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

[The Ugly One]

You realise most of the tech nerds enthusing about Apple Silicon are actually diehard Windows and Linux fans, right? They're biased away from Apple, but still find themselves forced to acknowledge Apple laptops are far superior in terms of hardware right now.

Itd be nice to hear a unbiased take on their hardware though, it's still interesting, but the fanboyism makes me a x86 fan

I mentioned upthread that I've done lots of hardware evaluations for work. I don't have much of an emotional attachment to any brands. Apple makes the best CPUs/SoCs right now. For laptops, it means that they're untouchable in power vs battery life. Build quality is also a big one. Macbooks survive a lot more punishment in a backpack or carry bag than a PC will. For bandwidth-bound compute tasks, they beat theoretically more powerful x86 processors due to the on-chip LPDDR. Then there's the distinct lack of jank that shows up in the PC space (cf. my frustration with the dual USB-C in my ASUS laptop not actually being capable of dual displays).

However, it always comes down to what you want a computer for. I wanted a laptop to act basically as a portable game console for when I travel, which is frequent. x86 is my only real option there. Also, if $1K+ for a laptop is a lot of money for you, sure, Apple doesn't have any budget options. But for those of us who get them, plenty of us would buy x86 notebooks in a heartbeat if someone would make a $1500 machine that was as good as a Mac...but nobody does.

 

[DavidS877]

x86 laptop

You misspelled x86 Chromebook, or ARM, whatever.

 

[Betonhaus]

x86 generally refers to 32-bit, did you mean x64?

 

[jeff7989]

x86 generally refers to 32-bit, did you mean x64?

You mean AMD64, right?

 

[Car Won't Crank]

Are there any Android tablets that don't suck balls?

There are some from Lenovo that are decent and not that expensive if you want to avoid the Samsung bloat.

The power is secondary. There are many x86 processors that can compete with Apple Silicon for compute, even in a laptop, and my desktop can crush a Mac Studio/Pro easily even though it isn't strictly top tier. What Apple has is great power and superb efficiency. A Macbook Pro can work literally all day, 16+ hours, while a Windows laptop doing the same work will drain its battery in two or three hours. And work in this case means the same as "game", computer doesn't care whether the math it's doing is being put into something productive or something entertaining. In mobile platforms, as compared to competing Windows products, Apple offers high-tier performance and absolutely unrivalled efficiency. Windows laptops that match it in battery life have so little performance they're barely usable even for just web browsing, and Windows laptops that match Apple in compute/graphics don't have anywhere near the battery life.
With a macbook, I can unplug from the wall, go to work, work all day, come home, watch films or game all evening, and only plug back into the wall overnight. With a Windows laptop I have to plug into the wall for half an hour every two hours. My 7840HS laptop can match a macbook in pure compute/game metrics, but battery life is a huge part of a quality laptop, and it just comes nowhere near being able to compete. The macbook can match it in performance, all day long. The x86 laptop conks out after just a few hours. And that's despite the 7840HS having a node advantage, TSMC 4nm vs TSMC 5nm. M2 Pro is just that much better.

Some of us are big boys and don't need or want a laptop to do our work on. There are such things are dedicated workstations we have setup at home or at the office to do work. Mid range windows laptops with linux work perfectly fine for on the go stuff like emails, documents, and vs code.

 

[Betonhaus]

Does this look like a good set for a server?
Xeon E5 2690 V3(24 threads)
32gb ram
ATX motherboard with slots for GPU and raid card
~$115 for kit
then I just need a heat sink and PSU (probably shouldn't buy PSU from Aliexpress)

 

[DavidS877]

Does this look like a good set for a server?
Xeon E5 2690 V3(24 threads)
32gb ram
ATX motherboard with slots for GPU and raid card
~$115 for kit
then I just need a heat sink and PSU (probably shouldn't buy PSU from Aliexpress)

Ignoring my personal concerns buying something like that from Aliexpress, although I've bought SAS and 10G cards there. I'd want 3 PCIie slots. And the 2nd slot on that one looks like x4. Most (good) RAID cards/SAS controllers are x8. The 3rd slot for network upgrades, either more Gigabit, or 2.5G or 5G or 10G

 

[Betonhaus]

Ignoring my personal concerns buying something like that from Aliexpress, although I've bought SAS and 10G cards there. I'd want 3 PCIie slots. And the 2nd slot on that one looks like x4. Most (good) RAID cards/SAS controllers are x8. The 3rd slot for network upgrades, either more Gigabit, or 2.5G or 5G or 10G

The raid card I'd be using is a MegaRAID SAS 9240-8i which does seem to be an x8, I would have to look around to make sure I get a kit with a compatible motherboard. a lot of the kits have shit options for PCIe cards so I have to watch out for that, thanks.

