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Comment by SECProto | Hacker News Reader

I've got an i7 from a similar time period (4700 maybe? something like that). It's been in a closet for a couple years cause I haven't had the time for it, but I'm considering upgrading to some more current components. Sorry, this isn't really the place to ask, but what sort of GPU and ram are you running?

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The problem with GPU right now is that there is great uncertainty when the new Nvidia GPUs are coming out... the CEO of Nvidia said "not for a long time," but that doesn't have to mean anything.

GPU and Ram prices are sadly also very high at the moment... probably the worst time to build a new high end PC.

yeah for sure. I mean GPU/RAM prices have been trending up for 18 months, and don't show any sign of slacking, so it is what it is. I think I'll just have to bite the bullet and upgrade from the geforce 5xx or whatever it has right now. It sounds like Radeons are the more OSS-friendly option right now anyway? (I don't game on Linux, but "vote with your wallet" etc)

AMD is the clear winner on Linux simply because the official drivers are in the mainline kernel. No more dealing with NVIDIA binary blobs, and DKMS + the breakage caused when NVIDIAs shim is out of step with the particular kernel you want to run. NVIDIA wins perf/price though, and availability depending on where you are. :(

I love the idea of opens source drivers in the mainline kernel. But from what I can tell linux + nvidia blob is still the more featureful, stable, and performant 3d stack for linux. I can stay logged in for weeks, watch bluray (with low CPU utilization), games, tinker with WebGL, and open a zillion terminals/tabs.

AMD is getting better, but doesn't seem quit there yet. Steam and phoronix still seem to generally agree nvidia is still the #1 choice on linux. #2 (stability wise) seems to be Intel's GPU. AMD's working on it, but decent performance often requires a custom build stack not supported on any current Linux distro. I'd rather not have to recompile my own kernel, mesa, and related just to get reasonable stable and decent performance.

> I love the idea of opens source drivers in the mainline kernel. But from what I can tell linux + nvidia blob is still the more featureful, stable, and performant 3d stack for linux

On my personal experience, I disagree.

> nvidia blob is still the more featureful

yet which still cannot run Wayland/Xwayland+XGL. And you cannot do anything about it.

I game on Linux with Nvidia (sadly, instead of training neural nets like I thought I'd do with the GPU).

There was a cryptocurrency bubble at the end of last year, and that was the primary driver of GPU prices. New GPUs are almost going for MSRP now.

I'm also at something similar; 2nd gen i7 (2600K) from 2012. I upgraded to Nvidia 1060, and have the original 16GB of DDR3. It's both amazing and disappointing how well the system is still managing.

I have the same hardware, and I'm sitting here just looking for excuses to upgrade (of all reasons, for a new heatsink I was given) and I just can't bring myself to place the order because I just don't need it.

As you say, these i7s are still handling the load quite nicely.

I5-2500k at 4.6ghz on big air that I bought when it came out was running great with a GTX 1080. Upgrading to a Ryzen 7 1800x@4ghz was a marginal perf game (and ~0 FPS gain in most games). The m2 SSD from a SATA SSD seems like it helped the most.

Indeed, I'm still running an i5-2500K as my primary gaming machine (with a GTX 970) and upgrading is hard to justify. It doesn't even have USB3!

Slap a USB 3.0 card in the thing and keep running it. The state of the art hasn't advanced all that much since Sandy Bridge.

Still running a 2500K here too, paired with a GTX 1070. Absolutely no qualitative issues with any games I play. Interestingly though I do notice its age when programming - builds take noticeably longer when compared to my work laptop (XPS 13 w/ i7-7700). Could be due to the higher core count I guess (not sure what level of parallelism my builds exploit beyond the parallelism offered by Make).

I've got a i5-4670k and I was all set to upgrade my processor this year, but then I looked at the numbers and realized it would barely help what I use it for (coding and gaming). Made me very sad, as I just couldn't justify the upgrade. So now I've got it running a 4.5 GHz overclock to see if it'll give me a reason, and to make up the 10% performance in the meantime.

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