best cpu ram combo for multitasking - 3 or more browsers - hundreds of tabs - imacros - other apps/programs at the same time

[hmmmmm]

It's time for me to get a new PC. I am not a gamer.

I would like the best setup for multitasking web/internet activities or occasionally doing video editing/rendering/conversion and graphic design on the Ubuntu operating system.

Examples of what I do are:

Firefox, Opera, Chromium all open at once with up to 20-30 tabs open in each browser... and running a graphic editor (GIMP) at the same time and could have a video editor open too... and I might have imacros running a script in the background. iMacros uses a lot of JavaScript (not Java).

Sometimes I do video conversion from mp4 or avi to DCP or similar tasks. But I was fine just letting it process overnight on my old HP Phenom AMD x4. I don't do this enough to worry or care how long it takes to render or complete the conversion.

The most important thing for me now is to be able to run imacros in the background while I do web/internet/coding type activities with a lot of tabs and browsers open because I have to separate projects by which browser I am using...

I never play games. So I'll just be using the integrated or my old graphics card that was in my old PC. It just needs to be able to play 1080p video without skipping.

So is it more important for me to have more cores like a 5960x or more speed and more modern design like a 6700k? I think the 5960x has a bigger pipe for memory transfer and bigger caches too.

Would it help me to drop my Ghz and get a quad-socket AMD or a dual-socket Xeon?

My main goal is to be able to as many different things at once and I believe that imacros is pretty cpu heavy. I'm running it now and it almost maxes out 2 of the 8 threads on the 4770 intel i7 (Intel® Core™ i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz × 8 - Haswell) that I'm borrowing until I get my new PC, almost maxes it out 2 of the 8 threads periodically (every 10 seconds in a loop.)

I have 13 tabs open in one browser as I close out my work-day. Earlier I had 3 browsers open with 20 tabs in each and running maybe 5-6 different applications at once.

 

[basroil]

That's not multitasking, any i5 would be enough. Better yet, just get rid of imacros because javascript heavy software is piss-poor software. Doesn't matter how good of a CPU you have if the program is about 100x slower than it should be! (see a simplified example with http://unriskinsight.blogspot.jp/2014/06/fast-functional-goats-lions-and-wolves.html)

 

[hmmmmm]

I'm not saying that iMacros is good or not. I'm saying that is what I use. The topic wasn't what software I should use. The question was how do I crush iMacros for Firefox, which is the best CPU/RAM setup for it so I can multi-task browsers and some other small softwares.

 

[basroil]

I'm not saying that iMacros is good or not. I'm saying that is what I use. The topic wasn't what software I should use. The question was how do I crush iMacros for Firefox, which is the best CPU/RAM setup for it so I can multi-task browsers and some other small softwares.

And I told you it's impossible because it's a PoS program. You need as much single threaded performance as possible, so a 4 core chip like the 4690k or 4790k overclocked to 4.5GHz+ is the best you can do

 

[hmmmmm]

I'm not saying that iMacros is good or not. I'm saying that is what I use. The topic wasn't what software I should use. The question was how do I crush iMacros for Firefox, which is the best CPU/RAM setup for it so I can multi-task browsers and some other small softwares.

And I told you it's impossible because it's a PoS program. You need as much single threaded performance as possible, so a 4 core chip like the 4690k or 4790k overclocked to 4.5GHz+ is the best you can do

It seems to be using more than one core based on my usage map here, this is a 4770 Haswell at 3.4GHZ with 16GB ram and it's still maxing out more than one core:

The above is just running iMacros and a few other programs. Given I have a lot of tabs open.
I don't know much about how iMacros works but wouldn't it use the hyperthreading or multitasking built into FireFox?

It looks like it uses 2 of the "threads/cores" on the 4770.

 

[basroil]

It looks like it uses 2 of the "threads/cores" on the 4770.

That right there looks like it uses ONE thread, since you can see that it never has two peaks at the same time! On top of a single thread, it seems to not have any programming for multicore computers and lets threads float

 

[hmmmmm]

It looks like it uses 2 of the "threads/cores" on the 4770.

That right there looks like it uses ONE thread, since you can see that it never has two peaks at the same time! On top of a single thread, it seems to not have any programming for multicore computers and lets threads float

ok, that makes sense

so to maximize imacros i need the highest speed possible, so wouldnt the 6700k that is over clocked be the best for this?

 

[basroil]

so to maximize imacros i need the highest speed possible, so wouldnt the 6700k that is over clocked be the best for this?

Sure, but is it worth ~$550 to you? You'll need to replace the CPU, mobo, and memory, for maybe a 5-15% improvement (depending on how lucky you are)

 

[hmmmmm]

so to maximize imacros i need the highest speed possible, so wouldnt the 6700k that is over clocked be the best for this?

