Semi-OT Intel I7 chips and other advice

I can't find any useful Intel newsgroups so I'm posting here..

I'm thinking of buying a new computer. My main use for processing
power is to render videos. Other then that I want a generally speedy
system but no other special needs. I was going to get an Intel I7
system based on what I've read. Don't want AMD. Had one years ago
and didn't like how it performed. Whatever I get will wind up running
Win10.

I see a wide variety of I7 systems, I7-xxxx of various kinds with
speeds ranging from around the high 2's up to 4. My basic question is
whether there is any meaningful difference to me in the -xxxx part of
the part number? I've seen some I5's that have passmark numbers not
much different then I7s. I presume I7 is better then an I5 for the
same speed? True? If not, why are there the different chips. Would
I be spending unnecessary money to get an I7 instead of an I5? What's
the price-performance sweet spot for speed these days?

Any opinions on memory size welcome also. My current system has 8 G
and rarely runs at more then 80% memory utilization so I'm thinking 8
G is my minimum but I wouldn't turn down more, most likely I'd want 12
G just to be safe against future shock. Any reason to want more than
that?

Ashton Crusher wrote:
I can't find any useful Intel newsgroups so I'm posting here..

I'm thinking of buying a new computer. My main use for processing
power is to render videos. Other then that I want a generally speedy
system but no other special needs. I was going to get an Intel I7
system based on what I've read. Don't want AMD. Had one years ago
and didn't like how it performed. Whatever I get will wind up running
Win10.

I see a wide variety of I7 systems, I7-xxxx of various kinds with
speeds ranging from around the high 2's up to 4. My basic question is
whether there is any meaningful difference to me in the -xxxx part of
the part number? I've seen some I5's that have passmark numbers not
much different then I7s. I presume I7 is better then an I5 for the
same speed? True? If not, why are there the different chips. Would
I be spending unnecessary money to get an I7 instead of an I5? What's
the price-performance sweet spot for speed these days?

Any opinions on memory size welcome also. My current system has 8 G
and rarely runs at more then 80% memory utilization so I'm thinking 8
G is my minimum but I wouldn't turn down more, most likely I'd want 12
G just to be safe against future shock. Any reason to want more than
that?

Memory first.

A 4GB DIMM is done with a single rank of chips (8 chips
on one side).

A 8GB DIMM is done with two ranks (double sided). In theory,
twice as many "open pages" can be present on the DIMM.
When a DIMM has "open pages", it means cache line sized
chunks can be opened faster from the pre-charged page,
than for pages which are currently closed. In practice,
I'm not even sure I could make up a benchmark to detect
this any more...

This means, on a dual channel computer motherboard, 2x8GB
is the best (minimum) configuration, whether DDR3 or DDR4 type.
You can get rather high speeds in those now. CAS is not too
crucial (a reduced CAS stick, the cost is all out of proportion
to the benefit). I think my latest were CAS 11 or so (not that good).

If you buy a four channel motherboard, and don't want to
spend a bundle, you can run 4x4GB (single rank) or 4x8GB (only
slightly better). The efficiency of quad channel is doubtful.
It's "spec sheet material" and not reflected in real performance.
A quad channel motherboard with eight slots, the main benefit is
for stuffing 8 DIMMs in it, and not for speed reasons. The speed
just isn't there. Theoretical 78GB/sec, practical 17GB/sec as
measured by memtest86+. Malloc typically runs at only 1GB/sec
to 2GB/sec, taking a while to "fill up" the RAM. A home-brew
C program writes to RAM at 300MB/sec. That's a long way from
the glossy brochure that promised you 78GB/sec.

*******

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Passmark is a good estimator. And the site also has
a column that rates "value" of the purchase.

Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.00GHz 11,228 $339.99
Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.00GHz 11,023 $399.99

The 4790K looks like a pretty good deal, even though a
6700K is more "modern".

This is an example of quad channel, LGA2011. This is a six
core processor, with the performance of a five core processor.
On some of the Intel processors, as the core count grows,
the internal data distribution becomes a bottleneck. The
motherboard for this, is $250 minimum. The above processors
the motherboard will be a bit cheaper (as the motherboards
are dual channel with four DIMM slots).

Intel Core i7-5930K @ 3.50GHz 13,666 $584.99

*******

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

Passmark Rank Value Price
Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.00GHz 11228 55 33.03 $339.99
Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.00GHz 11023 56 27.56 $399.99

Intel Core i7-5930K @ 3.50GHz 13666 34 23.36 $584.99

And that suggests the 5930K is "better value". Shocking.

