Computer upgrades, what to look for in a CPU

TheMysteryIsThePoint

nicstt said:

I read my first computer magazine in the 70s, albeit late 70s and I was more interested in the games then; this one didn't talk about games, but I still found parts interesting.

I've been reading them since and I never came across an article claiming that Bill Gates said that, however I have met many people who new someone who told me he said that. I even believed it myself until I set about trying to proove it. As I stated previously, we'd been discussing what constituted common knowledge and where that stopped and the requirement for legitimate citations supporting our arguments came in.

There is a belief that one can't proove a negative, scentifically this isn't true (no I'm not linking it - Google it with Google Scholar; I would suggest that the complete lack of hard evidence constitures a level of proof - becuase those magazines have generally not ceased to exist; don't believe me, their are loads available on ebay, this is not counting what the companies themselves keep.

Bill Gates himself admits to saying some crazy stuff, but has always denied that.

Then there is the fact that when folks say something, it can be taken out of context; a good example is the requirement that folks need to drink 2l of water a day. Many believe that I understand, but it was taken by a marketting department of a bottled water seller, and used out of context to sell water. Google it, I can't be bothered to find 'em.

 

I am obviously not a fan of Bill Gates, but he certainly witnessed firsthand the progression from even the 6502 to the 8080 to the 8086 and beyond, and the accelerating trends. I find it unlikely that he would have said something as myopic as that. Even if he actually did say it, he probably meant "at this time" because it was, in a very real sense, it was his decisions that meant that a typical PC could not even access much more than that much at all. The entire addressable space for the 8086 used in the PC AT was only 1 meg, and that was with all sorts of complicated sleight of hand intel employed to keep the pin count down... mention a "segment register" or the "A20 Line" to a programmer around during the pre-386 days and watch him develop a facial tick.

The same goes for the quote "I put the world-wide market for computers at 7". I can't remember to whom it is attributed, but I can't imagine any captain of tech industry not noticing how rapidly transistors were shrinking, switching faster, and getting cheaper, and not looking over his refrigerated room full of physical relays and thinking that, well, things are going to be different.

 

LeatherGryphon

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

nicstt said:

I read my first computer magazine in the 70s, albeit late 70s and I was more interested in the games then; this one didn't talk about games, but I still found parts interesting.

I've been reading them since and I never came across an article claiming that Bill Gates said that, however I have met many people who new someone who told me he said that. I even believed it myself until I set about trying to proove it. As I stated previously, we'd been discussing what constituted common knowledge and where that stopped and the requirement for legitimate citations supporting our arguments came in.

There is a belief that one can't proove a negative, scentifically this isn't true (no I'm not linking it - Google it with Google Scholar; I would suggest that the complete lack of hard evidence constitures a level of proof - becuase those magazines have generally not ceased to exist; don't believe me, their are loads available on ebay, this is not counting what the companies themselves keep.

Bill Gates himself admits to saying some crazy stuff, but has always denied that.

Then there is the fact that when folks say something, it can be taken out of context; a good example is the requirement that folks need to drink 2l of water a day. Many believe that I understand, but it was taken by a marketting department of a bottled water seller, and used out of context to sell water. Google it, I can't be bothered to find 'em.

 

I am obviously not a fan of Bill Gates, but he certainly witnessed firsthand the progression from even the 6502 to the 8080 to the 8086 and beyond, and the accelerating trends. I find it unlikely that he would have said something as myopic as that. Even if he actually did say it, he probably meant "at this time" because it was, in a very real sense, it was his decisions that meant that a typical PC could not even access much more than that much at all. The entire addressable space for the 8086 used in the PC AT was only 1 meg, and that was with all sorts of complicated sleight of hand intel employed to keep the pin count down... mention a "segment register" or the "A20 Line" to a programmer around during the pre-386 days and watch him develop a facial tick.

The same goes for the quote "I put the world-wide market for computers at 7". I can't remember to whom it is attributed, but I can't imagine any captain of tech industry not noticing how rapidly transistors were shrinking, switching faster, and getting cheaper, and not looking over his refrigerated room full of physical relays and thinking that, well, things are going to be different.

