On the threshold of "Pleasurable Computing".

[Innokentij]

Granted, on CPU-Z 1.75.0's benchmark, my ST score is around 2250, whereas a 4.0Ghz i7-6700K is around 2050. So I'm already faster than a 6700K in ST, which is notable.

Don't fool yourself.

 

[2is]

Demand for tech products is down, because consumer spending and disposable income is down. Pretty straightforward.

It's not simply that "PC are lasting longer these days, so people are buying less". Sure, that might be part of it, but it's not the whole picture, and what about those companies that aren't "PC companies", like Qualcomm? The whole "people aren't upgrading their PCs" doesn't explain the downturn of those companies, but the entire global economy tanking quite a bit does. Jimmy can't afford a new shiny cellphone every year.

Edit: And consumer spending and disposable income is down, because of wage stagnation, and the erosion of the middle-class.

It actually does because even mobile innovation has stagnated. The truth is going to be a combination of factors. To point to one and say THIS is the reason is simply wrong. So no, it absolutely isn't as straight forward as you think it is.

When Qualcomm was making money hand over fist not everyone had a smart phone and new phones had significant improvements over the previous. The market is now saturated and everyone owns one. New devices offering less return on investment. I'm typing this on an iPad mini 2, the reason I'm not typing it on an iPad mini 4 isn't because I can't afford one. It's because it doesn't provide a substantial enough upgrade for me to retire this one.

 

[nerp]

The refresh cycle for PCs has in fact lengthened by quite a bit. People tend not to replace computers. Some are not replacing them at all and going for Chromebooks and devices like the Surface or going for a laptop. The vast, overwhelming majority of people never upgrade the computer they buy.

Tablet sales have also tanked because people don't need to upgrade them when their iPad 2 mini or air still works great for them.

 

[hhhd1]

The fact is, people who paid $200/$300 for an i5/i7 Sandybridge 5 years ago, still have absolutely no reason to upgrade, unless you do specific things like (high-res gaming/encoding/..etc).

This is unlike the old days, when you had to upgrade from pentium 1 to pentium 2 to 3 to 4 to dual core to c2d ..etc.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

The fact is, people who paid $200/$300 for an i5/i7 Sandybridge 5 years ago, still have absolutely no reason to upgrade, unless you do specific things like (high-res gaming/encoding/..etc).

This is unlike the old days, when you had to upgrade from pentium 1 to pentium 2 to 3 to 4 to dual core to c2d ..etc.

Or even gaming and encoding, frankly.

But you had to upgrade with previous CPUs? Humbug. Most early Pentiums were slower than the 486DX4/100 and 133. The first couple releases of Pentium IIIs were a hard sell to anybody with a PII-450 or OC'd C300A, and nobody upgraded from a Tualatin PIII to any single-core Pentium 4 unless they were forced to at gunpoint.

IMO enthusiasts are just looking for an excuse to upgrade, not a need. Non-enthusiasts, as always, are replacing their computers when they break, or when there is a game-changing "killer app" that their existing machines simply can't do.

 

[SuperJaw]

..etc.

Just noticed your sig.... awesome!:thumbsup:

 

[SuperJaw]

If you want snappy, you go Skylake with Speedshift support (MSI mobo for example.).

Assuming you dont run full speed all the time.

Can you comment any more about Speedshift and how to tell if it's enabled or supported? Most of what I've read seems to indicate it's an OS level thing for Skylake chips not a hardware motherboard feature.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9751/examining-intel-skylake-speed-shift-more-responsive-processors

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Proces...sted-Significant-User-Experience-Improvements

 

[hhhd1]

But you had to upgrade with previous CPUs? Humbug. Most early Pentiums were slower than the 486DX4/100 and 133. The first couple releases of Pentium IIIs were a hard sell to anybody with a PII-450 or OC'd C300A, and nobody upgraded from a Tualatin PIII to any single-core Pentium 4 unless they were forced to at gunpoint.

i get your point, maybe not every 2 successive generations were enough to warrant an upgrade, .. but lets say if you are 3~4 generations behind, you had to upgrade, lets not forget that with every few generations ram size and speed increased too and that was a huge factor.

personally, my upgrade path was:
486
pentium 1 233mhz
pentium 4 1.8ghz
core duo in a laptop 1.6ghz
core 2 duo desktop 1.8ghz OC'd to 2.4/2.6ghz (it was actually pentium conroe chip)

each time was a 'must' upgrade, the performance difference was huge.

 

[hhhd1]

Due to budget reasons, my last 2 laptops where:
- SandyBridge 2C/4T @ 2.1ghz (i3-2310m)
- IvyBridge 2C/2T @2.4ghz (pentium 2020m)

in both cases was using the same SSD.
the one with i3 with 4 threads felt much faster and snappier in allot of different situations,

I would have to say that if the budget allowed, 2C/4T should be the minimum.

 

[Magic Carpet]

and nobody upgraded from a Tualatin PIII to any single-core Pentium 4 unless they were forced to at gunpoint.

So true, my Pentium III-S was still in service until I switched to AMD Athlon X2. But that happened in late 2005. Skipped the whole P4 family entirely (mostly because of the very poor performance per watt metric).