Sure, but is it worth ~$550 to you? You'll need to replace the CPU, mobo, and memory, for maybe a 5-15% improvement (depending on how lucky you are)

I'm buying a new PC. I'm just on a loaner now (the 4770 3.4ghz haswell i7 with 16GB).

Will 32GB ram help me with multitasking and make it so I can have more programs open than just 16GB ram?

Are perl/python/php scritps run from shell going to use all of my available cores or just force it onto one core?

Given that FireFox/imacros looks like single core program, perhaps the cpu or firefox puts the load on the least used thread and I'm just not doing that much to see overlaps? That's why I see it using thread-core 2 and 8 in alternating fashion?

 

[basroil]

I'm buying a new PC. I'm just on a loaner now (the 4770 3.4ghz haswell i7 with 16GB).

Will 32GB ram help me with multitasking and make it so I can have more programs open than just 16GB ram?

Are perl/python/php scritps run from shell going to use all of my available cores or just force it onto one core?

Given that FireFox/imacros looks like single core program, perhaps the cpu or firefox puts the load on the least used thread and I'm just not doing that much to see overlaps? That's why I see it using thread-core 2 and 8 in alternating fashion?

1) Skip the 6700k, get a 6600K, it's cheaper
2) Yes, more memory means more tasks and larger data, but I doubt you will ever use more than 16 (I personally can, but that's because I can sometime work with data sets > 250 million points in size each point being several bytes in size)
3) Scripting languages in general are single threaded. If you use multiple instances it might work, but I doubt you ever will.
4) imacros has nothing to do with firefox, it's simply a program that latches onto it. If you have performance issues, contact that program's manufacturer

 

[hmmmmm]

I'm buying a new PC. I'm just on a loaner now (the 4770 3.4ghz haswell i7 with 16GB).

Will 32GB ram help me with multitasking and make it so I can have more programs open than just 16GB ram?

Are perl/python/php scritps run from shell going to use all of my available cores or just force it onto one core?

Given that FireFox/imacros looks like single core program, perhaps the cpu or firefox puts the load on the least used thread and I'm just not doing that much to see overlaps? That's why I see it using thread-core 2 and 8 in alternating fashion?

1) Skip the 6700k, get a 6600K, it's cheaper
2) Yes, more memory means more tasks and larger data, but I doubt you will ever use more than 16 (I personally can, but that's because I can sometime work with data sets > 250 million points in size each point being several bytes in size)
3) Scripting languages in general are single threaded. If you use multiple instances it might work, but I doubt you ever will.
4) imacros has nothing to do with firefox, it's simply a program that latches onto it. If you have performance issues, contact that program's manufacturer

thanks!

what's the different between the 6600 and the 6700? their benchmarks are nearly identical

how is ddr3 vs ddr4 going to effect things?

which programs in linux are able to use 8 cores and there for make a fx9590amd be faster?

 

[basroil]

what's the different between the 6600 and the 6700? their benchmarks are nearly identical

6600K is a 4 core 4 thread processor without hyperthreading while the 6700K is a 4 core 8 thread processor with hyperthreading. Both can be overclocked, both need the Z170 chipset to overclock.

how is ddr3 vs ddr4 going to effect things?

For you, it won't. Scripting languages are 100% parsing limited, which means memory isn't a concern.

which programs in linux are able to use 8 cores and there for make a fx9590amd be faster?

FX9590 will ALWAYS be slower than the 6700 at the same clock speed, and in fact the default ~4GHz clock can never be beaten by a FX9590 in anything other than an experimental setups using LN2. Even in multithreaded operations the 6700 will be faster 100% of the time.

As for multithreaded programs, tons of them, but again, scripting languages are inherently bad at it and won't count. C++ coded program chunks can be multithreaded even with a scripting based interface (i.e. opencv's optical flow computations or blender's render operations), but considering your other posts it's not worth it.

 

[hmmmmm]

what's the different between the 6600 and the 6700? their benchmarks are nearly identical

6600K is a 4 core 4 thread processor without hyperthreading while the 6700K is a 4 core 8 thread processor with hyperthreading. Both can be overclocked, both need the Z170 chipset to overclock.

how is ddr3 vs ddr4 going to effect things?

For you, it won't. Scripting languages are 100% parsing limited, which means memory isn't a concern.

which programs in linux are able to use 8 cores and there for make a fx9590amd be faster?

FX9590 will ALWAYS be slower than the 6700 at the same clock speed, and in fact the default ~4GHz clock can never be beaten by a FX9590 in anything other than an experimental setups using LN2. Even in multithreaded operations the 6700 will be faster 100% of the time.

As for multithreaded programs, tons of them, but again, scripting languages are inherently bad at it and won't count. C++ coded program chunks can be multithreaded even with a scripting based interface (i.e. opencv's optical flow computations or blender's render operations), but considering your other posts it's not worth it.

is now a bad time to buy a long term PC since Zen is scheduled to come out this year?

