Dual Pentium III

[EverStaR]

A little Retro Humor - not a jab at anyone. Interesting conversation. One aspect of all this too is how Microsoft and software developers kept eating up our new powerful CPUs thus negating quite of the gains we experienced. It is the nature of the Kool-Aid they kept serving and we kept drinking.

 

[lowen]

Yeah, even the most modern multi core multi GB RAM multi terabyte monster GPU system won't let a great writer write any faster or any better; Isaac Azimov used a TRS-80 Model II and it was enough machine for the job.

The only true performance gains are in eye candy items and games. I can see some gains in the CAD and 3D modeling worlds, but for most things the vast power of modern PCs is wasted.

Then again, my idea of perfect website design is CNN low bandwidth and my idea of the perfect forum software is a good Usenet reader with a solid and trimmed Usenet feed.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

A little Retro Humor

Aaaagh! AI! Kill it with fire!!!

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Yeah, even the most modern multi core multi GB RAM multi terabyte monster GPU system won't let a great writer write any faster or any better; Isaac Azimov used a TRS-80 Model II and it was enough machine for the job.

As a writer I will say having 6 monitors helps me write better. And as a writer with poor eyesight having a gigantic monitor with high resolution and excellent scaling helps me see what I'm writing better.

The only true performance gains are in eye candy items and games. I can see some gains in the CAD and 3D modeling worlds, but for most things the vast power of modern PCs is wasted.

CAD and 3D are also helped along by modern equipment being able to drive larger high-resolution displays. Video production also benefits from higher clock speeds and GPU rendering. I can encode an hour long TV show at 1080p in about 5 minutes. Back in the day it would take me all night to do an hour's worth of video at CRT Television resolutions. So it definitely has gotten faster.

Then again, my idea of perfect website design is CNN low bandwidth and my idea of the perfect forum software is a good Usenet reader with a solid and trimmed Usenet feed.

I wish the entire internet looked that way...

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Aren't we forgetting 4+ CPU systems? https://www.ebay.com/itm/200736309992

I want it. I want it to have my children.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

One aspect of all this too is how Microsoft and software developers kept eating up our new powerful CPUs thus negating quite of the gains we experienced.

I mentioned how I was a relatively early adopter of "consumer-level SMP" back in 1999 when put together that dual Celeron system. Had the 400mhz-rated CPUs overclocked to 552mhz, and that thing truly felt like God's Computer compared to the 233mhz K6 that was my previous system. There's a ton of nostalgia there, and I would go so far as to argue that at least on some subliminal level there were at least *some cases* where that machine subjectively "felt smoother" compared to a single CPU machine of roughly similar aggregate horsepower. (IE, park it next to a faster Pentium III and fire off a multi-threaded Linux kernel build and it may well end up finishing significantly faster, And if you did that in the background you might notice just a little less jerkiness on whatever foreground task you were up to.)

But as delicious at that nostalgia might be, well, it's just that. All rose colored glasses. The flip side of it is for quite a few things, especially games under Windows 2000, that machine would get utterly creamed. For a period around the turn of 2001 I was in the throes of a serious Half-Life (and spinoffs) addiction, along with lovin' me some emulators, so when Fry's had as one of their weekly specials an 800mhz Duron and motherboard for basically zero money I bought it to build into a computer to hook to the TV, and, well, I can't sugar coat it, that thing completely blew the dually away as a gaming machine. Boot the dually into Linux and it might still win the kernel compile cookoff, but the blunt truth is that for a lot of tasks even today it's single-thread performance that's going to matter the most for interactive applications.

The beauty of newer multi-core CPUs compared to the old dual-socket systems is they're better at both; not only are the individual cores faster, their shared caches and faster on-die interconnects cut down on the overhead and therefore experience less degredation in single-thread performance while still enabling hardware multiprocessing. The fact that modern software has bloated up so much that it can make even these much improved multi-core CPUs feel slow isn't the hardware's fault; it is objectively better than the old stuff in nearly every possible way. All the nostalgia in the world isn't going to negate that fact. Alas.

 

[Zare]

Yeah, even the most modern multi core multi GB RAM multi terabyte monster GPU system won't let a great writer write any faster or any better; Isaac Azimov used a TRS-80 Model II and it was enough machine for the job.

The only true performance gains are in eye candy items and games. I can see some gains in the CAD and 3D modeling worlds, but for most things the vast power of modern PCs is wasted.

Then again, my idea of perfect website design is CNN low bandwidth and my idea of the perfect forum software is a good Usenet reader with a solid and trimmed Usenet feed.

Hm, true, but only in specific examples such as the writer. Consider a guitar player instead.

Text entry and novel composition is a sequential procedure that can't be parallelized. Text is a very low resolution medium in abstract terms. No benefit from extra core and RAM.
Audio recording and multitrack composition is ideal for parallelization. You can increase sample rates to infinity. Instant benefit from extra core and RAM.

