Should I run my Skylake G4400 @ 4.4Ghz+ or my Thuban 1045T @ 3.5Ghz+ as daily driver?

[VirtualLarry]

Curious what some people say.

I guess my thinking was, the 95W 1045T Thuban wasn't all that bad as far as power consumption. (And you had better believe that SKL draws a bit more power as you crank up the freq past 4Ghz and above 1.1V. More than Haswell, IMHO.)

I do several things with my PC.

1) Skype (you can do this with a quad-core Atom, although a dual-core Atom may use 80-90% CPU while on a video chat)
2) Web browsing with Waterfox (largely single-threaded, though this may change in the future)
3) Distributed Computing with BOINC (this can use as many threads / cores and GPUs as you can throw at it, power and cooling permitting)

My SKL G4400 @ 4.455Ghz is excellent at #2, due to extremely high single-threaded speed. However, the lack of cores means that it's not so excellent at #3.

My AMD Thuban 1045T @ 3.5Ghz, is not as good at #2, but is excellent at #3, just due to the sheer number of cores, and FPUs. (Hex-core versus dual-core.)

There's just not much of a substitute for MOAR CORES.

If I do decide to run the Thuban, then I'll probably pick up one or two of these boards:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2459940
Or one from another mfg similar, with the 970 chipset, and a PCI-E M.2 slot. (That board is 2.0 x4, a slight step down from my Z170 Pro4S with PCI-E 3.0 x4. Though I'm not sure how much difference that makes in the real world.)

 

[Arachnotronic]

For the money you seem prepared to spend, buy a proper Core i5-6400 or better and use that as your daily driver.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I still run a 1045 at 3.5GHz and score 60FPS easy at 1080p in titles such as Witcher 3, Fallout 4, etc ... with ultra/high settings with a 960 4GB card.

I'm effectively gonna get to skip the entire Bulldozer series of processors until Zen thanks to Phenom II X6.

This is the post that kind of sparked my idea, combined with that new AM3+ mobo with the PCI-E M.2 slots. If a 1045T wouldn't hold back gaming much, then I'm wondering if it would be a better choice than a high-clocked Intel dual-core?

I don't do so much gaming, but I'm tempted to try some of the newer titles, just to play with.

My video card is a 7950 3GB, my monitor is 1080P.

 

[Gikaseixas]

I'm assuming you have both cpus already correct? For your uses i would go with the 6 cores.

 

[Deders]

Why not have the hexacore purely ding boinc, and the dualie for general use? that way one wont interfere wit the other.

 

[NTMBK]

Moar cores

 

[AtenRa]

You have the Z160 board, sell both the Phenom and the Pentium and buy a Core i7 6700 (non K). OC to 4.4GHz and still have faster performance at lower power consumption than both Phenom AND Pentium together.

 

[Arachnotronic]

You have the Z160 board, sell both the Phenom and the Pentium and buy a Core i7 6700 (non K). OC to 4.4GHz and still have faster performance at lower power consumption than both Phenom AND Pentium together.

This.

/thread

 

[Burpo]

For the money you seem prepared to spend, buy a proper Core i5-6400 or better and use that as your daily driver.

+1

You have the Z160 board, sell both the Phenom and the Pentium and buy a Core i7 6700 (non K). OC to 4.4GHz and still have faster performance at lower power consumption than both Phenom AND Pentium together.

Or this..

 

[ShintaiDK]

For the money you seem prepared to spend, buy a proper Core i5-6400 or better and use that as your daily driver.

You have the Z160 board, sell both the Phenom and the Pentium and buy a Core i7 6700 (non K). OC to 4.4GHz and still have faster performance at lower power consumption than both Phenom AND Pentium together.

Ding ding, both winners.

 

[AtenRa]

One clarification, does BOINC use AVX ??? if yes forget about OCing the Core i7 6700 because AVX doesnt work when Skylake is OverClocked.

 

[cbn]

3) Distributed Computing with BOINC (this can use as many threads / cores and GPUs as you can throw at it, power and cooling permitting)

How does BOINC compare with CPU vs. GPU?

How much extra GPU would you need to put on the OC G4400 system to equal the BOINC performance of the the OC Thuban plus a lesser GPU?

 

[Yuriman]

I'd use the Pentium, but as others have said, sell both chips and get rid of spare motherboards, and get at least an i3.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

For the money you seem prepared to spend, buy a proper Core i5-6400 or better and use that as your daily driver.