 

[basroil]

is now a bad time to buy a long term PC since Zen is scheduled to come out this year?

If you need a PC now, buy it. If you can wait, then just wait. CPU performance won't change that much, and even if zen gets haswell level IPC it won't help you one bit since you are mostly single thread limited.

 

[hmmmmm]

so I'm going to get a 6700k with 16gb ram ddr4, regular hard drive (from old PC), power supply from old pc (some kind of quiet-ish corsair i think), and the Silencio 652S by cooler master...

something like that

 

[basroil]

so I'm going to get a 6700k with 16gb ram ddr4, regular hard drive (from old PC), power supply from old pc (some kind of quiet-ish corsair i think), and the Silencio 652S by cooler master...

something like that

If the PSU is older than ~3-4 years, I would suggest budgeting a new PSU too. If you put down the PSU model number I might be able to tell you if it's compatible.

 

[hmmmmm]

so I'm going to get a 6700k with 16gb ram ddr4, regular hard drive (from old PC), power supply from old pc (some kind of quiet-ish corsair i think), and the Silencio 652S by cooler master...

something like that

If the PSU is older than ~3-4 years, I would suggest budgeting a new PSU too. If you put down the PSU model number I might be able to tell you if it's compatible.

also could you recommend the cheapest cpu cooler that will allow me to overclock it to 4.9-5ghz.

i have a tr2 430w thermaltake cooler p/n: w0070ruc atx 12v 2.3 model:TR2-430NL2NC, if I can get a much quieter I would like to go quieter

also which motherboard? i'm looking at the Asus Z170-AR ATX LGA1151 Motherboard or the Asus Z170-PRO but I don't really know my options

im going to get ddr4 3400 ram, does brand matter or should i just get cheapest?

 

[basroil]

Yea, that thing is NOT haswell compatible and will have issues.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/XVKmyc

That's a set of parts, though just a few caveats:
1) Overclocking CPUs involves as much luck as good parts, no guarantees that you'll hit 5GH on that, but you certainly will get 4.5GHz without issue
2) Your memory choice is pointlessly expensive, it will only be marginally faster for about twice the cost of 2400 ram

 

[hmmmmm]

Yea, that thing is NOT haswell compatible and will have issues.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/XVKmyc

That's a set of parts, though just a few caveats:
1) Overclocking CPUs involves as much luck as good parts, no guarantees that you'll hit 5GH on that, but you certainly will get 4.5GHz without issue
2) Your memory choice is pointlessly expensive, it will only be marginally faster for about twice the cost of 2400 ram

i'm going skylake not haswell, but i'm already using the pcpartpicker.com site

any other tips? any motherboard suggestions?

do I need a special cooler to get 4.5-5ghz or just any air-cooler? this is what I have selected so far: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler

 

[basroil]

i'm going skylake not haswell, but i'm already using the pcpartpicker.com site

any other tips? any motherboard suggestions?

do I need a special cooler to get 4.5-5ghz or just any air-cooler? this is what I have selected so far: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler

Gigabyte, MSI, and Asus are all good as long as you get Z170. If you are serious about pushing clocks very high, you'll want to spend on a mobo that has good reviews in overclocking.

As for cooler, the 212 evo might work for light overclocking, but if you intend to push it you'll find it's easier with lower base temps, so either water or big air.

 

[hmmmmm]

I was advised to get the "Asus Z170-AR ATX LGA1151 Motherboard " by the guy at Fry's who has a $4500 overclocked PC. But is Gigabyte better? or Evga or MSI for the same price?

Here's my build so far:

anything I could do cheaper/better?

 

[hmmmmm]

What's the difference between the Asus Z170-AR and the Asus Z170-A motherboards? Seem to be the same thing?

 

[hmmmmm]

Here's the answer from ASUS tech support:

the specifiactions and functionalities of both Z170- AR and Z170- A are same, except that Z170-A supports Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory .

 

[hmmmmm]

so I got my machine now, I'm still waiting on the case, and I was able to use te 430W powersupply... spent $740 before tax and about $765 after tax (I think)

6700k
asus z710-a
16gb ddr4 2400
cyrorig h7
cooler master 625s silencio

i wasted $3-$5 on thermal paste because it comes with the cyrorig h7

ill get a $25 giftcard rebate from the cooler master

some problems: the asus z170-a ethernet/network card doesnt work with ubuntu out of the box, i had to put in my old wireless card, the sound doesnt work yet

other than that it's working fine but lagging a little bit while I type in this box and imacros is running in the background, maybe the 6 core 5280k with 6 cores would be better for that?

 

[basroil]

other than that it's working fine but lagging a little bit while I type in this box and imacros is running in the background, maybe the 6 core 5280k with 6 cores would be better for that?

I think we already covered that your software is strictly single threaded. Throwing more threads will NOT help at all.

As for network drivers, you should be able to find them at the intel website.