Haswell, and the 10-year rig revisited

[VirtualLarry]

Some of you might have read my other thread about an IB Celeron and my goals of having a "ten year rig". One that I wouldn't have to do a platform upgrade for 10 years.

Well, I might have been a bit pre-mature buying an IB rig for that purpose, but I had that idea mostly AFTER I purchased it.

Assuming I do something similar for my personal rig, except get a Haswell. Do you all think that the HW platform is a good investment for a "ten year rig"?

 

[RU482]

I don't understand the concept. Why would you want to keep a computer for 10 years?

 

[2is]

Yeah, I'm not really understanding this inquiry either. Build the system, use it, if it lasts you 10 years, great.

 

[gmaster456]

It's worth a try. It'll be interesting. I know a few people still using ten year old machines. Just got rid of one that was 8-9 years old in one of the offices not too long ago. Poor guy had to put up with that thing. With some upgrades though I'm sure it he could have squeezed another year or two if he didn't kill himself by then. The thing had a 40gb HDD, a northwood P4 and 1gb of ram. A clean install of windows and some more ram and maybe it could have hung in there but the processor was too slow. We got him a new Ivy Bridge machine.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I don't understand the concept. Why would you want to keep a computer for 10 years?

Less e-waste, and computers aren't dramatically increasing in performance like they once were.

Edit: RE the P4 rig mentioned above. I'm not advocating every machine should be kept for 10 years. P4 is too old, slow, hot, power-hungry, etc. PCs from that generation should be replaced.

But given the slowdown of platform and CPU innovation in the PC space, it starts to make more sense to attempt to keep a modern platform with plenty of CPU power, plenty of RAM expansion, and low power consumption, for as long as possible if not gaming.

 

[Markfw]

Well, I have an X2 3800 rig that I used today. Its the only one that will run Dune 2000 for some reason. I think its 10 years old.

 

[cbn]

Less e-waste, and computers aren't dramatically increasing in performance like they once were.

Edit: RE the P4 rig mentioned above. I'm not advocating every machine should be kept for 10 years. P4 is too old, slow, hot, power-hungry, etc. PCs from that generation should be replaced.

But given the slowdown of platform and CPU innovation in the PC space, it starts to make more sense to attempt to keep a modern platform with plenty of CPU power, plenty of RAM expansion, and low power consumption, for as long as possible if not gaming.

Have you thought about waiting for "SATA Express" (SATA III's replacement) to appear on Haswell motherboards.

 

[Hulk]

On one hand if you are just going to be using it for web browsing, office applications, e-mail, etc then 10 years should be doable without much "pain of use."

If on the other hand you plan to get into more heavy duty use like 4k video editing, future games, and the like then you will probably feel the pain in 4 or 5 years.

I am typing this on a 2006 Dell laptop which I upgraded to full RAM capacity and an SSD last year and for basic tasks it doesn't slow me down at all. That's 7 years no sweat. While I have the urge to upgrade for a better screen, longer battery life, and a a better/lighter form factor, I just can't justify the expense with two small children in the house if you know what I mean.

 

[Yuriman]

On one hand if you are just going to be using it for web browsing, office applications, e-mail, etc then 10 years should be doable without much "pain of use."

If on the other hand you plan to get into more heavy duty use like 4k video editing, future games, and the like then you will probably feel the pain in 4 or 5 years.

I am typing this on a 2006 Dell laptop which I upgraded to full RAM capacity and an SSD last year and for basic tasks it doesn't slow me down at all. That's 7 years no sweat. While I have the urge to upgrade for a better screen, longer battery life, and a a better/lighter form factor, I just can't justify the expense with two small children in the house if you know what I mean.

Inspiron 15.6"? I gave mine to my sister but it's still a fantastic machine. 8600GT does alright for non-AAA titles too, and it wasn't even high-end when it was new.

_____

What are you aiming to do with your 10-year rig? I'd suggest making sure you get a GPU with display port and build it to be quiet, the very fast rigs from 2003 is simply noisy slow rigs today.

 

[SPBHM]

Well, I have an X2 3800 rig that I used today. Its the only one that will run Dune 2000 for some reason. I think its 10 years old.

x2 is from 2005, exactly 10 years ago we are talking about Athlon XP and Pentium 4 Northwood

my Athlon 64 X2 PC is also active and working well,

 

[2is]

exactly 10 years ago we are talking about Athlon XP and Pentium 4 Northwood

I have a box with just that in it (Northwood) and it's too slow even for browsing pages with moderate amount of media on it. Speaking of which, I need to put that in the trunk so I can drop it off at the next electronic recycling spot I happen to drive by.