 

Yeah, Intel addressing schemes (<facial tick><tick><tick>)  At the time I was writing assembler language programs for Motorola 68000 chips which had a sane 32-bit linear addressing scheme and I was forced onto a project that had to use an Intel chip writing programs in assembler.  I was fine with the assembler itself until the programs got bigger than one section of memory <tick> and I had to start dealing with the obtuse Intel <tick><tick> addressing scheme <tick><tick><tick><tick><tick>

nicstt

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

nicstt said:

I read my first computer magazine in the 70s, albeit late 70s and I was more interested in the games then; this one didn't talk about games, but I still found parts interesting.

I've been reading them since and I never came across an article claiming that Bill Gates said that, however I have met many people who new someone who told me he said that. I even believed it myself until I set about trying to proove it. As I stated previously, we'd been discussing what constituted common knowledge and where that stopped and the requirement for legitimate citations supporting our arguments came in.

There is a belief that one can't proove a negative, scentifically this isn't true (no I'm not linking it - Google it with Google Scholar; I would suggest that the complete lack of hard evidence constitures a level of proof - becuase those magazines have generally not ceased to exist; don't believe me, their are loads available on ebay, this is not counting what the companies themselves keep.

Bill Gates himself admits to saying some crazy stuff, but has always denied that.

Then there is the fact that when folks say something, it can be taken out of context; a good example is the requirement that folks need to drink 2l of water a day. Many believe that I understand, but it was taken by a marketting department of a bottled water seller, and used out of context to sell water. Google it, I can't be bothered to find 'em.

 

I am obviously not a fan of Bill Gates, but he certainly witnessed firsthand the progression from even the 6502 to the 8080 to the 8086 and beyond, and the accelerating trends. I find it unlikely that he would have said something as myopic as that. Even if he actually did say it, he probably meant "at this time" because it was, in a very real sense, it was his decisions that meant that a typical PC could not even access much more than that much at all. The entire addressable space for the 8086 used in the PC AT was only 1 meg, and that was with all sorts of complicated sleight of hand intel employed to keep the pin count down... mention a "segment register" or the "A20 Line" to a programmer around during the pre-386 days and watch him develop a facial tick.

The same goes for the quote "I put the world-wide market for computers at 7". I can't remember to whom it is attributed, but I can't imagine any captain of tech industry not noticing how rapidly transistors were shrinking, switching faster, and getting cheaper, and not looking over his refrigerated room full of physical relays and thinking that, well, things are going to be different.

 

We're on the same page, some however cannot be convinced.

kenshaw011267

nicstt said:

I read my first computer magazine in the 70s, albeit late 70s and I was more interested in the games then; this one didn't talk about games, but I still found parts interesting.

I've been reading them since and I never came across an article claiming that Bill Gates said that, however I have met many people who new someone who told me he said that. I even believed it myself until I set about trying to proove it. As I stated previously, we'd been discussing what constituted common knowledge and where that stopped and the requirement for legitimate citations supporting our arguments came in.

There is a belief that one can't proove a negative, scentifically this isn't true (no I'm not linking it - Google it with Google Scholar; I would suggest that the complete lack of hard evidence constitures a level of proof - becuase those magazines have generally not ceased to exist; don't believe me, their are loads available on ebay, this is not counting what the companies themselves keep.

Bill Gates himself admits to saying some crazy stuff, but has always denied that.

Then there is the fact that when folks say something, it can be taken out of context; a good example is the requirement that folks need to drink 2l of water a day. Many believe that I understand, but it was taken by a marketting department of a bottled water seller, and used out of context to sell water. Google it, I can't be bothered to find 'em.

I have some of those old mags in storage, although some are on old digital formats that may not be readable, this is an issue that does need to be addressed. I have boxes of 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" media for which I haven't had a working drive, or interface card, in well over 20 years.

