i3 vs i5 vs i7 single thread processes

[preludeman92]

Hello all,
My office has turned to me to help spec out updates for the computers in our engineering department. We run Solidworks almost exclusively. Solidworks is generally single threaded, but there are a few aspect of our daily routine that will hit a 2nd core. There is really only 1 engineer that would benefit from the 8 threads an i7 provides and has said he will wait if we don't bump him to an i7.

That being said, 90%+ of Solidworks is single threaded so 1 fast Haswell core is really what I need. Accounting is balking at us requesting an i7-4790k because our normal work only hits the i7 we already use (i7 Q740, 1st gen mobile) 12% in task manager and uses less than 1/2 the ram we have. They say our computers are more than fast enough. The processors in our laptops have a Passmark single thread score of 920, while a new i3-4370 is 2225, i5-4690k is 2254, and an i7-4770 is 2239. In theory, everything we do will be twice as fast on a new computer, right?

Will we really notice much of a difference here between the Haswell processors since nearly everything we do is single threaded? I would jump back to a G3258 and overclock it, but overclocking is not allowed.

 

[Undying89]

Yes, you will notice a difference. Basically in single-threaded apps core clock is the king so dosnt matter if its an i5 or i7.

 

[Pinhedd]

Hello all,
My office has turned to me to help spec out updates for the computers in our engineering department. We run Solidworks almost exclusively. Solidworks is generally single threaded, but there are a few aspect of our daily routine that will hit a 2nd core. There is really only 1 engineer that would benefit from the 8 threads an i7 provides and has said he will wait if we don't bump him to an i7.

That being said, 90%+ of Solidworks is single threaded so 1 fast Haswell core is really what I need. Accounting is balking at us requesting an i7-4790k because our normal work only hits the i7 we already use (i7 Q740, 1st gen mobile) 12% in task manager and uses less than 1/2 the ram we have. They say our computers are more than fast enough. The processors in our laptops have a Passmark single thread score of 920, while a new i3-4370 is 2225, i5-4690k is 2254, and an i7-4770 is 2239. In theory, everything we do will be twice as fast on a new computer, right?

Will we really notice much of a difference here between the Haswell processors since nearly everything we do is single threaded? I would jump back to a G3258 and overclock it, but overclocking is not allowed.

Yes, quite a difference. You'd even notice a difference between an i5 and i7 of the same architecture due to the i7's greater cache.

Tell your accounting department to stuff a sock in it and to never tell an engineer whether or not the tools that he or she is using are adequate.

Furthermore, you should spend a few extra dollars to invest in a workstation that uses Xeon microprocessors and ECC RDIMMs.

If they give you any guff, just tell them to take a look at how much they're paying the engineers and then work out the dollar value of time those engineers are sitting around waiting for tasks to complete. I guarantee that the new hardware will pay for itself rather quickly.

 

[QSV]

I noticed a huge increase in speed from an E8400 to an i5-750 in single threaded performance (and the i5 was clocked 200 MHz slower), so you will feel the speed increase between 4 whole generations even more.

 

[ingtar33]

though solidworks is single threaded, it benifits from 2 things.
1) clock speed
2) cache size

as a result short of an extreme edition cpu and ddr4 memory and silly large cache sizes, it would run best on an i7-4790k, largest cache, highest base clock speed. overclock it a bit and you'll be fairly productive.

as for accounting. i work in corperate IT, i've never met an accounting department that knew how to use more then the 10 key number pad, most are hardly litterate and the rest think computers are magic. when you say accounting what you really mean is the "boss" am I right? cause it sounds like a small firm with a boss who thinks he knows what he's talking about. i deal with that as well with some of my clients.

yes, a haswell i3 will work fine, and represent a significant boost over your older i7-q740; not the least of which due to the massive clock speed improvement.

 

[LucoTF]

as for accounting. i work in corperate IT, i've never met an accounting department that knew how to use more then the 10 key number pad, most are hardly litterate and the rest think computers are magic. when you say accounting what you really mean is the "boss" am I right? cause it sounds like a small firm with a boss who thinks he knows what he's talking about. i deal with that as well with some of my clients.

As a chartered accountant who is also head of IT:

 

[ingtar33]

as for accounting. i work in corperate IT, i've never met an accounting department that knew how to use more then the 10 key number pad, most are hardly litterate and the rest think computers are magic. when you say accounting what you really mean is the "boss" am I right? cause it sounds like a small firm with a boss who thinks he knows what he's talking about. i deal with that as well with some of my clients.

As a chartered accountant who is also head of IT:

hahah

that's a great gif. 😀

 

[preludeman92]

though solidworks is single threaded, it benifits from 2 things.
1) clock speed
2) cache size

as a result short of an extreme edition cpu and ddr4 memory and silly large cache sizes, it would run best on an i7-4790k, largest cache, highest base clock speed. overclock it a bit and you'll be fairly productive.

as for accounting. i work in corperate IT, i've never met an accounting department that knew how to use more then the 10 key number pad, most are hardly litterate and the rest think computers are magic. when you say accounting what you really mean is the "boss" am I right? cause it sounds like a small firm with a boss who thinks he knows what he's talking about. i deal with that as well with some of my clients.

yes, a haswell i3 will work fine, and represent a significant boost over your older i7-q740; not the least of which due to the massive clock speed improvement.

