly-low prices of around $20... They really want to off-load these chips, way too many vulns these days.

For a browser-box, for your average "Grandma", how bad are the vulns affecting Haswell? Are all of them mitigated by Windows Patches, if these boards don't have BIOS patches? (They probably should, they are the "CSM" models, but I haven't checked, and Haswell is pretty old.) (They are Asus boards.)

 

[DrMrLordX]

Spectre/Meltdown patches can be disabled for extra performance. Not sure if updated drivers with mitigations can be disabled. You can always load older drivers if you can find them. We know so little about the iGPU vulnerability that it's hard to assess its impact on "grandma". Spcetre/Meltdown is mostly harmless to light consumer users so long as they used a browser hardened against remote payload delivery.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Is it likely that a Haswell H81 board (albeit a "CSM" board), that has a newest BIOS from 2015, would be able to UEFI boot, or boot off of a PCI-E NVMe (adapter card w/SSD)?

I realize that late-model Z97 boards, some had M.2 slots, not sure if any of them could take NVMe. That the mainstream introduction of NVMe was with Skylake and friends.

 

[DrMrLordX]

[HowTo] Get full NVMe Support for all Systems with an AMI UEFI BIOS

@ all: Please read this before posting into this thread: This thread has been designed by me for users, who want to do the required BIOS modification themselves by following this guide. Users, who want to get an already modded BIOS, may search for it within >this< Sub-Forum or post their...

www.win-raid.com

I found that looking around for answers to your question about H81 boards. Not sure if it helps.

 

[moinmoin]

Is this basically the worst idea in the world, given the recent disclosure of Intel Gen7/7.5 iGPU vulnerabilties, and the mitigations of such (in Linux), that cuts performance in half, or worse.

For a change this impact appears to be exaggerated. The developers put in these notes in their patches after the news broke:
"**** NOTE: ****
This series is in active development and is not intended to be merged to mainline in its current form. The intent of the RFC is simply to outline the strategy for the mitigation, as a focus for active discussion, and to openly share progress. There has been only minimal attention paid to performance thus far, as the focus is on robustness. It is not anticipated that there will be any measurable performance impact in the final version.
**** END NOTE ****"

Intel Gen7 Graphics Mitigation Will Try To Avoid Performance Loss In Final Version - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

We know so little about the iGPU vulnerability that it's hard to assess its impact on "grandma".

Here are some more details about the vulnerability:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-iGPU-Leak-Details
Fingerprinting would impact grandmas as well.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Interesting. Looks like the browser vendors could interfere with iGPU leak somewhat, but that's nothing a malware provider couldn't stop.

 

[mopardude87]

I still find my old i5 4670 lovely and Haswell wise this quad still feels good to use.

I myself got no issues with even a friend's 2500k for browsing but dang a dual core in 2020?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I myself got no issues with even a friend's 2500k for browsing but dang a dual core in 2020?

More like, "Haswell dual-core @ 4.0Ghz in 2020"? I mean, IPC-wise, Haswell wasn't really far off from Zen v1 CPU in performance at ISO clocks, at least in games.

And there are 2C/4T Ryzen / Athlon (Zen) APUs.

I don't think that would be "too slow" for Grandma, even today, with sufficient RAM (8-16GB) and SSD (256GB or larger).

 

[DrMrLordX]

More like, "Haswell dual-core @ 4.0Ghz in 2020"? I mean, IPC-wise, Haswell wasn't really far off from Zen v1 CPU in performance at ISO clocks, at least in games.

And there are 2C/4T Ryzen / Athlon (Zen) APUs.

I don't think that would be "too slow" for Grandma, even today, with sufficient RAM (8-16GB) and SSD (256GB or larger).

You will need an adblocker/scriptblocker or some web pages will bog down a system like that.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yes, adblocker, OF COURSE~!

 

[Arkaign]

Ublock Origin

It doesn't sound like the worst idea, though I think it would have to be really cheap to make sense, otherwise ebaying off the mobos may be the more sensible way out of that. I even have some Z170 stuff like i5-7400 and i7-6700k that I'm kinda ehh about what to do with.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Ublock Origin

It doesn't sound like the worst idea, though I think it would have to be really cheap to make sense, otherwise ebaying off the mobos may be the more sensible way out of that. I even have some Z170 stuff like i5-7400 and i7-6700k that I'm kinda ehh about what to do with.

