2017 Hardware Thread

At the end of the day as long as you're happy with what you have that's all the counts :)

slicendice said:

Speaking of multiple cores...

Yes a gamer does not need a gazillion cores, but I can see many places where more cores is better. I need a lot of cores for software development (not the development part but for compiling), and I also need many cores for virtualization. Then there is also some simulation computing that benefit a lot from multiple cores and multiple GPUs in vectorized calculations....and the list goes on and on...


...but yes, the Average Joe does not need all those gazillion cores, not for normal desktop usage nor for gaming. But that could change soon...as people were saying 10 years ago...

...so how soon is soon...as it has been proven many times, time is relative... ..we just have to wait and see when programmers learn to take better advantage of multiprocessing on both CPUs and GPUs.

sygnus21 said:

Honestly, a lot of us don't need the machines we have, but hey, they sure plenty of bragging rights

Yeah, but...
all those wonderful PCIe lanes AMD is giving, while INTEL is being stingy

Processor	Cores/Threads	PCIe lanes	Base Clock	Turbo 2.0	Turbo 3.0	TDP	Price
Core i9 7980XE	18 / 36	44	2.6 GHz	4.2 GHz	4.4 GHz	165 W	$1999
Core i9 7960X	16 / 32	44	2.8 GHz	4.2 GHz	4.4 GHz	165 W	$1699
Core i9 7940X	14 / 28	44	3.1 GHz	4.3 GHz	4.4 GHz	165 W	$1399
Core i9 7920X	12 / 24	44	2.9 GHz	4.3 GHz	4.4 GHz	140 W	$1199
Core i9 7900X	10 / 20	44	3.3 GHz	4.3 GHz	4.5 GHz	140 W	$999
Core i7 7820X	8 / 16	28	3.6 GHz	4.3 GHz	4.5 GHz	140 W	$599
Core i7 7800X	6 / 12	28	3.5 GHz	4.0 GHz	na	140 W	$389
Core i7 7740X	4 / 8	16	4.3 GHz	4.5 GHz	na	112 W	$369
Core i5 7640X	4 / 4	16	4.0 GHz	4.2 GHz	na	112 W	$242
Threadripper 1920X	12 / 24	64	3.5 GHz	4.0 GHz	4.2 GHz (XFR)	180 W	$799
Threadripper 1950X	16 / 32	64	3.4 GHz	4.0 GHz	4.2 GHz (XFR)	180 W	$999

Well, Intel is being stingy, but what the heck would you do with 64 PCIe lanes? Run a 4 card SLI at x16? Maybe a few raid cards? It really sounds good, but what will the average person use them for? The 28 lanes Intel is being stingy with will run a graphics card and 3 M.2 drives. I have 40 lanes and I have never used all of them or come close. If you use a regular 2 card SLI, I guess it would be nice to run them both at X16.

essenbe said:

Well, Intel is being stingy, but what the heck would you do with 64 PCIe lanes? Run a 4 card SLI at x16? Maybe a few raid cards? It really sounds good, but what will the average person use them for? The 28 lanes Intel is being stingy with will run a graphics card and 3 M.2 drives. I have 40 lanes and I have never used all of them or come close. If you use a regular 2 card SLI, I guess it would be nice to run them both at X16.

I was thinking of more M.2 drives, as SLI isn't really supported anymore, and one good graphics card these days is better(and probably cooler for the case).

4 GPUs, maybe a few more add on card, 4 M.2 4x NVMe drives in RAID, 6-8 SSD/HDD in RAID, Dual 10GB LAN, AD WLAN, BT, 32-bit audio processor, A bunch of USB3.1 and Thunderbolt 3 peripherals and...your 64PCI lanes is not enough. Easy to use them all :)

You guys have to remember that on most MBs today a lot of ports and plugs share those lanes, meaning that if you plug something in one port, another either gets disabled or both gets slowed down.

essenbe said:

Well, Intel is being stingy, but what the heck would you do with 64 PCIe lanes? Run a 4 card SLI at x16? Maybe a few raid cards? It really sounds good, but what will the average person use them for? The 28 lanes Intel is being stingy with will run a graphics card and 3 M.2 drives. I have 40 lanes and I have never used all of them or come close. If you use a regular 2 card SLI, I guess it would be nice to run them both at X16.

This is part of the hype of things - They tell you "we have more" but what good is more if there's nothing to consume it?

I'm like you, at this point in time I see no use for it. To me it's just a gimmick to push sales and say we have more than Intel. I'm sure Intel will reply in kind, and then we'll all be sitting around with 64 or more PCI lanes waiting for something to come along and take advantage of them.

sygnus21 said:

This is part of the hype of things - They tell you "we have more" but what good is more if there's nothing to consume it?

I'm like you, at this point in time I see no use for it. To me it's just a gimmick to push sales and say we have more than Intel. I'm sure Intel will reply in kind, and then we'll all be sitting around with 64 or more PCI lanes waiting for something to come along and take advantage of them.

Similar thing was with USB and Firewire as next best thing to sliced bread but was languishing for years and then just exploded. If there's an opportunity, somebody will be there to exploit it sooner or later. If it languishes too long it will just flop like PS/2 did.

Speaking of average users...which average user would buy a $1000 CPU and a $600 MB? And not to forget Intel $2000+ CPUs. :) Those devices are not meant for an average user. I would say most average user has a low-mid end laptop because it's cheap.

slicendice said:

Speaking of average users...which average user would buy a $1000 CPU and a $600 MB? And not to forget Intel $2000+ CPUs. :) Those devices are not meant for an average user. I would say most average user has a low-mid end laptop because it's cheap.

Well, your average millionaire for instance.

For GeForce users, see my post here: Latest NVIDIA GeForce Graphics Drivers for Windows 10 - Page 80 - Windows 10 Forums