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Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-21 05:06
by Deb-fan
You know who you are. If you are one such of the afflicted then you are well aware of this fact. Talking about theses folks with octa-core processors and 32gbs-ram on their personal computers. What are you peeps doing with these monsters? Why the need for them and do you ever even see them come remotely close to top end? Yes this is partially motivated by spec envy but mostly curiousity. Think as in all things the trend ideal is more better, higher spec better but does it ever get used, thereby justified in any practical usage scenario?

See some people's specs posted and can't help shake head. Some degree of jealousy at play surely but still shake head. Can't personally ever see need for more than 4-6gigs or a quad-core. With the way I config my os and tuning, plus some degree of browser tweaking and noscript could have 80tabs open, still be streaming a reasonable resolution vid and not top out my measily 4gigs, touch swap or melt the poor 2.17ghz dualcore on this antique laptop. So what are you people doing and why? :) Why I say, whyyyyyy?!

Just been considering the excess systems tend to have nowadays and wanted to kick this around and get yall's input. Also some poor guy in the Linux mint community was noting he'd just just bought a system 76 darter pro, turned around and upgraded the thing with 32gbs ddr4 and a smoking flash drive, at least a 10th gen i5 or i7 quad. Poor dude went to install latest Mint on this monster and is getting 2min boot time on it. Ouch! From an oem which part of their claim to fame and no doubt somewhat higher pricetag is being gnu/nix friendly. Me, 10yr old Inspiron 1545, 4gigs, dual-core, 7200rpm rust hdd and cold boots to working desktop in 40s. Still never really come close to topping out even this old thing. So what's the deal people? What's your deal I say?!?

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-21 05:42
by Deb-fan
Do you ever watch YouTube (and by watch YouTube, I mean everything on the site at the same time), sit back and maniacally cackle, it's mine, all the RAM in the world is mine, mineeeee!?

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-21 07:23
by Nili
No we haven't, we've buyed all those powerful tractors full of unlimited memory just to show how it is done tweaking exotic OS's, consoles, i3, bspwm, polybar, dwm, vim, also show you the scrots for conviction. Welcome to the absurdity :)

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-21 07:35
by Deb-fan
^Lol

What do these people do, set up vm's and run every gnu/nix distro since time began at the same time?! Probably say Deb-fan's laptop is on welfare while they do it I bet! You people are sick, just sick! :)

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-21 07:48
by Nili
Deb-fan wrote:^Lol

What do these people do, set up vm's and run every gnu/nix distro since time began at the same time?! Probably say Deb-fan's laptop is on welfare while they do it I bet! You people are sick, just sick! :)
Indeed, the brave ones uses all efforts via VM,'s. I have done aswell a few years ago HeHe! People Are Strange.

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-21 14:45
by NFT5
A few years ago I bought a new car. From the factory it had 147kW and 450Nm and could accelerate 0-100km/h in 11.5 seconds. It now produces 220kW, over 700Nm and will do 0-100 in 7 seconds. Not too shabby from a 4 cylinder diesel that weighs in at 2800kg? I'm working on ways to get that time down around 5 seconds.

My desktop started life as a lowly quad core AMD Phenom II X4 955 at 3.2GHz and I've recently swapped a 6 core FX6300 for an 8 core FX8350 at 4Ghz. I've just ordered another 8GB RAM. Right now, with two Windows VMs running, plus Inkscape, Thunderbird and Firefox with only 4 tabs open, it's using 6.1GB from 8GB RAM and, I admit unusually, 1.1GB Swap. That's on a MATE desktop because, although I love Plasma, it was just too resource hungry.

A project at the moment is to set up servers for web, mail, routing, files and security, all on SBCs. I probably could do it with basic Raspberry Pis, but instead I'm looking at a stack of four, 6 core 2Ghz processors, each with 4GB RAM.

Why?

Because I want a firewall that will slam the door so hard that a hacker will get a bloody nose, I can't stand being beaten in the traffic light Grand Prix by a Hyundai and I detest waiting for my desktop to catch up or crashing because it's run out of resources.

Most of all, because I can. :twisted:

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-21 15:33
by Deb-fan
^Braggart!^ !!!

Sheesh well at least sounds like you do actually use it. Have no idea what's using what there, so just going to blame everything on windows. :) The ole can factor, still amusing to see how far people are taking pc's. Remember a Crunchbang user who had a water cooled heat sink in his desktop, jebuz christ, come on WTH people!?

