fyi
Good article!
I’m sticking w/ my 486.
sick = illness? impaired? unhealthy?
My 5 year old Dell Optiplex 3.4 GHz P4 with 4G of RAM, dual DVI video card, tv tuner card and XP PRO is basically goofing off when performing any tasks I give it. Even when I have the tv on, a TurboCad 3D design open and a browser window open, there is no noticeable performance drop. You can buy a Dell Optiplex GX280 on Ebay for ~$100 -$150.
The Intel Core i7-980X shows that Intel continues to push the performance envelope, at least incrementally. Six cores processing twelve threads is a monumental achievement, but again software technology needs to catch up so users can properly utilize all the cores they paid for. Sure, buying an i7-980X will get you the fastest possible results now, but think of the processor as a hedge against future technological and software upgrades. Someday you will be able to utilize this processor fully, rather than “you will be able to use the full potential of this processor now.”
What’s the point? Game technology is limited to xBox/PS3 capabilities. My 3 yo run of the mill desktop plays the latest games well with all options maxed.
$ head -8 /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 26 model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 930 @ 2.80GHz stepping : 5 cpu MHz : 1600.000 cache size : 8192 KB
I'm running 2 FAH clients, ripping a DVD, listening to tunes, and running 2 virtual servers in VMWare and still am barely touching the power of this CPU
top - 18:28:16 up 1 day, 19:54, 7 users, load average: 4.13, 3.65, 2.97 Tasks: 325 total, 4 running, 321 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu0 : 3.0%us, 0.8%sy, 6.7%ni, 89.3%id, 0.3%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu1 : 2.7%us, 0.8%sy, 11.8%ni, 84.2%id, 0.6%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu2 : 1.3%us, 0.3%sy, 54.0%ni, 44.1%id, 0.3%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu3 : 2.0%us, 0.5%sy, 11.8%ni, 85.3%id, 0.4%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu4 : 2.1%us, 0.6%sy, 0.9%ni, 94.8%id, 1.5%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu5 : 2.0%us, 0.6%sy, 0.8%ni, 96.2%id, 0.4%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu6 : 1.3%us, 0.4%sy, 25.4%ni, 72.5%id, 0.2%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.2%si, 0.0%st Cpu7 : 1.1%us, 0.3%sy, 32.5%ni, 66.0%id, 0.1%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 6118284k total, 6075664k used, 42620k free, 1380904k buffers Swap: 8224760k total, 20696k used, 8204064k free, 1774584k cached
I've got a WinXP client that I run in VMWare for a few specific tasks, and it boots in 30 seconds from power on. Not bad.
Yeah, I'm bragging, but It's been so long since I've had real horsepower, that I just can't help it. :-)