Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world

Re:Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world by Nition on Thursday July 06, 2017 @12:08AM (#14708074)

Similarly, I only just upgraded from an i7 860 (2009) to a 6700K at the end of last year. In performance benchmarks, it's only twice as fast as my old one, and that's over seven years. Big difference to how things felt in the past. Imagine if your 66Mhz Pentium still ran well enough that you weren't sure it was worth upgrading to a 500Mhz Pentium III. Same time span.

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Re:Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world by ido on Thursday July 06, 2017 @01:42AM (#14708380)

This was mostly only true in the 90s tho, when we saw the hockey stick part of the S curve: between 1981 and 1987 your comparable choice would have been upgrading a 5mhz 8088 to a 10mhz 286.

a 386 machine would be ~$10k (in 80s $s!) and more like a high end multichip Xeon system or something today - they actually had a compaq 386 of that vintage in my first job and it was still in active service in 2001.

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Re:Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world by Nition on Thursday July 06, 2017 @02:00AM (#14708434)

In that case I guess my problem is we bought our first computer in '95, so my kind of baseline experience is that super fast world.

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Re:Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world by Frogolocalypse on Thursday July 06, 2017 @04:57AM (#14708994)

Try and imagine since 1980. Kind of hard to explain to my boy actually. He has my old computer from about 7 years ago. At least i think it was 7. Intel 2600k? Still works a treat. It's almost as old as he is.

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Re:Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world by Kenji on Thursday July 06, 2017 @06:00AM (#14709211)

I also got Intel 2600K. Yes, it's still going very strong. No reason to switch until my motherboard breaks. Speed gains would be minimal, yet getting a new processor would be quite expensive.

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Re:Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world by rolal on Thursday July 06, 2017 @12:14PM (#14711455)

I've a 2600K with 32GB DDR3 ram, and its the cost of DDR4 ram that is that stopping me from upgrading. Well that and the fact that that i've no compelling reason to upgrade beyond keeping up with the joneses.

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Re:Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world by ido on Thursday July 06, 2017 @06:22AM (#14709291)

i had an i5-2500k that my nephew got a couple years ago simply cause we moved to a different country and i didn't want to lug a big-ass desktop with me. I suspect most people wouldn't notice the difference between it and a brand new CPU.

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Re:Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world by dsr_ on Thursday July 06, 2017 @07:41AM (#14709601)

I just replaced my work desktop i5-2500 with an i5-4570. Same SSDs, 16GB RAM instead of 24GB. (Not a voluntary move.)

There's no perceivable difference.

If you have enough RAM to avoid swapping and cheap SATA SSDs, all the requirements for fast/large CPUs or graphics cards are special applications of some sort. Browsers and editors and terminal windows and video playback don't count.

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Re:Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world by paulmd on Thursday July 06, 2017 @09:21AM (#14710160)

Even with a very intense overclock, Sandy Bridge is starting to fall behind the pack in gaming. Not obsolete by any means but 5 years of even incremental IPC gains do add up, and Sandy Bridge is still running PCIe 2.0. The 2500k is starting to come out 30-50% behind the 7600K in many titles let alone a 7700K, which is a very perceptible difference.

http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2773-intel-i5-2500k-revisi...

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-is-it-...

For "work" workloads, Sandy Bridge is still quite potent though. Honestly in that segment the gains have mostly been coming from moving to more cores. A hexacore or octacore with hyperthreading/SMT knocks the stuffing out of an i5.

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Re:Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world by Frogolocalypse on Saturday July 08, 2017 @03:56AM (#14724587)

Yep. It was that reason that i upgraded from the 2600k. My entire workspace is virtual machines. The 2600k started falling down there. Vmware without hyperthreading is kinda non optimal. Sub normal. Frfrrl. Everything else, it is still a cracking pc.

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Re:Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world by ido on Thursday July 06, 2017 @02:59AM (#14708636)

Oh it's a common (& valid) comparison :)

Just wanted to add a little historical context.

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Re:Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world by jl6 on Thursday July 06, 2017 @02:17AM (#14708485)

I'm still on my i7 860 with nothing compelling me to upgrade. Intel's biggest competitor in 2017 is Intel from 2010.

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Re:Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world by danieldk on Thursday July 06, 2017 @03:35AM (#14708744)

It really depends on your applications/field. If you are in machine learning or data analysis, AVX can give a welcome performance boost. Also, a maximum of 16GB RAM is quite limiting.

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Re:Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world by majewsky on Thursday July 06, 2017 @06:57AM (#14709422)

If you're in ML, can't you just stick a new GPU in the PCIe slot? A GTX 1070 can be had for below 500 €, which would still be a bit less than a new motherboard, new RAM and a new i7.

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Re:Intel Core i9-7900X review: The fastest chip in the world by ac29 on Thursday July 06, 2017 @11:03PM (#14715714)

My i5-750 has run 32GB RAM for years (4x8GB). I haven't had any issues.

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