How about this motherboard?

 

[Almighty Space Duck]

@Betonhaus Why would you want something that old? Haswell will be 10 next year.

 

[Betonhaus]

@Betonhaus Why would you want something that old? Haswell will be 10 next year.

I don't need anything super powerful, I just need to use my existing case as it has an sas x8 raid system. Admittedly I wanted a Xeon but that's not super necessary...

...however, I may consider cannibalizing my current computer (Ryzen 5 3600) as I have a MSI Trident 3 I can use, and if I do I just need a atx motherboard and more ram. Would I be fine having no ECC and a consumer CPU tho?

 

[Susanna]

I don't need anything super powerful, I just need to use my existing case as it has an sas x8 raid system. Admittedly I wanted a Xeon but that's not super necessary...

...however, I may consider cannibalizing my current computer (Ryzen 5 3600) as I have a MSI Trident 3 I can use, and if I do I just need a atx motherboard and more ram. Would I be fine having no ECC and a consumer CPU tho?

Ryzen supports ECC, and that 3600 is far more powerful and efficient than an ancient Xeon. Just get an ASRock or Supermicro motherboard, since the motherboard is what determines ECC support for AMD.

 

[Overly Serious]

I too want to upgrade. Though I've recently taken a financial hit and not sure I should. The thing is my CPU is actually still very capable. A Threadripper 1920 from nearly six years ago. It's been a trooper. It's the rest of the platform that slightly holds it back. I'm on PCI-Ev3 NVME so now two generations behind. The memory is 2400MHz. The graphics card is probably slightly hampered by being on Gen 3 PCI-E as well but not enough to matter. And also, the thing draws in about 180-270w. I'd honestly like to replace it with something that draws a lot less that I can just leave running. There are current gen AMD CPUs that are capped at 65W and have gen5 support. They're only dual-channel memory support so sadly the boost to memory speeds wouldn't be as much as you'd think but still better. It's the storage though that would be a killer. Density has changed to. Whilst my build has multiple 1TB HDDs, a single 4TB NVME drive meets that for less power consumption and runs FAR faster.

I'm sincerely tempted to upgrade despite the cost, but they say that 2024 H1 is going to to see the next gen Ryzens that might have 15% higher performance for the same watts...

 

[Betonhaus]

Ryzen supports ECC, and that 3600 is far more powerful and efficient than an ancient Xeon. Just get an ASRock or Supermicro motherboard, since the motherboard is what determines ECC support for AMD.

THe status of Ryzen ECC support is a bit confusing, as it's more a matter that AMD didn't disable support then them guaranteeing it'll work. I'll keep any eye out when I choose the motherboard then.

 

[Susanna]

I too want to upgrade. Though I've recently taken a financial hit and not sure I should. The thing is my CPU is actually still very capable. A Threadripper 1920 from nearly six years ago. It's been a trooper. It's the rest of the platform that slightly holds it back. I'm on PCI-Ev3 NVME so now two generations behind. The memory is 2400MHz. The graphics card is probably slightly hampered by being on Gen 3 PCI-E as well but not enough to matter. And also, the thing draws in about 180-270w. I'd honestly like to replace it with something that draws a lot less that I can just leave running. There are current gen AMD CPUs that are capped at 65W and have gen5 support. They're only dual-channel memory support so sadly the boost to memory speeds wouldn't be as much as you'd think but still better. It's the storage though that would be a killer. Density has changed to. Whilst my build has multiple 1TB HDDs, a single 4TB NVME drive meets that for less power consumption and runs FAR faster.

I'm sincerely tempted to upgrade despite the cost, but they say that 2024 H1 is going to to see the next gen Ryzens that might have 15% higher performance for the same watts...

In your case, I would upgrade only the storage. Like you say, 4TB NVMEs are now pretty cheap. It’ll be an enormous improvement over HDDs. If you’re using a modern high-end GPU, being limited to PCIe3 will reduce your performance by about 3%. No big deal. It’s more significant if you have a modern low-end GPU, since those don’t have the full x16 width and are already effectively operating at PCIe3 (so they’re effectively running at PCIe2 instead). Similarly PCIe4 NVMEs will still be very good on PCIe3, because most of the sluggishness in a computer is from latency rather than actual read speed. Optane will outperform NVMEs in the latency metric even on PCIe2, and therefore beat even modern PCIe5 NAND in random read tests.

THe status of Ryzen ECC support is a bit confusing, as it's more a matter that AMD didn't disable support then them guaranteeing it'll work. I'll keep any eye out when I choose the motherboard then.

AMD doesn’t certify that it works, because that’s expensive, but it does work. There are more than enough sources to verify that, including IT professionals using memory error injectors. The motherboard vendors to look for are ASRock, Gigabyte, ASRock Rack, and Supermicro.

