Single threaded Apps are too SLOOOWWW!

[Habeed2]

My system : E6400 CPU clocked at 3200 mhz
4 gigs ram, clocked at 800mhz timings 4/4/4 12
3 separate mechanical hard drives, and the swap file is on it's own drive
Asus p5b
XP 64-bit

I run several applications, such as Adobe Acrobat and a program called SuperMemo that aren't as fast as I would like. Neither program is multi-threaded, so a quad core will NOT help. This computer is over 18 months old, yet I can't find anything on the market that is a significant performance boost. I'm disappointed.

The highest I've seen people safely overclock a quad core is to 3.6 - 4 ghz. That's hardly more than a 20% performance boost for single threaded programs.

Sure, I could get 1066mhz ram....for maybe 5% more performance, if any. I'd have worse timings if I did that, and would need a new motherboard.

Ideas? Do some of the new intel CPU lines offer a significant boost in instructions per clock over the E6400 CPU I already have? Or some secret way to overclock to 6.4ghz, enough to be worth an upgrade? (since less than a 100% performance increase is not that useful to me)

I know that an SSD would probably give me the biggest speedup, but what about CPU performance? Certain tasks are pokey, mainly because the programs I have to use are inefficient. Need more power!

 

[Markfw]

Welcome to the forums !

I would bet that an E8400 (or better) dual-core @ 4 ghz or better would let you see some improvements.

 

[Habeed2]

Just how much would the cooling cost to overclock to 4ghz? Is it even stable? (I don't see many posts from people running above 3.6)

And 4.0/3.2 = 1.25. Hardly the 100% improvement I would expect for paying more for the parts than the CPU I have NOW cost THEN.

 

[andrei3333]

the cpu design is different, dont underestimate newer cpu's

and yes, extra 0.8 GHz is a nice gain with a proper dual core processor...

 

[Cogman]

Your trying to measure performance based on GHZ, don't do that. Penryn CPU's outperform old conroes by 2-10% at the same GHZ. combine that with the fact that they run cooler, and overclock higher, You can get a pretty good performance boost by upgrading.

If you want a big boost though, wait for Nehalem. If any of the early benchmarks say anything, its that nehalem is going to be very fast. Summer of '09 is the date for you.

 

[Idontcare]

The best you can do for sustained 24x7 overclock is vaporphase cooling.

http://www.asetek.com/content/view/51/101/

It costs an arm and a leg, both to purchase and to operate. I know I have one. But they get the job done. You could probably push an E8600 to 5GHz or higher with a vapoLS if you have a motherboard that can handle the FSB.

But it will be loud. Expensive ($1k for the unit, plus another $30/month in electricity bill increase). And every now and then enough precipitation (ice) and condensation will form that eventually your mobo gives up and dies (my run-rate was 1/year, not too bad in my book).

 

[AmberClad]

Originally posted by: Habeed2
I run several applications, such as Adobe Acrobat and a program called SuperMemo that aren't as fast as I would like.

Seriously -- Adobe Acrobat runs too slowly for you? I'm not sure how much of a boost a faster CPU is going to give you with that app.

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: Idontcare
The best you can do for sustained 24x7 overclock is vaporphase cooling.

http://www.asetek.com/content/view/51/101/

It costs an arm and a leg, both to purchase and to operate. I know I have one. But they get the job done. You could probably push an E8600 to 5GHz or higher with a vapoLS if you have a motherboard that can handle the FSB.

But it will be loud. Expensive ($1k for the unit, plus another $30/month in electricity bill increase). And every now and then enough precipitation (ice) and condensation will form that eventually your mobo gives up and dies (my run-rate was 1/year, not too bad in my book).

"LOWEST TEMPERATURES & MOST BANG FOR THE BUCK!"

Lol, yeah, im not too sure on that one. Oh, and I hate you What do you run your computer at Idontcare?

 

[Quiksilver]

Originally posted by: Habeed2
My system : E6400 CPU clocked at 3200 mhz
4 gigs ram, clocked at 800mhz timings 4/4/4 12
3 separate mechanical hard drives, and the swap file is on it's own drive
Asus p5b
XP 64-bit

I run several applications, such as Adobe Acrobat and a program called SuperMemo that aren't as fast as I would like. Neither program is multi-threaded, so a quad core will NOT help. This computer is over 18 months old, yet I can't find anything on the market that is a significant performance boost. I'm disappointed.

That alone is a problem within itself.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Cogman
Lol, yeah, im not too sure on that one. Oh, and I hate you What do you run your computer at Idontcare?

Metatrader 4

It's a single-threaded app (the part that I use at least) that enables you to code up your own trading strategies for foreign currency exchange (forex). It's not computationally challenging when running on live market data, but the backtesting over say 5yrs of historical data a few hundred thousand times for parameter optimizations is a real CPU consumer.

In my case I run 4 concurrent sessions at a time, which keeps all four cores on my quad fully loaded 24x7 for about a month to two months at a time (per run).

Just goes to show the lengths a computer enthusiast will go to in order to convince the wife that spending $1k on a vaporphase cooler is "best bang for the buck honey, honest!".

 

[Habeed2]

Thanks for the replies, guys.

So a 25% CPU performance boost if I went to 4 ghz, and maybe another 10% from using a more modern core. Total = 35%.

Cost? I found that vapor cooler on ebay for $400, then I would need a new, top binned CPU ($350) and a new motherboard ($200)

New RAM....$100.

$1050 for perhaps a 40% performance boost on single cored applications.

Acrobat Pro is slow because I am using certain tools in it that are poorly written, so they are slow. The other program I am using it also poorly written. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do : it's the only software available that does what I need it to do.

