Discussion Borderline CPU - Comparisons

[jnjnilson6]

This is another illuminating question that would be regarded differently depending upon the particular requirements of said forum user and depending upon the deeper intentions we harbor regarding the term 'requirements.' It would be beautiful to skim upon the outline of the question, answering swiftly and in a minimalistic manner, venturing breathlessly throughout the components and speeds that first come to mind, accumulating a friendly and helpful thread with lots of valuable information; the keys on the keyboard sounding listlessly whilst creating effortless and depthless communication.

Now, we will be bound to take into notice 3 main points.

Point 1. Requirements (as of today) for daily / office use.
Point 2. Requirements (as of today) for gaming.
Point 3. Requirements (as of today) for animation / intense graphics work / multitudinous programming.
(It would be recommended that four main categories are fulfilled - OS / CPU / RAM / GPU and HDD or SSD. It does not matter whether the system is a laptop or a desktop machine.)

What do you think would fall into these categories? You do not need to be correct; the only requirement is to inscribe your personal opinion and partake in a halcyon happy pastime.

For example:
Point 1.
OS: Windows 10
CPU: Intel Core i3-5005U (2 cores / 2 GHz)
RAM: 8 GB
GPU: Integrated Graphics
SSD: 256 GB


Point 2.
OS: Windows 11
CPU: Intel Core i5-12400 (6 cores / 12 threads / Top Speed @ 4.4 GHz)
RAM: 24 to 32 GB
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6600 / GeForce RTX 3060
SSD: 512 to 1 TB


Point 3.
OS: Windows 11
CPU: Intel Core i7-13700 (16 cores / 24 threads / Top Speed @ 5.2 GHz)
RAM: 32 to 64 GB
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX / GeForce RTX 4080
SSD: 2 TB and above

You may add only Intel or AMD CPUs or both, the same pertaining to the addition of Nvidia or AMD GPUs. Let the sunshine melt the concrete numbers, and uniquely, passing through the deviant colorful highlights, gaudily strewn on the screen, both within and without the gaming and the animating world,
let your imagination scurry towards a beautiful conclusion, perhaps a little tempting, veering into the particulars of hardware components that would be but a click away to appear herein and propagate the light subtle magic. Let your opinion be known and with the shifting searchlight of accumulated guesses, partake in the vigorous experience of the thread; it would be indefinitely exciting!

Thank you!

 

[hotaru.hino]

My issue with moving to any sort of work beyond basic tasks is that everyone has different requirements as to what they need versus what they want. In addition, their requirements are often vague ("I want it as fast as possible" or "I just don't want it to take all night to render a video")

For instance, for gaming, an i3-12100 is perfectly serviceable if all you want is at least 60FPS in games, which at the time of release easily attains that. But I would bet you the moment you suggest a quad core processor, people will be on you like vultures over a freshly abandoned carcass.

Similarly with say video editing work, it really depends on what you're doing with that editing. A lot of people do just fine with something like an XPS 15 or MacBook Pro (especially the Intel ones), especially if they don't add a lot of flash to their videos. If I were to pull out an example, something like Casey Neistat's daily vlogs were all about composition rather than the technical aspects of editing. Not everyone needs a setup like Linus Tech Tips (and I would argue LTT mostly does it because it's run by a giant nerd)

And as a software developer who's touched projects that were approaching 1 million lines of code, you don't need a powerhouse of a computer to work with it unless you're constantly rebuilding the entire project. The bulk of the computation comes up front with the initial build. Once that's done, the compiler only builds what changed. And even for huge collaborative projects, whole builds tend to be managed and offloaded to some other machine anyway.

But if anything, the takeaway at least here if you need a quick and dirty answer, something like this is fine, but it shouldn't be taken as the rule.

 

[jnjnilson6]

My issue with moving to any sort of work beyond basic tasks is that everyone has different requirements as to what they need versus what they want. In addition, their requirements are often vague ("I want it as fast as possible" or "I just don't want it to take all night to render a video")

For instance, for gaming, an i3-12100 is perfectly serviceable if all you want is at least 60FPS in games, which at the time of release easily attains that. But I would bet you the moment you suggest a quad core processor, people will be on you like vultures over a freshly abandoned carcass.

