The last poster wins

[Werne]

The board looked so pretty, though! The CPU was more in the groove of 'the best cheapest thing available'.

Yeah, I can tell. :tongue:

Also, my brother has an i7-3970X that we found for about 60% off. I was so jealous.

Damn, I'm jealous too. And I couldn't afford it even if I were to find it 80% off. :sad:

Edited January 13, 2014 by Werne

[ub3rman123]

So how do you tell apart CPUs? I was looking at the GHz, # of cores, and socket type when I was browsing eBay. At about a hundred bucks, the one I got was the cheapest quad-core I could locate. Was I wrong in focusing more on a quad-core than a dual-core?

[BlackRampage]

Same here. The newprice of that thing starts at a whopping € 770. Ouch. Even if I'd be able to afford it, I probably wouldn't buy the damn thing though. I'd save 300 bucks by getting the 3930K instead. (which I actually did :tongue: ) Not that much difference in performance between the 2.

That's the annoying thing about high end components btw. There's often vast differences in prices for the slightest of performance gains.

 

And I couldn't afford it even if I were to find it 80% off. :sad:

 

Hmmm I'd love to see you be able to though. Just to see how much you'd be able to overclock the damn thing. :tongue:

[Ironman5000]

everytime I come here it's all computer talk

[billyro]

Yeah, and I don't even understand most of it. Don't even read it, in fact.

[ub3rman123]

It's all right, I don't understand it either. I'm pretty sure we're just making up number-letter combinations.

[Werne]

 

And I couldn't afford it even if I were to find it 80% off. :sad:

Hmmm I'd love to see you be able to though. Just to see how much you'd be able to overclock the damn thing. :tongue:

An enthusiast-class processor and me, that would be interesting. With an air cooler like Noctua NH-D14 or Thermalright Silver Arrow I'd say some 4.8GHz or 5.2GHz depending on the chip. With water cooling, I'd just pump it full of voltage and up the frequency until it explodes in a blaze of glory. :devil:

 

Speaking of CPU cooling, I did consider getting a better cooler for myself so I can finally yank every bit of performance out of my 8320. I was thinking Scythe Mugen 4 PCGH but I'm not sure how well would it cool an FX chip. So far I got my CPU to 5.5GHz on current cooling with half the cores disabled (my cooler can't stand the heat of all 8 cores running on a voltage higher than 1.428V) but I would love to see how well can this thing work with 8 cores at 5GHz or higher, shouldn't take much more voltage to push it there.

So how do you tell apart CPUs? I was looking at the GHz, # of cores, and socket type when I was browsing eBay. At about a hundred bucks, the one I got was the cheapest quad-core I could locate. Was I wrong in focusing more on a quad-core than a dual-core?

I tell apart CPUs by generation and designation. i5-3570 doesn't have a K at the end which means it has a locked multiplier, and it's designation 3-5-70 stands for generation (3 = fifth generation Core architecture, Ivy Bridge, socket 1155), performance range (5 = mid-range quad-core processor) and performance level (70 = higher-end). Same way how i7-3930K, 3960X and 3970X are spread (30K = unlocked processor, lower-binned, 60X = enthusiast-class unlocked processor, mid-range, 70X = enthusiast-class unlocked processor, high-end). Most low-end and mid-range Intel processors are missing some classes but it all comes down to basically the same thing.

 

And frequency, back in the day when AMD and Intel were neck-and-neck frequency mattered. Architectures had nearly identical IPC (Instructions Per Cycle) so the only way to actually tell the difference in power regarding the same generation was frequency.

 

Nowadays that doesn't matter in the slightest since Sandy Bridge, a 3.4GHz Haswell i5 only performs 20% faster than a 3.4GHz Sandy Bridge i5. And a Sandy Bridge i5 performs ~25% faster than a 3.4GHz Nehalem i5. And a 3.4GHz Nehalem i5 performs ~15% faster than a 4.1GHz FX 4350. But when you think about it, even that FX 4350 can play games like Skyrim at 60FPS constant so there is not much point to go higher than Ivy Bridge, even the old overclocked Core 2 Quad processors and Phenom II X4 stand strong when it comes to gaming.

 

Things also changed in another direction aside from frequency - thread count. For example, the FX 8350 sucks in games like Skyrim because the game scales badly across cores (Skyrim uses only 4 cores, technically 2 but it also uses another two for script processing). With FX 8350 having a ~45% worse per-core performance than i5-3570, the i5 will perform better. That changes in some current-gen (and presumably most next-gen) games. Crysis 3, for example, favors cores so an FX 8350 and FX 8320 go neck-and-neck with mainstream i7s even though they get outperformed by a large margin by an i5 in Skyrim.

 

So yeah, things got complicated nowadays. Back in the day you could've picked CPUs based on frequency alone but now it all got shitty with IPC, threads, architecture, frequency, power consumption (even though power draw shouldn't be a factor in a gaming build), etc. To me it's all crap, I had a set amount of money to spend on a processor ($200) and the only two processors that came in my budget were the AMD FX 8320 and i3-3220 so I went with the FX since I knew I could overclock it and disable some cores if necessary to gain more performance. I previously had an i5-3570K (Hit the silicone lottery and a good TIM, 4.9GHz was awesome until a VRM blew up :devil:) but to be honest, I can't see much difference between it and the FX except when it comes to multi-threaded programs where 8 cores just blow the i5 away.

Edited January 13, 2014 by Werne

[Iv000]

If you google "booby", you'll see lots of pictures of birds.

[Ironman5000]

lol hey your right, because booby is a type of bird! Tits are as well, let's google that..

 

...

 

... :ohmy:

[ub3rman123]

Ah, that all makes much more sense. Thanks for the guide on the numbers, it's hard to find proper tutorials on hardware online.

 

I wonder if I could do the same mods to the new Armor-EVO that I did with my CG-5275. It was fun having some old switches from the 60s installed on the front panel to control auxiliary fans. That, and there was some primal entertainment to be had in taking a band saw to my case.

 

In other news, I'd like to have a moment of thanks to those who have customers that return merchandise, which is then posted on eBay for half off. Because then I get things basically new, but at a much lower price.