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-21 16:58
by Head_on_a_Stick
Deb-fan wrote:What are you peeps doing with these monsters?
Playing CS:GO with a triple-digit framerate :cool:

Anyway, the argument is the same as for guns & condoms:
I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-21 17:06
by Deb-fan
^LMFRIGAO!

Well said but somebody here has to admit liquid cooling of a personal computer is taking things a bit too far? Tad bit, maybe ... no?

PS, ah I've got two more windows managers to dork with, that is if you greedy pigs left any system resources for the rest of us to use. :P

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-21 17:24
by wizard10000
Deb-fan wrote:Well said but somebody here has to admit liquid cooling of a personal computer is taking things a bit too far?
Um - no. I was watercooling my overclocked dual processor (not dual-core) P3 home PC way back in the day. Company named Koolance made entire cases built for watercooling with the radiator built into the bottom of the case. This PC also had real SCSI RAID5 with an Adaptec RAID controller three 10k rpm enterprise drives.

These days I call that intellectual masturbation - but for some, hardware is still a hobby. Nothing wrong with that :)

BTW, the first machine I ever overclocked was an Atari 800XL - those were clocked by line frequency and my eurospec 800XL ran at a 12% overclock using a 60Hz US power supply.

I got better, though :mrgreen:

edit: I also had a dual-processor P2 (those were slot-load processors) using the now-classic Asus P2B-DS motherboard. Those motherboards had embedded Adaptec wide SCSI - but it wasn't a RAID controller :)

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-21 18:00
by Deb-fan
Really cool Wiz,

Sounds like you were one of the pioneer's in a couple comp area's, at very least a very early adopter. Do you know the kind of carbon footprint you and the evil minions you helped spawn are responsible for, well do ya? Earth is probably 2degs hotter just thanks to you from the sound of it! Kidding :P Researched over clocking but never had the ballz or initiative to go beyond that with it. Now I'm too old and lazy to mess with it.

Also no point in even touching this crusty ole thing, needs a walker, not more sys specs. Ah though still kicking around getting a cheapy SSD for the poor thing. Only upgrade that 1/2 makes sense. Though hey you guys processors probably cost more than I paid for it, so in yer faces! Might take it awhile but when it gets up to speed it's very impressive to behold. :)

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-21 20:27
by Deb-fan
Feel bad for that Mintite. Like the guy, seems funny and intelligent but his new purchase is an epic fail in terms of common sense. For the kind of bucks he must've laid out for that baby, some research, even contacting of customer support was surely warranted. Also establishing of a clear return policy and a live session test drive. Apparently he did these additional ram/flash drive upgrades himself. Then installed and found out his favorite gnu/nix runs like chit on it. Remember such things can sometimes void warranties?

Ah guy needs to upgrade everything, kernel, microcode, firmware, anything else related to that puppy that's latest/greatest gnu/nix hardware support in my view. Yet another reason I like buying used outside of staying broke. Though feel for the guy, buying a fararri and having it topend at 24mph can't make someone feel the warm and fuzzies.

In other totally random news remember seeing Amd going for the highest clock speed record on the tube one time. Apparently they did it but the chip got so hot during the process they were cooling it with liquid nitrogen! Intel probably took the record back shortly thereafter? Lol talk about boring viewing, went like this, blink eyes, peeps are saying yay, they did it! :)

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-21 22:50
by NFT5
Deb-fan wrote:somebody here has to admit liquid cooling of a personal computer is taking things a bit too far? Tad bit, maybe ... no?
Not when you have a CPU like the AMD FX which runs ridiculously hot. My desktop at work has to deal with heat and dust. I considered water cooling, until I tried a Cooler Master Hyper TX3 EVO cooler. They're huge, but the FX8350 runs at 47C, while the FX6300 used to run at just over 40C. Anything else and I was up over 60C just at idle.

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-21 23:59
by Deb-fan
Dang that bytes.

The temps on this dinosaur tend to stay in really dang good ranges according to lm-sensors. Would honestly like to know what brand of thermal paste Dell was using when they put this thing together. Ten friggin yrs and still working fine. Keep envisioning it looking like the petrified forest in there. Now that I've said/typed this, cpu explodes in a dazzling shower of sparks in 3 2, .... 1! Scared to open the case, might find a dead cat in there or summin. These old dells are tanks. Don't know if same build quality today ? :) Any feedback on it welcome guys. Sheesh this old 250gb Western digital hdd is 10fricken years old and no doubt lived vast majority of it's life with Windows flogging it incessantly. Still going though.

