Discussion
The new PC I built about 3 months ago had pretty much the same water cooler (Corsair i80). They really keep the CPU very cool indeed but what a fiddly thing to fit ! My case has 5 fans spaces and I tried every one until I got one to fit. Something always got in the way of the pipes. I reckon I spent over half my build time just trying to get the cooler in the right place.
(Just spotted they are building it for you).
(Just spotted they are building it for you).
snuffy said:
The new PC I built about 3 months ago had pretty much the same water cooler (Corsair i80). They really keep the CPU very cool indeed but what a fiddly thing to fit ! My case has 5 fans spaces and I tried every one until I got one to fit. Something always got in the way of the pipes. I reckon I spent over half my build time just trying to get the cooler in the right place.
(Just spotted they are building it for you).
Yeah I did consider self building but Scan are building this for only £100 more than the individual component prices on pcpartpicker.com, well worth it for the warranty and someone to shout at and diagnose any problems etc(Just spotted they are building it for you).
Yep i7 is pointless until games really utilise all the cores and features properly.
4 cores and more processing speed is king for now.
It's funny that my old 2500k which was £130 about 6 years ago is still technically a better gaming processor than my 4770k which was about £300 a few years ago!
It really shows how both the processor speeds/cost ratio improvements have really started to slow, and how the graphics pipelines have rested on their laurels for far too long.
£1,400 seems pretty reasonable.
I've got 16gb ram and 4770k here, with a GTX760.
I've got all the hdds and ssds and screens you could shake a stick at though, so any upgrade would be just be ram and gpu probably. 32gb and and a 1070 GTX sound like a plan for my needs.
I just can't see the point of a new CPU again still. It just seems you spend £££ on the mobo to get the CPU which is really about 10% quicker, and for most tasks the CPU isn't even fully utilised anyhow!
4 cores and more processing speed is king for now.
It's funny that my old 2500k which was £130 about 6 years ago is still technically a better gaming processor than my 4770k which was about £300 a few years ago!
It really shows how both the processor speeds/cost ratio improvements have really started to slow, and how the graphics pipelines have rested on their laurels for far too long.
£1,400 seems pretty reasonable.
I've got 16gb ram and 4770k here, with a GTX760.
I've got all the hdds and ssds and screens you could shake a stick at though, so any upgrade would be just be ram and gpu probably. 32gb and and a 1070 GTX sound like a plan for my needs.
I just can't see the point of a new CPU again still. It just seems you spend £££ on the mobo to get the CPU which is really about 10% quicker, and for most tasks the CPU isn't even fully utilised anyhow!
snuffy said:
This was my built 3 months ago:
I kept my 5.1 speakers, mouse and keyboard and 3 x 27" HD monitors.
My old system had an i5-2500k (like so many people). I paid £170 in December 2011 and sold it on ebay in February for £71. I though that was pretty good for a CPU that was 5 years old.
The 2500k was one of those chips.I kept my 5.1 speakers, mouse and keyboard and 3 x 27" HD monitors.
My old system had an i5-2500k (like so many people). I paid £170 in December 2011 and sold it on ebay in February for £71. I though that was pretty good for a CPU that was 5 years old.
I'd still be running mine now had the mobo/cpu not popped in lightning
The last chip I had so much bang for buck from was my P2 300, 4.5 x 66mhz, but with 100mhz ram/bus adjustment it was a 450mhz P2.
It took a few years till the P3 450 arrived and it was still double the price... though at that time the extra instructions and features on CPUs actually did benefit in the newer apps so it was worth the upgrade.
Is the latest DX properly multi-threaded yet to take full advantage of an i7?
I take it that it's also only supported in Win10 too?
This is a recent article: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3039552/hardware/te...
So: maybe. But probably not in the near future. Unless you do editing and such, there's probably not much value in the upgrade just yet.
So: maybe. But probably not in the near future. Unless you do editing and such, there's probably not much value in the upgrade just yet.
i7 isn't just more cores/hyperthreading compared to i5, you also get more cache. This will help with basically anything data-intensive, including 3D graphics in games. The current i5 probably represents better value for money but the i7 will still be cutting it further into the future than the i5.
Well I went for the i7 because I like to do workstationy kinda stuff, but at the time I did (on an old GTX 275), the FPS was actually initially lower due to 3.5ghz vs the 4.5ghz of my 2500k OC.
I know I could OC the new i7 4770k but I really think they should just get around to optimising the software properly by now. Multicore chips have been around for what? A decade?
I know I could OC the new i7 4770k but I really think they should just get around to optimising the software properly by now. Multicore chips have been around for what? A decade?
Mr Whippy said:
I know I could OC the new i7 4770k but I really think they should just get around to optimising the software properly by now. Multicore chips have been around for what? A decade?
