Is a new computer THAT much better than a 7 year old system?

[john.mathieson]

Sounds like a stupid question - but - I have a 7 year old system I built with i7 3939, 32gb DDR3 1333 RAM, 1 tb Samsung 850 EVO SSD for OS, Radeon HD 7900, plus a bunch of spinning HD for data. I also put in a Corsair 1200W PS for no good reason other than I liked the idea.

It has been on 24/7 since 2012, used for medical imaging applications (mostly CPU rather than graphics card intensive) plus Photoshop, Lightroom, HDR applications, and Excel. No video editing or gaming. For my photos I use fairly large RAW files that slow things right down.

No problems so far, but was thinking at some point it should be replaced.

But, when I look at a new system, unless I spend at least 4k, I am not sure it will be noticeably better - an i7 8700 isn't much faster (maybe 25% better CPU mark score), an i9 9900 is about 2x better CPU mark, DDR4 RAM at 3200 a bit faster (but way more expensive than it was), and of course NVMe SSD is faster, and an optane accelerator can speed up my spinning data disks.

The rate limiting step for my medical imaging application is still bandwidth - I have a 600 GB internet line, and that is really what limits things - wavelet decompression and image manipulation really aren't noticeably slow. Doing things like merging image files for HDR and

So - even though I like the idea of building something new, I am not all that sure I would notice much difference - has the real world effect of Moore's law kind of petered out for non-gamers? Would doing an image merge of large RAW image files be THAT much faster? or still a kind of a pain, more likely...

Maybe I should just wait until something blows up - maybe the motherboard will fail, or power supply or...

Thanks for your advice and comments.

 

[john.mathieson]

sorry typo i7 3930

 

[USAFRet]

I went from an i5-3570k + 16GB RAM to an i7-4790k + 32GB RAM.
All SATA III SSD in both cases.

Time importing RAW files into Lightroom decreased by 30+%.
If 1 or 2 images at a time, you probably wouldn't notice. Importing 100-200 at a time...major time difference.

For your 7 year old system...yeah, it's probably time for a full refresh.

 

[john.mathieson]

The reason I ask, is because even though 7 years have gone by, spending 3-4,000 would only get me a modest increase in performance, and a lot of the things that newer CPUs and GPUs do are not of a lot of use if you aren't gaming, mining or doing movies..... I bought top level parts last time, and run them with a power supply that is about 3x more capable than needed, so it isn't running hot...... so, what do I really have to gain? I really like the idea of upgrading and buying the best and latest, but over the past few years, it is becoming harder and harder to improve upon functionality - once you can do most things quickly, how much "more quickly" do you need? (I also have my first Mac still functional - it is one of the first colour Macs from around 1990 - now THAT was slow!!!)
A brand new i7 8700 gets about 15,000 CPU score, compared to 12,000 for my 7 year old CPU. !! What happened to Moore's Law!

 

[USAFRet]

Making the decision for an upgrade is often tough. And yes, the generational CPU changes are getting smaller between each one.
But I prefer to look at actual performance vs benchmarks. As noted above, my Lightroom performance increased significantly.

Going from your current Gen 3 to a new Gen 8 or 9 would be an even greater change.

Your current parts aren't likely to "break" anytime soon. CPU/GPU/motherboard rarely does.
I see no need for a major upgrade "right now". But anything from the current i7-8xxx or and up WILL be a major change to your existing system.

And yes, there is the component of "how much faster" is "faster enough".
In your use case, an NVMe drive would make a significant difference. And to make use of that, a newer platform of course.

Consider waiting one more generation of CPU.
Either 10th Gen Intel or Ryzen 3.

 

[john.mathieson]

Good advice, thanks!