So you ended up putting a monster heatsink on that pc then? Guess should Google. Only concession this old laptop gets is I do keep it propped up so the bottom vents are somewhat clear at all times. Just keep something stuck under it to keep some breathing room.

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-22 00:12
by Deb-fan
Such is also a reason I opt for the ondemand power governor in gnu/nix. I tune it so it'll step up freqs much sooner than it would with the defaults and stays there longer before down shifting than stock settings but majority of time the cores are staying at lowest freq until put under load. The premise of the performance governor grates on my nerves. Having cores full bore all times just seems needless.

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-22 02:27
by stevepusser
Deb-fan wrote:Such is also a reason I opt for the ondemand power governor in gnu/nix. I tune it so it'll step up freqs much sooner than it would with the defaults and stays there longer before down shifting than stock settings but majority of time the cores are staying at lowest freq until put under load. The premise of the performance governor grates on my nerves. Having cores full bore all times just seems needless.
You need to learn a bit more of how the p_state power governor puts the CPU into halt modes, then, even under performance. Powertop can help you.

I have a fairly recent and powerful six-core/twelve-thread 16 GB 2018 gaming laptop with an SSD and a spinning rust drive, and build many "heavy" packages for MX Linux repositories on it that have it running full steam for many hours at a time--Debian upstream kernel backports, Waterfox, Pale Moon, MAME, Liquorix kernels, Libreoffice, openjdk backports no longer done by Debian, Virtual Box, and so on--those are just some I've done recently. I just wish the Nvidia GPU could somehow be drafted into helping with the compiling. Luckily, it has a very nice cooling solution, has never overheated on even a hot day, and turned out to be very compatible with Linux despite total uninterest from MSI whether it was or not. I need the speed.

Before you start laughing about water-cooled machines, research about what's in the heat pipes in practically every computer first...

I will agree that most people don't need that kind of horsepower on a daily basis...but most people don't need to waste a hundred times as much energy and money driving around alone in a massive SUV or pickup either. Pick your targets.

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-22 07:29
by Deb-fan
^No worries I know about all that, newer Intel pstate, older and mines 10yrs and Amd default to ondemand which have learned more than a tad about tuning by this point. Compared to many can set the thing to sing and dance. :) Personally like it more so than the others as a result. Pretty much like userspace or can tune it to whatever. Pstate isn't an option here. Again no worries. Still think many of you guys are coming up short on your ethical obligations, esp as open source users. For shame you guys or should I start calling you eco-terrorists!? If you have any principles at all you'll box up all those pollution spewing electronics and send them to me. So I can properly dispose of em and see they never harm our dear Earth again!

Errrr, is this working on anybody ? I can come up with some more. :)

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-22 09:24
by NFT5
Deb-fan wrote:Errrr, is this working on anybody ? I can come up with some more. :)
Nah. That will get them going. :lol:

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-22 17:01
by CwF
Guilty as charged. I confess.

When it's bad out, my grocery getter is a Duramax 6.6L diesel. Otherwise 2 wheels also on the excessive end of performance. For a decade I piled 220k+ on my ice road fiero, studded out to make fools of awd suv's.
NFT5 wrote:. Not too shabby from a 4 cylinder diesel that weighs in at 2800kg? I'm working on ways to get that time down around 5 seconds.
Maybe a Cruz? I'm looking forward to putting one of those in the back of the fiero. I can redo the pcm and ecm, imagine half your weight with all that torque! ...and mid engined to put it down! 50+mpg here I come! That's better than the bike!

Interestingly enough, things like tuning ecm's is exactly why I have some wicked computers. I noticed years ago, on my toughbook that had 5 external doohickeys to hook up to gm, chysler, cat, cummins, bombardier, mercedes...each one more costly than the computer, a few for operations on vehicles that cost more than a house, and these things are destined to be obsoleted. So, years back I chose KVM. It chose debian, it fits with my industrial duty bent. Debian does more for me now that I'm getting a handle on it, A+ I say.

So, running vm's solves the issue. Then I start imagining how could anyone take advantage of 2+ cores and 4GB? In line with the subject here. Like some others have mentioned, I too had dual's with scsi arrays since NT 3.5. Anyone remember a dual 486 Vtech? My NT cad box had dual monitors even! They make toys now? My dual P3's seemed enough forever.