You have the Z160 board, sell both the Phenom and the Pentium and buy a Core i7 6700 (non K). OC to 4.4GHz and still have faster performance at lower power consumption than both Phenom AND Pentium together.

Given Larry's preference for maximum performance at minimum power usage, I'd suggest a 35W 6700T. Win-win...

 

[NTMBK]

Given Larry's preference for maximum performance at minimum power usage, I'd suggest a 35W 6700T. Win-win...

I thought Larry's preference was for minimum performance at maximum expenditure?

 

[crashtech]

One clarification, does BOINC use AVX ??? if yes forget about OCing the Core i7 6700 because AVX doesnt work when Skylake is OverClocked.

Is this a permanent problem, or something that could eventually be fixed with BIOS updates?

 

[ShintaiDK]

I think the AVX part is solved since FMA3 works.

 

[dark zero]

Easy. Sello both and go Core i7 Haswell K.

Not more insanely fast un ST as the OC Pentium (same level), but way better on MT than the Thuban.

 

[tential]

I thought Larry's preference was for minimum performance at maximum expenditure?

He's spent far more on hardware since I bout my 4770k and still doesn't have the performance. It's sad.

 

[Deders]

I think the AVX part is solved since FMA3 works.

I was going to mention this but then I realised he was taking about Boinc and not Prime95. Boinc might not substitute FMA3 instead of AVX in all calculations, especially if the aren't multiplication based.

That being said it looks like the microcode fix is now available for most motherboards.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Your Skylake Pentium is good at certain things, while that Thuban is OKAY at everything.

There's just not much of a substitute for MOAR CORES.

In your situation, I'd keep them, unless you can sell them and not lose half the money you paid for them. You need to study economics or something

 

[VirtualLarry]

One clarification, does BOINC use AVX ??? if yes forget about OCing the Core i7 6700 because AVX doesnt work when Skylake is OverClocked.

Yes. That's one big problem with the idea of just selling both CPUs, and getting an i5-6400 or the like and overclocking it.

Why not have the hexacore purely ding boinc, and the dualie for general use? that way one wont interfere wit the other.

Wow, that makes too much sense. Good idea!

I think the AVX part is solved since FMA3 works.

That being said it looks like the microcode fix is now available for most motherboards.

Is that the microcode fix, for the "AVX bug" in SKL, or the inability to actually even use AVX (at full speed), when doing a BCLK OC of a locked SKL CPU?

Edit: It should be noted, that BOINC itself doesn't do the crunching, it's basically a host program that manages network communication, storage, and processing, and it enumerates the host's capabilities, but it's down to each project's executables, what opcodes and GPUs and features are actually utilized.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Yes. That's one big problem with the idea of just selling both CPUs, and getting an i5-6400 or the like and overclocking it

But if you do go the selling route, I wouldn't get anything slower than 4790K/6700 as an adequate replacement. No matter what.

 

[Zor Prime]

I'm the one who sparked the interest -- lol, never would have imagined.

The Phenom II X6 will do all you want it to do. I've built my son a Haswell rig over Christmas and it's great and I begrudgingly did it because I like having new stuff as well but this old thing is just so tried and true and doesn't skip a beat and does all I want it to do ... that I can't justify upgrading yet.

If I wanted to leave 1080p land for 4K land, yes I would. But I'm not going there yet.

I leave it on 24/7 running BOINC projects, as well. BOINC is basically like a handling system, each project does different things as far as CPU instructions go. I can't think of many that use anything more advanced than SSE2 and none of my projects do.

It is nice having 6 full blown cores and with a SSD if I click something ... it just happens.

If my motherboard totally went under, could I justify a new AM3+ board? Only if it was super cheap.

I have considered upgrading to an i5 Skylake processor, but it would take that as a minimum to get me off my 1045t.

 

[Ken g6]

Yes. That's one big problem with the idea of just selling both CPUs, and getting an i5-6400 or the like and overclocking it.

Note that neither of your current CPUs support AVX either, at any speed.

I think that if Prime95 is using FMA3, then it's using AVX too. So I'm just not seeing a problem there.

Why not have the hexacore purely ding boinc, and the dualie for general use? that way one wont interfere wit the other.

More total power use. Consider that you can always run a Skylake i5 at stock at 65W, and it should beat either of the other chips.

I'm one to talk. I bought an i3 Skylake for my next daily driver. But I plan to upgrade it to an i7 someday, when prices aren't quite as insane.