Poll - How much CPU power do you really need?

[aarontpx]

For personal use, do you really "need" a cpu that can drive a GTX690 or that can encode a DVD in a few minutes quicker than a less powerful one? I dont know, but it is sure nice to have. Even though I dont need it, I would still like to have a 3770, and anyone that can afford it and wishes to get more cpu performance than they "need", more power to them. One thing I like about computers is that you can pretty much get a top end system for not a lot of money, relative to say a fancy car or house

To illustrate, the midrange buyers guide system, at about half the cost of my latest build, is probably 90-95+% the performance in almost every scenario.

I bought an i7 because I wanted one, not because I "needed" it Would an i5 have been sufficient? Yes.

Does spending more on components necessarily translate into better "performance"? The answer is clearly no.

 

[akugami]

I picked "I'm good. I can't really use more compute"

I was actually fine on a Q9550 that I just upgraded from. I'm currently on an i-3770k with 16GB RAM and a 240GB SSD. I know Haswell is around the corner but Microcenter talked me into buying a 3770k at $250'ish after tax.

So what do I do? Run at most 2 VM's concurrently for software testing. A little bit of light photo editing with Photoshop Express and Photoshop Lightroom. I might encode a video here and there but I usually schedule those overnight. I play the occasional game but with 3 kids, I simply don't have the time to play games enough that I'd care about maxing out the latest game.

Not exactly taxing the system or doing anything that it can't handle right now.

 

[UaVaj]

i7-3770k here

as soon current games can utilize all 4 core. would not have to oc to maximize 2.5 core.

 

[biostud]

I need more performance/watt

 

[PrincessFrosty]

A few games could use more CPU speed, Planetside 2 really kicks the crap out of my 2500k @ 4.9Ghz, that's mostly the games fault though, it's badly optimised for multi-core.

 

[Face2Face]

A few games could use more CPU speed, Planetside 2 really kicks the crap out of my 2500k @ 4.9Ghz, that's mostly the games fault though, it's badly optimised for multi-core.

A game that kicks the crap out of a CPU that bad? That's scary....

 

[UaVaj]

SC2 beat the crap out of i7-3770k too.

looks like most of the time only 1.5 core is being used.

 

[Subyman]

To be totally honest, I'm fine with compute. Sure a few games may benefit, but I don't encode a lot of video or audio. Sometimes when I do batch processes in photoshop it takes a little time but most of my slow downs are from data transfer, not compute.

 

[colonelciller]

just bought a new Intel CPU... still need dramatically more compute

 

[colonelciller]

I need more performance/watt

why?

 

[jumpncrash]

I voted more, because more!

But ot be honest I don't need more

 

[GLeeM]

Everybody knows that we don't need more than:

640K memory on a 4.77 megahertz 8088 CPU running DOS

 

[Ajay]

I'm good for now, though a few apps could use ALLOT more compute power.

 

[MisterMac]

I hope everyone for the of humanity in general and everything else never answers that question with:

"Nope - i'm good!".


Give us the power - we'll find a accepted use for it

 

[Gikaseixas]

happy with what i have but more is always welcome
Both rigs on my sig perform very well and with SSD's i really feel i don't need to upgrade anytime soon.

Problem is, if Haswell amazes me in some way i'll loose comon sense and spend $$ right away.

 

[BeauCharles]

Have a Phenom II X4 980 @ 4.0 Ghz and its almost always fine. A few games could use a little more power, but its not worth a complete switch to a new motherboard and processor to get it. Maybe in a year or so.

 

[JimmiG]

My current CPU is usually enough. However I'm a flight simmer, and FSX needs all the single-threaded performance you can throw at it. With some addons, people with SB's at 4.8+ GHz are getting < 20 FPS.

 

[Ajay]

Problem is, if Haswell amazes me in some way i'll loose comon sense and spend $$ right away.

LOL! A clear case of upgraditis. I'd have the same problem except my budget is already mostly blown for the year (unless the Mrs. changes her mind ).

 

[gmaster456]

My main desktop at home is still running a Phenom X4 9750. Aside from the occasional app or two it's done everything I've needed for the last, what 4 years? Sometimes it chokes during video editing/encoding but I don't make a living off of that so I put up with it. Will probably upgrade to haswell or whatever AMD is offering at the time.

I could even squeeze some more life out of it by finally adding an SSD.

 

[yottabit]

For almost all my home and business use I'm perfectly happy with something like a Core 2 Duo

Much more important is having enough RAM, and preferably having an SSD

There's a handful of other tasks (3D Rendering, Ripping DVDs) where I could obviously use even more power than my 3570K!

I hadn't tried to rip DVDs in years, and was really amazed when it only took a few minutes. The DVD drive was roaring, and I figured "Wow, it must be that the DVD drive is finally the limiting factor now" and then I decided to check CPU utilization and saw all 4 cores pegged at 100%. That was at stock clocks though. I wonder how much CPU power you would need for a typical DVD drive to be the limiting factor?

EDIT: I was encoding into x264 too- probably could do better with a GPGPU solution or something right?

 

[sm625]

All I want is one fast core, like 3.2GHz ivb type of fast. Not even top end, just decent. On top of that I want 3 additional cores that run slower, like 1.5-2 GHz. And then I want a gpu that can be roughly as fast as a HD5750 (when plugged in, 67% of this speed on battery). And I want it all to be able to run at 10W on battery / 20W plugged in.

 

[Vic Vega]

For what I do (games, IT-sys admin) my system is fine.

I play BF3 maxed out at 1920x1200 with no slowdown. I run VMs, I do lots of stuff.

No need to upgrade really. I may do it anyway but no realistic need.

People get consumed with benchmarks and graphs. 10+ years ago it mattered, today not to much.

OMG, this CPU does this task in 65 seconds and this one does it in 45 seconds.

 

[fleshconsumed]

3770K? Ahahahahaha.... I'm still using 5 year old technology. All 4 of my computers are still Penryn based, 3 quadcores, and one dual core (HTPC). That should tell you about my CPU requirements. Yes, I do code, and I do work with large RAW photo files that can take a while to process, but that's probably the only situation where I wish I had more CPU power. When it takes 2 seconds to convert RAW image into jpeg, it can get annoying, however I can just leave it and go make myself a cup of tea. I'm finally upgrading my computers this year. I already got 3570K that I'm currently building, and I hope to pick up one or two haswell rigs at the end of the year during black friday, but I'm not doing this because I need more horsepower, I'm doing it because my computers are 5 years old, and I do not want to be caught in a situation where one or more of my computers are dead or suddenly dying.

 

[Vectronic]

Would love to have more, but only 1% of the time.

3570K @ 4.5GHz... easily copes with everything I (emphasis) throw at it except 3D rendering, where probably 12 cores would be about right with that CPU/speed, reasonably speaking.

File I/O is the only other bottleneck I bump into which is mostly tertiary batch processing, media libraries, virus scans, etc.

 

[billyb0b]

limitations in software are the real culprits in robbing cpu performance, especially across many cores... though i'm in the camp of wanting more speed, more power anyday!!!!