Yep, it would basically be a giveaway. I have everything but the CPU for it.

When you can get a passable (4GB RAM) i5-4570 REFURB PC, complete, for $120 or less, there's not much market for pre-Ryzen CPUs anymore, quite frankly.
(And the almost daily new Intel CPU and iGPU exploits don't help.)

Refurbished: HP EliteDesk 800 G1 SFF i5-4570 3.20GHz 8GB 512GB SSD Win 10 Pro 1 Yr Wty - Newegg.com

Buy Refurbished: HP EliteDesk 800 G1 SFF i5-4570 3.20GHz 8GB 512GB SSD Win 10 Pro 1 Yr Wty with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

That said, I'm getting a G3258 off of ebay for under $20. A few of the vendors I looked at last night, sent me "Seller Offers", they really want to get rid of these chips!

 

[EliteRetard]

Ublock Origin

It doesn't sound like the worst idea, though I think it would have to be really cheap to make sense, otherwise ebaying off the mobos may be the more sensible way out of that. I even have some Z170 stuff like i5-7400 and i7-6700k that I'm kinda ehh about what to do with.

I see that a lot now, people literally throwing away i7s and the like...one person used dozens of perfectly good ones for "art" because they're "worthless".
Makes me hurt a little inside.
I'm still on a Phenom II from 2011 because I can't afford an upgrade.
Even if I could snag a free CPU/MOBO though, the whole platform (especially GPU) and even cost of games means it's not going to happen.
Well that and everything has gotten vastly more f*d up and broken, almost every modern computer I've used or built for someone else has been problematic.

My computer is actually decent for everyday basics, even without an SSD...though I finally had to switch from CRT to a disappointing LCD about a year ago. Makes it that much harder to play the older games my computer can run, which are mostly locked to old low res display formats (640x480 - 1280x1024). I find myself wishing I had the space and ability to take this back to an XP rig and setup a 98 SE computer as well, so I could play these older games natively (or even at all). I think I lost touch with computer software and gaming after Vista launched, I have no idea what I've been missing out since then...

Not sure why I just remembered this, but did anybody ever release a visual pack for Skyrim like the old Morrowind total overhaul?

I know Skyrim got a ton of mods, but they were all separate and extremely complex to implement. The old Morrowind overhaul had bug fixes and everything in a nice easy to use interface, with screenshot comparisons that showed what each change did as you selected them. You could keep the game very close to vanilla while getting vastly improved graphics, or you could change things up. I've been waiting for a Skyrim mod like this before I play it, I especially want much longer/better view/draw distance. I actually much prefer the Morrowind style fog for open world games that can't handle the graphics past a point (with mod you could keep full detail and push that fog much further back). Default Skyrim style with severe pop in and shit smear for anything past 100 feet is horrid and unusable. I've been waiting a long time to play it...never been able to find a good easy to use overhaul mod for it.

 

[Arkaign]

I realize now that I really screwed up my post haha. I didn't mean that my 7400 and 6700k CPUs were bad by any means, just that it's expensive sometimes to find a decent Mobo and supporting cast of parts to build a rig up, so sometimes I'll horse swap or whatever so I can get something out the door.

 

[EliteRetard]

I realize now that I really screwed up my post haha. I didn't mean that my 7400 and 6700k CPUs were bad by any means, just that it's expensive sometimes to find a decent Mobo and supporting cast of parts to build a rig up, so sometimes I'll horse swap or whatever so I can get something out the door.

I don't think you screwed up anything. Your post just reminded me of a project somebody did, they asked people to send in junk CPUs for an art project.
They got tons of modern i7s and other totally good CPUs as "throwaways". I hate to see good hardware like that go unused, or even thrown away.