I'm shifting all my CD-Rom's and DVD-ROM's to tape, but I realize most people cannot afford and do not have access to that sort of thing, but those disks...

But long story short, if it's supposed to be in a specific issue of something I have next time I'm in the storage unit I could take a look but that stuff is in the back. However I really doubt I'm the only person who is sitting on an issue of something like Byte from 1981.

 

TheMysteryIsThePoint

LeatherGryphon said:

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

nicstt said:

I read my first computer magazine in the 70s, albeit late 70s and I was more interested in the games then; this one didn't talk about games, but I still found parts interesting.

I've been reading them since and I never came across an article claiming that Bill Gates said that, however I have met many people who new someone who told me he said that. I even believed it myself until I set about trying to proove it. As I stated previously, we'd been discussing what constituted common knowledge and where that stopped and the requirement for legitimate citations supporting our arguments came in.

There is a belief that one can't proove a negative, scentifically this isn't true (no I'm not linking it - Google it with Google Scholar; I would suggest that the complete lack of hard evidence constitures a level of proof - becuase those magazines have generally not ceased to exist; don't believe me, their are loads available on ebay, this is not counting what the companies themselves keep.

Bill Gates himself admits to saying some crazy stuff, but has always denied that.

Then there is the fact that when folks say something, it can be taken out of context; a good example is the requirement that folks need to drink 2l of water a day. Many believe that I understand, but it was taken by a marketting department of a bottled water seller, and used out of context to sell water. Google it, I can't be bothered to find 'em.

 

I am obviously not a fan of Bill Gates, but he certainly witnessed firsthand the progression from even the 6502 to the 8080 to the 8086 and beyond, and the accelerating trends. I find it unlikely that he would have said something as myopic as that. Even if he actually did say it, he probably meant "at this time" because it was, in a very real sense, it was his decisions that meant that a typical PC could not even access much more than that much at all. The entire addressable space for the 8086 used in the PC AT was only 1 meg, and that was with all sorts of complicated sleight of hand intel employed to keep the pin count down... mention a "segment register" or the "A20 Line" to a programmer around during the pre-386 days and watch him develop a facial tick.

The same goes for the quote "I put the world-wide market for computers at 7". I can't remember to whom it is attributed, but I can't imagine any captain of tech industry not noticing how rapidly transistors were shrinking, switching faster, and getting cheaper, and not looking over his refrigerated room full of physical relays and thinking that, well, things are going to be different.

 

Yeah, Intel addressing schemes (<facial tick><tick><tick>)  At the time I was writing assembler language programs for Motorola 68000 chips which had a sane 32-bit linear addressing scheme and I was forced onto a project that had to use an Intel chip writing programs in assembler.  I was fine with the assembler itself until the programs got bigger than one section of memory <tick> and I had to start dealing with the obtuse Intel <tick><tick> addressing scheme <tick><tick><tick><tick><tick>

Ha ha, yes, the 68K was the anti-x86 of the day. The flat address space was the one thing, and all the general purpose registers were another... I think A7 was the only one that kinda-sorta was designated for a specific purpose. I could never get used to Big Endian-ness, though.

kenshaw011267

LeatherGryphon said:

TheMysteryIsThePoint said:

nicstt said:

I read my first computer magazine in the 70s, albeit late 70s and I was more interested in the games then; this one didn't talk about games, but I still found parts interesting.

I've been reading them since and I never came across an article claiming that Bill Gates said that, however I have met many people who new someone who told me he said that. I even believed it myself until I set about trying to proove it. As I stated previously, we'd been discussing what constituted common knowledge and where that stopped and the requirement for legitimate citations supporting our arguments came in.

There is a belief that one can't proove a negative, scentifically this isn't true (no I'm not linking it - Google it with Google Scholar; I would suggest that the complete lack of hard evidence constitures a level of proof - becuase those magazines have generally not ceased to exist; don't believe me, their are loads available on ebay, this is not counting what the companies themselves keep.