Similarly with say video editing work, it really depends on what you're doing with that editing. A lot of people do just fine with something like an XPS 15 or MacBook Pro (especially the Intel ones), especially if they don't add a lot of flash to their videos. If I were to pull out an example, something like Casey Neistat's daily vlogs were all about composition rather than the technical aspects of editing. Not everyone needs a setup like Linus Tech Tips (and I would argue LTT mostly does it because it's run by a giant nerd)

But if anything, the takeaway at least here if you need a quick and dirty answer, something like this is fine, but it shouldn't be taken as the rule.

That's very illuminating reasoning.

It's like those depthless verges in games like Crysis wherein the palm trees and the grasses, magnified, would capture the eye and continually drag the imagination into phantasmal and breathtaking conjectures; that insidious framerate hopping up and down due to optimization being a little less on the bright side... I still have it as a vivid memory, remaining on the forgotten recesses of the past... I remember the ships in the Multiplayer skirting the ocean and hovercrafts appearing and reappearing on the edges of the island, and gauzy forms skirting the edges of trees and hidden verdure, and smashing blows being retained from unintelligible corners...

That's talking a little old-school; I believe Crysis 1 has become like Counter-Strike 1.6 in terms of old-school. I haven't fired those babies up in almost a decade. Irregardless of that, I remember when Chris Pirillo (from YouTube) ordered a machine with 64 GB RAM back in 2010/2011. Who knew? It would still be considered a lot over a decade later.

 

[Eximo]

8GB of memory is a little light even for general office work. At any significant company size you are going to see mandatory AV/Firewall/DLP or some other real time protection. There may also be local system monitoring like a Solar Winds client or equivalent (SCCM, Tanium, etc) which will quietly consume system resources.

SaaS removes a lot of bulk processing from the end user, but means more browser tabs open. Add in O365/Teams/Slack/Google etc and memory requirements swiftly rise above 8GB. Was just a few months ago our IT department went around and upgraded everyone to 16GB minimum, where possible.

(Coming off a fresh reboot myself, with just SSMS, Outlook, Teams, and a browser running 10.1GB consumed) But it is an 11th gen i7 with 32GB of memory, so it is probably using more memory than it absolutely has to, but given the room 16GB is now the minimum I would accept.

System 2 seems perfectly adequate for decent gaming, seems to have a lot memory for the typical system though. CPU could be lighter like a Ryzen 5500 or the 12100/13100.

RX6600 and RTX3060 aren't really in the same class though. Better comparison would be the RTX3050, or bumping up to the 6700XT.

System 3 is very high end and what most people would consider a dedicated gaming or media creation system.


I remember Crysis pushing my 8800GTS to the test, it already ran normally at 90C, that pushed it to 100C+. As a consequence I hardly ever played it and never went back to it when I upgraded later on.

 

[jnjnilson6]

8GB of memory is a little light even for general office work. At any significant company size you are going to see mandatory AV/Firewall/DLP or some other real time protection. There may also be local system monitoring like a Solar Winds client or equivalent (SCCM, Tanium, etc) which will quietly consume system resources.

SaaS removes a lot of bulk processing from the end user, but means more browser tabs open. Add in O365/Teams/Slack/Google etc and memory requirements swiftly rise above 8GB. Was just a few months ago our IT department went around and upgraded everyone to 16GB minimum, where possible.

(Coming off a fresh reboot myself, with just SSMS, Outlook, Teams, and a browser running 10.1GB consumed) But it is an 11th gen i7 with 32GB of memory, so it is probably using more memory than it absolutely has to, but given the room 16GB is now the minimum I would accept.

System 2 seems perfectly adequate for decent gaming, seems to have a lot memory for the typical system though. CPU could be lighter like a Ryzen 5500 or the 12100/13100.

RX6600 and RTX3060 aren't really in the same class though. Better comparison would be the RTX3050, or bumping up to the 6700XT.

System 3 is very high end and what most people would consider a dedicated gaming or media creation system.