To me even a P4 or Athlon XP is still a usable CPU, AMD 64 (especially X2) are still OK, and C2D and Phenom II are still good.
Anything newer than that, like a 2500k is a great CPU. Best computer I've ever used, even to this day, is a 4790k ITX based system I built for a friend.
I have built newer systems, like an AMD Ryzen 2700 system...which runs like redacted. It feels worse than my Phenom II system.
That and it suffers every modern calamity possible, from sleep issues to display-port black screen problems and weird internet issues etc.
Thinking about it, I have never used display-port once where it was not a steaming pile of broken crap. HDMI is always woefully outdated and unacceptable for use.
Never had a problem with any other display standard before those...why can't we just get a new DVI standard?
Or whatever happened to super MHL? It was vastly superior to HDMI 2 all the way back in 2015, it could've been a great monitor connector and included power.

MHL Consortium Announces superMHL: New Standard & New Cable To Drive 8K TV

www.anandtech.com

Profanity is not allowed in the tech
sub-forums.

AT Mod Usandthem

 

[ElFenix]

^^ i have way more hdmi issues now than displayport. displayport had issues where windows would set the resolution to garbage when i turned the monitor off, but after mucking about in the registry i got that sorted.

i have a 4 core haswell itx system. i'd like a newer cpu but only because i want to run some VMs on it. moar cores would be pretty useful.

 

[EliteRetard]

^^ i have way more hdmi issues now than displayport. displayport had issues where windows would set the resolution to garbage when i turned the monitor off, but after mucking about in the registry i got that sorted.

i have a 4 core haswell itx system. i'd like a newer cpu but only because i want to run some VMs on it. moar cores would be pretty useful.

I should've mentioned in my last post that I also built a different 2700x based system, and it's much better than the 2700 though still suffers some issues.
The 2700x actually works and boosts correctly, though I still feel Ryzen was way overhyped and my experience has been tarnished by the lack of support.
There was another person in my thread that was able to confirm with the same 2700 CPU and MOBO how broken and bad it was (somehow still my fault).
I posted about the 2700 because it made me salty, but really it was the massive hate and torment I got for it that tipped me over and got me pissed off...

Interestingly I see you can now get a rebadged "2600" for $85:

Amazon.com: AMD Ryzen 5 1600 65W AM4 Processor with Wraith Stealth Cooler (YD1600BBAFBOX): Computers & Accessories

Buy AMD Ryzen 5 1600 65W AM4 Processor with Wraith Stealth Cooler (YD1600BBAFBOX): CPU Processors - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

www.amazon.com

Review:

AMD Ryzen 5 1600 AF CPU Review & Benchmarks: Best CPU Under $100 in 2020 | GamersNexus

stub This isn’t a revisit of the old AMD Ryzen 5 1600 – it’s a review of the new variant, named the AMD Ryzen 5 1600 “AF” by the community, dubbed as such for its SKU change from AE to AF. The AMD R5 1600 AF is a brand new CPU with an old, old name from 2017. It’s mostly an R5 2600, in that it’s...

www.gamersnexus.net

If I could've gotten my chip near that price I'd be willing to accept all the issues I've had with Ryzen up till now.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I have built newer systems, like an AMD Ryzen 2700 system...which runs like redacted. It feels worse than my Phenom II system.

Not this again. Please, just accept that you had some sort of anomaly (or Ryzen really doesn't like you), and move on. Plenty of us have decently-working Ryzen systems.

Granted, my personal system crashes like 2x a month, sometimes, but ... I've got a cutting-edge GPU, from a more-or-less new architecture, of which the bugs are still being worked out, I'm running all four sticks of DDR4, at clocks BEYOND what my mobo officially supports (even with "OC" for RAM), and I've tortured my CPU by running it at 117C for like a few hours. So yeah, I'm not totally surprised I'm getting crashes. Oh yeah, I'm nearly always mining in the background too. So I'm not totally surprised by my personal rig-stability issues.

My other rigs (Ryzen R5 1600), that are at stock, with GTX 1660ti video cards, rarely if ever crash. Pretty-much never.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, those $85 Ryzen R5 1600 "AF" model CPUs sound like a great deal to me. I'll try to snag one at some point, when I get some money. I would also like to snag a 3500 or 3500X, if it's cheap enough.

