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From: UCLAN on 22 May 2010 00:40
My system is 6-years old. For normal home (non gaming) use, what is today's
preffered CPU? Intel's Core i3? i5? AMD's Athlon II? AMD Phenom?

3G RAM? 6G RAM?

If I go with a "ready made" box, HP? Dell?

Thanks.
From: philo on 22 May 2010 10:05
On 05/21/2010 11:40 PM, UCLAN wrote:
> My system is 6-years old. For normal home (non gaming) use, what is today's
> preffered CPU? Intel's Core i3? i5? AMD's Athlon II? AMD Phenom?
>
> 3G RAM? 6G RAM?
>
> If I go with a "ready made" box, HP? Dell?
>
> Thanks.


For "normal" home use, if you have a 6 year old machine
then you might as well keep using it for a few more years.

What, specifically do you think a new machine will do that your present
one does not.

If your present machine is doing the job
then just keep it...

OTOH: If it's a bit on the slow side
maybe all you need is a bit more RAM





From: J G Miller on 22 May 2010 10:47
On Sat, 22 May 2010 09:05:33 -0500, Philo wrote:

> OTOH: If it's a bit on the slow side
> maybe all you need is a bit more RAM

More RAM, and faster disks.

Splitting an installed system over two disks can give
a noticeably improvement in performance for many operations,
for BSD, GNU/Linux, and Micro$loth Windoze systems.
From: Paul on 22 May 2010 13:26
UCLAN wrote:
> My system is 6-years old. For normal home (non gaming) use, what is today's
> preffered CPU? Intel's Core i3? i5? AMD's Athlon II? AMD Phenom?
>
> 3G RAM? 6G RAM?
>
> If I go with a "ready made" box, HP? Dell?
>
> Thanks.

With regard to RAM, I noticed a news item within the last couple of
days, that said one of the majors is changing their machine
configurations, due to a shortage of RAM. So the ready-made
computers might come with less RAM on their own, as the impact
of a RAM shortage is digested.

*******

As for the Intel Core families, they differ a bit in terms of
how they connect to chipsets. You'd want to find a website
doing benchmarks, to see what difference that makes to everyday
usage.

Core i7, connects to a more or less conventional chipset via QuickPath.

Core i7 (LGA1366)

http://www.intel.com/Assets/Image/diagram/X58_blockdiagram.gif

Core i5, has the PCI Express video interfaces on the processor, and
the interconnect to the rest of the chipset solution is via DMI
(somewhere in the 2GB/sec range). Another different might be
whether Hyperthreading is included or not (virtual cores, small
performance boost).

(LGA1156) PCI Express on processor, DMI to a "Southbridge"

http://www.intel.com/Assets/Image/diagram/h55_Block-Diagram.gif
http://www.intel.com/Assets/image/diagram/h57_Block_Diagram.gif

Core i3, could include a separate GPU chip inside the same package
as the CPU silicon die. I don't consider that to be an "integrated"
GPU in the normal sense of the word. The IC package is an MCM
(multi chip module), and there would be regular bus interconnect
between the CPU silicon die and the GPU next to it. And the
bus running outside the processor package would be DMI.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_core (look at the tables further down the page)

This is a pretty good review, comparing the modern low end Intel
versus its AMD competitor. If you're on a limited budget, reading
this may be enough to frame up your choices.

Core i3 review (showing two die, processor and GPU, inside the same package)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2921

AMD's product offerings are a bit more consistent, open and extensible.
If I want to chain a bunch of Hypertransport equipped chips together,
there aren't licensing issues like there'd be on Intel. Hypertransport
is used on all the processors, with bandwidths along the QuickPath end
of things, rather than DMI end. The architecture is more conventional,
with external Northbridge for the PCI Express slots plus a Southbridge
for the slower interfaces. But in terms of CPU performance, AMD isn't
really invading the top end, still attacking the mid and low end systems.

AMD has memory interfaces on the CPU, like Intel does now. So they're
now comparable, in terms of architecture.

Both companies make 6 core processors, but really, who cares ?

While I can't afford it, if I was upgrading now, and I had a "long view",
I'd pick a Core i7 LGA1366 system, and put a 920 in it (cheapest i7).
There are no compromises on I/O with such a system, whereas with the LGA1156,
I'm constantly looking at the DMI as a potential bottleneck.

An annoyance with practically any system, is the mixture of PCI Express
and PCI slots. Every time I look at my newest motherboard, I'm reminded
of this. I have slots I probably will never use (lousy PCI Express x1
slots, I'm looking at you...). I happen to have two x16 video card slots,
and I'm hoping something worthwhile can use the second one of those for
expansion. I barely have enough PCI slots for what I want to do.
(Currently, my WinTV card is plugged in there. I'm using onboard sound,
because it isn't very convenient right now, to plug in my existing PCI
sound card.) So the slot mix is a major PITA. My previous Core2 board
was more "legacy", had a ton of PCI slots, and was more convenient
for quick changes in hardware configuration.

So when I review the choices, I review them for their impact on the
motherboard, as much as for the processor itself.

You can get benchmarks from here, but with the caveat that you have
to figure out for yourself, why the results are so weird. Practically
all the benchmarks here, support multithreading, so head to head
single core execution is harder to compare using charts like this.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts (scroll down to "Processors")

Oh, and if I was shopping for a new system today, I'd still want
two PS/2 connectors on it. If find interaction with the machine is
more responsive with PS/2. Under heavy I/O, my USB mouse doesn't
get the attention it deserves.

Paul
From: UCLAN on 22 May 2010 14:05
philo wrote:

>> My system is 6-years old. For normal home (non gaming) use, what is
>> today's preffered CPU? Intel's Core i3? i5? AMD's Athlon II? AMD Phenom?
>>
>> 3G RAM? 6G RAM?
>>
>> If I go with a "ready made" box, HP? Dell?
>>
>> Thanks.
>
> For "normal" home use, if you have a 6 year old machine then you might as
> well keep using it for a few more years.
>
> What, specifically do you think a new machine will do that your present one
> does not.
>
> If your present machine is doing the job then just keep it...
>
> OTOH: If it's a bit on the slow side maybe all you need is a bit more RAM

It's got it's maximum RAM - 1GB. The HD is showing signs of age. Lots of
bad sectors, etc., and is small (60 GB), the CPU is old/slow (Athlon XP at
2.1GHz), I'm getting LOTS of intermittent problems in much of my software -
websites suddenly not opening properly (no graphics), Word giving me "not
enough memory" error message when I try to open, Adobe Reader failing to
open files (or even displaying the "OPEN" file selections), Thunderbird
refusing to add attachments to mail, and more. In all instances, just closing
affected application and then re-opening solves problem.

Add up all the negatives and system age, and being sick of trying to fix
things, I figure a new computer is called for. I will be keeping my present
monitor, speakers, modem, keyboard, etc., so I figure a PC only in the
$600 or under range is possible.

Any clues to any of the above?
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