I remember Crysis pushing my 8800GTS to the test, it already ran normally at 90C, that pushed it to 100C+. As a consequence I hardly ever played it and never went back to it when I upgraded later on.

You're perfectly right about the RAM usage. Booting up my i7-12700H with 48 GB RAM, I am already using 8 GB with the drivers loaded and nothing supplementary.

To be honest I feel that in 2023 the 48 GB RAM I retain are something like 8 GB in 2011. I would not dare say 4 GB in 2010, but I think that 8 GB a year later would be a fair conclusion, because I've used both of those amounts (4 Gigs in 2010 and 8 in 2011). In 2012 I upgraded to 16 GB RAM. The 2010 PC was a HP Pavilion dv6, the 2011 one - a Lenovo IdeaPad Y570 and by 2012 I had switched to a desktop.

If you are using Chrome and watching movies or using Microsoft Office and you have 8 GB RAM, you would be pushing the line, yet as A LOT of machines come with 8 GB RAM preinstalled nowadays, throwing them all completely into the trash would be rather a harsh bout of decisiveness.

My Acer Nitro 5 (2022) came with Core i7-12700H, 16 GB RAM (which I upgraded to 48 GB), a 1 TB SSD (which had faulty sectors and which I replaced with the Samsung 980 Pro 2TB), and a Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti. Now they are selling the same machine (only a different modification) with 8 GB RAM. Who in their right mind would buy a Core i7-12700H equipped with a RTX 3050 Ti, a 1 TB SSD and only 8 GB RAM? That is hilarious. It is like putting a Radeon HD 5970 and an i7-990X back in the day with 1 GB RAM....

 

[Eximo]

Pretty sure my i7-4700HQ has 16GB of memory. That lower price probably tricks people into buying it.

 

[jnjnilson6]

Pretty sure my i7-4700HQ has 16GB of memory. That lower price probably tricks people into buying it.

Got mine on Black Friday 2022 for 1125~1175 eur (cannot remember precisely). And the model with 8 GB RAM now goes for 1016 eur. A lot of time has passed since then, so the price difference would be marginal.

I remember my Lenovo IdeaPad Y570 coming with 8 GB RAM for (as far as I can remember) a little over 700 eur. It had an i7-2630QM.

The 2630QM is a 2011 CPU, the 12700H - a 2022 one. The fact both machines may harbor the same amount of RAM in their default states is a killer.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Another thing to point out, and I know it's not for everyone, but regarding the amount of RAM, I'm pretty sure Windows is the problem. Or Windows and system builder bloatware.

For instance I bought a Dell XPS 13 with 8GB of RAM back in 2021. It came with Windows 11 and just sitting there even after some cleanup, it'd sit at around 4GB of RAM being used. However I had plans to turn it into a Linux machine, and after installing Zorin OS, it sat at under 2GB, though I want to say it was even lower. And I noticed it didn't run as hard.

So I'd posit that if you're in the "destitute" region, 4GB of RAM is fine for office work, you just need to throw Linux on it.

 

[jnjnilson6]

Another thing to point out, and I know it's not for everyone, but regarding the amount of RAM, I'm pretty sure Windows is the problem. Or Windows and system builder bloatware.

For instance I bought a Dell XPS 13 with 8GB of RAM back in 2021. It came with Windows 11 and just sitting there even after some cleanup, it'd sit at around 4GB of RAM being used. However I had plans to turn it into a Linux machine, and after installing Zorin OS, it sat at under 2GB, though I want to say it was even lower. And I noticed it didn't run as hard.

So I'd posit that if you're in the "destitute" region, 4GB of RAM is fine for office work, you just need to throw Linux on it.

Indeed! That's wonderfully true.

Back in the day, on Windows XP, I could open about 40 tabs in Chrome and have more tabs on other windows (talking about 2011-2012) on a single core Sempron 3300+ at 2 GHz, 896 MB RAM (128 went to the ATI Xpress 200M) and a 80 GB Hard drive. Everything ran smoothly and videos were played at a very good speed. Alongside with that I could run Office applications. All on 896 MB RAM. Today, on my Acer Nitro 5 (Core i7-12700H, GeForce 3050Ti, 48 GB RAM, 2 TB SSD), I would need a Minimum of 16 GB for those same things (if not, I am almost sure, moderately more). The difference in RAM usage is x18.3 for exactly the same thing.

