Best gentoo desktop platform / CPU currently?

Message

msst · Post by **msst** » Tue Sep 22, 2020 6:10 pm

Ouch, my desktop just died. Power supply is fried, no idea what else did bite the dust. I could try to revive it with a new power supply, not sure if it would work though. However the machine is upwards of 13 years old, so maybe a signal to replace it finally. It was feeling a bit slow lately anyway.

Then I have lost track of the new developments for desktop computers however, seeing there was not much exciting in terms of performance any more for years now. So I actually do not know what currently the best options for a "compiler beast" with optimal gentoo compatibilities would be. What is the state of the gentoo art without costing a fortune? I don't need a gaming PC, but I hate endless compiler runs.

P.S.: The old system was an i7-3770K CPU with 16 GB RAM and a standard intel motherboard.

Post by **Chiitoo** » Tue Sep 22, 2020 7:41 pm

AMD Ryzen all the way would definitely get my vote even though I already want to replace my current "zen1" 1700 unit. I got it back in 2017 even though I normally don't get the first version of anything, if possible, but I did not have the patience to wait any longer.

Just the other day I had the opportunity to test a 3100, which is half the cores/threads compared to mine, but still compiled some things (such as Wine) faster (edit: forgot that one was with all sorts of debug goodies attached... and without, they compile in about the same time, probably being bottlenecked at the single-threaded stages for example), which was somewhat surprising though not entirely unexpected.

That said, if at all possible, I'd definitely wait for "zen3" since they're supposed to be out on the 8th of October I believe.

RAM prices are at about 50% in some cases from when I bought mine... so it doesn't seem like a bad time at all to get new stuff like this.

Makersmarx · Post by **Makersmarx** » Tue Sep 22, 2020 7:45 pm

I will also throw in my suggestion for AMD Ryzen

axl · Post by **axl** » Tue Sep 22, 2020 8:10 pm

If it were me, I would hold back a little bit longer. New things are coming to mainstream and it's a major major improvement. PCI 4.0. It promises so much more. And everything else is connected to it. CPU, GPU, NVME. Basically everything and anything. Whatever you buy this year, will be obsolete by next year.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Tue Sep 22, 2020 8:19 pm

Makersmarx,

How much pain do you want?

Look at arm64 (scarce) and Power9 (expensive) solutions.
Don't be constrained by the x86 architecture, which was only driven be the need no beat Motorola to market with the first 16 bit CPU.
Its never shaken off the scars from being born like that.

Intel tried once, with Itanium, and gave up.

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Tue Sep 22, 2020 8:21 pm

Upgraded my system earlier this year, ryzen 3700x, opted to put in 64g mem and an nvme, makes a world of difference (old system was fx8320 ~8 years old).

Not a compile beast by any means but it cut the compile speeds by over half (fx8320) though there are some top end ryzen 3 that would make a nice compile beast.

viewtopic-t-1062980.html talks about mb's for ryzen as well as ryzen stuff in general.

Whatever you buy this year, will be obsolete by next year.

Pretty much the case since the intro of personal computers.

Post by **Chiitoo** » Tue Sep 22, 2020 8:33 pm

Chiitoo wrote:but still compiled some things (such as Wine) faster

I should amend this a bit, as I just remembered I turn a whole bunch of debug stuff on for Wine on this main machine, and without those it took around the same time (13 minutes) to compile Wine (still kind of impressive... but perhaps the neck of the bottle is somewhere else).

axl wrote:If it were me, I would hold back a little bit longer. New things are coming to mainstream and it's a major major improvement. PCI 4.0. It promises so much more. And everything else is connected to it. CPU, GPU, NVME. Basically everything and anything. Whatever you buy this year, will be obsolete by next year.

Seems like every year to me. :]

Always something better coming out (and well, here we have a machine that actually broke down (okay if it's only the PSU, it might be re-usable later on, but still)). I used a Phenom II X6 1090T from around 2010 to 2017, and I still do things with it on the side, so I should definitely be a little bit more than used to the waiting game.

Also who knows, maybe the RAM prices, or something else will shoot up tons very soon from now. If I had the money, I'd definitely get new stuff as soon as possible, but that's me right now.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Tue Sep 22, 2020 8:50 pm

msst,

There are very few packages that benefit from more than -j30.
Playing with -j100 on a 96 core box showed that fairly early in my playtime. :)

That tells that you are into diminishing returns with a 16 core 32 thread box.
Yes you can sometimes have emerge run several packages is parallel but that depends on the dependency tree.

