has anyone noticed that cpu speed doesnt matter anymore

[hans007]

i just got a laptop, a 700mhz one. i used to have a 1ghz athlon and well i cant notice the difference.

I think computers are starting to move towards convenience, i mean win2k runs blazing fast on this laptop and win xp probably will too, so why would anyone need a 1.7 ghz except for games. like i see people getting book pcs, and imacs and other PCs with other "features".


Anyways what do you guys think

 

[TunaBoo]

You only need so many MHz to surf the web. You only need so many MHz to type a paper.

I see a BIGGER branch of PC's in the future. Right now a "low end" system would be a 600 MHz celeron or Duron, and a High end would be a p4 1.7GHz or an Athlon 1.33 GHz.

I could see a 1 GHz chip being sold for normal computers, and a 3-4 GHz chip sold for gamers/graphic designers etc.

Not only does a slower CPU save a few bucks off the CPU cost, it allows passive cooling (A 1 GHz passive coole CPU is not a far stretch). Passive cooling makes less noise and is more reliable, both of which a web surfer and a typer would appreciate.

 

[MulLa]

True it's doesn't matter for general office use / surfing the web. Even for games these days it's more dependent on the graphics card rather than your CPU. A fast CPU is still needed for some more specialised use such as CAD / video editing etc...

 

[nortexoid]

a fast cpu isn't even required for gaming, as the graphics card usually becomes the bottleneck in 3d APIs.

faster cpus are required for mostly non-consumer level tasks, though w/ the advent of video/audio encoding, they do show useful (i.e. encoding divx)...

i agree that cooler cpus should be on the priority list of technological progression....

.13 micron, passive cooling, 1ghz+ and a damn fast GPU....

 

[TunaBoo]

<< a fast cpu isn't even required for gaming, as the graphics card usually becomes the bottleneck in 3d APIs.

faster cpus are required for mostly non-consumer level tasks, though w/ the advent of video/audio encoding, they do show useful (i.e. encoding divx)...

i agree that cooler cpus should be on the priority list of technological progression....

.13 micron, passive cooling, 1ghz+ and a damn fast GPU.... >>



Some games like CS, are 80% CPU dependent.

Bottleneck is a lot of stuff like crappy PCI bus speeds, multipliers of 10 - 17x. I mean think if is a athlon 1.33 GHz could be run at like 2 * 667. Mmmmhhph. Im sure CPU would get more data than it could handle, so not a HUGE deal...

And yes, the day integrated video does what a geforce 3 does now, will be a pimp day

 

[Duvie]

Like everyone said running excel or surfing the web yeah it is overkill right now...and for most people even ion gaming most likely the vid card is the bottle neck and the performance gain gets minimized...

However being that I stepped up from 750 tbird to 1.1 tbird I can tell you mhz still does matter for me...

I rip and encode dvd movies to divx and fps boost is sizeable which amounts to 2-3 hours in time to encode...3d rendering in cadd very noticeable...encoding wav files to mp3s very noticeable...playback of certain high bitrate divx movies very noticeable...and the list goes on....

I guess you must be one of the ppl who do the first thing mentioned...huh!!!

&quot;has anyone noticed that cpu speed doesnt matter anymore&quot;

pretty bold statement!!!

 

[TravisBickle]

people have been saying CPU speed doesn't matter anymore for a long time. particularly from 600MHz. it is only true for the humdrum office app person. look how well a Voodoo 5 does with a 1GHz CPU. or how much quicker a movie will be to encode. we'll find uses for the extra speed, don't you worry

 

[MrWhiteUK]

What makes me laugh is the way people judge how fast a machine is, how many times have you heard someone in a shop looking at a top of the range machine go

&quot;Whooo look how fast the start menu is!!&quot;
&quot;Look how quick it start up/shuts down!&quot;


If you put two machines next to each other one say a P2 233 and a high end Ghz Athlon and just messed about through Windows you'd be hard pushed to notice a difference.
But start to compile a 3D rendering and the difference will be huge.

People who buy 1.33Ghz just to play games are wasting their money.