The thing is, the program has to use the cores, for you
to get the value. If I run 7ZIP on these three processors,
then indeed, the 5930K wins. 7ZIP will use all the cores
it can find.

But if the movie rendering step only has four threads of execution,
there is "unused" horsepower on all of them. Perhaps one of the
top two processors finished first (because of the 4GHz bit).

This requires the user to know a *lot* about the characteristics
of the programs, before committing a lot of money to new hardware.
The difference might be $1600 for one system and $800 for the
other.

Regarding motherboards, the Z170 chipset has an issue with
booting from USB. Which can prevent older OS installer
media from working properly. Which is another reason
I would probably favor the 4790K if I could still find one.
(The 4790K is partnered with older chipsets.)

(See the XHCI section for Z170)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9485/i...vga-supermicro

Much of what goes on the spec sheet of the hardware is "theoretical".
It looks nice as a glossy spec. It means less in the real world.
Shop accordingly.

I've had both 16GB and 64GB on a system, and the 64GB is
only useful as a RAMDisk. And even that, isn't all that
fast in Windows. On 64 bit Windows, you can only
read and write at 1GB/sec. My WinXP system writes
to its RAMDisk at 4GB/sec. Such is "progress".
On a test of Win7 x32, the speed was 6.5GB/sec.
And the reason for the behavior, is the page tables
must be using larger pages for PAE space. On a 32 bit
OS, the RAMDisk is mostly in PAE space.

For my processor, 16GB was closer to "being to scale" with
the processor. You don't notice the delay filling
RAM all that much. Filling 64GB takes a bit of time.
And encourages you to do projects that require
just a little bit more RAM than the 64GB you've got - which
then run dog-slow. So be careful what you wish for.

And if you don't want to spend even $340 for a processor,
I'm sure there are good compromise purchases in the list.
I would probably be searching for a 4C 8T processor though,
just one with a little less cache. That might be one
difference between an i5 and i7. You only notice cache,
to an insignificant degree, when running 7ZIP or RAR
compressors. That sort of thing. Maybe a movie render
isn't as sensitive ?

I had a Core2 with 6MB cache, and a Core2 with 2MB cache.
And 7ZIP was significantly slower on the latter one
(3MB/sec versus 2MB/sec compression speed.)
But no other software, seemed to care. It was still
a perfectly good system (the latter setup was a
$300 upgrade, motherboard, CPU, RAM).

The trick with Intel, is not to slide too far down
the CPU list. You can pay $150 for a CPU, that you'll
have doubts about later. If you buy the $300+ processor
now, and there is really nothing better to replace it
with two years from now, you'll sleep better. I wasted
a lot of money buying dual core processors, when
I should have just bought a quad core when they came out.
I probably would have avoided two upgrade cycles if
I'd done that, and saved money in the process. So don't
buy inferior systems, only to "feel the need for speed"
a few months later :-)

HTH,
Paul

Thanks, great info.

On Fri, 20 Nov 2015 14:22:51 -0500, Paul wrote:

Ashton Crusher wrote:
I can't find any useful Intel newsgroups so I'm posting here..

I'm thinking of buying a new computer. My main use for processing
power is to render videos. Other then that I want a generally speedy
system but no other special needs. I was going to get an Intel I7
system based on what I've read. Don't want AMD. Had one years ago
and didn't like how it performed. Whatever I get will wind up running
Win10.

I see a wide variety of I7 systems, I7-xxxx of various kinds with
speeds ranging from around the high 2's up to 4. My basic question is
whether there is any meaningful difference to me in the -xxxx part of
the part number? I've seen some I5's that have passmark numbers not
much different then I7s. I presume I7 is better then an I5 for the
same speed? True? If not, why are there the different chips. Would
I be spending unnecessary money to get an I7 instead of an I5? What's
the price-performance sweet spot for speed these days?

Any opinions on memory size welcome also. My current system has 8 G
and rarely runs at more then 80% memory utilization so I'm thinking 8
G is my minimum but I wouldn't turn down more, most likely I'd want 12
G just to be safe against future shock. Any reason to want more than
that?

Memory first.

A 4GB DIMM is done with a single rank of chips (8 chips
on one side).

A 8GB DIMM is done with two ranks (double sided). In theory,
twice as many "open pages" can be present on the DIMM.
When a DIMM has "open pages", it means cache line sized
chunks can be opened faster from the pre-charged page,
than for pages which are currently closed. In practice,
I'm not even sure I could make up a benchmark to detect
this any more...