PS. For anyone wondering those were three HP Compaq nx6125 machines all with the same specifications which I continued using throughout the time I had the HP Pavilion dv6 and the Lenovo IdeaPad Y570, and even into the time I built my rig in about 2012 with i7-3770K and 16 GB RAM.

 

[jnjnilson6]

Another thing to point out, and I know it's not for everyone, but regarding the amount of RAM, I'm pretty sure Windows is the problem. Or Windows and system builder bloatware.

For instance I bought a Dell XPS 13 with 8GB of RAM back in 2021. It came with Windows 11 and just sitting there even after some cleanup, it'd sit at around 4GB of RAM being used. However I had plans to turn it into a Linux machine, and after installing Zorin OS, it sat at under 2GB, though I want to say it was even lower. And I noticed it didn't run as hard.

So I'd posit that if you're in the "destitute" region, 4GB of RAM is fine for office work, you just need to throw Linux on it.

If we actually delete my esteemed 48 GB of memory into 18.3, we would get about 2.62 GB RAM, which would have been considered a very good amount up until 2010 when 4 GB became the new high-end standard. And probably you would be able to do synonymous things on Windows XP and with the software of days afore with 2.62 Gigs that you would be able to do today on Windows 11 with software written by ___ and harboring innumerable lines of disconnected code and infinite structures instead of the smart ones which would bring stability but are only a myth in nowadays' software.

 

[Eximo]

Windows 10 and 11 intentionally consume memory to speed up response times. The more you have the more it will reserve for itself.

If you launch big programs Windows will give up the memory space and move it to the swap file.

 

[jnjnilson6]

Windows 10 and 11 intentionally consume memory to speed up response times. The more you have the more it will reserve for itself.

If you launch big programs Windows will give up the memory space and move it to the swap file.

Your build looks very nice. I remember the Cooler Master Storm Trooper box and the Corsair H110 water cooling I used to have on my i7-3770K system. Was able to overclock that bad boy up to 5 GHz with aforementioned cooling.

Pretty funny how the i7-12700H eats one for breakfast.

If it would not be too presumptuous, are you a fan of overclocking?

Btw, what happened after the 8800GTS? Got a 58xx series GPU? Or a 6xxx or a 7xxx one? Those were the sweet times.

Have you been within the vogue of the Core 2 systems and retained one? What was your first CPU from the 'Intel i' series?

So many CPUs and dates and numbers, it is a trick of the mind, divisive as a mirrored stare, to unfathomably drag them on throughout the decades and never forget the relative goodness and the brilliant happenings that pass like the unexpressed redolence of faded hours.

 

[Eximo]

Your build looks very nice. I remember the Cooler Master Storm Trooper box and the Corsair H110 water cooling I used to have on my i7-3770K system. Was able to overclock that bad boy up to 5 GHz with aforementioned cooling.

If it would not be too presumptuous, are you a fan of overclocking?

Btw, what happened after the 8800GTS? Got a 58xx series GPU? Or a 6xxx or a 7xxx one? Those were the sweet times.

Have you been within the vogue of the Core 2 systems and retained one? What was your first CPU from the 'Intel i' series?

8800GTS was paired with an Athlon X2 6000. I never owned a Core 2, was pretty much AMD from Pentium 2 and up until the first 'i' chip. If I recall, I actually built a system that Tom's Hardware featured which was my first introduction to the website. This was just at the end of the local computer show era and I started looking and shopping online instead of in person. Used to be just go to a show, see what they had, read through manuals and pick out parts. And hope it all worked when you got home.

I have particularly bad timing when it comes to buying components.

I waited and waited for ASUS/AMD to release a BIOS update for my motherboard so I could drop in a quad core Phenom II (which they did about six months after I upgraded) It did support the Phenom I, but they only ran at 2.4Ghz vs the 3Ghz I was already running with the X2.