No, our company is over 300 people, so not really small. My Engineering director (boss) has a small budget ($5000) to upgrade as we see fit. We asked to build 5 new computers ourselves (i7-4790k overclocked, 8GB ram, Quadro cards, 850 EVO SSDs). Accounting got wind of engineering wanting to spend $1000 computers, flipped out and asked IT to step in. IT said they don't want to support us doing this and believe we have installed SW wrong. Our SW reseller has said it's installed right, but we need new hardware and are coming in next week to figure out what the biggest holdup is.
In the mean time, IT has been so gracious as to gift us brand new HP towers with Celeron J1900 processors, 5400rpm HDDs, and Intel graphics because "they work great in the rest of the building". They are collecting dust in the corner right now. IT noticed that this morning and declared "we don't know what we are doing, those are the best computers in the building!". Accounting happened to overhear an exchange between me and IT and asked for me to price what I wanted from HP and walked away when I told them over $2000 each.
I'm thinking we can get them to buy us actual i3 towers with a fast clock as well as the Quadro GFX cards we need.

So, a new i3 vs a new i7 will act differently despite the passmark score is so close? I'm not really worried about how much faster the new computer is vs our old laptops, I'm more curious about new vs new.

We are also having some serious battles over our network and servers which are seriously overloaded and seriously old... 4 server boxes each have 16gb ram and 1 8 core processor (gen 1 Core xeon processor clocked under 2.5ghz) support over 13 virtual servers including 4 production Solidworks setups, EPDM, webserver, outlook server, our configuration manager, phones, file server... We have constant timeouts and not responding issues that IT blames on us not knowing what we are doing or our software is wrong. Funny, our last IT director walked away because accounting wouldn't give them the funds needed to update our network and servers.
We're still running office 2003 everywhere and XP in many locations!

 

[LucoTF]

...feel better now champ?

it's ok, let it all out

 

[Pinhedd]

though solidworks is single threaded, it benifits from 2 things.
1) clock speed
2) cache size

as a result short of an extreme edition cpu and ddr4 memory and silly large cache sizes, it would run best on an i7-4790k, largest cache, highest base clock speed. overclock it a bit and you'll be fairly productive.

as for accounting. i work in corperate IT, i've never met an accounting department that knew how to use more then the 10 key number pad, most are hardly litterate and the rest think computers are magic. when you say accounting what you really mean is the "boss" am I right? cause it sounds like a small firm with a boss who thinks he knows what he's talking about. i deal with that as well with some of my clients.

yes, a haswell i3 will work fine, and represent a significant boost over your older i7-q740; not the least of which due to the massive clock speed improvement.

No, our company is over 300 people, so not really small. My Engineering director (boss) has a small budget ($5000) to upgrade as we see fit. We asked to build 5 new computers ourselves (i7-4790k overclocked, 8GB ram, Quadro cards, 850 EVO SSDs). Accounting got wind of engineering wanting to spend $1000 computers, flipped out and asked IT to step in. IT said they don't want to support us doing this and believe we have installed SW wrong. Our SW reseller has said it's installed right, but we need new hardware and are coming in next week to figure out what the biggest holdup is.
In the mean time, IT has been so gracious as to gift us brand new HP towers with Celeron J1900 processors, 5400rpm HDDs, and Intel graphics because "they work great in the rest of the building". They are collecting dust in the corner right now. IT noticed that this morning and declared "we don't know what we are doing, those are the best computers in the building!". Accounting happened to overhear an exchange between me and IT and asked for me to price what I wanted from HP and walked away when I told them over $2000 each.
I'm thinking we can get them to buy us actual i3 towers with a fast clock as well as the Quadro GFX cards we need.

So, a new i3 vs a new i7 will act differently despite the passmark score is so close? I'm not really worried about how much faster the new computer is vs our old laptops, I'm more curious about new vs new.

We are also having some serious battles over our network and servers which are seriously overloaded and seriously old... 4 server boxes each have 16gb ram and 1 8 core processor (gen 1 Core xeon processor clocked under 2.5ghz) support over 13 virtual servers including 4 production Solidworks setups, EPDM, webserver, outlook server, our configuration manager, phones, file server... We have constant timeouts and not responding issues that IT blames on us not knowing what we are doing or our software is wrong. Funny, our last IT director walked away because accounting wouldn't give them the funds needed to update our network and servers.
We're still running office 2003 everywhere and XP in many locations!

Oh god.

Have you seen Office Space? If not, you should definitely watch it.

 

[preludeman92]

I'm sorry to have gone on a rant. I realized I did it as soon as I hit the post button. It just makes me (and I'm sure everyone else) so angry when someone else tells me the specialized tools I need to do the job they've asked for when they have no idea what the job is. When a coal miner asks for a new pneumatic drill, does the company owner go down to Harbor Freight and buy a cordless drill? Probably not.