This means, on a dual channel computer motherboard, 2x8GB
is the best (minimum) configuration, whether DDR3 or DDR4 type.
You can get rather high speeds in those now. CAS is not too
crucial (a reduced CAS stick, the cost is all out of proportion
to the benefit). I think my latest were CAS 11 or so (not that good).

If you buy a four channel motherboard, and don't want to
spend a bundle, you can run 4x4GB (single rank) or 4x8GB (only
slightly better). The efficiency of quad channel is doubtful.
It's "spec sheet material" and not reflected in real performance.
A quad channel motherboard with eight slots, the main benefit is
for stuffing 8 DIMMs in it, and not for speed reasons. The speed
just isn't there. Theoretical 78GB/sec, practical 17GB/sec as
measured by memtest86+. Malloc typically runs at only 1GB/sec
to 2GB/sec, taking a while to "fill up" the RAM. A home-brew
C program writes to RAM at 300MB/sec. That's a long way from
the glossy brochure that promised you 78GB/sec.

*******

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

Passmark is a good estimator. And the site also has
a column that rates "value" of the purchase.

Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.00GHz 11,228 $339.99
Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.00GHz 11,023 $399.99

The 4790K looks like a pretty good deal, even though a
6700K is more "modern".

This is an example of quad channel, LGA2011. This is a six
core processor, with the performance of a five core processor.
On some of the Intel processors, as the core count grows,
the internal data distribution becomes a bottleneck. The
motherboard for this, is $250 minimum. The above processors
the motherboard will be a bit cheaper (as the motherboards
are dual channel with four DIMM slots).

Intel Core i7-5930K @ 3.50GHz 13,666 $584.99

*******

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

Passmark Rank Value Price
Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.00GHz 11228 55 33.03 $339.99
Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.00GHz 11023 56 27.56 $399.99

Intel Core i7-5930K @ 3.50GHz 13666 34 23.36 $584.99

And that suggests the 5930K is "better value". Shocking.

The thing is, the program has to use the cores, for you
to get the value. If I run 7ZIP on these three processors,
then indeed, the 5930K wins. 7ZIP will use all the cores
it can find.

But if the movie rendering step only has four threads of execution,
there is "unused" horsepower on all of them. Perhaps one of the
top two processors finished first (because of the 4GHz bit).

This requires the user to know a *lot* about the characteristics
of the programs, before committing a lot of money to new hardware.
The difference might be $1600 for one system and $800 for the
other.

Regarding motherboards, the Z170 chipset has an issue with
booting from USB. Which can prevent older OS installer
media from working properly. Which is another reason
I would probably favor the 4790K if I could still find one.
(The 4790K is partnered with older chipsets.)

(See the XHCI section for Z170)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9485/i...vga-supermicro

Much of what goes on the spec sheet of the hardware is "theoretical".
It looks nice as a glossy spec. It means less in the real world.
Shop accordingly.

I've had both 16GB and 64GB on a system, and the 64GB is
only useful as a RAMDisk. And even that, isn't all that
fast in Windows. On 64 bit Windows, you can only
read and write at 1GB/sec. My WinXP system writes
to its RAMDisk at 4GB/sec. Such is "progress".
On a test of Win7 x32, the speed was 6.5GB/sec.
And the reason for the behavior, is the page tables
must be using larger pages for PAE space. On a 32 bit
OS, the RAMDisk is mostly in PAE space.

For my processor, 16GB was closer to "being to scale" with
the processor. You don't notice the delay filling
RAM all that much. Filling 64GB takes a bit of time.
And encourages you to do projects that require
just a little bit more RAM than the 64GB you've got - which
then run dog-slow. So be careful what you wish for.

And if you don't want to spend even $340 for a processor,
I'm sure there are good compromise purchases in the list.
I would probably be searching for a 4C 8T processor though,
just one with a little less cache. That might be one
difference between an i5 and i7. You only notice cache,
to an insignificant degree, when running 7ZIP or RAR
compressors. That sort of thing. Maybe a movie render
isn't as sensitive ?

I had a Core2 with 6MB cache, and a Core2 with 2MB cache.
And 7ZIP was significantly slower on the latter one
(3MB/sec versus 2MB/sec compression speed.)
But no other software, seemed to care. It was still
a perfectly good system (the latter setup was a
$300 upgrade, motherboard, CPU, RAM).