Writing is about the worse example to use - it's known that famous writers prefer 80s tools and that basic text editing peaked in early 90s or so, considering the balance between features and distractions.
Old computer that just does what it does, in that case a very bland text editor, is a perfect tool for getting in the zone.

 

[Zare]

The fact that modern software has bloated up so much that it can make even these much improved multi-core CPUs feel slow isn't the hardware's fault; it is objectively better than the old stuff in nearly every possible way. All the nostalgia in the world isn't going to negate that fact. Alas.

I'm not sure what software you use, I don't plan on moving from my 2015 i7 platform, maybe I get a Xeon for it just because why not, but it's closing in on 10 years and I have no plans because the computer runs great, snappy, on whatever I do.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

I'm not sure what software you use, I don't plan on moving from my 2015 i7 platform, maybe I get a Xeon for it just because why not, but it's closing in on 10 years and I have no plans because the computer runs great, snappy, on whatever I do.

LGA2011 i7 right? Depending on model it might actually be better than the available xeons.

I built my dual xeon in 2018 with parts mostly from 2015(the motherboard was new but I suspect it had been in production for a little bit) with plans to make it last until 2028. So far, so good.

 

[EverStaR]

I mentioned how I was a relatively early adopter of "consumer-level SMP" back in 1999 when put together that dual Celeron system. Had the 400mhz-rated CPUs overclocked to 552mhz, and that thing truly felt like God's Computer compared to the 233mhz K6 that was my previous system. There's a ton of nostalgia there, and I would go so far as to argue that at least on some subliminal level there were at least *some cases* where that machine subjectively "felt smoother" compared to a single CPU machine of roughly similar aggregate horsepower. (IE, park it next to a faster Pentium III and fire off a multi-threaded Linux kernel build and it may well end up finishing significantly faster, And if you did that in the background you might notice just a little less jerkiness on whatever foreground task you were up to.)

But as delicious at that nostalgia might be, well, it's just that. All rose colored glasses. The flip side of it is for quite a few things, especially games under Windows 2000, that machine would get utterly creamed. For a period around the turn of 2001 I was in the throes of a serious Half-Life (and spinoffs) addiction, along with lovin' me some emulators, so when Fry's had as one of their weekly specials an 800mhz Duron and motherboard for basically zero money I bought it to build into a computer to hook to the TV, and, well, I can't sugar coat it, that thing completely blew the dually away as a gaming machine. Boot the dually into Linux and it might still win the kernel compile cookoff, but the blunt truth is that for a lot of tasks even today it's single-thread performance that's going to matter the most for interactive applications.

The beauty of newer multi-core CPUs compared to the old dual-socket systems is they're better at both; not only are the individual cores faster, their shared caches and faster on-die interconnects cut down on the overhead and therefore experience less degredation in single-thread performance while still enabling hardware multiprocessing. The fact that modern software has bloated up so much that it can make even these much improved multi-core CPUs feel slow isn't the hardware's fault; it is objectively better than the old stuff in nearly every possible way. All the nostalgia in the world isn't going to negate that fact. Alas.

I think its going to outperform my AMD 7950 3D X - RTX 4090, 128GB RAM System for sure! Wink



Seriously I don't believe I care how well it is going to actually perform do you? Nostalgia will always be just that, nostalgia, no longer todays new reality, largely irrelevant but in the minds of the few. I tell people that your afterlife is how you will live on in the minds of others after you pass. But even in that model there just wont be anyone to remember some day. If you live on in the minds of others after that, chances are you were famous either in a good or bad way.

What might be interesting is to consider is how yesterdays hardware/software stack performs against todays hardware/software stack. I imagine that you would find a similar sentiment, the more honking the hardware the better the most demanding software would run. Much has come and gone, however the paradigm hasn't really changed much.

Ironically a lot of the people that could afford and by the fabulous hardware would not make as much use of it on average as the ones that couldn't and wished they had it. See, that hasn't changed that much either.

Meanwhile, I am but a few more deliveries away from completing the build cycle for the PIII Beast. Here is how the front of the case is looking, rather ho humm don't you think?

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Seriously I don't believe I care how well it is going to actually perform do you?

It is always funny how many discussions on this forum devolve into "Ok, but it won't perform as well as a modern PC". Like duh, you think all the TRS-80 users are using them because they out-bench a threadripper?

Always amusing.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

I always wanted a 6-way Pentium Pro but you need the complete setup and some kind of use for it. Dual PPro was good enough same with dual P3 and P2 slot 1 systems.

4 and 6 way Pentium Pro systems had extremely limited use cases because of the crippled 66 MHz FSB. If you had an application that needed lots of power, but didn't need to push around large volumes of data, then a 4 or 6 way system would be fine. For everything else, it was a waste and would fall flat on its face.

 

[Zare]

LGA2011 i7 right? Depending on model it might actually be better than the available xeons.

I built my dual xeon in 2018 with parts mostly from 2015(the motherboard was new but I suspect it had been in production for a little bit) with plans to make it last until 2028. So far, so good.

i7-5820K on an X99S motherboard.
There are 22 core Xeons available on Ali for 300e that my motherboard supports. These have similar single thread performance as mine, just almost 4x the core count.