Bill Gates himself admits to saying some crazy stuff, but has always denied that.

Then there is the fact that when folks say something, it can be taken out of context; a good example is the requirement that folks need to drink 2l of water a day. Many believe that I understand, but it was taken by a marketting department of a bottled water seller, and used out of context to sell water. Google it, I can't be bothered to find 'em.

 

I am obviously not a fan of Bill Gates, but he certainly witnessed firsthand the progression from even the 6502 to the 8080 to the 8086 and beyond, and the accelerating trends. I find it unlikely that he would have said something as myopic as that. Even if he actually did say it, he probably meant "at this time" because it was, in a very real sense, it was his decisions that meant that a typical PC could not even access much more than that much at all. The entire addressable space for the 8086 used in the PC AT was only 1 meg, and that was with all sorts of complicated sleight of hand intel employed to keep the pin count down... mention a "segment register" or the "A20 Line" to a programmer around during the pre-386 days and watch him develop a facial tick.

The same goes for the quote "I put the world-wide market for computers at 7". I can't remember to whom it is attributed, but I can't imagine any captain of tech industry not noticing how rapidly transistors were shrinking, switching faster, and getting cheaper, and not looking over his refrigerated room full of physical relays and thinking that, well, things are going to be different.

 

Yeah, Intel addressing schemes (<facial tick><tick><tick>)  At the time I was writing assembler language programs for Motorola 68000 chips which had a sane 32-bit linear addressing scheme and I was forced onto a project that had to use an Intel chip writing programs in assembler.  I was fine with the assembler itself until the programs got bigger than one section of memory <tick> and I had to start dealing with the obtuse Intel <tick><tick> addressing scheme <tick><tick><tick><tick><tick>

I learned to code on the Apple II and the good ole 6502 chip. The 8086 was a shock. I get that 8/16 bit scheme was a kluge but what were they thinking?

But after a while I got hold of a C compiler and only wrote ASM for embedded stuff, mostly. I'd still like to find the guy who thought making me learn Pascal was a good idea in college. I've never once written a line of Pascal for a paying gig. Has anyone written anything in Pascal except as part of a course?

bk007dragon

The school where I obtained my computer science degree taught in a mixture of languages.   ADA, C/C++, Assembly Language,  COBOL, Java, Javascript, HTML, Pearl.  They used diffrent languages for diffrent courses or even for individual projects within courses.  They beleaved a computer language was a tool and you use diffrent tools for diffrent jobs.  As a computer programmer you need to adjust to programming in whatever language your employer needed you to use.

anepher

Drip said:

outrider42 said:

Yes, if you are not using your CPU for rendering, then the only concern is having a CPU decent enough to run the Daz Studio application. When you hit the render button, your GPU does 100% of the work when you use it for Iray. So spending $750 on CPU would give you very little benefit. A $750 CPU might render better than cheaper ones, but it still would not be as fast as the 1070 currently is.

All you need is a reasonably decent CPU, and like I said, pretty much any modern CPU will fit that bill, whether it be a i5 or Ryzen 5, or slightly better.

The ONLY time you need to concern yourself with CPU is if you actually want to use it for rendering. The rest of the PC's specs for Iray are similar. You don't need to worry about RAM speed, it is not doing much for Iray's purpose at all. This has been tested! We have had users buy a 1070 and use it with ancient DDR2 RAM, it made no difference. An SSD is about the best upgrade there, but even that isn't a huge boost for Daz. Many people still complain about Daz Genesis loading slow even with SSDs and newer computers. So Daz's loading issues are more based on software than hardware, though a SSD will certainly help. You only need enough system RAM to support your scenes, and since you have 8GB of VRAM, it would be tough to build a scene that maxes out your RAM while staying under that 8GB VRAM. 32 BG of RAM is just about right for that level of VRAM.

If you really want to upgrade Daz Studio Iray, the single best move you can do is to upgrade your GPU and forget the rest. I am being serious. Unless your computer is just plain sluggish with that 2600K, which it may be, then you don't even need to really build a whole new machine just yet unless you really want to. Iray is so GPU focused that your best upgrade is the fastest GPU you can buy, this holds true pretty every time.