I've got (original, "AE") Ryzen R5 1600 CPUs in my secondary rig(s), and they perform just fine.

When I had a Ryzen R5 1600 in my main rig, I used to overclock it to 3.8Ghz. Even on 120mm water, which was strained by the OC (but still better than my air cooler), it was a tiny bit unstable, and I actually seem to get better "feel" to the system, WITHOUT the OC, even though the objective benchmarks would be higher. Something about the overall syncronization of the system, it felt like, was "off" when I was doing the manual OC.

Zen 2 architecture (Ryzen 3000-series CPUs), is so totally different, in terms of "Boost Behavior", and so much better at automatically optimizing performance and power usage. Basically, set it and forget it.

 

[EliteRetard]

Not this again. Please, just accept that you had some sort of anomaly (or Ryzen really doesn't like you), and move on. Plenty of us have decently-working Ryzen systems.

Granted, my personal system crashes like 2x a month, sometimes, but ... I've got a cutting-edge GPU, from a more-or-less new architecture, of which the bugs are still being worked out, I'm running all four sticks of DDR4, at clocks BEYOND what my mobo officially supports (even with "OC" for RAM), and I've tortured my CPU by running it at 117C for like a few hours. So yeah, I'm not totally surprised I'm getting crashes. Oh yeah, I'm nearly always mining in the background too. So I'm not totally surprised by my personal rig-stability issues.

My other rigs (Ryzen R5 1600), that are at stock, with GTX 1660ti video cards, rarely if ever crash. Pretty-much never.

Hey, there was another person who verified everything I was saying with the same CPU/MOBO.
I don't care if you guys all have the magic combo...I bought a top of the line CPU and MOBO and got terrible experience out of it.
I simply reported what I found and how I felt about the experience, you guys then proceeded to outright viciously attack me.
Even after I was proven right you guys insisted on pounding me down further, vilifying me for your own gratification.
"Oh well you're still a piece of s*t, expected to much...clearly you were demanding something you didn't deserve!"

Because I expected a 2700 to perform like a 2700x at a couple hundred MHz less?!
Because I expected the chip to perform as advertised and seen in reviews? It did not, as verified by another.

I have every right to report factual information. I have every right to share my thoughts and feelings based on this.
I'm not going to continue the argument here.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, it wasn't just that you were having problems. You "came out swinging", and put down AMD and the AM4 platform as a whole, as if your problematic experience was emblematic of the entire platform, when there are dozens or hundreds of peeps on this forum, that were and are (genuinely) happy customers, and had no-where near your problems.

I think, that if you simply came out and said, "hey guys, I bought X, and I'm having Y problems, can you help me?", you would have gotten a lot more positive attention and sympathy, rather than saying "Z platform SUCKS! It's BUGGY AND UNSTABLE! PLZ HELP!".

So, yeah, when you come out attacking other companies and other poster's experiences, then expect to be attacked.

Edit: And for the record, I have a friend that used to use an Athlon II X4 CPU for like 10 years, it was very beautifully stable. I convinced him last year (and sold him some of the parts at cost) to build an AM4 / Ryzen R3 1200 rig, w/RX 570 GPU. It hasn't been problem-free, completely. He had some BSODs last month.

(There is a thread, I think in OS sub-forum, talking about getting BSODs with Win10, but recently patches seemed to fix it. I don't know if that was the cause with my friend, or if his AMD video card drivers were causing it, or the sites that he was visiting, or what.)

 

[Insert_Nickname]

To me even a P4 or Athlon XP is still a usable CPU, AMD 64 (especially X2) are still OK, and C2D and Phenom II are still good.

I'm respectfully going to have to disagree with you on that. The Athlon XP is obsolete. It doesn't support SSE2, which is pretty much required for even 32bit software today. A late high frequency Prescott/Cedar Mill P4 might be useable in a pinch, but it's still a single core CPU. You do not want to run Win8(.1)/10 on it.

