Re: Advice on system purchase
Am Montag, 29. Oktober 2012 schrieb Stan Hoeppner:
> > For powerful laptops and power saving desktops I think Intel
> > Sandybridge/Ivybridge is best bet currently - except for the
> > political dimension.
>
> Sure, but 90% of users don't need "powerful". All the cores sit idle
> most of the time, and a faster CPU doesn't make Thunderbird or Firefox,
> IE or Outlook express, go any faster. Nor any of the standard desktop
> apps. 90% of users would benefit more from a low wattage dual or even
> single core CPU, with an SSD instead of a rust drive.
>
> But it's hard to sell people on the truth after you've been lying to
> them about the benefits of 4-8 core CPUs for many years...
Yeah, as you pointed out its about peak performance.
But if you look at my powertop snapshots you will see that the Linux
Kernel mostly switched between 800 MHz and turbo mode, i.e. give me all
MHz you can squeeze out of the CPU given the current load on other cores
and GPU. Especially if regularily it does it mostly on one core. If that
core can go faster it may have a noticable effect.
So a higher peak performance may have a beneficial effect on latency in
short high load situations like starting an application or other high
loads.
Whether thats noticable? Well, one would have to test it.
I think to see any difference during application load times tough you need
to have a good SSD alongside. But I do believe that the kernel pings
between 800 MHz and turbo mode not for nothing.
That said: By all means, I bet there are numerous AMD CPUs out there that
are just fast enough already. So I think we basically agree with
difference in detail scope.
--
Martin 'Helios' Steigerwald - http://www.Lichtvoll.de
GPG: 03B0 0D6C 0040 0710 4AFA B82F 991B EAAC A599 84C7
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