I had an i7-950 and eventually dropped in a GTX580. That CPU was certainly overclocked, from the base 3.067Ghz to 3.67Ghz. I was a bit unlucky in that I couldn't get my memory to cooperate. You could get those CPUs to 4.0/4.2 GHz sometimes. Had I waited a bit I could have had a Sandy Bridge i7 which was way better at overclocking, and I wouldn't have needed a super expensive 12GB triple channel memory kit. DDR3 1600 back than was a massive overclock in itself though.

i7-4770k after that, overclocked to 4.3Ghz. 4.5GHz was possible but too hot. Added a second GTX580, because why not. This was a mild disaster as my chassis was not well suited to running dual GPUs, particularly not such high power (for the time) ones. 244W stock, each. I bought that second card used for like $200, rather late in its cycle. I was unable to find appropriate water blocks, so I used AIO to cool them. Also at the time I had an h80i, so I ended up with 3 120mm radiators in a chassis that really wasn't designed for water cooling. Worked though. (Oh, because I got a Z87 board, couldn't get a Broadwell chip, another upgrade that would have reset my whole building schedule)

Later replaced that with a GTX980 and went back to air cooling for a bit, and later on a second GTX980, because why not. Also water cooled all of that with my first custom loop. Nearly instant regret when the 10 series launched and the beginning of the end for SLI (Unreal announced that year they would drop SLI support in favor of a type of compression, they eventually added it back, but too late by then)

So I picked up a GTX1080, along with an i7-7700k again, water cooled. Got the 7700k up to 5Ghz with a quick de-lid and re-paste. It had one very warm core from the factory. GPU overclocking doesn't get you very far these days, so just a mild overclock from the stock 2012MHz to 2100Mhz or so, and a little extra on the memory.

I had the itch again, and 11th gen had just come out, which caused quite the sale on 10th gen, so I picked up a 10900F on the cheap. Since it already boosts to 5.2GHz, didn't see the need to get a 10850K or 10900K for overclocking. It is still water cooled as you see, but it run that same GTX1080 with my then quite old Swiftech pump/res/rad combo.

During the pandemic I bought an MSRP 3080Ti, again, a stupid choice. Either should have bought a 3080 at launch (though I said I wasn't going to buy an 80 class again, since I missed both the 980Ti and 1080Ti launches. Then the 2080Ti launched at $1200 (funny, hindsight), so I skipped it, and then GPU unavailability and rising prices didn't look good, so I went ahead and made the purchase. Kind of neat to have an example of the last generation of official EVGA card, but had I waited I could have gotten a 4080 or 4070Ti for a lot less.

Still, two water blocks for that card. Gave Bykski a try, probably never again outside of a reference card. And while I was at it, replace my main pump/res/rad. I have not overclocked the GPU this time around, actually have it power limited to 280W. Too efficiently cooled, it heats up the room real fast. CPU can't be overclocked, not even really tweaked except to max the power limit, but that doesn't do much. What is overclocked is the system memory, which I haven't done since the i7-950. Running a 3200 kit at 3600.

Oldest part in my system is the CPU block, so whatever CPU I get next is due for a new one, and the move to DDR5. I am considering an Intel GPU as my next choice since that will be more interesting than say an RTX 5070, unless AMD pulls off something amazing for 8000. I already have an A380 in my HTPC, which is actually more up to date than my main system.

AMD E350 -> i3-4130T (4770k stock cooler) Radeon 6670/GTX750Ti/GTX950/GT1030 dropped my old i7-4770k in there and ran it 2.4Ghz all core and like 30W, nice Noctua cooler. Just recently added the A380, then upgraded the rest of it to an i3-12100F, 32GB of memory, and a 1TB SSD. Probably have that config for a long while since it is very much overkill.

My parts pile is rather large at this point.
i7-7700k is in service as my Nephew's main gaming box. Re-assembled one of the GTX980 for that and got a new PSU, chassis, and SSD for that.
I have two Z87 motherboards and two Haswell processors, the remaining GTX980
And the GTX1080 still sitting, though that is likely to end up with the Nephew when he moves on to more demanding games.