C++ can be a real memory hog. Allow 2G RAM per thread.

So 32 threads and 64G RAM looks like a good staring point.
A motherboard with 4 RAM slots populated with 2x32G sticks.
Then you can add another 64G later without throwing anything away.

Some build phases are single threaded by design, so there is scope for overcommitting CPU and RAM.

axl · Post by **axl** » Tue Sep 22, 2020 9:14 pm

Chiitoo wrote:Seems like every year to me. :]

Always something better coming out (and well, here we have a machine that actually broke down (okay if it's only the PSU, it might be re-usable later on, but still)). I used a Phenom II X6 1090T from around 2010 to 2017, and I still do things with it on the side, so I should definitely be a little bit more than used to the waiting game.

Also who knows, maybe the RAM prices, or something else will shoot up tons very soon from now. If I had the money, I'd definitely get new stuff as soon as possible, but that's me right now.

Yes and no.

Well, the best drive I know to date, which is the intel 905 nvme drive, does around 3000 MB/s. the new nvme pci 4.0 drive in the sony playstation 5, does 6000 MB/s.

Imagine what that bandwidth does to the gpu.

I got 3 new generations of computers in the last decade.

My favorite machine is an x58 chipset based machine. I got that basically in 2010. I have a gigabyte x58 udr3 motherboard, WITH pci 2. as a result, it can use pci3 devices, but at low speed. I invested in a lot of parts for this machine, but none of them were expensive. the cpu is an intel i7 950. it's a decent cpu. 4 cores. it can hold it's own gentoo just fine. put on top of that is 32 GB of ram. 1866 ram. maximum reliable speed for that architecture. ddr3 ram. last of it's kind. it has an intel 750 nvme drive. which works great. can't boot off of it, but it works, once the kernel booted. nehalem generation of cpu. decent machine. even today. even in windows, as long as you have that amount of ram, and that nvme drive, and a decent gpu, u can pretty much do everything the big boys are doing. less better, in pci2 mode, but you can do it.

next i got a haswell. same gpu. same nvme drive. nvidia 960 smth. and intel 750 nvme drive. except on this one, the cpu was 6820k. 6 core. not a lot faster. but the bottle neck was never in the cpu. and this one has pci 3. so the nvme drive and the gpu work in full mode. plus, memory got upgraded to ddr4, so instead of running at 1866, now it was running at 3000.

Next I got my current rig. 9980xe. 18 cores. use them sporadically for like 1-2 hours straight... and then coast... for nothing. Now ram runs at 4000. Nvme drives from 750 to 905 within the same pci 3 standard have raised from like 2000 to like 3000 MB/s. But not by much. It's still a damn good experience, even when you add layers of encryption and emulation and virtualization. it's smooth. it's wonderful.

But they have 32 core cpu's now. The new nvidia 3000 series is just freaking insane. How insane it is? Well, let me try to explain. When series 9xx of nvidia was created, that was supposed to be for hd. so that series of cards, best of the line, 980, was supposed to be able to render full hd stuff, on 2 monitors at a time. the next series, was 10xx. which was supposed to be the 4k series. the 20xx series was supposed to be the 8k series. nvidia went on to create the 30xx series, which only serves in ai, bitcoin mining and cracking hashes. there's no amount of tv's that you could connect to a modern 3080 nvidia card to render stuff and consume all of the card. we would have to invent (from what I understand we need like 4 32k monitors to saturate a 3080 nvidia card). Not sure how right that is, but it's something to consider. I am right about 900 series being the full hd series, 1000 series being the 4k series, and 2000 series being the 8k series. which begs the question ... wtf is the 3000 series. and given what nvidia is doing with arm... it's the AI series

anyway. I don't get excited about silly ideas like quantum computers. i'm older than that. but pci 4.0 WILL bring a lot of changes to what we think about computing. I hope it will also bring whatever is next after gigabit. which frankly is behind the whole digital revolution. mobile networks... ok. 4g, lte, 5g. but old fashion ethernet is stuck.

Anyway. pci4 and I suspect ddr5... will make my rig obsolete. today my rig is still cool. it's ok. i can't complain. but there will come a day (I suspect after I buy PS5) when I will just go... yeap... you are now obsolete. Like in a day.

One thing I know for a fact, prices in the market will adjust immediately. Not when I figure it out, but when the new thing is launched. all of the old pci3/ddr4 things will become obsolete overnight.

It's the new decade.