 

[Leaded Gasoline]

that 3600 is far more powerful and efficient than an ancient Xeon.

(X)

a 2690v3 has double the cores and quad channel support


2696v3 set to 12 cores so it is going to boost a little higher but a 2690 would be around the same performance

check out https://xeon-e5450.ru/ and make sure that you get a kit which supports the turbo boost unlock and a memory timings menu to make proper use of your ram if you are interested in one of these old xeons

 

[Susanna]

This may be interesting to @Betonhaus in particular, but anyone wanting to get into storage pools in general.

 

[Betonhaus]

This may be interesting to @Betonhaus in particular, but anyone wanting to get into storage pools in general.

I'm just using mergeRFS to pool the drives, and I intend to flash my raid card to be passthrough. I can get 8 4tb drives for much much cheaper then a single 32tb drive.
I'm still on the fence for ECC, using it would add a lot of cost to my server for little gain, as it's a media storage / playback server and AM4 chipsets only support 2/3rds of ECC

 

[WelperHelper99]

I mentioned upthread that I've done lots of hardware evaluations for work. I don't have much of an emotional attachment to any brands. Apple makes the best CPUs/SoCs right now. For laptops, it means that they're untouchable in power vs battery life. Build quality is also a big one. Macbooks survive a lot more punishment in a backpack or carry bag than a PC will. For bandwidth-bound compute tasks, they beat theoretically more powerful x86 processors due to the on-chip LPDDR. Then there's the distinct lack of jank that shows up in the PC space (cf. my frustration with the dual USB-C in my ASUS laptop not actually being capable of dual displays).

However, it always comes down to what you want a computer for. I wanted a laptop to act basically as a portable game console for when I travel, which is frequent. x86 is my only real option there. Also, if $1K+ for a laptop is a lot of money for you, sure, Apple doesn't have any budget options. But for those of us who get them, plenty of us would buy x86 notebooks in a heartbeat if someone would make a $1500 machine that was as good as a Mac...but nobody does.

Basically a laptop for me is a budget tool until I can put together a good rig. A project already that is taxing my wallet for perspective, and it's not exactly the beefiest thing in the world. Cost is a major factor for a laptop for me. If I want true gaming, that's for consoles or a future rig. That's how I think.

I do agree some people will get the most out of their MacBooks. But the people i see buying them most are college kids. Literally just to write papers. Sure is the battery life better? Yeah. But on a normie drone laptop you pick up from Walmart, messing with the power settings, you can get roughly 10 hours out of it if it's just being a work drone. Power has gotten better in X86 laptops.

The raid card I'd be using is a MegaRAID SAS 9240-8i which does seem to be an x8, I would have to look around to make sure I get a kit with a compatible motherboard. a lot of the kits have shit options for PCIe cards so I have to watch out for that, thanks.

How about this motherboard?

Below

This may be interesting to @Betonhaus in particular, but anyone wanting to get into storage pools in general.

Asking a question, do you need a RAID card if you just want multiple drives but don't care about linking them up? Asking because my build is going to have a boot SSD, 1-2 M.2 drives, and might have a high capacity HDD (6-10 tb). This is just for a normal rig, not a server.

 

[Betonhaus]

Asking a question, do you need a RAID card if you just want multiple drives but don't care about linking them up? Asking because my build is going to have a boot SSD, 1-2 M.2 drives, and might have a high capacity HDD (6-10 tb). This is just for a normal rig, not a server.

My case is a Lenovo ThinkServer TS440, which has 8 hot-swap SAS drive bays connected to a RAID card. Very few motherboards have 8 sata ports (plus one for the OS and temporary downloads) and I can get used and tested 4TB SAS drives for half the price of used untested 4TB Sata drives.
The RAID card is needed to connect all of the drives to the motherboard, but I will be running it in JBOD or IT passthrough mode so the OS can see each individual drive and merge them into one folder by itself. I'm not using RAID, but by necessity I need a RAID card. I could get a basic SAS controller card, but I already have the RAID card.

For your system you'd only need raid if you wanted to mirror your data to a second drive for backup, but you'd be better suited using an OS-level data backup software as RAID mirrors need the drives to match.

 

[Susanna]

Asking a question, do you need a RAID card if you just want multiple drives but don't care about linking them up? Asking because my build is going to have a boot SSD, 1-2 M.2 drives, and might have a high capacity HDD (6-10 tb). This is just for a normal rig, not a server.

No.
You basically never need a RAID card nowadays. They're obsolete, and it's better to let the operating system handle what they used to do. If you run out of SATA/SAS ports, though, you may need a HBA, which is an expansion card that adds more of those slots.
You probably don't need one. Three M.2 slots and four SATA ports are standard on motherboards now.