 

[Yuriman]

I have a box with just that in it (Northwood) and it's too slow even for browsing pages with moderate amount of media on it. Speaking of which, I need to put that in the trunk so I can drop it off at the next electronic recycling spot I happen to drive by.

I use a 3.0c rig (with an added Geforce 210) for Netflix and other movies, connected to a 50" LCD TV. It's a wonderful torrent (legal torrents!) + HTPC + browse on the couch machine.

 

[Zorander]

You cannot reliably predict the typical computational demands in 10 years time and, for that reason, how today's CPUs will cope (whether badly, barely, just fine or very well).

That said, I suspect it will only cope with text-based stuff and sites with 'antiquated' flash contents, for similar reasons the P4 2.26-2.67GHz (IIRC the mainstream CPUs from 2003) struggles with today's content-heavy sites and 1080p videos except for emails and documents. There will also be so much lag even with moderately heavy workload the user may be driven mad and upgrade.

Regards.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You cannot reliably predict the typical computational demands in 10 years time and, for that reason, how today's CPUs will cope (whether badly, barely, just fine or very well).

That said, I suspect it will only cope with text-based stuff and sites with 'antiquated' flash contents, for similar reasons the P4 2.26-2.67GHz (IIRC the mainstream CPUs from 2003) struggles with today's content-heavy sites and 1080p videos except for emails and documents. There will also be so much lag even with moderately heavy workload the user may be driven mad and upgrade.

Regards.

I don't think using a P4 is a good example, even if it is, in fact, 10 years old.

Look at how the C2D has aged, in comparison. From 2006 until today, is what, 8 years? And yet, they are still totally viable, assuming that you max the RAM out and add an SSD.

After the quantum leap forward in performance with the P4 to C2D transition, further CPU performance increases were much more subtle, on the order of a few miniscule percentage points each new generation.

Intel is now much more concerned with lowering power consumption and increasing IGP performance, than they are with raw CPU performance. They also don't seem to want to go beyond quad-cores in the consumer segment, even though quad-cores were introduced in 2006 as well.

Edit: Then again, we may have 4K video and H265 by then (in 2 more years), which might cripple the C2D rigs just as much as 1080P flash video cripples P4 rigs today. Who knows.

 

[Sleepingforest]

I think that since Haswell has a number of issues (like the USB 3.0) you may want to wait until Broadwell or at least more platform maturity before committing for 10 years. There also the interfaces (SATA Express, PCIe 4.0, USB 4.0, DDR4 and so on) that may evolve during the next few years. You should try to get on at the beginning of at least a few of these to avoid dead-end hardware.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

If it wasn't for the fact that I could get a whole bunch of Phenom II X6 1045Ts cheap ($80 with motherboards), a lot of my ancilliary and folks' machines would still be good old 65nm C2Ds (E4300s, E6600s) - mostly 4GB RAM and 3 - 3.4GHz.

Still plenty fine.

 

[2is]

I use a 3.0c rig (with an added Geforce 210) for Netflix and other movies, connected to a 50" LCD TV. It's a wonderful torrent (legal torrents!) + HTPC + browse on the couch machine.

I couldn't even get an Athlon X2 to play certain HD Netflix streams smoothly. Not sure how you're doing it with a P4C. Power consumption and performance would make it a horrible HTPC machine for my uses. I've since transitioned my HTPC duties to a C2D e7300 + HD5450 (which was also used with the X2 machine) and it's been great.

 

[cbn]

I don't think using a P4 is a good example, even if it is, in fact, 10 years old.

Look at how the C2D has aged, in comparison. From 2006 until today, is what, 8 years? And yet, they are still totally viable, assuming that you max the RAM out and add an SSD.

After the quantum leap forward in performance with the P4 to C2D transition, further CPU performance increases were much more subtle, on the order of a few miniscule percentage points each new generation.

Intel is now much more concerned with lowering power consumption and increasing IGP performance, than they are with raw CPU performance. They also don't seem to want to go beyond quad-cores in the consumer segment, even though quad-cores were introduced in 2006 as well.

That is a good analogy.