Ant P. · Post by **Ant P.** » Wed Sep 23, 2020 12:07 am

You're waiting for PCIE 4.0 to happen? How much are Intel bribing you to act so ignorant? It's so old at this point it's nearly obsolete, my Ryzen desktop with it is a year old and POWER9 has had it at least three times as long.

And for the record: prices did not adjust. Intel's just as much a ripoff as ever.

axl · Post by **axl** » Wed Sep 23, 2020 12:14 am

i did say... mainstream.

but you know... kudos to you

Tony0945 · Post by **Tony0945** » Wed Sep 23, 2020 12:31 am

Another AMD vote here. Although my last Intel was an i486DX-100, king of the hill at the time. And was it actually 16Meg of RAM?
Anyway, my latest is a 2700X following NeddySeagoon's advice that 2000 series would drop in price when 3000 came out. It's on an MSI B450 mobo and is the fastest thing I've ever owned. I do have an Asus x570 mobo and a 3900X with NVME in the basement waiting to be assembled. But I splurged with the USA stimulus money. Since I'm retired, I didn't need extra money to replace losing a job. But they sent $1200 to everyone who filed a tax return whether they needed it or not. (In Bill gates' case whether they noticed it or not). So I stimulated China's economy by buying a bunch of computer equipment. My last splurge was about a dozen years ago.
I could have bought a 3950X but the price difference offended me. I wanted to splurge, not get robbed.
64G RAM, again per Neddy's recommendation. I don't even use all my 32G but, well, when I bought the Phenom II, 8 G seemed like too much too.

axl · Post by **axl** » Wed Sep 23, 2020 12:32 am

I do agree that Intel is just wrong. or a bandit. or smth. it just doesn't make sense. not even how prices are adjusted. after specter and meltdown and everything else I expected there will be no more intel.

instead, we live in a world similar to "the big short". it's just too big to fail. and some people are just not happy with that. I TOTALLY GET IT.

But on the other hand, I hope nobody expects me to go out and burn my cpu in the streets. coz I wont do that.

And further more, i am most proud of my intel nvme's. not my intel cpus. very different product. although, even those intel 750 nvme drives... i noticed one of them was 98% used. i didn't realize at the time that it's lifetime was measured in terabytes. and yes, the 750 series had that. but the 900 series lifetime is measured in exobytes. so... progress

I am not sure what you want me to say. yes companies are aweful. but sometimes, by accident, they actually make good products. and once in a while, they actually make great products.

I didn't come into this discussion to promote intel cpus. because I can't do that. And I can say 750 series drives were great nvme drives in terms of speed. but short life span. 905 has a much larger life span, much better speed.

But in the end it's still pci 3 technology. all I'm saying, give the market a chance for one year. I think this year... regardless of each individual camp, new technology is coming out. it's funny that once again, the game consoles are leading the charge. ps4/xbox whatever didn't change much. but ps3 generation did. well, once again, the gaming consoles are ahead, like 10 years ago. all I am saying is ... just wait and observe.

not that you are wrong. or right. i am an intel fanboy. yes. I am wrong. yes. but that doesn't invalidate their nvme line of drives. which are awesum. or were. anyway. i can't wait for the actual ps5 to come out. and... I wasn't aware that vendors already sold pci4 ready motherboards. but I do lag behind. so.. who knows.

my initial point stands. get something with pci4. and ddr5. i am pretty sure they dont have ddr5 as standard ram for computers yet. but I think next year... it will be a thing.

axl · Post by **axl** » Wed Sep 23, 2020 12:38 am

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-BAR-Plus ... B07BPHN7LV

apropos new technologies. you guys should see a modern raspberry pi 4 with this usb 3 drive. it's actually impressive.

Hund · Post by **Hund** » Wed Sep 23, 2020 5:16 am

Your CPU is 8 years old and there's nothing wrong with it, it's even faster than my older i5-2500k and I have no reason to upgrade. It's not like it's in anyway obsolete or performing bad for todays tasks.

Do yourself and the planet a favour and save your wallet and the planet from some carbon dioxide by buying a new PSU instead. :)

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Wed Sep 23, 2020 9:22 am

The problem with computers that are getting older, things like capacitors start wearing out (mb, power supply, etc) and thus it's just failure waiting to happen. I usually buy a new computer ever 5-10 years, and re-purpose the old one, I just don't trust it to be main computer once it starts aging. This doesn't mean that just because it's old it won't work, but like all things that age, some of them are going to break, I choose to keep my main system as a relatively modern cpu/mb and reuse my older systems, in non-critical areas. YMMV

