GPUs & CPUs & Enthusiast hardware: Questions, Discussion and fanboy slap-fights - Nvidia & AMD & Intel - Separe but Equal. Intel rides in the back of the bus.

[LegoTugboat]

Yeah. With an iMac, you can just plug it in and let it go. I can easily see the appeal of that, and that the monitor itself is pretty solid.

I'm curious though, what would you say is a prosumer-grade 4K monitor, roughly?

 

[Fcret]

I'm curious though, what would you say is a prosumer-grade 4K monitor, roughly?

Something like an Asus PA279CRV or BenQ PD2725U - almost perfect DCI-P3 and AdobeRGB color gamuts, factory color calibrations, etc. The sort of quality standard that most consumers won't need but is kind of the base-level of what you want if you're doing artsy shit that requires accurate color reproduction. These tend to go for around 500-800 USD.

 

[LegoTugboat]

Mm. A different level from what I'd look for a monitor. Last time I looked for one, I was aiming for the $350-400 AUD mark, and settled on a Samsung S24F350, which is more of a gaming monitor.

In fairness, also probably performance that most consumers won't need.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Meteor Lake appears to me to be targeted at Apple, not AMD.

It doesn't look like Meteor Lake's memory packaging or efficiency gains will take a strong bite out of Apple, while AMD will continue to be a good option for traditional form factors and higher TDPs. AMD can add 5-10% performance to Phoenix with the Hawk Point refresh and match any standard TDP gains coming out of Intel, then Strix Point should be notably better but coming around Q3.

Meteor Lake with the memory on package sounds like a good option for x86 tablets, and there was a leak that mentioned a new 1P + 8E SKU for this purpose. I assume only the 2P + 8E die is getting memory on package.

Minisforum is making a premium "3-in-1" tablet with Hawk Point. It seems like the wrong chip for the job to me, but it will be interesting to see how it does.

I'd say part of it is... it's kinda hard to recommend an iMac.

M3 iMac starts at $2199 AUD. M2 Mac Mini starts at $999 AUD.

(1000 AUD = 655 USD)
It's easy to find the M2 Mac Mini for $500 in the US, and it was always around $500-600 for the entry level Mac Mini as far as I remember. American privilege strikes again. 500 USD seems like a reasonable price for an entry to the Apple Silicon ecosystem, with the caveat of only 8 GB of magic memory which is totally equivalent to 16 GB on Windows.

 

[The Ugly One]

It doesn't look like Meteor Lake's memory packaging or efficiency gains will take a strong bite out of Apple, while AMD will continue to be a good option for traditional form factors and higher TDPs. AMD can add 5-10% performance to Phoenix with the Hawk Point refresh and match any standard TDP gains coming out of Intel, then Strix Point should be notably better but coming around Q3.

I don't think they need to beat Apple so much as stop the bleeding. I've had two Intel and one AMD laptop over the past three years, all of them high end, and without exception, their battery life was awful, they ran hot as furnaces, and just made me miss my old Macbooks. It's so bad that I'm starting to see enterprises offer Macs as an option, which is further enabled by how many apps run in the browser these days. At this point, the convenience of a laptop that doesn't die during presentations or round tables is worth paying the Apple tax. I am purely speculating here, but if Meteor Lake laptops can be power efficient enough to get a student or worker through the day without being tethered to the wall, Win86 world can stop Apple from gobbling up its most lucrative consumer market.

 

[Fcret]

Minisforum is making a premium "3-in-1" tablet with Hawk Point. It seems like the wrong chip for the job to me, but it will be interesting to see how it does.

>165 Hz display
>LPDDR5-6400
>8-core Zen4
>on a fucking tablet

If I had to guess, using one of these will go something like this:

 

[Waifu Denier]

Looks like Intel is going to get a big bump in iGPU performance, like when Xe caught them up with the Vega iGPUs from AMD.

 

[Betonhaus]

What low to mid-range Intel CPUs with a iGPU would be best for a home server right now? I'm thinking I'll just swap out the old motherboard and cpu, I don't really need a super powerful one as even an Intel N100 has as much power as I need and all the decoding/encoding capacity, I just want something new enough to support the most common codecs without being overkill for power

 

[Fcret]

What low to mid-range Intel CPUs with a iGPU would be best for a home server right now? I'm thinking I'll just swap out the old motherboard and cpu, I don't really need a super powerful one as even an Intel N100 has as much power as I need and all the decoding/encoding capacity, I just want something new enough to support the most common codecs without being overkill for power

Maybe a 12th gen i5? Amazon has a Black Friday deal on the 12600K right now for about $150. It'll probably blow your computing requirements out of the water but it's fairly cheap and competent.

Are you only specifically looking for new parts? Because you can get some good deals on secondhand CPUs on ebay although you'll sometimes just get dead chips or ones that are not long for this world.

 

[seri0us]

Maybe a 12th gen i5? Amazon has a Black Friday deal on the 12600K right now for about $150. It'll probably blow your computing requirements out of the water but it's fairly cheap and competent.