I think I'm gonner start a business selling 233Mhz comps rebadged to be 1.33Ghz Athlons but just use a tweak program in windows to speed the start menu up a bit, ps2rate to higher the mouse refresh, remove all ATA100 controllers so it boots faster, speed up the windows sound effects etc. Voila! Joe Public thinks he's brought a Screamer!


Peace

 

[OS]

yeah, i'd say that for 90% of the people out there, cpu speed has stopped being a serious consideration. Chipset, ram type/amount, hd speed/size, monitor size are bigger considerations to most people for getting a responsive system imo.

In my case, I'm still running dual celeron 400s and it suits my needs great. Having lots of ram and lots of physical hds affects the usefulness of my system more than having more mhz. Don't game at all these days, and I plan on keeping this system as long as I can. Which will probably be a while if you exclude games and if no new killer apps come out.

 

[rc5]

Yeah, for girlish users, a 600Mhz cpu is sufficient.

For power users like me, there will never be too much cpu power.

So are all distributed computation users.

 

[damocles]

It matters for me at work. I use large Excel spreadsheets and cpu makes a big difference

 

[DynaOne]

It matters to me. A typical FEA solution with 20,000 degrees of freedom took about an hour on my PII-400/384meg Ram. Takes about 15 minutes on my PIII800/1Gig RAM. 20,0000 DOF was all I could do before, now I can go to 50,000 with the extra RAM.

Just added a 2nd CPU (supposed to make a 32% difference with my software - haven't benched it yet).

Would I like dual 2 gig CPU's with 2 Gig memory? - you bet.
DynaOne

 

[Raincity]

<< It matters for me at work. I use large Excel spreadsheets and cpu makes a big difference >>

I can tell also with Excel since alot of the sheets I work with have a 2500+ entries. Trying to work on these sheets with a K6-2 400 machine with 128 megs of ram is awfully slow.

Rain

 

[DynaOne]

I think Red's 90% number is probably right. My last 3 generation machines are in productive use by friends and family.
DynaOne

 

[BlackWob]

Haven't you guys wondered why most OEMs stopped coming up with new systems every week after 900mhz was hit? They don't even feel a need to spend R&amp;D time to make a nice 1.33ghz Athlon system, because:

1. Joe Public won't spend $2500 from an OEM to buy a system to surf the web when for $900 he can do the same thing.

2. Anyone that really needs a 1.33ghz Athlon will either build themselves or have it built through a custom builder [IE for video editing peeps they will have a company that specializes in DV Systems build their system.]

 

[DynaOne]

He's right - also, have you noticed that the systems offered by Best Buy and CompUSA tend to be toward the lower end now - and under $1,000. If you don't have a &quot;compelling&quot; use for the speed, you are wasting $.
DynaOne

 

[mithrandir2001]

Current rock-bottom CPU prices prolly wouldn't exist if lots of MHz was needed to operate modern software.

My work PC has a P3/733 and it is &quot;silly fast&quot;. If ever the system seems &quot;slow&quot;, it's either due to the hard drive or memory (upgrading it from 128 to 256MB made a big difference since it runs Win2K).

If it wasn't for games, I could be quite happy with even a Celeron-600 class system. I'm not complaining that GHz power is so cheap these days, but when people upgrade their 1GHz CPUs with 1.4GHz CPUs, I can only laugh at the folly.

 

[VBboy]

Obviously, you kids don't do any of the following:

Frequent anti-virus scanning (when the files are cached in memory and only the CPU, not HD has to do the very intensive work).

3d rendering or modeling, sound processing, mpeg encoding/decoding.

Heavy multitasking - playing a DVD while downloading something from the web, etc.

Programming - compilation is all about the CPU! Try compiling a 100-file project in VC++, and it will take a few minutes.

Playing games with a GOOD videocard where it doesn't hold back your measily Duron-Duron 800

Doing a lot of compression/decompression with files (Zip, Rar, etc)

...
There are more.

Don't say the CPU speed doesn't matter - say you don't know how to use it

 

[TunaBoo]

<< Obviously, you kids don't do any of the following:

Frequent anti-virus scanning (when the files are cached in memory and only the CPU, not HD has to do the very intensive work).