Example: At one point I had a Pentium III Coppermine 650 Mhz. I believe that processor was made in late 1999. I got rid of the system long before 10 years was up! ...but if it had lasted that long I'd have a hard time believing it would be sufficient for very much at all in late 2009.

A 2006 desktop system (with C2D or C2Q), on the other hand, I could easily see working well till 2016.

 

[Dark Shroud]

I have a Pentium 4 that I bought in '03 or '04 and I used it until Sandy Bridge came out.

It booted slow but was fine for web browsing and office use. I had also put a 4670 DDR3 in it towards the end there. It also had a Sound Blaster X-FI. So it could actually do web browsing and videos pretty well.

It was shit for trying to do much of anything else. The biggest hurdles were it wasn't x64 capable and it did not have PCI Ex 2.0. Follow that up with all for memory slots only supporting 1GB max of PC 3200 ram. The mobo wouldn't even let me upgrade to a Pentium D.


If you want to try a 10 year PC build make sure it has stuff like Thunderbolt ports and quality chips in the motherboard. I'm waiting to see how Haswell does before I decide if I'm going to upgrade or not.

My current mobo is going to need upgrading soon anyway. P67 & H6x boards have garbage third party chips sets in them.

 

[Zorander]

Hard to say indeed what sort of computational demands we will have in 10 years time. If it does stagnate and barely increases from today, then a Haswell will cope. But if 4K video, H265 or some new stuff comes around and pushes even today's quad- & hex-core CPUs to the limit, then a Haswell will just be rubbish then.

I picked the P4 as it was current exactly 10 years ago. As personal example, I built a 2.66GHz Northwood rig for a friend and it was genuinely fast I thought it would last many years (possibly like forever). I also built a X2 3800+ rig in 2005 (my first dual-core) and had the same thought. None of those rigs lasted very long, especially as soon as 1080p videos came around.

I'm not making the same assumption with my current Lynnfield rig (which is still doing fine currently), nor will I for any upcoming CPU architecture. They all become obsolete in time and 10 years is a very long stretch in the computer world.

Regards.

Edit: There is also need to be mindful of any new peripheral standards. IIRC we had only USB 1 in 2003. Try moving data off a 16GB-32GB USB stick on one of these...

I don't think using a P4 is a good example, even if it is, in fact, 10 years old.

Look at how the C2D has aged, in comparison. From 2006 until today, is what, 8 years? And yet, they are still totally viable, assuming that you max the RAM out and add an SSD.

After the quantum leap forward in performance with the P4 to C2D transition, further CPU performance increases were much more subtle, on the order of a few miniscule percentage points each new generation.

Intel is now much more concerned with lowering power consumption and increasing IGP performance, than they are with raw CPU performance. They also don't seem to want to go beyond quad-cores in the consumer segment, even though quad-cores were introduced in 2006 as well.

Edit: Then again, we may have 4K video and H265 by then (in 2 more years), which might cripple the C2D rigs just as much as 1080P flash video cripples P4 rigs today. Who knows.

 

[biostud]

As been said before, besides gaming and other very CPU intensive programs I can't imagine what a Haswell Quad core + SSD wouldn't be able to handle in 10 years. But if you look at performance/watt then you'll definitely get something better down the road. Specially since it looks like more of the heavy computing is moved to the cloud.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Basically, I want to get in on the newest features, before they: 1) move to BGA-only CPUs (soldered on motherboards), and 2) get rid of PCI-Express, just to thwart the discrete GPU mfgs. Basically, I want to build a "big" (opposite of NUC, where desktops are heading) rig, while I still can, and continue to use it for as long as I can (as long as it is supported by OSes).

 

[2is]

If your goal is keeping it for 10 years BGA or LGA is completely meaningless. Either way, after 10 years that board is going to get replaced when you upgrade. I still don't think you've thought this idea through much. Buy what you're going to buy and use it as long as you're willing/able to use it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If your goal is keeping it for 10 years BGA or LGA is completely meaningless.

Not totally. If the board dies in 5 years, but I don't feel like upgrading (perhaps the new platform has more-intrusive DRM), the if I have an LGA board, then I won't have to re-purchase a CPU.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Obviously Haswell would be better for a 10 year period. But the entire concept of a 10 year period is silly. You need every single component to work that long, and you need to be able to replace any defect component within reasonable price, should it happen. Not to mention all the performance related issues.

Had you bought the best 10 years ago. It would be something like a singlecore P4 2.8Ghz/K7 with a FX5800/9700 card and whatever limited memory it may have had.