where goes processors these days?

It's Spring, and the desire to do a major upgrade of my pc is growing
:-) What is the current thinking about the processor and its place in
desktop computers?

Around 2010, all the buzz centered around multi-core (4, 6, 8+) CPUs,
and an expectation that the idea of a CPU in a personal computer was
obsolete with the shift to manufacturing APUs. ISTR reading that
eventually even those would be supplanted by GPUs becoming the only
processor a personal consumer computer would need because the
processing power of a GPU was so much greater than traditional CPUs of
the time and doing so would enable more innovative hardware.

But as I look at ads for motherboards, video cards and, yes, CPUs :-),
there doesn't seem to have been any bold, significant jump in what's
offered out there. Is that due to me having become habituated to small
incremental changes in the tech world or has there not been any
dramatic change over the past several years?

John

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 13:00:45 +0000 (UTC), "Yes"
wrote:

It's Spring, and the desire to do a major upgrade of my pc is growing
:-) What is the current thinking about the processor and its place in
desktop computers?

Around 2010, all the buzz centered around multi-core (4, 6, 8+) CPUs,
and an expectation that the idea of a CPU in a personal computer was
obsolete with the shift to manufacturing APUs. ISTR reading that
eventually even those would be supplanted by GPUs becoming the only
processor a personal consumer computer would need because the
processing power of a GPU was so much greater than traditional CPUs of
the time and doing so would enable more innovative hardware.

But as I look at ads for motherboards, video cards and, yes, CPUs :-),
there doesn't seem to have been any bold, significant jump in what's
offered out there. Is that due to me having become habituated to small
incremental changes in the tech world or has there not been any
dramatic change over the past several years?

Last I looked, I'd say an entry point might be 4 cores and nothing
less. Mixed GPU/CPU platform offerings were then available, but I
couldn't say what greater part convenience might now play for boards
available without integral G/CPU (gamer support, perhaps, for MBs for
various flavors of AGP slots).

Not that I really see any issues. I have to go to the same places
I've been that sell computer parts and spend some time drilling them
over. For such as how might UEFI BIOS extensions meet my
expectations. OS driver support would be another I'd personally be
looking hard at.

It's not really going to make a difference, though, in the end. If
one or both my quadcore/vidchipped Gigabyte MBs blows up, into a
million pieces today, that's all that's out there left. What else is
there that matters -- you take what they give you, or so that's the
plan, as they say -- for any sense I may personally entertain about
obsolescence?

Yes wrote:
It's Spring, and the desire to do a major upgrade of my pc is growing
:-) What is the current thinking about the processor and its place in
desktop computers?

Around 2010, all the buzz centered around multi-core (4, 6, 8+) CPUs,
and an expectation that the idea of a CPU in a personal computer was
obsolete with the shift to manufacturing APUs. ISTR reading that
eventually even those would be supplanted by GPUs becoming the only
processor a personal consumer computer would need because the
processing power of a GPU was so much greater than traditional CPUs of
the time and doing so would enable more innovative hardware.

But as I look at ads for motherboards, video cards and, yes, CPUs :-),
there doesn't seem to have been any bold, significant jump in what's
offered out there. Is that due to me having become habituated to small
incremental changes in the tech world or has there not been any
dramatic change over the past several years?

John
I think the spirit of what you say is correct. I think the liquid CPU
coolers are an improvement--easy installation, so issues with dust. I'm
not sure, however, that I'm willing to call that "dramatic". My CPU
cores of my 4790K are running about 23 to 25-degrees C; GPU at about
32-degrees, according to Fan Speed. Problem is there not quite enough
competition for Intel to "heighten" its offerings dramatically.

Bill

On Sun, 15 Mar 2015 15:00:17 -0400, Flasherly
wrote:

It's not really going to make a difference, though, in the end. If
one or both my quadcore/vidchipped Gigabyte MBs blows up, into a
million pieces today, that's all that's out there left. What else is
there that matters -- you take what they give you, or so that's the
plan, as they say -- for any sense I may personally entertain about
obsolescence?

Curious...and checked. [MSI H81M-P33 LGA 1150 Intel H81 SATA 6Gb/s USB
3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard]

Military spec'd $40 MB MSI - solidcaps, fast boot/skip bios screen,
hi-temp/humidty -- all cool;- "Intel® Smart Connect * Automatically
pull data from cloud services for always updated content" -- dunno
waz'up wid dat ****.

Looks like there's Win XP drivers from MSI.

2 HDs sucks, 1 PCI sucks, onboard vid *Supported only by CPU with
integrated graphic, buy an AGP card that's basically going to
overpriced for the MB price...or else

Micro not mini factor, hold on to your socks they'll be shipping MBs
the size of a deck of cards next year.