Ultimately the lack of NVMe and memory limit will be the nail in the coffin, up until then, I wouldn't mind a ton more of processing power for not much money. I actually work on projects that have some measurable compile times - when I'm at the office I don't mind grabbing a cup of tea, when I'm home I want things done as fast as possible

Actually wanted and probably will open a thread here asking for comments on my plan. MB is MSI X99S Mpower, I forgot what exact Xeon E it was, but it was most beefiest that my board supports.

 

[lowen]

.... Consider a guitar player instead.

I happen to be a bass player myself...

...
Audio recording and multitrack composition is ideal for parallelization. You can increase sample rates to infinity. Instant benefit from extra core and RAM.

If it were that simple. Latency is a primary concern in multi track production. Multitrack audio production is something that I do professionally using the excellent Harrison Mixbus and Mixbus 32C DAWs. I upgraded from a Core i7-3740 to a Core i7-9750 and get worse latency. IRQ architecture and RT kernel friendliness with your specific hardware is way more important than speed and RAM size.

MIDI composition can be done on much less powered machines.

Writing is about the worse example to use - it's known that famous writers prefer 80s tools and that basic text editing peaked in early 90s or so, considering the balance between features and distractions.
Old computer that just does what it does, in that case a very bland text editor, is a perfect tool for getting in the zone.

It's a glorified typewriter, and forces more focus, IMO.

 

[Zare]

I happen to be a bass player myself...

We need a vocalist and a drummer then

If it were that simple. Latency is a primary concern in multi track production. Multitrack audio production is something that I do professionally using the excellent Harrison Mixbus and Mixbus 32C DAWs. I upgraded from a Core i7-3740 to a Core i7-9750 and get worse latency. IRQ architecture and RT kernel friendliness with your specific hardware is way more important than speed and RAM size.

MIDI composition can be done on much less powered machines.

I was just talking generally, problem domain one vs another. Not going into I/O details of audio processing.

MIDI is also not just MIDI but virtual instruments and effect busses. More CPUs, more RAM, more of those able to work simultaneously.

Also pretty curious about your case, what kind of latency do you get? What type of system/drivers, ASIO on Windows?

It's a glorified typewriter, and forces more focus, IMO.

Well that's one of few real world usages of early computers, text stuff, typing, editing, printing. Booking, administration. Maybe controlling industrial machinery and stuff. Everything else was for the computer, like the utilities and games.

 

[Unknown_K]

There were always distractions even when computers were single tasking machines. Am I the only one who works with music playing in the background?

 

[Zare]

Absolutely not, but it has to be certain type of music.
I find game soundtracks good for this because they're usually designed to not distract from whatever is going on.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

I'm not sure what software you use, I don't plan on moving from my 2015 i7 platform, maybe I get a Xeon for it just because why not, but it's closing in on 10 years and I have no plans because the computer runs great, snappy, on whatever I do.

Hey, I still really like my 2014 i7 quad-core desktop; enough so that I've hardly used the absolutely fire-breathing laptop I bought last year to replace it; my comment about bloat was actually a lampshade of this "it was all better in the old days attitude" that's often found dripping down the walls in nostalgia oriented places.

I mean, sure, there are some things I find kind of laughable about modern software; the example of text editors was chucked out there, and, well, it does kind of blow my mind when I download what *seems* on the surface should be a pretty simple piece of software but it's a 100+ MB download, but, well, there are reasons for it and some of them are kind of unavoidable these days. (Just as a for-instance, UNIX was *hella* smaller back in the 1970's, sure, but by today's standards it was also massively insecure and it was trivial to break it with bad inputs/buffer overflows/etc. Just adding the layers of security we need for anything that might even remotely touch the internet is a massive cost multiplier.)

 

[Eudimorphodon]

It is always funny how many discussions on this forum devolve into "Ok, but it won't perform as well as a modern PC". Like duh, you think all the TRS-80 users are using them because they out-bench a threadripper?

Always amusing.

But that's not what I said. I simply responded to your contention that it's *better* than a slightly more modern SMP cpu because it has two holes instead of one for its two cores.

Again, just curious for an actual answer for "how". "Nostalgia" is a fair answer, mind you, you just seem to really want to avoid saying that.

 

[lowen]

We need a vocalist and a drummer then

Indeed.

....

Also pretty curious about your case, what kind of latency do you get? What type of system/drivers, ASIO on Windows?

Drifting a bit off topic, but I'm running Debian Linux. On an older generation system with CentOS and an earlier version of Mixbus using JACK I was under 20ms but that was using an Maudio Delta 1010LT. The newer machine, even with it being close to ten times faster than the old Precision M4300, isn't low enough latency for good overdubbing, so I pull out the M4300 (full PCI slot in the dock) with the 1010LT when doing punch in/out. Using a Focusrite Scarlett 2+2 on the other one. I have several plugins, including an excellent Fairchild 670 emulation.