Future proof computer to be built in June?

[Squilliam]

I was wondering what kind of computer I should build?

I already have an HD 7850 but the card is acting funky with macro blocking glitches so I slowed it down a little, I intend to replace it next year anyway so it isn't a big deal.

The real question really is which CPU architecture? Should I go for Haswell or should I go for Bulldozer? The thing I'm wondering about is the fact that the next generation consoles have 8 cores, would a desktop Intel processor be good for that or should I try to get as close to 8 physical cores with integrated GPU on the AMD side?

 

[Davros]

Years ago I had the choice of a quadcore or a much higher clocked dualcore because of budget (games at the time used 2 cores at most, most used a single core) I went for a quad and I think I made the right choice. (still using it now)

About 3 months ago I asked a similar question (upgrade at the end of 2013) quad intel or 8 core amd and surprisingly everyone said go intel.

heres the post
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=62275

 

[Squilliam]

What about the fact that both consoles are APUs? Would that count for anything? I'm concerned a little by the lack of logical cores on the Intel, though the fact that it clocks twice as high ought to make it more equivalent and mainly I am concerned that as they are AMD APUs that the games themselves will tank on hardware which isn't designed as an APU.

 

[trinibwoy]

What about the fact that both consoles are APUs? Would that count for anything? I'm concerned a little by the lack of logical cores on the Intel, though the fact that it clocks twice as high ought to make it more equivalent and mainly I am concerned that as they are AMD APUs that the games themselves will tank on hardware which isn't designed as an APU.

I'm doing a build in June as well and it will be Haswell based. Everything but the GPU will be used for 5 years.

Don't get too caught up in core count. That's just marketing bullocks. Each Bulldozer "core" is far weaker than a Sandy core. Compared to Haswell it looks even worse. One Haswell core matches a Bulldozer module on integer throughput and kills it on floating point.

I'm not so sure games will be designed for APUs specifically. Yes, console performance will benefit from APU architecture but discrete PC hardware is going to be so much more powerful that it won't matter. Also, these APUs are the closest thing we've ever had to PC hardware in a console so PCs should be even better off this generation.

 

[pjbliverpool]

What about the fact that both consoles are APUs? Would that count for anything? I'm concerned a little by the lack of logical cores on the Intel, though the fact that it clocks twice as high ought to make it more equivalent and mainly I am concerned that as they are AMD APUs that the games themselves will tank on hardware which isn't designed as an APU.

Haswell will utterly destroy the new consoles CPU's in every respect, you have absolutely nothing to worry about there. If you go with an i7 you'll get hyperthreading anyway so have 8 threads which matches the 8 threads of the consoles. A 4 core/thread i5 will serve you just as well though.

Also consider that FX series CPU's have no on die GPU unlike Haswell so if you're concerned about the HSA nature of the next gen consoles requiring something similar in the PC space then you're doubly out of luck with Bulldozer (or Piledriver) since there's no local GPU to farm GPGPU tasks off to and it's peak SIMD throughput will only be a little over half of Haswell. So even if it's not possible for PC games to use the Haswell GPU to handle console style GPGPU code, the CPU's own SIMD units may be enough to compete with the GPGPU capabilities of the new consoles.

Other things you'll want to consider - get plenty of system RAM. 8GB will probably be sufficient but 16GB to be on the safe side for the next 5 years. Make sure you pick up a GPU with lots of graphics memory too. If you want to last the entire console generation with this GPU then 2GB probably won't cut it. 3GB might scrape by but would be a risk IMO. 4GB should keep you fairly safe and you'll be lauching with 6GB although the only cards with 6GB now or in the near future are Titan and extremely expensive 7970Ghz editions. Either should be more than powerful enough to see you through to the end of this console generation though.

 

[Arwin]

I would leave out GPU considerations altogether. Just get the best thing you are comfortable with spending money on (between 100-200$) and upgrade that evy 1-2 years.

 

[Davros]

Dont forget if the on die gpu is weak your better off doing compute on a discreet gpu as well as graphics

plus on the pc you dont have to rely on a puny integrated gpu to do compute to can add a gfx card and have it dedicated to compute (at least with physx) and there is no reason why opencl/direct compute cant have this capability

 

[pjbliverpool]

Dont forget if the on die gpu is weak your better off doing compute on a discreet gpu as well as graphics

plus on the pc you dont have to rely on a puny integrated gpu to do compute to can add a gfx card and have it dedicated to compute (at least with physx) and there is no reason why opencl/direct compute cant have this capability

Consoles will use compute in a way that effects gameplay and thus it'll need to be done on a GPU with much lower latency communication with the CPU than a discrete PC GPU over PCI-E. Thus for PC's the options may be limited to doing the same work on the CPU, handing it over to an on die GPU or reducing the settings/work being done if that's even possible.

Doing the work on the CPU would be slow. Quad Haswells and Hex core Sandybridges might be able to do a decent job of keeping up with the 4 CU's on Orbis but I wouldn't like to put money on it. And turning settings down isn't what we want to be doing as PC gamers so that just leaves moving the work to an on die GPU (if that is a real possibility - AMD seems to suggest it is in one of it's HSA presentations).

If we assume 4 CU's is generally going to be the maximum compute power next gen consoles will use for games then high end models from the Haswell, Trinity, Richand, Kaveri and even llano familys should all offer enough compute power to keep up. At least in theory.