** When things get Really Weird, really, the Really Weird get going **

Where I said a basic quadcore, guess I should have said "read my lips"
first --

!!! $200... (holy moley mary and jesus rolled into one hot poker)

Intel Core i5-4430 Haswell Quad-Core 3.0GHz LGA 1150 84W Desktop
Processor Intel HD Graphics BX80646I54430

where do they get off on that price (I bought both pulls, my quads
from Fleabay, at about $25 each)

I can tell I'd need to do some more homework, lots, were I looking to
build on the shy. Hey, I only know one way how to assemble - cheap.

Yes wrote in part:
It's Spring, and the desire to do a major upgrade of my
pc is growing :-) What is the current thinking about the
processor and its place in desktop computers?

Always a good question. From a users perspective, hardware
is dependant on software (purchase hw to run sw) and software
is in turn dependant on tasks to be done. Not much new.

Around 2010, all the buzz centered around multi-core
(4, 6, 8+) CPUs, and an expectation that the idea of a
CPU in a personal computer was obsolete with the shift to
manufacturing APUs. ISTR reading that eventually even those
would be supplanted by GPUs becoming the only processor a
personal consumer computer would need because the processing
power of a GPU was so much greater than traditional CPUs of
the time and doing so would enable more innovative hardware.

Yes, GPUs are tremendously powerful. Mostly by very wide
parallelism -- 16x - 256x cores. These are very good for
structured input like image rendering but very inflexible
and horrid at general-purpose computing.

There appears to be plateau'ing (stagnation) with the clock limit
around 4 GHz and advancing only slowly from 3.0 GHz a decade ago
(after advancing from 0.2 GHz in the previous decade). Likewise IPC
(instructions-per-clock) has not advanced much -- the basic Intel
core is the same triple-issue as the PPro, improved with new
instructions (XMM2) and larger caches/buffers.

ARM has different targets (subwatt) with lower clocks and IPC.

Parallelism is an obvous advance, and it works well for servers
which naturally have many tasks. But a single human has only
a single focus no matter how fast they think they can shift it
("Multitasking"). And I notice even an advanced browser like
chrome or firefox really cannot keep more than two threads running
per page. (Perhaps more if there are multiple distracting animated
elements.) HTML would appear to have limited parallelism.


But as I look at ads for motherboards, video cards and,
yes, CPUs :-), there doesn't seem to have been any bold,
significant jump in what's offered out there. Is that due
to me having become habituated to small incremental changes
in the tech world or has there not been any dramatic change
over the past several years?

This is also my impression. Software has not advanced much,
nor has hardware. Apart from games or specialised uses,
a 2-4 core machine will suffice for current user software.

-- Robert

On Mon, 16 Mar 2015 11:59:28 +0000 (UTC), Robert
wrote:

Parallelism is an obvous advance, and it works well for servers
which naturally have many tasks. But a single human has only
a single focus no matter how fast they think they can shift it
("Multitasking").

Those capable apps apart servers or video can make the quad+core an
obvious choice advantage over innocuous duals, mainstream almost a
decade ago -- all else being approximately equal to duals for $10 on
Ebay -- whereas for a quad similarly positioned at $20, now, that's
what I call the real deal in trickle-down effects.

(Metadata containers to audio processing, for instance gain/track
processing, makes a difference, I think is great, when heating up four
cores over half the thruput of two.)

I do some stuff that requires single-threaded speed, so I look for
quad-cores with greatest MHz, turbo mode, big L1 L2 cache.
The hex/octa offerings are not useful for me. Neither are GPUs.
If they were still making dual-cores that went faster than a quad-core,
I would actually buy some.

On Thu, 19 Mar 2015 04:51:49 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

I do some stuff that requires single-threaded speed, so I look for
quad-cores with greatest MHz, turbo mode, big L1 L2 cache.
The hex/octa offerings are not useful for me. Neither are GPUs.
If they were still making dual-cores that went faster than a quad-core,
I would actually buy some.

Another is near/realtime audio processing effects, which, though they
may strongly purport CPU dependencies on a technological bandwagon for
overall maximum effect -- they can't necessarily be correlated to core
usages when artifacts invariably occur on a quad. Likely sooner, too,
and without conciliation for a dual.

With good mastering provided, however, compression, perhaps a
bottom/top-shelf shaper/limiter, takes care of a brunt of it,
factoring out bunches of redundant if not degrading performance from
overly aggressive signal chains comprising dynamic/harmonic exciters,
whatnot and such. Of course if amps and drivers are ****, it's going
to be a pure and simple case of putting out **** regardless.