No joke, you could buy a brand new 3080 that is releasing in a week and it would render Iray EXACTLY as fast as a 3080 in a brand new PC with 16 core CPUs and boatloads of RAM. Iray doesn't care about that stuff. Iray wants CUDA cores and RT cores. And since a 3080 is $700, that would also be a much cheaper upgrade than building a whole new machine, while giving you a massive performance boost.

A 1070 can hit about 2.5 iterations per second in our Iray test bench. A 2080ti can do 7.5 iterations per second. The 2080ti is basically 3 times faster than a 1070, and a 3080 is going to be even faster than that. So just think about this for a second. If you took your average scene and were able to render it 3 times faster, what would your render times be?

So IMO this is the best upgrade path, because it offers instant performance benefits. Cutting every single render by a factor of 3 would save a ton of time. Perhaps having a better CPU might make Daz a little better to work in, but will it make Daz 3 times better to work in? I doubt it very much.

Well, there is a use for fast, or at least more recent, CPU's outside rendering, yet within Daz Studio. While setting up complex scenes, a more recent CPU will make a noticable difference in how fast you can move your viewport around while setting up a scene. On my previous computer, I had a relatively old i5 (some 2013 model, 4440 I believe), with 8GB memory. On the new rig I got last year, I got a Ryzen 5 2600x, and due to one memorybank failing, also 8GB memory (I gladly have 32GB now). On both, I worked with the exact same scene which had Lagoon Living by Favereal, Terradome 3 for background, and a bunch of G3 and G8 characters sprinkled around. On the old rig, changing camera angle or distance was a challenge. It frequently took 10 seconds for the viewport to respond, which makes it quite hard to place a camera exactly where you want, or find a good angle to position some character or asset. On the new computer, with the same scene, the camera was perfectly responsive. So yes, a slightly more recent CPU may have a huge impact on Daz Studio. Not on the rendering, but it can make a major difference setting up a new scene.

You can set up instant rendering to a minimum of details, I don't think you need a complex rendering each time you adjust the camera or the objects inside the scene. I have an I5 and it's running fast even in complex scenes with a hundred plus objects inside.
On the full render I will go with the GPU.​

As a suggestion I think a CPU with the most cores is the best choice for running applications. I'm also a software developer and usually I have opened multiple dev environments running applications and DAZ. So I think an AMD max core should be the best choice, unless you are also playing games where the I7 usually is better than the AMDs ones.

bk007dragon

Jack Tomalin said:

bk007dragon said:

Also please note, MSI boards have more FAN headers on their boards so you can control more system fans directly from the board without a fan hub.  My MSI Z490 MEG Unify has 6 fan headers in addition to the CPU FAN header, most other motherboards have 2 or 3. Fan headers. 

Just for the sake of fairness.. Asus boards have a ton of fan headers too..(probably more brands too..) but personally, I'd worry less about that and more about the other features frankly..  < personal opinion of course.

 

I entirely agree that when selecting a motherboard you should look at the entire feature set.  In fact my second sentence was:  Research your motherboard options for the best feature set for your needs.  For me 4 pin system fan headers for case fans were one of those features.  When I looked at main boards my end choice was between ASUS and MSI, both of which are typically good products.       

All of the ASUS boards I looked at had 2-3 case fan headers in their own specifications, if they have more they really should think about what they post in their specifications.  Most people only need 2 or 3 Case fan headers, in my case I was looking to support more fans directly from the motherboard without relying on a FAN HUB.    I chose to go with a Fractal Design Meshify S2 midtower due to the fact that it can fit anything I want to put in it.  That tower supports 9 140mm or 120mm fans.  I am running 5 Noctua NF-A14 PWM's as intake fans and the 3 140mm Fractal fans that came with the case as exhaust.  I plan on adding a 9th fan as a 4th exhaust when It arrives from NEWEGG. 