The trick with Intel, is not to slide too far down
the CPU list. You can pay $150 for a CPU, that you'll
have doubts about later. If you buy the $300+ processor
now, and there is really nothing better to replace it
with two years from now, you'll sleep better. I wasted
a lot of money buying dual core processors, when
I should have just bought a quad core when they came out.
I probably would have avoided two upgrade cycles if
I'd done that, and saved money in the process. So don't
buy inferior systems, only to "feel the need for speed"
a few months later :-)

HTH,
Paul

Ashton Crusher wrote:
Thanks, great info.


I see I mixed up the "Value" column. The
4790K had the greatest value. Doh!

******

Using Passmark, I'm sure you can compare
the i5 and i7 products and find the right
price point for your application. If I was
buying, I'd try to find something where
I could push the clock. The 4790K does
4GHz without using an overclock setting,
whereas it's possible some other processor
still has headroom, and a lower purchase price.

The price of RAM has come down a bit
since I did my last build, and I wouldn't
expect 2x8GB to hurt that much as a purchase ($90).
I think I paid around $200 for that much RAM.
I think my computer was all-round happier
with 16GB than with 64GB. I can do some
great experiments with the 64GB config though,
like have entire virtual machines loaded in
RAM (even the VHD). Still doesn't go that fast.
Stuff only runs at SSD speed, negating the fun factor.

As an example, over the years I've seen partitions
that were fragmented. And a dream was "what would
it be like to defragment a drive that was a
RAMdrive?". Well, I had a chance to try that,
and it doesn't go very fast at all. Talk
about disappointed. But at least now, I know...
Ain't worth ****. Maybe I'll have to go
back and try this on WinXP... Hmmm.

Paul

On Fri, 20 Nov 2015 14:31:42 -0700, Ashton Crusher wrote:

Thanks, great info.

On Fri, 20 Nov 2015 14:22:51 -0500, Paul wrote:

Ashton Crusher wrote:

A 169 line reply which, despite its worthiness of being quoted in full,
I have snipped in the interests of 'brevity'. :-)

====huge snip====

The most blatant example (compounded by top posting) of usenet etiquette
sins, the single line response appended (in this case, prepended)to a
very long posting quoted in full, that I have ever seen!

I reckon the reply to quoted text ratio in this case must only be around
the 0.25% mark. My news agent (Pan) annoys me with a pop up that delights
in giving me a warning of 'There are problems with this post' listing the
problem as 'the reply is mostly quoted text' which, at a guess, would be
when that ratio just drops below the 50% mark. That gives me pause for
thought before I dismiss the warning and hit the send button (as if I
hadn't already decided that the quoted text was essential regardless of
the ratio which, btw, rarely gets below the 25% mark).

If you haven't the time to offer a considered and detailed reply longer
than a 'one liner', the general rule is, *don't* quote the text! :-)

--
Johnny B Good

On 21/11/2015 20:35, Johnny B Good wrote:
....
If you haven't the time to offer a considered and detailed reply
longer than a 'one liner', the general rule is,*don't* quote the
text!

Depends.
The real problem, in my view, is you should never post a mere "thank
you" message. Not even with null quoting.
Saying thanks to the person who helped you is polite, OK, but your post
is going to be seen by hundreds. There is nothing in your post for all
them.
I say, do add something interesting to your "thank you", please!
For instance, did you make up your mind?

"Thank you, Paul! After reading your great info I think I might buy the
4790K if I can find it, because it has a good CPU score *and* good value
according to cpubenchmark, like you noticed yourself. Actually its price
is $299, not 399. As to the RAM, I am still in doubt if I should go for
2x8GB or 1x8GB, as I could upgrade the RAM in the future if I need to."

Feel free to kill file me. Your concerns made sense back when we had
300 baud modems, operated with floppy disks, and had text
based-scrolls right off the screen display systems.


On Sat, 21 Nov 2015 19:35:34 GMT, Johnny B Good
wrote:

On Fri, 20 Nov 2015 14:31:42 -0700, Ashton Crusher wrote:

Thanks, great info.

On Fri, 20 Nov 2015 14:22:51 -0500, Paul wrote:

Ashton Crusher wrote:

A 169 line reply which, despite its worthiness of being quoted in full,
I have snipped in the interests of 'brevity'. :-)

====huge snip====

The most blatant example (compounded by top posting) of usenet etiquette
sins, the single line response appended (in this case, prepended)to a
very long posting quoted in full, that I have ever seen!