I'd like to try to get a better solution for our team than what we have, even if it isn't the best solution.

 

[ingtar33]

though solidworks is single threaded, it benifits from 2 things.
1) clock speed
2) cache size

as a result short of an extreme edition cpu and ddr4 memory and silly large cache sizes, it would run best on an i7-4790k, largest cache, highest base clock speed. overclock it a bit and you'll be fairly productive.

as for accounting. i work in corperate IT, i've never met an accounting department that knew how to use more then the 10 key number pad, most are hardly litterate and the rest think computers are magic. when you say accounting what you really mean is the "boss" am I right? cause it sounds like a small firm with a boss who thinks he knows what he's talking about. i deal with that as well with some of my clients.

yes, a haswell i3 will work fine, and represent a significant boost over your older i7-q740; not the least of which due to the massive clock speed improvement.

No, our company is over 300 people, so not really small. My Engineering director (boss) has a small budget ($5000) to upgrade as we see fit. We asked to build 5 new computers ourselves (i7-4790k overclocked, 8GB ram, Quadro cards, 850 EVO SSDs). Accounting got wind of engineering wanting to spend $1000 computers, flipped out and asked IT to step in. IT said they don't want to support us doing this and believe we have installed SW wrong. Our SW reseller has said it's installed right, but we need new hardware and are coming in next week to figure out what the biggest holdup is.
In the mean time, IT has been so gracious as to gift us brand new HP towers with Celeron J1900 processors, 5400rpm HDDs, and Intel graphics because "they work great in the rest of the building". They are collecting dust in the corner right now. IT noticed that this morning and declared "we don't know what we are doing, those are the best computers in the building!". Accounting happened to overhear an exchange between me and IT and asked for me to price what I wanted from HP and walked away when I told them over $2000 each.
I'm thinking we can get them to buy us actual i3 towers with a fast clock as well as the Quadro GFX cards we need.

So, a new i3 vs a new i7 will act differently despite the passmark score is so close? I'm not really worried about how much faster the new computer is vs our old laptops, I'm more curious about new vs new.

We are also having some serious battles over our network and servers which are seriously overloaded and seriously old... 4 server boxes each have 16gb ram and 1 8 core processor (gen 1 Core xeon processor clocked under 2.5ghz) support over 13 virtual servers including 4 production Solidworks setups, EPDM, webserver, outlook server, our configuration manager, phones, file server... We have constant timeouts and not responding issues that IT blames on us not knowing what we are doing or our software is wrong. Funny, our last IT director walked away because accounting wouldn't give them the funds needed to update our network and servers.
We're still running office 2003 everywhere and XP in many locations!

as an it professional i am wincing reading this. My firm mostly subcontracts out to a number of smaller shops which can't afford a dedicated IT department, so i get to see a lot of different workplaces. I'm pretty sure my boss would have dropped a client like this.

terrible.

you can tell you boss/accounting and IT there that their setup is shamed by 5 employee small businesses everywhere.

 

[Pinhedd]

I'm sorry to have gone on a rant. I realized I did it as soon as I hit the post button. It just makes me (and I'm sure everyone else) so angry when someone else tells me the specialized tools I need to do the job they've asked for when they have no idea what the job is. When a coal miner asks for a new pneumatic drill, does the company owner go down to Harbor Freight and buy a cordless drill? Probably not.

I'd like to try to get a better solution for our team than what we have, even if it isn't the best solution.

As an Engineer myself, I feel your pain.

I imagine a similar scenario in my case would go like this:

Accounting: You don't need a 500Mhz, four channel, 2 Gsps digital oscilloscope. We'll clear you for a 25Mhz, two channel analogue handheld one instead.

Engineering: You don't need Oracle E-Business suite, you can use Quickbooks Online

 

[giantbucket]

Hello all,
My office has turned to me to help spec out updates for the computers in our engineering department. We run Solidworks almost exclusively. Solidworks is generally single threaded, but there are a few aspect of our daily routine that will hit a 2nd core. There is really only 1 engineer that would benefit from the 8 threads an i7 provides and has said he will wait if we don't bump him to an i7.

That being said, 90%+ of Solidworks is single threaded so 1 fast Haswell core is really what I need. Accounting is balking at us requesting an i7-4790k because our normal work only hits the i7 we already use (i7 Q740, 1st gen mobile) 12% in task manager and uses less than 1/2 the ram we have. They say our computers are more than fast enough. The processors in our laptops have a Passmark single thread score of 920, while a new i3-4370 is 2225, i5-4690k is 2254, and an i7-4770 is 2239. In theory, everything we do will be twice as fast on a new computer, right?

Will we really notice much of a difference here between the Haswell processors since nearly everything we do is single threaded? I would jump back to a G3258 and overclock it, but overclocking is not allowed.

an i3-4350/4360/etc, a workstation-level board, and ECC ram. $150 + $200 + $200 (16G). add $60 SSD for OS and call it a day. add graphics card if needed.

replicate for the single guy but swap i3 for Xeon (skip i5 and i7 since they don't do ECC)

done and done.