I should add that I sold the GTX580 for $65 each some years back. Total was something like $985 spent, and $130 recovered. I also sold one of the coolers, the other broke while it was on loan to a friend.

 

[jnjnilson6]

8800GTS was paired with an Athlon X2 6000. I never owned a Core 2, was pretty much AMD from Pentium 2 and up until the first 'i' chip. If I recall, I actually built a system that Tom's Hardware featured which was my first introduction to the website. This was just at the end of the local computer show era and I started looking and shopping online instead of in person. Used to be just go to a show, see what they had, read through manuals and pick out parts. And hope it all worked when you got home.

I have particularly bad timing when it comes to buying components.

I waited and waited for ASUS/AMD to release a BIOS update for my motherboard so I could drop in a quad core Phenom II (which they did about six months after I upgraded) It did support the Phenom I, but they only ran at 2.4Ghz vs the 3Ghz I was already running with the X2.

I had an i7-950 and eventually dropped in a GTX580. That CPU was certainly overclocked, from the base 3.067Ghz to 3.67Ghz. I was a bit unlucky in that I couldn't get my memory to cooperate. You could get those CPUs to 4.0/4.2 GHz sometimes. Had I waited a bit I could have had a Sandy Bridge i7 which was way better at overclocking, and I wouldn't have needed a super expensive 12GB triple channel memory kit. DDR3 1600 back than was a massive overclock in itself though.

i7-4770k after that, overclocked to 4.3Ghz. 4.5GHz was possible but too hot. Added a second GTX580, because why not. This was a mild disaster as my chassis was not well suited to running dual GPUs, particularly not such high power (for the time) ones. 244W stock, each. I bought that second card used for like $200, rather late in its cycle. I was unable to find appropriate water blocks, so I used AIO to cool them. Also at the time I had an h80i, so I ended up with 3 120mm radiators in a chassis that really wasn't designed for water cooling. Worked though. (Oh, because I got a Z87 board, couldn't get a Broadwell chip, another upgrade that would have reset my whole building schedule)

Later replaced that with a GTX980 and went back to air cooling for a bit, and later on a second GTX980, because why not. Also water cooled all of that with my first custom loop. Nearly instant regret when the 10 series launched and the beginning of the end for SLI (Unreal announced that year they would drop SLI support in favor of a type of compression, they eventually added it back, but too late by then)

So I picked up a GTX1080, along with an i7-7700k again, water cooled. Got the 7700k up to 5Ghz with a quick de-lid and re-paste. It had one very warm core from the factory. GPU overclocking doesn't get you very far these days, so just a mild overclock from the stock 2012MHz to 2100Mhz or so, and a little extra on the memory.

I had the itch again, and 11th gen had just come out, which caused quite the sale on 10th gen, so I picked up a 10900F on the cheap. Since it already boosts to 5.2GHz, didn't see the need to get a 10850K or 10900K for overclocking. It is still water cooled as you see, but it run that same GTX1080 with my then quite old Swiftech pump/res/rad combo.

During the pandemic I bought an MSRP 3080Ti, again, a stupid choice. Either should have bought a 3080 at launch (though I said I wasn't going to buy an 80 class again, since I missed both the 980Ti and 1080Ti launches. Then the 2080Ti launched at $1200 (funny, hindsight), so I skipped it, and then GPU unavailability and rising prices didn't look good, so I went ahead and made the purchase. Kind of neat to have an example of the last generation of official EVGA card, but had I waited I could have gotten a 4080 or 4070Ti for a lot less.

Still, two water blocks for that card. Gave Bykski a try, probably never again outside of a reference card. And while I was at it, replace my main pump/res/rad. I have not overclocked the GPU this time around, actually have it power limited to 280W. Too efficiently cooled, it heats up the room real fast. CPU can't be overclocked, not even really tweaked except to max the power limit, but that doesn't do much. What is overclocked is the system memory, which I haven't done since the i7-950. Running a 3200 kit at 3600.