This ^^^^ They are actually pretty close to the limit on how quickly a single core can go with current technology so the only way to get significant gains is multi-threading and parallel processing. They've had ages to get it sorted though, what is going on?Guvernator said:
Mr Whippy said:
I know I could OC the new i7 4770k but I really think they should just get around to optimising the software properly by now. Multicore chips have been around for what? A decade?
This ^^^^ They are actually pretty close to the limit on how quickly a single core can go with current technology so the only way to get significant gains is multi-threading and parallel processing. They've had ages to get it sorted though, what is going on?https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/4c7to9/w...
I think those making software just expected processor speeds to go up, so why improve multi-threading?
Now speeds have stalled and cores/features go up instead, they're playing catch up. They're getting there now but it's taken some time!
A big issue is probably legacy support or not wanting to update increasingly outdated stuff. DX and OGL probably struggle here.
Ie, Mantle API seems to be loads better than others but it's also brand new, so no legacy to worry about.
All that said, if MS didn't make DX mutli-core/threaded years ago it's pretty sad. It could have done all this years ago, same with OGL. There was no need to wait till it was too late.
You see the same with some high end apps though. I sit here sometimes watching PS CS6 running one core to do a job, while something like Agisoft Photoscan is hammering all cores, the GPU and everything to do tasks in a small fraction of the time it would on one core.
Just lazy old legacy programs and programmers!
Now speeds have stalled and cores/features go up instead, they're playing catch up. They're getting there now but it's taken some time!
A big issue is probably legacy support or not wanting to update increasingly outdated stuff. DX and OGL probably struggle here.
Ie, Mantle API seems to be loads better than others but it's also brand new, so no legacy to worry about.
All that said, if MS didn't make DX mutli-core/threaded years ago it's pretty sad. It could have done all this years ago, same with OGL. There was no need to wait till it was too late.
You see the same with some high end apps though. I sit here sometimes watching PS CS6 running one core to do a job, while something like Agisoft Photoscan is hammering all cores, the GPU and everything to do tasks in a small fraction of the time it would on one core.
Just lazy old legacy programs and programmers!
Making productivity software do things in parallel and making games do things in parallel are very different prospects though, from a software engineering point of view. Very often game engines have to do things in a fairly serial way because lots of things have to happen in sync.
Just playing devil's advocate, there are games out there that probably could use multiple cores better than they do.
Just playing devil's advocate, there are games out there that probably could use multiple cores better than they do.
I agree.
But I'd say it's more a consequence of building games on frameworks on the PC.
Wheras consoles with their fixed architecture allow lots of cool optimisations. Iirc the PS3 and the Battlefield 4 engine optimisations were amazing, where some unit of the hardware that was maybe designed to just render the frame buffers to view, was used for other tasks while the frames were being rendered to buffers in the first place! Or something along those lines.
Every bit of potential was used up. No idling transistors anywhere
Since on a PC all games are just built to run on Windows firstly, and then on DX or OGL secondly, lots of optimisations are already limited before you even start.
Obviously that's a lot of momentum to change direction easily. It's just a shame it's taken till now for it to happen!
But I'd say it's more a consequence of building games on frameworks on the PC.
Wheras consoles with their fixed architecture allow lots of cool optimisations. Iirc the PS3 and the Battlefield 4 engine optimisations were amazing, where some unit of the hardware that was maybe designed to just render the frame buffers to view, was used for other tasks while the frames were being rendered to buffers in the first place! Or something along those lines.
Every bit of potential was used up. No idling transistors anywhere
Since on a PC all games are just built to run on Windows firstly, and then on DX or OGL secondly, lots of optimisations are already limited before you even start.
Obviously that's a lot of momentum to change direction easily. It's just a shame it's taken till now for it to happen!
OK, I'll rephrase that slightly - game frameworks often don't lend themselves well to parallel processing either.
PC games tend to work well by brute force; even relatively modest gaming PCs are significantly more powerful than current consoles and very high-end machines are approaching an order of magnitude more. I more or less gave up on consoles because my gaming tastes aren't very well catered for but when I do have a go at a new game on a current console I'm often impressed with what has been squeezed out of such little hardware. The reverse is often true - GTA IV on even a high-spec PC was an embarrassment compared to how the game played on a PS3 or XBox 360.
PC games tend to work well by brute force; even relatively modest gaming PCs are significantly more powerful than current consoles and very high-end machines are approaching an order of magnitude more. I more or less gave up on consoles because my gaming tastes aren't very well catered for but when I do have a go at a new game on a current console I'm often impressed with what has been squeezed out of such little hardware. The reverse is often true - GTA IV on even a high-spec PC was an embarrassment compared to how the game played on a PS3 or XBox 360.
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