My Computer is Still Fast!
The MHz race is so over. In the recent years, CPU speed really hasn't increased much, has it?
In 2007 I bought a L1N64-SLI board with 2 x FX-74 (3GHz) CPUs and 8GB RAM. Dual core CPUs were already popular at that time. Intel had the Core 2 Duo and AMD had the Athlon X2. But in an attempt to offer a better value, AMD stepped it up a bit. They reused their Opteron architecture to introduce a fast workstation platform for "enthusiasts" (e.g. early adopters that tend to spend way too much money on cutting edge technology based on company promises, but I'm not jaded or anything). This was the FX platform. Essentially a rebranded, cheaper Opteron CPU this architecture allowed for having more than one CPU on a motherboard, something the X2 couldn't do.
At the time 4 cores (two dual cores) was rather bleeding edge, but AMDs promise was to deliver a quad core Athlon FX CPU, which would have made for an awesome eight core (dubbed 4×4) setup. That is, until AMD canceled it to focus on the X2 socket which was most likely much more cost effective for them. ಠ_ಠ
So now, three years later, I'm trying to figure out what my options are and a potential upgrade path might look like for me. But even though I could buy a new computer, they're not really all that much faster it seems.
I'd like to cling to my dead FX architecture for a little while longer. I've known for a while that there are unofficial bios hacks that enable the use of Opteron (server) CPUs on my board, which would allow for eight cores, and a recent search turned up fairly simple instructions. Basically flash the bios, make sure you have ECC RAM, and then throw two Barcelonas on that thing. Wait, ECC RAM? Okay, so that's an additional expense. I'd be looking at roughly $500 for the CPUs and $200 for ECC RAM. Never mind. Not only more expensive, but the more interesting aspect is the speed of the Opteron. It's slower. The ones I found are clocked at 2GHz. So I end up with 8 x 2GHz cores instead of 4 x 3Ghz cores. It's still a net win if, and only if, programs actually take advantage of the architecture. A single threaded application will run slower, whereas a multi-threaded application will (hopefully) spread its load across all the cores and get things done in parallel and therefore quicker.
Hmm, I think I'll stick to my computer as it is for a little while longer.
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