Oldest part in my system is the CPU block, so whatever CPU I get next is due for a new one, and the move to DDR5. I am considering an Intel GPU as my next choice since that will be more interesting than say an RTX 5070, unless AMD pulls off something amazing for 8000. I already have an A380 in my HTPC, which is actually more up to date than my main system.

AMD E350 -> i3-4130T (4770k stock cooler) Radeon 6670/GTX750Ti/GTX950/GT1030 dropped my old i7-4770k in there and ran it 2.4Ghz all core and like 30W, nice Noctua cooler. Just recently added the A380, then upgraded the rest of it to an i3-12100F, 32GB of memory, and a 1TB SSD. Probably have that config for a long while since it is very much overkill.

My parts pile is rather large at this point.
i7-7700k is in service as my Nephew's main gaming box. Re-assembled one of the GTX980 for that and got a new PSU, chassis, and SSD for that.
I have two Z87 motherboards and two Haswell processors, the remaining GTX980
And the GTX1080 still sitting, though that is likely to end up with the Nephew when he moves on to more demanding games.

I should add that I sold the GTX580 for $65 each some years back. Total was something like $985 spent, and $130 recovered. I also sold one of the coolers, the other broke while it was on loan to a friend.

Had an AMD E-450 myself. A Sony Vaio. It had x32 Windows 7 and 4 GB RAM of which, I think, only 3.5 GB were recognized. A good little machine, despite its performance was synonymous to the Pentium 4s. A P4 520 system I had scored higher on Cinebench than it and it was from 2012.

Then again it was quite good for the time.

Between 2015/16 and up until now, I have gone through innumerable middle-end and low-end laptops. The Core i7-12700H was the real thing. Although to be honest for the work I am doing it is more than sufficient and many times ahead.

I think you've been having some very good systems. The timing was very good, I'd say. I've seen far worse decisions regarding upgrades and timing. People going from a Sandy i7 to an Ivy i5, people selling their computers for high prices and somehow managing to sell them to unwitting persons, people getting GPUs with the exact same performance of their 4-5 year old current ones, and the list goes on indefinitely...

Thanks for writing up! It was really illuminating...

 

[Eximo]

Had an AMD E-450 myself. A Sony Vaio. It had x32 Windows 7 and 4 GB RAM of which, I think, only 3.5 GB were recognized. A good little machine, despite its performance was synonymous to the Pentium 4s. A P4 520 system I had scored higher on Cinebench than it and it was from 2012.

Then again it was quite good for the time.

Between 2015/16 and up until now, I have gone through innumerable middle-end and low-end laptops. The Core i7-12700H was the real thing. Although to be honest for the work I am doing it is more than sufficient and many times ahead.

I think you've been having some very good systems. The timing was very good, I'd say. I've seen far worse decisions regarding upgrades and timing. People going from a Sandy i7 to an Ivy i5, people selling their computers for high prices and somehow managing to sell them to unwitting persons, people getting GPUs with the exact same performance of their 4-5 year old current ones, and the list goes on indefinitely...

Thanks for writing up! It was really illuminating...

Outside of being generally into cars, PCs are my main hobby. I don't do as much gaming or benchmarking as I used to, but I always enjoyed tinkering with them. Problem these days is that most of the fun of overclocking is gone without going to extremes. Water cooling is interesting to do, and once you've sunk some costs into it, pretty easy to justify buying components here and there.

Since late college I have always had a pretty beefy gaming PC. Not the hardware that is bad, just price efficiency. Had I bought Sandy Bridge, probably would have ended up on Skylake or lasted until Coffee Lake and its 6 CPU cores. Heck I could have bought the i7-960 and had six cores all along which would have pre-disposed me to sticking with the HEDT, but then Intel bailed on it after '10th' gen until now.

My E350 was an embedded mini-ITX motherboard from ASUS. It was neat to play with, basically an offshoot of what they put in the Playstation and Xbox of the time, but only a dual core. Still makes a great NES emulator.