I'm just disappointed : it used to be, you could buy a computer that was twice as fast for the same money 18 months later.

NOW, I would have to spend a lot more money than this computer cost 18 months ago, to get something maybe 40% faster.

And I am aware that the machine actually IS twice as fast, if I am able to use all 4 cores.

Guess I'll wait for the next big CPU to come out.

 

[Quiksilver]

Originally posted by: Habeed2
Thanks for the replies, guys.

So a 25% CPU performance boost if I went to 4 ghz, and maybe another 10% from using a more modern core. Total = 35%.

Cost? I found that vapor cooler on ebay for $400, then I would need a new, top binned CPU ($350) and a new motherboard ($200)

New RAM....$100.

$1050 for perhaps a 40% performance boost on single cored applications.

Acrobat Pro is slow because I am using certain tools in it that are poorly written, so they are slow. The other program I am using it also poorly written. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do : it's the only software available that does what I need it to do.

I'm just disappointed : it used to be, you could buy a computer that was twice as fast for the same money 18 months later.

NOW, I would have to spend a lot more money than this computer cost 18 months ago, to get something maybe 40% faster.

And I am aware that the machine actually IS twice as fast, if I am able to use all 4 cores.

Guess I'll wait for the next big CPU to come out.

Actually what your waiting for is two pieces of software that aren't poorly written (no matter what tools your using in them) and that are also multi-threading to take advantage of those extra cores.

Not a new CPU.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Habeed2
Guess I'll wait for the next big CPU to come out.

You're going to be waiting a very long time then. The GHz race is officially over. The multicore race has started, and the software developers are going to have to catch up.

In terms of single-threaded performance, I don't see future CPUs improving upon that by a significant margin. Today's CPUs practically work miracles in terms of microarchitecture. There really aren't many tweaks that are left to be discovered and implemented. Larger caches are a given, given the die shrinks of newer CPUs, but there are no massive CPU gains left to be had.

 

[Markfw]

The 4 ghz on an E8400 is with a $40 cooler.

 

[edplayer]

Originally posted by: Habeed2
Just how much would the cooling cost to overclock to 4ghz? Is it even stable? (I don't see many posts from people running above 3.6)

And 4.0/3.2 = 1.25. Hardly the 100% improvement I would expect for paying more for the parts than the CPU I have NOW cost THEN.

I have read about many E8X00 cpus being stable at 4GHz and over with only air cooling. Seems like 4~4.5GHz is attainable for most people using only air cooling at reasonable voltages (1.4V and under). Maybe up to 4.7GHz with an exceptional cpu and higher voltage.

Apart from the increased MHz, you also will get 3X the L2 cache (2MB vs. 6MB)

If you are concerned about the cost, an E8400 with a good air cooler can be had for around $200. Is your motherboard capable of 450MHz FSB? You seem surprised that one gets diminishing returns on investment when one advances through the upper strata of computer performance. Welcome to computers.

 

[Habeed2]

Thanks for the advice.
To edplayer : my motherboard caps out at 399mhz FSB with DRAM in all 4 slots. It doesn't have that cap if I only have 2 sticks of DRAM installed. Kind of funny.

And it does look like I'll be waiting. The "Ghz race" isn't entirely over. The latest intel parts are up to the clock speeds that P4s were at several years ago. In effect, they ARE much faster at single cored applications than those old chips.

Maybe this time next year, or in 18 months there will be a CPU that can be overclocked to give me a 100% single core performance boost, enough to make the crappy software I have to work with glide.

 

[o1die]

If you want to improve performance, I would clean up your files and switch to an older version of windows. I run my celeron with windows 2k pro, and it's faster than a 2400 hertz e4300 (overclocked) which uses vista.

 

[Mango1970]

Faster hardrives? 10K raptors? Some apps I use. no matter what computer I have used them on simply... well simply wont go any faster. They take x amount of time to load and whether I was running my older AMD x2-4800 or my e6850 or my Q6600 at the end of the day there was little difference in how they worked. However with that said, I have noted my best gains overall by simply getting faster newer Hardrives, and keeping my OS clean, light and nimble.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: Habeed2

I'm just disappointed : it used to be, you could buy a computer that was twice as fast for the same money 18 months later.

NOW, I would have to spend a lot more money than this computer cost 18 months ago, to get something maybe 40% faster.

Thank AMD for that

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Mango1970
Faster hardrives? 10K raptors? Some apps I use. no matter what computer I have used them on simply... well simply wont go any faster. They take x amount of time to load and whether I was running my older AMD x2-4800 or my e6850 or my Q6600 at the end of the day there was little difference in how they worked. However with that said, I have noted my best gains overall by simply getting faster newer Hardrives, and keeping my OS clean, light and nimble.

Are you really IOP limited when running the application (lots of non-sequential writes/reads to the hard-drive) or are you speaking to just the application load time when first launched and initialized?

A ramdrisk made from 512MB or 1GB of your system ram then used to house your workfiles might give you a sizable boost in speed in this case. I use superspeed's ramdisk for addressing this bottleneck in my single-threaded apps. It is really nice and for me makes a HUGE difference. Superspeed's ramdisk even allows you to access that ram you can't see above ~3.5GB on 32bit OS'es to make your ramdrive with.

 

[Zstream]

I have no idea what you are using with Adobe but if you have a Nvidia GPU you can get some performance boost with it.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/t...al_adobe_acrobat8.html

 

[Fraggable]

Go for a E7200 and a nice air cooler, like a Tuniq Tower 120, and OC it to 5.0... Ok maybe not 5.0, but 4.5 should be attainable with a good OCing motherboard and some skills. The 3.2 > 4.5 increase alone would be worth it, then add maybe 10% more for the better performance clock-for-clock with the newer cores.