And I moved from that P3 mostly because of ram speed/size bottlenecks. CPU speed was still fine for my usage back then.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Can you comment any more about Speedshift and how to tell if it's enabled or supported? Most of what I've read seems to indicate it's an OS level thing for Skylake chips not a hardware motherboard feature.

Its very easy. Download hwinfo64.

If you see SST as green. It means its enabled. If you see SST as red, it means CPU support but not enabled in BIOS. Either due to disabled in BIOS or currently lack of support in the BIOS. You need Windows 10 as well if I recall right. But who wouldn't use Windows 10 with Skylake to begin with.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Microsoft might never fully support SpeedShift in anything other than Windows 10+. Not that it exactly matters much for a desktop computer anyway. This tech is mostly useful in laptops and other battery powered devices.

 

[ShintaiDK]

This tech is mostly useful in laptops and other battery powered devices.

I disagree. Its quite noticeable on my desktop.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I disagree. Its quite noticeable on my desktop.

Compared to what, high performance mode?

 

[ShintaiDK]

Compared to what, high performance mode?

Standard.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Standard.

Yeah, it might be noticeable in Balanced. Personally, I run high performance, because the power consumption isn't so much more (definitely not a big deal for a desktop computer) but the performance is better in my workloads. Balanced vs High Performance was a big deal ~10 years ago, when processors consumed so much watts at higher clocks. Not so much anymore (Haswell/Skylake+).

 

[ShintaiDK]

Yep, the clear alternative to SST is obviously the high performance mode.

I just did a quick test, and the penalty on a 6700K for high performance mode is miniscule. The increase for the IA cores goes from ~2W to ~4-5W in idle. A lot lower than I expected I must admit.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Yep, the clear alternative to SST is obviously the high performance mode.

I just did a quick test, and the penalty on a 6700K for high performance mode is miniscule. The increase for the IA cores goes from ~2W to ~4-5W in idle. A lot lower than I expected I must admit.

Yep. Haswell processors show similar minuscule gains in power when switching the profiles/clocks. Not so, with anything older though. This feature is most useful in laptops where every mV counts, so you can run Balanced without performance degradation.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Yep. Haswell processors show similar minuscule gains in power when switching the profiles/clocks. Not so, with anything older though. This feature is most useful in laptops where every mV counts, so you can run Balanced without performance degradation.

You are right, my 4670 also shows miniscule increases. It raises the question if its even worth not running maximum speed on a Haswell/Broadwell/Skylake desktop system (Unless you got SST enabled). It also removes any concerns about power saving on a BCLK OCed non K.

I just learned something new

Back with my IB system, the change was rather steep. But 2-3W penalty with a 6700K top SKU

 

[Magic Carpet]

You are right, my 4670 also shows miniscule increases. It raises the question if its even worth not running maximum speed on a Haswell/Broadwell/Skylake desktop system (Unless you got SST enabled).

So yeah, unless mobo/cpu supports SST, it's best to leave High Perfomance mode enabled on all builds equal or newer to Haswell. There are other ways we can easily find to save ~5w of power without any performance drop.

It also removes any concerns about power saving on a BCLK OCed non K.

This is something, I haven't tested yet but very much would like to.

I just learned something new

My motto is, learn something new every day

Back with my IB system, the change was rather steep. But 2-3W penalty with a 6700K top SKU

Yeah, the older the cpu the bigger delta difference you will observe. After Haswell, I stopped paying attention to this on a desktop PC.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

i get your point, maybe not every 2 successive generations were enough to warrant an upgrade, .. but lets say if you are 3~4 generations behind, you had to upgrade, lets not forget that with every few generations ram size and speed increased too and that was a huge factor.

personally, my upgrade path was:
486
pentium 1 233mhz
pentium 4 1.8ghz
core duo in a laptop 1.6ghz
core 2 duo desktop 1.8ghz OC'd to 2.4/2.6ghz (it was actually pentium conroe chip)

each time was a 'must' upgrade, the performance difference was huge.

Well, yeah, in that case you're looking at a 5x+ speed boost every time you turn around. I've known people (cheapskates?) who, on principle, would hold out for more than that, even.

Upgrading a CPU - even to one that's, say, 50% faster, which hasn't really been possible since all the Core2Quad holdouts bought 2500Ks (assuming you're buying at the same place in the product stack and not, say, going from a Pentium to an i7 or something) - isn't going to change much of what you use the computer for, or what you can do with it, it's just going to make the stuff you do work a little better - you might not even notice. (I didn't, really.)

Certainly not on par with the truly generational leaps (like 233MHz to 1.8GHz.) I'd rather spend the money on accessories, storage, or pizza. Or really fancy speakers. Everybody forgets that part.

Then again, there's a ham radio store and telescope shop near me that has cash registers running on 25 year old Apple computers. Sometimes there's an amount of CPU performance that's sufficient for the application and that's the end of it.

 

[CHADBOGA]

Not that I was using it just because I wanted a little variety to break up the monotony of using a single PC. (One reason I have multiple PCs to use. I guess it's kind of like having a Harem.)

Yeah but every girl in your Harem is fat and ugly. D:

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

You kicked this one back up a stack of posts almost a week old to do that...?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah but every girl in your Harem is fat and ugly. D:

Yeah, well, they're mostly Intel-based, so I guess that fits...

(Do they make Plus-sized bunny suits? LOL.)

Edit: Since this thread is devolving, Mods can lock this thread, thanks.