 

PerttiA

kenshaw011267 said:

nicstt said:

I read my first computer magazine in the 70s, albeit late 70s and I was more interested in the games then; this one didn't talk about games, but I still found parts interesting.

I've been reading them since and I never came across an article claiming that Bill Gates said that, however I have met many people who new someone who told me he said that. I even believed it myself until I set about trying to proove it. As I stated previously, we'd been discussing what constituted common knowledge and where that stopped and the requirement for legitimate citations supporting our arguments came in.

There is a belief that one can't proove a negative, scentifically this isn't true (no I'm not linking it - Google it with Google Scholar; I would suggest that the complete lack of hard evidence constitures a level of proof - becuase those magazines have generally not ceased to exist; don't believe me, their are loads available on ebay, this is not counting what the companies themselves keep.

Bill Gates himself admits to saying some crazy stuff, but has always denied that.

Then there is the fact that when folks say something, it can be taken out of context; a good example is the requirement that folks need to drink 2l of water a day. Many believe that I understand, but it was taken by a marketting department of a bottled water seller, and used out of context to sell water. Google it, I can't be bothered to find 'em.

I have some of those old mags in storage, although some are on old digital formats that may not be readable, this is an issue that does need to be addressed. I have boxes of 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" media for which I haven't had a working drive, or interface card, in well over 20 years.

I'm shifting all my CD-Rom's and DVD-ROM's to tape, but I realize most people cannot afford and do not have access to that sort of thing, but those disks...

But long story short, if it's supposed to be in a specific issue of something I have next time I'm in the storage unit I could take a look but that stuff is in the back. However I really doubt I'm the only person who is sitting on an issue of something like Byte from 1981.

The archival media never seems to catch up in capacity in comparison to the space you are actively using, I thought I had finally found one in BlueRay with 50GB disks, but not long after getting the drive, I was already going past 10TB:s on the computer... I have given up a long time ago and just use the HD:s I have removed  for storing old stuff and backups.

bk007dragon

Drip said:

outrider42 said:

Well, there is a use for fast, or at least more recent, CPU's outside rendering, yet within Daz Studio. While setting up complex scenes, a more recent CPU will make a noticable difference in how fast you can move your viewport around while setting up a scene. On my previous computer, I had a relatively old i5 (some 2013 model, 4440 I believe), with 8GB memory. On the new rig I got last year, I got a Ryzen 5 2600x, and due to one memorybank failing, also 8GB memory (I gladly have 32GB now). On both, I worked with the exact same scene which had Lagoon Living by Favereal, Terradome 3 for background, and a bunch of G3 and G8 characters sprinkled around. On the old rig, changing camera angle or distance was a challenge. It frequently took 10 seconds for the viewport to respond, which makes it quite hard to place a camera exactly where you want, or find a good angle to position some character or asset. On the new computer, with the same scene, the camera was perfectly responsive. So yes, a slightly more recent CPU may have a huge impact on Daz Studio. Not on the rendering, but it can make a major difference setting up a new scene.

This is correct, when setting up a scene in Iray preview mode the CPU quality will make a diffrence.  Again though, I think Ryzen 7 37XX or Intel I7-10700k or Intel I5-10600k all hit the sweet spot.  For most users any CPU with 6 core/12 thread or 8 core/ 16 threads will be good.   Until 3 days ago, when I built my newest PC, I was running an I-7 8700 with 32 gig of 2666 DDR4 RAM and having 0 problems with DAZ studio.  All 3 CPU's I mensioned above are better than the stock mode I7-8700 I was running.   

I think a top end Ryzen 9, I-9, or Threadripper are not neeeded unless you plan on doing mostly CPU rendering or are planning on running other productivity software that use multiple threads simultaiously with DAZ studio.  If you are planning this kind of multitasking though then a Ryzen 9 or Threadripper will be the best bet due to higher core count.  I personally like taking a break and going for a walk, or playing a VIDEO game on my 1070 TI while I render on my 1080 TI.