389292 · Post by **389292** » Wed Sep 23, 2020 10:48 am

It depends on your budget. If you want your new system to hodl well for another 10+ years, then there are no other way other than Threadripper currently. You can buy a bit less RAM and less cores initially, and in 4-6 years pupulate everything to the MAX using ebay or whatever you have in your region.
In my opinion to futureproof right now you gonna need:
Proper IOMMU on the MBD.
Multiple NUMA nodes on the CPU.
A lot of PCIe lines/slots.
High max RAM ceiling.
USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) or even 3.2 (20Gbps) for connectivity.
For the GPU it almost doesn't matter, it's the easiest component to replace, or pick anything later.

bammbamm808 · Post by **bammbamm808** » Wed Sep 23, 2020 5:15 pm

axl wrote:If it were me, I would hold back a little bit longer. New things are coming to mainstream and it's a major major improvement. PCI 4.0. It promises so much more. And everything else is connected to it. CPU, GPU, NVME. Basically everything and anything. Whatever you buy this year, will be obsolete by next year.

At no point in time will this nit be the case. No point in waiting. Get what fits your uses at the best price you can and enjiy it.
BTW: Ryzen.

AJM · Post by **AJM** » Wed Sep 23, 2020 7:42 pm

Hund wrote:Your CPU is 8 years old and there's nothing wrong with it, it's even faster than my older i5-2500k and I have no reason to upgrade. It's not like it's in anyway obsolete or performing bad for todays tasks. Do yourself and the planet a favour and save your wallet and the planet from some carbon dioxide by buying a new PSU instead.

I'd agree - I have a 2500k based machine here too, not overclocked or anything - it runs my Gentoo desktop and a heap of VMs all day long every day without so much as breaking into a sweat. Of course if the OP just fancies a new PC there's nothing wrong with that, but personally I'd be ordering a decent PSU and be back in business next day...

Post by **pjp** » Thu Sep 24, 2020 3:05 am

My workhorse is an AMD Phenom II X4 965. I've had it for 8 years, it was released in 2009.

It replaced one of the Athlon "Slot A" cartridges. And I didn't buy that when it was initially released.

I'm only tempted to replace it when there are security fixes in quick succession on some of the larger packages (primarily web browsers).

Tony0945 · Post by **Tony0945** » Thu Sep 24, 2020 3:21 am

PJP, I'm resurrecting an ATHLON II X3 as a video recording box (updated with SATA SSD and big WD GOLD HDD for storing recordings.
I have a32bit chroot that builds everything (except eix) for a k-6. That's on the Phenom II. I'll be retiring that, but if I copy the entire partition, it should run on the 3900X that replaces it, right?

Ant P. · Post by **Ant P.** » Thu Sep 24, 2020 7:57 am

Phenom II has 3dnow and everything post-Bulldozer doesn't, so keep that in mind.

Tony0945 · Post by **Tony0945** » Thu Sep 24, 2020 1:46 pm

Ant P. wrote:Phenom II has 3dnow and everything post-Bulldozer doesn't, so keep that in mind.

True, perhaps I should copy the toolchain from the 2700X first and rebuild -e @world. That would give it a shakedown cruise!

Anon-E-moose · Post by **Anon-E-moose** » Thu Sep 24, 2020 3:45 pm

You will need to recompile or the ryzen will barf on the phenomII (if you're using native) code if you try and run it.

Tony0945 · Post by **Tony0945** » Thu Sep 24, 2020 4:23 pm

Anon-E-moose wrote:You will need to recompile or the ryzen will barf on the phenomII (if you're using native) code if you try and run it.

When I moved from the AM4 bulldozer to the 2700X, I had been building a string of -noX -noY to avoid that problem. I think maybe I got that string from you. Yes, in particular, 3dnow is a problem. Since I had no incompatible instructions, just a world rebuild with -march=native sufficed before.
An alternative to coping the Ryzen toolchain is build -e @world without -march-native, maybe just -mtune=amdfam10 or whatever the mnemonic is.
Then rebuild. Yet another alternative is to copy /usr/lib, /usr/bin et cetera from the 2700X, leaving just /root and /home from the Phenom II
The past year I've been wondering just what -march-native really does for us. Twenty years ago a great deal because k6 was internally quite different from Pentium Pro, but now? What's with the proliferation of weird instructions? IIRC, Phoronix tested once between generic code and CPU-optimized code and it only made a significant difference (more than 0%) is highly vectored programs like video manipulation and highly visual games.

Best gentoo desktop platform / CPU currently?

Best gentoo desktop platform / CPU currently?

><)))°€

Re: ><)))°€

Re: ><)))°€