Later (Penryn+) C2D's and (K10) Athlon/Phenom's are still reasonable, if very basic, CPUs when paired with a modern GPU, like the GT1030. But again, you'll want some form of Linux on them. Because Win8(.1)/10, while it'll run on them, will completely and utterly bog down while doing the usual background Windows "housekeeping". Resulting in a very bad experience when you try to do anything else while this runs in the background. Updating 10 on my retro Athlon X3 445 is such a pain in the backside, I mostly have to leave it overnight to actually finish anything. And this is on an NVMe SSD (Intel 600p 512GB). I shudder to think how long it would take doing on a regular 7200RPM HDD.

I actually have quite a few Athlon XP's in my little CPU collection. The boards to actually run them have long since ('15 I think for the last one) given up the ghost, unfortunately. nForce2 FTW!

 

[EliteRetard]

Well, it wasn't just that you were having problems. You "came out swinging", and put down AMD and the AM4 platform as a whole, as if your problematic experience was emblematic of the entire platform, when there are dozens or hundreds of peeps on this forum, that were and are (genuinely) happy customers, and had no-where near your problems.

I think, that if you simply came out and said, "hey guys, I bought X, and I'm having Y problems, can you help me?", you would have gotten a lot more positive attention and sympathy, rather than saying "Z platform SUCKS! It's BUGGY AND UNSTABLE! PLZ HELP!".

So, yeah, when you come out attacking other companies and other poster's experiences, then expect to be attacked.

Edit: And for the record, I have a friend that used to use an Athlon II X4 CPU for like 10 years, it was very beautifully stable. I convinced him last year (and sold him some of the parts at cost) to build an AM4 / Ryzen R3 1200 rig, w/RX 570 GPU. It hasn't been problem-free, completely. He had some BSODs last month.

(There is a thread, I think in OS sub-forum, talking about getting BSODs with Win10, but recently patches seemed to fix it. I don't know if that was the cause with my friend, or if his AMD video card drivers were causing it, or the sites that he was visiting, or what.)

I entirely disagree with you, I didn't come out swinging or attacking at all.
I clearly and calmly stated what I bought, what I got, and how I felt about it.
Sure some of my frustration seeped in between the lines, and it was totally fair.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Updating 10 on my retro Athlon X3 445 is such a pain in the backside, I mostly have to leave it overnight to actually finish anything. And this is on an NVMe SSD (Intel 600p 512GB).

You have an Athlon II X3 CPU, with an NVMe SSD? Do tell... I think that there was an ASRock AM3+ board with an NVMe slot, towards the end of the platform's life.

 

[EliteRetard]

I'm respectfully going to have to disagree with you on that. The Athlon XP is obsolete. It doesn't support SSE2, which is pretty much required for even 32bit software today. A late high frequency Prescott/Cedar Mill P4 might be useable in a pinch, but it's still a single core CPU. You do not want to run Win8(.1)/10 on it.

Later (Penryn+) C2D's and (K10) Athlon/Phenom's are still reasonable, if very basic, CPUs when paired with a modern GPU, like the GT1030. But again, you'll want some form of Linux on them. Because Win8(.1)/10, while it'll run on them, will completely and utterly bog down while doing the usual background Windows "housekeeping". Resulting in a very bad experience when you try to do anything else while this runs in the background. Updating 10 on my retro Athlon X3 445 is such a pain in the backside, I mostly have to leave it overnight to actually finish anything. And this is on an NVMe SSD (Intel 600p 512GB). I shudder to think how long it would take doing on a regular 7200RPM HDD.

I actually have quite a few Athlon XP's in my little CPU collection. The boards to actually run them have long since ('15 I think for the last one) given up the ghost, unfortunately. nForce2 FTW!

I never said anyone should try running Win10 on an Athlon or P4.
But those computers can and do still run OK with XP for most everything people usually do nowadays...facebook and youtube.
My friends, fiances, father was still running a real estate business with one such computer until just last year when the HDD started to fail.

Win10 on a PhenomII is just fine for me, even on a 7200RPM HDD. In fact my computer runs better than most even much newer machines.
Though I'm a fairly competent user and I know how to reasonably customize/optimize software and not load my machine up with crap.
I do resent upgrading to Win10 though because it does nothing the older OS couldn't do, in fact it does much less.