Are you only specifically looking for new parts? Because you can get some good deals on secondhand CPUs on ebay although you'll sometimes just get dead chips or ones that are not long for this world.

What makes a CPU "not long for this world"?

 

[Fcret]

What makes a CPU "not long for this world"?

Usually stuff that's been abused. I don't know how much of a problem it is with modern chips, but you used to get CPUs from ebay sellers where they'd literally pull them from piles of e-waste that'd been left outside in the elements. They usually work fine for a while but the thermal stress of actual workloads pushes them over the edge and they fail.

 

[Betonhaus]

Maybe a 12th gen i5? Amazon has a Black Friday deal on the 12600K right now for about $150. It'll probably blow your computing requirements out of the water but it's fairly cheap and competent.

Are you only specifically looking for new parts? Because you can get some good deals on secondhand CPUs on ebay although you'll sometimes just get dead chips or ones that are not long for this world.

I see the attraction of a used cpu, but I've had too many cursed prices of hardware to trust them. I discovered that h265 codec support wasn't running on my jellyfin client which has helped, and I may consider converting my videos to h.264 with an auxillary computer I have on had for now.

 

[DavidS877]

I see the attraction of a used cpu, but I've had too many cursed prices of hardware to trust them. I discovered that h265 codec support wasn't running on my jellyfin client which has helped, and I may consider converting my videos to h.264 with an auxillary computer I have on had for now.

I think you just want to be able to convert videos, right? Have you checked to see if the Intel A380 card would work for you? Seems to be available for US $100. Not sure if it has all the codec/transcoding support, but it should.

 

[LegoTugboat]

I see the attraction of a used cpu, but I've had too many cursed prices of hardware to trust them. I discovered that h265 codec support wasn't running on my jellyfin client which has helped, and I may consider converting my videos to h.264 with an auxillary computer I have on had for now.

Yeah. If a seller's got good feedback, that helps.

I've had my... share of fun dealing with some interesting components, to put it mildly, such as the time I had to assist with getting a small webserver back up and running. Pulled it out, replaced what was though to be the fault, sprayed it with compressed air, plugged it back in and hit the power button.

It spun back up for about... 3 or 5 seconds, then went BANG in a glorious shower of blue smoke and white sparks. Didn't exactly know what the fault was, but assumed it was something to do with the black smoking hole in part of the motherboard.

 

[Betonhaus]

I do want to put a more powerful cpu in, with the socket I have I can get a max of about 50% more power for about $30 so I'll maybe order one off Ali (hopefully I can trust one that has a lot of sales), then see if I can get a used A380 or something off Facebook or somewhere. I do have a few different configuration possibilities but I don't know what would be the most efficient route. I don't want to make things overly complicated or expensive or overkill but I also don't want it to die on me.

 

[The Ugly One]

If you're so cash-strapped that you can't afford a new-in-box (even old gen) CPU, you'd be better of just buying an entire used computer than rolling the dice on a used CPU. Actually, you should probably pay off your creditors and kick your drinking habit instead of buying a computer.

 

[Waifu Denier]

What low to mid-range Intel CPUs with a iGPU would be best for a home server right now? I'm thinking I'll just swap out the old motherboard and cpu, I don't really need a super powerful one as even an Intel N100 has as much power as I need and all the decoding/encoding capacity, I just want something new enough to support the most common codecs without being overkill for power

Any Intel CPU with Xe graphics will work perfectly for just a home server. They will support basically every codec you need and for some reason, probably because they worked with Apple for so long, their iGPUs have far greater decoding/encoding capability than you would expect, often exceeding actual dedicated GPUs.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

This isn't directly about CPUs but it's related. Doing liquid cooling for the first time ever. Now from what I've been reading, front of the case is the best place to put it, but you need to make sure the tubing is on the bottom and below the CPU. Assuming I can do that... Is it better to have a 240mm on the front doing intake, which is the largest this case supports in the front, or have a 360mm on the top of the case doing exhaust? Which I'm told is less efficient but it's also an extra fan.

 

[Susanna]

This isn't directly about CPUs but it's related. Doing liquid cooling for the first time ever. Now from what I've been reading, front of the case is the best place to put it, but you need to make sure the tubing is on the bottom and below the CPU. Assuming I can do that... Is it better to have a 240mm on the front doing intake, which is the largest this case supports in the front, or have a 360mm on the top of the case doing exhaust? Which I'm told is less efficient but it's also an extra fan.

240 is fine. 360 is only necessary for custom loop, where you’re also hooking the GPU into the loop. The tubes thing is best practice, it’s not absolutely critical. What can happen if you don’t do it is you get occasional whizzing noise because an air bubble gets sucked into the pump.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

240 is fine. 360 is only necessary for custom loop, where you’re also hooking the GPU into the loop. The tubes thing is best practice, it’s not absolutely critical. What can happen if you don’t do it is you get occasional whizzing noise because an air bubble gets sucked into the pump.

Excellent, thanks.