3d rendering or modeling, sound processing, mpeg encoding/decoding.

Heavy multitasking - playing a DVD while downloading something from the web, etc.

Programming - compilation is all about the CPU! Try compiling a 100-file project in VC++, and it will take a few minutes.

Playing games with a GOOD videocard where it doesn't hold back your measily Duron-Duron 800

Doing a lot of compression/decompression with files (Zip, Rar, etc)

...
There are more.

Don't say the CPU speed doesn't matter - say you don't know how to use it >>



Your post is right on with 2 exceptions:
MPEG DECODING doesn't need more than 600 MHz. Encoding it is nice to have more, but not to watch.
Downloading something from the web uses very little CPU resources.

 

[dowxp]

i just moved my fasttrack array to a 1.1ghz kt7 system. i cannot tell the difference. in fact, hdtach is slowed down by 20mps! its at 55 now.

hdtach on cusl2-c p3 933

it boots slower, so all i see is slowness on this athlon. i dont cpu matters anymore, while i can see that it could in many exceptions. i think the next goal of mine is not palamino or tualatin, but scsi. hard drive speeds matter in my mind now. i borrowed by friends board and chip while hes on vacation and im selling the cusl2 and p3 933 to go smp+u160 scsi.

 

[dowxp]

<<

<< Obviously, you kids don't do any of the following:

Frequent anti-virus scanning (when the files are cached in memory and only the CPU, not HD has to do the very intensive work).

3d rendering or modeling, sound processing, mpeg encoding/decoding.

Heavy multitasking - playing a DVD while downloading something from the web, etc.

Programming - compilation is all about the CPU! Try compiling a 100-file project in VC++, and it will take a few minutes.

Playing games with a GOOD videocard where it doesn't hold back your measily Duron-Duron 800

Doing a lot of compression/decompression with files (Zip, Rar, etc)

...
There are more.

Don't say the CPU speed doesn't matter - say you don't know how to use it >>



Your post is right on with 2 exceptions:
MPEG DECODING doesn't need more than 600 MHz. Encoding it is nice to have more, but not to watch.
Downloading something from the web uses very little CPU resources. >>




actually, if its a high kps divx movie, say, 1500, you will need cpu for FULL screen mode. i encode that high on some stuff. i dunno about downloading, but im pretty sure it really depends on how fast your transferring. for example, a 56k line needs nothing, but a movie transfer at a LAN party eats up alot.

all of those stuff above i do alot. im just not that impatient. i will say this though. i dv edit alot. CPU HELPS ALOT! thats why im going SMP.. =) dual 700e -> 933. of course, pentium.

 

[Hawk]

<< Frequent anti-virus scanning (when the files are cached in memory and only the CPU, not HD has to do the very intensive work). >>



How many times do you have to scan for viruses a day? Like continuously or something? If YOU know how to use your computer, maybe you wouldn't need to use one cause you wouldn't do anything dumb to infect yourself.



<< Heavy multitasking - playing a DVD while downloading something from the web, etc. >>



Hmm, downloading AND watching a DVD huh, man, I am downloading 20 files right now, I can baby this baby slooooooooooowing down, yeah, like downloading is &quot;heavy&quot; multitasking.

About a month ago I had to use my P150 laptop w/ 48 MB of RAM for a while, and surfing the web was barely any slower. It was actually surprisingly fast. Compiling was noticably slower, but this is a P150 for crying out loud. I am going to try and keep my current computer for a couple years (who am I kidding). =)

 

[DynaOne]

VB,
All of your examples are good ones - but look at what the vast majority of PC owners are doing -
-surfing the web
-e-mail
-word processing
-small spreadsheets
-home finance/banking

I think the 10% number (and I'm one of them), can truly justify spending top $ on the latest hardware all the time.

DynaOne

 

[w74656]

CPU speed matter for me, try play dixv on a P233, or compiling C++, or playing CS at 640x480, heck, even excel takes 20 sec to open...

 

[mackstann]

Everyone in this thread seems very angry and quite frankly, you are all scaring me.

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