Sadly it wasn't fast enough to run the TV-Tuner I put in it, so I ended up adding the 6670 to give it more oomph in older games. I played a lot of my pre-DX9 titles on there since the AMD card worked better than my Nvidia cards for that. Retired it when the 6670 simply could not handle output to an HDMI 2.0 port, it just refused to scale properly despite drivers and vBIOS updates.

 

[jnjnilson6]

Outside of being generally into cars, PCs are my main hobby. I don't do as much gaming or benchmarking as I used to, but I always enjoyed tinkering with them. Problem these days is that most of the fun of overclocking is gone without going to extremes. Water cooling is interesting to do, and once you've sunk some costs into it, pretty easy to justify buying components here and there.

Since late college I have always had a pretty beefy gaming PC. Not the hardware that is bad, just price efficiency. Had I bought Sandy Bridge, probably would have ended up on Skylake or lasted until Coffee Lake and its 6 CPU cores. Heck I could have bought the i7-960 and had six cores all along which would have pre-disposed me to sticking with the HEDT, but then Intel bailed on it after '10th' gen until now.

My E350 was an embedded mini-ITX motherboard from ASUS. It was neat to play with, basically an offshoot of what they put in the Playstation and Xbox of the time, but only a dual core. Still makes a great NES emulator.

Sadly it wasn't fast enough to run the TV-Tuner I put in it, so I ended up adding the 6670 to give it more oomph in older games. I played a lot of my pre-DX9 titles on there since the AMD card worked better than my Nvidia cards for that. Retired it when the 6670 simply could not handle output to an HDMI 2.0 port, it just refused to scale properly despite drivers and vBIOS updates.

Have had the version that is a little faster, the 6770, myself. I had the Sapphire version. Could overclock Core from 775 to 980 and Memory from 1000 to 1380/90.

It ran Crysis and other games of the time wonderfully with the i7-3770K. My friends had worse CPUs, but moderately better cards so they got more FPS until I got my first 7870 (used to have 2x 7870 GHz in CF). Their specs were i5-2400 + 4 GB RAM + HD 6850, AMD T1090 (or 1100, don't remember) + 4 GB RAM + HD 5850, and Core i5 3rd gen (as far as memory serves me) + HD 7770.

The PC with the AMD T1090 and the HD 5850 cost the person who bought it about 3065 eur back in 2010. I told him he'd been cheated out of his money, and all he said was that the person who'd built him the PC was 'a friend of the family.'

Have been out of the gaming and the hardware sphere myself. How well I remember the old days and the old parts and how insufferably unaligned my memory proves with current hardware... Guess time plays its invariable tricks and the wistfulness of the past, like surreal and evasive memories, would be stretched out, unattainable and serene, providing surcease and avid immersion within lukewarm happenings, the chilling resolution of time's fast passing, the effortless mingling of regretful old things...

 

[Eximo]

I believe the 6670 was the fastest GPU available at the time that didn't require a PCIe power cable, and my HTPCs have always leaned towards efficiency over performance.

I'm a bit mad that slot power A380 are now available. Never made sense that a 75W card needed an 8-pin PCIe connector, but I needed to replace the old PSU anyway, nearly a decade of service for that old Silverstone.

I would say one of the other reasons I upgrade as often as I do is to replace other people's hardware. 750Ti replaced the 6670, but that 6670 was sold at the same time as the GTX580, I think for practically the cost of shipping. 750Ti ended up as a donation to someone who had had a recent tragedy. His friends basically forced him into gaming as a type of suicide watch which was a good idea. GTX950 ended up in a friend's machine for playing World of Warcraft, but I am keeping the GT1030 as a spare troubleshooting card this time around, also not a very good GPU, but good for HTPC.

I have built many machines for my brothers out of spare parts over the years. Even a few business desktops converted into quick gaming boxes. The friend I lent the GTX580 ended up getting a GTX970. I came across a Dell i7-4790 Micro ATX tower that clearly had been mis-marked with the price of an i5, and picked that up. Stripped it, cobbled an aftermarket heatsink for it, wired up my own 24 to 8 pin adapter and moved the whole thing into my friends full tower (Got that from a co-worker on the cheap, NZXT something) Always fascinated why many first time gaming PC builders always go for a full tower.