Worth upgrading from G3258 @ 4.2, 8GB DDR3-1600, 240GB M500 to SKL?

[dave_the_nerd]

That gives me an idea. Why not CPU tie-ins, with say, soft-drink companies?

Have a "Mt. Dew Kickstart special-edition CPU", with an image of a Kickstart can on the heatspreader. It wouldn't cost much more in production to laser-etch the picture, but it could be co-marketed with the soft-drink companies, to the "Gamer market". (Think G3258 popularity, with much better, "cooler", end-user branding.)

For that matter, why not allow CPUs to be custom-mfg'ed (For a fairly steep additional fee), and have the heatspreader laser-etched with a small custom image file in the corner? M&M's will custom-print a word for you, why not custom-etched CPU heatspreaders? I think it would be cool, to have CPUs with your own small company logo on them, or your picture, or whatever. Think, "nerd valentine's day gift".

Cocaine.

 

[tynopik]

Doing those things, I could probably make my G3258 last 6-10 years, if I had to.

ask again in 6-10 years

 

[cbn]

Sept. 1 is when the rest of the SKL desktop lineup drops, right?

I suppose then we'll find out if there are any multi-unlocked CPUs below the quad-cores, or if you can OC a locked SKL CPU on a Z170 through BCLK OC. (Would be a real shame if you couldn't.)

Was eyeing a Z170 mobo that takes DDR3. (I started a thread in Motherboards, listing the ones I've found.) There's an Asus and an ASRock Fatal1ty. Both have M.2 3.0 4x slots, that also take SATA. Was fantasizing about a Samsung 256GB XP951 drive. (Don't really care about the NVMe one, and I don't think that you can install Win7 on an NVMe M.2 SSD anyways.)

But then reality sinks in, and I realize, that I'm perfectly happy with my SATA6G SSDs, and especially the prices of them, compared to M.2 drives. (I'm a very budget-minded person.)

I wonder what SKL would bring me, that I don't already have with Haswell?

I don't game so much anymore, and what little I might do, my G3258 and 7950 handle just fine.

Edit: I guess I should answer the "for what" question...
Reading forums
Listening to internet radio
Skype
Downloading Linux ISOs
Burning Linux ISOs to DVD
Doing some DC in the background (mostly only during Winter months)
Gaming (very rarely) @ 1080P, 60Hz LCD

Doing those things, I could probably make my G3258 last 6-10 years, if I had to.

Before I got my G3258 CPUs, I was still using my Q9300 C2Q CPUs @ 3.0Ghz to do DC and game (with HD4850 cards). I still have them, they still work (mostly) fine.

The main reason behind the last big upgrade, was power consumption. Idle power with the Q9300 OCed and HD4850 was around 200W.

With my current G3258 / 7950 rig, it's around 78W, WITH my 24" HDTV LCD monitor included in that number.

I've been using a MeegoPad T02 with Win10 Pro 32-bit on it, just seeing how I can manage most of those things (aside from gaming and DC), on such a small and low-power device. It's somewhat manageable, but too much activity, web browsing, Skype video chats, network file transfers, etc., make the thing thermal-throttle down from 1.33Ghz (slow) to 500Mhz or lower (really, painfully slow).

Larry, have you thought about any methods by which one rig with Skylake i5 6600K and two HD 7950s to replace two rigs (each with one G3258 and one HD7950)?

The reason I bring this up is because I have seen you mention running duplicate hardware (each having a 24" HDTV) in some of your previous threads.

Multi-seat Linux?

Virtual Machines?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Larry, have you thought about any methods by which one rig with Skylake i5 6600K and two HD 7950s to replace two rigs (each with one G3258 and one HD7950)?

The reason I bring this up is because I have seen you mention running duplicate hardware (each having a 24" HDTV) in some of your previous threads.

Multi-seat Linux?

Virtual Machines?

Yes, that was one of my thoughts / considerations - the possibility of replacing both machines with one uber-machine. But not worrying about the multi-seat aspect. (Only one of me.)

 

[Denithor]

That gives me an idea. Why not CPU tie-ins, with say, soft-drink companies?

Have a "Mt. Dew Kickstart special-edition CPU", with an image of a Kickstart can on the heatspreader. It wouldn't cost much more in production to laser-etch the picture, but it could be co-marketed with the soft-drink companies, to the "Gamer market". (Think G3258 popularity, with much better, "cooler", end-user branding.)

For that matter, why not allow CPUs to be custom-mfg'ed (For a fairly steep additional fee), and have the heatspreader laser-etched with a small custom image file in the corner? M&M's will custom-print a word for you, why not custom-etched CPU heatspreaders? I think it would be cool, to have CPUs with your own small company logo on them, or your picture, or whatever. Think, "nerd valentine's day gift".

Why not? Uh, because anything that makes the heatspreader less flat hurts thermal transfer out of the cores? IE the whole reason people lap their heatspreaders? Or even de-lid and run naked?

Any etching that would be visible on the surface would result in considerably poorer thermal transfer properties.

And wouldn't even be visible, at all, once clamped down under the HSF...

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Why not? Uh, because anything that makes the heatspreader less flat hurts thermal transfer out of the cores? IE the whole reason people lap their heatspreaders? Or even de-lid and run naked?

Any etching that would be visible on the surface would result in considerably poorer thermal transfer properties.

And wouldn't even be visible, at all, once clamped down under the HSF...

To the last point - most of the cosmetic work (cable routing, matching PCB colors, etc.) that goes into a really sexy build is pretty much ignored like 99% of the time.

 

[justin4pack]

I used an overclocked G3258 for a while and while it worked out great, I did find it hindered specific games. Other then that it worked amazing. Since you rarely game its probably not worth it for you. BTW I upgraded to an i5. Night and day in some games. But again since your not doing this often not sure its worth it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Why not? Uh, because anything that makes the heatspreader less flat hurts thermal transfer out of the cores? IE the whole reason people lap their heatspreaders? Or even de-lid and run naked?

So, you are saying, that the whole reason people lap their heatspreaders, is because Intel laser-etches words onto the heatspreader, and those affect heat transfer? It has nothing to do with mechanical tolerances of the heatspreader or concavity?

Any etching that would be visible on the surface would result in considerably poorer thermal transfer properties.

I don't believe that, since Intel does that already.

And wouldn't even be visible, at all, once clamped down under the HSF...

But it would be visible, in the retail box. Which is all that matters, really.