I reckon the reply to quoted text ratio in this case must only be around
the 0.25% mark. My news agent (Pan) annoys me with a pop up that delights
in giving me a warning of 'There are problems with this post' listing the
problem as 'the reply is mostly quoted text' which, at a guess, would be
when that ratio just drops below the 50% mark. That gives me pause for
thought before I dismiss the warning and hit the send button (as if I
hadn't already decided that the quoted text was essential regardless of
the ratio which, btw, rarely gets below the 25% mark).

If you haven't the time to offer a considered and detailed reply longer
than a 'one liner', the general rule is, *don't* quote the text! :-)

On Sat, 21 Nov 2015 21:10:16 +0100, edevils
wrote:

On 21/11/2015 20:35, Johnny B Good wrote:
...
If you haven't the time to offer a considered and detailed reply
longer than a 'one liner', the general rule is,*don't* quote the
text!

Depends.
The real problem, in my view, is you should never post a mere "thank
you" message. Not even with null quoting.
Saying thanks to the person who helped you is polite, OK, but your post
is going to be seen by hundreds. There is nothing in your post for all
them.
I say, do add something interesting to your "thank you", please!
For instance, did you make up your mind?

"Thank you, Paul! After reading your great info I think I might buy the
4790K if I can find it, because it has a good CPU score *and* good value
according to cpubenchmark, like you noticed yourself. Actually its price
is $299, not 399. As to the RAM, I am still in doubt if I should go for
2x8GB or 1x8GB, as I could upgrade the RAM in the future if I need to."




I'll try to be less civil in the future. Sorry that you wasted that
1.02343434 of second being drowned in my thank you reply.

Ashton Crusher wrote:

I'm thinking of buying a new computer.

I expect a report when you have some
experience on the new machine...

Paul

On 21/11/2015 22:14, Ashton Crusher wrote:
On Sat, 21 Nov 2015 21:10:16 +0100, edevils
wrote:

On 21/11/2015 20:35, Johnny B Good wrote:
...
If you haven't the time to offer a considered and detailed reply
longer than a 'one liner', the general rule is,*don't* quote the
text!

Depends.
The real problem, in my view, is you should never post a mere "thank
you" message. Not even with null quoting.
Saying thanks to the person who helped you is polite, OK, but your post
is going to be seen by hundreds. There is nothing in your post for all
them.
I say, do add something interesting to your "thank you", please!
For instance, did you make up your mind?

"Thank you, Paul! After reading your great info I think I might buy the
4790K if I can find it, because it has a good CPU score *and* good value
according to cpubenchmark, like you noticed yourself. Actually its price
is $299, not 399. As to the RAM, I am still in doubt if I should go for
2x8GB or 1x8GB, as I could upgrade the RAM in the future if I need to."




I'll try to be less civil in the future.

That's not what I said.

Sorry that you wasted that
1.02343434 of second being drowned in my thank you reply.

That's not the point.

On Sat, 21 Nov 2015 14:12:55 -0700, Ashton Crusher wrote:

Feel free to kill file me. Your concerns made sense back when we had
300 baud modems, operated with floppy disks, and had text based-scrolls
right off the screen display systems.

I'm free to killfile anyone I please but, in this case, it would be a
bit of an over-reaction. I've put up with far worse before killfiling
"The Offender" :-)

There was a time when the limitations of 300baud modems and floppy disk
storage were an important consideration in minimising the amount of text
flying around the system but those days disappeared with the advent of
56K V90 modems and HDD capacities measured in hundreds of MBs. However,
the one problem of replies comprised of more than a screenful of text
still remains so there is still some justification to try and be economic
in follow up postings.

That 1.02343434 of a second's worth of 'wasted time' btw, is actually
more like 3 seconds. That's about how long it took for me to scroll
through the quoted text to see whether or not you had interleaved any
further comments before realising that the only new text was that single
line reply at the very top of the page.

Your one line reply is in the same category as the "Me too," response
typed at the end (or the beginning) of a screed of quoted text, now
enshrined by the ironic use of the standard abbreviation "AOL". I don't
know about you but I think most usenet posters would prefer not to be
associated with AOL or reminded of their past mistake in falling victim
to AOL's hard sales tactics.

Despite whatever your attitude is in regard of how others see you, being
associated with AOL is the one universal perception no self respecting
usenet poster wants to have hanging around their neck.

My advice was offered simply to save you from such an embarrassment. :-)

--
Johnny B Good

On Sat, 21 Nov 2015 16:43:32 -0500, Paul wrote:

Ashton Crusher wrote:

I'm thinking of buying a new computer.

I expect a report when you have some experience on the new machine...


You forgot to add the phrase "full and frank" (quid pro quo and all
that). :-)

--
Johnny B Good