Well, fast forward past the point when a computer could do everything to now when you need a few for different jobs. I go a different direction concerning multiple sbc's, it's not an efficient way to go. I've watch things develop having 5-8 computers on board, to 3, to 2, and every engineer has mentioned we wish we could get it down to one. Basically, once you have a few things (3-4) running that add up to 100W+, a single machine will be more efficient. My system can run a 4 core 4GB vm with ~15W. I won't boast my current specs, but 10 of those don't step on each other at all and run on 90-300W, scaling nicely with load. My 2 extra AMD video cards scale too, some don't and power up too much when not in use.

So not only have I built vehicle systems with power and thermal limits, but I take that thinking to whole home systems too. So overbuild, use a few xeons, castrate the smp, maybe restrict core count or clock to get the load within thermal limits so all fans can fail. Industrial, I expect 7 years up time.
real:

Code: Select all

$  uptime
 10:41:32 up 120 days, 19:45,  3 users,  load average: 1.36, 1.00, 0.81
stevepusser wrote: research about what's in the heat pipes in practically every computer first...
"Liquid" yes, water no. I built some thing starting with bulk heat pipes that I bend and fit to a custom aluminum case. Once I cracked one and didn't know until run time. It hissed. From the smell it was brake cleaner like perchlorel something..something that wicks well through the fibrous mesh like guts of the pipe, so also, it's not a empty tube with water. Maybe there are types?

Stability is against common sense. With massive complexity you'd expect my systems to be fragile. With kvm on debian and little else running on the host, it is perfectly stable. The vm's might not be, but I haven't taken out a host for a few years now. In one case, a piece of hardware would lock a few bare metal examples often on exit. In a vm, the hardware did the same thing, but I could reset it live, no reboot, much faster.

I can imagine a house server doing much of what a google dumb-terminal, aka smartphone can do. I prefer to keep the info local as well as the processing. So while I use higher end stuff, I use boring video cards, and a flip phone. I don't see extending the life of high end hardware as excessive, I consider more than $100 for a video card or a phone close to stupid. Yes I will hit 256GB of DDR3 long before I bother with DDR4. I haven't seen much speed improvement for a decade. The same job now is simply more power efficient. Old software doesn't use the advanced features so doesn't run much faster in its single thread. New software runs better, faster maybe, multicore, but not on old hardware. So apples and oranges really. So piling everything into one big box works well for me. I lived long enough far out of reach from anything other than a satellite. I appreciate local capabilities where outside links are optional and not required.

Faster? Not really, vm's lie. They can't count time sometimes. I have an xp bare metal monster to compare against. Much like a naked countach with 12 carbs, I can balance those for you! A dual X5687 with 24GB (~21GB pae ram drive) and 4GB amd pitcairn gpu. No vm so far comes close even though they claim to, lie lie lie. But that's a major draw to get the job done, like the countach, so I use a dual core vm that barely moves the needle. It does have a ramdrive too. A common smb available drive for the whole system, is 20GB's for $20-30 a decent deal? I think so.

Overall, I'll be the last guy to brag my i386 vm's use 300MB. It's a false economy. If they used twice, there would be no real impact. It's does what I need and is responsive, or it's not. I'm a pass/fail type, not a A for 300MB, and a C for 900MB. If the F example is 2GB idle, but works perfectly it passes. I might not use it, but not because it uses to much memory, I need it, or not.

Then the end result. There is never a time when anyone can't try something, do something, play something, watch something, where the situation is the computer is 'busy'. Not acceptable. Many sockets, many cores, terabytes, yes, any task can be done full speed while any other task(s) are also in progress. I will find the limits, it's my job. Every limit I find is an upgrade in waiting.

A note on clock control, other than the issue of generation specific factors, the motherboard bios, if complete, often has better controls than in OS user controls. Most Xeon boards I've worked with can limit or extend average clock better than user control. With SMP turned off, non-turbo limited and maybe some cores disabled, a xeon will go to max clock at a pin drop and hold it indefinitely. No lesser setup will match it. Yes, it is just like grocery getting in the duramax. Guilty.

Re: Have people gone crazy with specs?

Posted: 2020-02-23 02:53
by stevepusser
Standard copper computer heat pipes have nothing but liquid water and water vapor after the air is evacuated and the tube sealed. No need at all for exotic chemicals when water's phase change already does a great job.