 

[Davros]

Consoles will use compute in a way that effects gameplay

How did you come to that conclusion ?

 

[Blazkowicz]

HSA.
But, Intel CPUs won't have HSA, at most they have OpenCL support on the integrated GPU, as a checklist feature.

Game developers would in effect have multiple integrated GPUs to support : there is Haswell, AMD with HSA, AMD without HSA - including the yet to be launched A10-6800K, Ivy Bridge / Sandy Bridge HD 2500 and 2000 : not worth using?, as long as FX and *-bridge CPUs with absent or disabled graphics.

So that's multiple versions of the software needed, plus dealing with the same variety of dedicated GPUs (including Maxwell, which is an APU so it could runsome of the code you would be running on the CPU-APU elsewise.)

That's a big pile of clusterfck!

 

[pjbliverpool]

HSA.
But, Intel CPUs won't have HSA, at most they have OpenCL support on the integrated GPU, as a checklist feature.

Game developers would in effect have multiple integrated GPUs to support : there is Haswell, AMD with HSA, AMD without HSA - including the yet to be launched A10-6800K, Ivy Bridge / Sandy Bridge HD 2500 and 2000 : not worth using?, as long as FX and *-bridge CPUs with absent or disabled graphics.

So that's multiple versions of the software needed, plus dealing with the same variety of dedicated GPUs (including Maxwell, which is an APU so it could runsome of the code you would be running on the CPU-APU elsewise.)

That's a big pile of clusterfck!

But just as with game code developers shouldn't have to worry about what GPU the code is running on. That should be handled by the API/Driver as it currently is for GPU based compute jobs. As long as there is a minimum feature set and a minimum level of performance I'd have thought any GPU would be fair game.

 

[Davros]

I disagree. I think compute will be used exactly the same way it is on the pc, eyecandy and visual effects.
Off the top of my head I can only think of 3 compute related things that affect gameplay.(unless you include fog and smoke as affecting gameplay)

penetration(eg: bullet penetration) doesnt make sense unless you model materials at the molecular level
cfd(Computational fluid dynamics) its not even used in f1 simulators (its ran on supercomputers and its still not 100% accurate) an approximation makes more sense
forces (eg gravity) an approximation makes more sense as above.

 

[Davros]

I'd have thought any GPU would be fair game.

Should be with direct compute as its part of dx11

That should be handled by the API/Driver

Its handled by the end user with physx

 

[Blazkowicz]

Consoles will run optimized code (that may make a big difference for GPGPU) and their GPU will work seamlessly on CPU data.
This may allow them to do stuff that isn't worth doing on a PC without HSA (even if the CPU includes a GPU), because with the time you spend to set the thing up, wait for the computation and get it back, you might as well have run the computation on the CPU.

I'm sure much pathological code can be written which will slow you down if you use GPGPU, because of the overhead. Consoles could run code that's not worth running on PC, except if the PC has a Steamroller (not any other kind of CPU) and the code targets it.

It's notable that Intel and nvidia are not in the console stuff at all and it seems to me the PC is facing two directions regarding APU and GPU : Intel + nvidia or AMD + AMD (or AMD + nvidia if that's what you want to run).
I can't predict what the near future will look like - except that little thing that millions people will keep their i3, i5 and phenoms etc. for a long time.

 

[Squilliam]

Thanks for the assistance people, I had a further think about what kind of computer I would need and it looks like Haswell ought to be good enough, especially in the 8 thread/4 core flavour. It's too bad that Kaveri won't come out until the end of this year but I figure that Intel won't be doing anything significant with Broadwell so waiting until after Haswell doesn't make much sense. Since I don't know much about how those 4 Compute units will be used in Orbis I can't predict the future but given the fact that Orbis won't have that in common with PC or Xbox and it looks like Sony will dedicate some resources to image processing as well such a deficit won't likely be as bad as it first appears on the surface.

I already have an SSD I won't be upgrading that and the HD 7850 in the system is good enough to last this year. I have a personal rule that I not upgrade GPUs on the same process node so this means I'll hold off until Volcanic Islands before I make a decision in that department. I will probably go for 16GB of RAM because quite frankly that is just too cheap to pass up.

I think I need a new computer case as well, this computer is going in the lounge so I was thinking about the Fractal Design R4 or something similar.

http://www.fractal-design.com/?view=product&prod=99

It will be going in the lounge so I figure something cool, quiet and understated would be good which has >5 HDD slots.

 

[Blazkowicz]

I thought that would be a white case

Both colors are available.
black makes me feel sad LOL.
But dwelling in a north facing flat and being in winter maybe is why I think that.

Either way I think that case looks wonderous.
As for the color choice.. maybe this is what matters the most, more than what hardware you choose

 

[Albuquerque]

It will be going in the lounge so I figure something cool, quiet and understated would be good which has >5 HDD slots.

You should consider laptop drives... You can get them in 1TB 7200RPM flavors now, and you can cram two laptop drives into the same space as a single desktop drive. Thus, a case with "only" two HDD bays can hold four laptop drives.

Case in point: I'm using a MicroATX case to hold twelve spindle drives, one SSD, and a bluray player all within the "sanctioned" drive cage space. It acts as a Hyper-V host, along with 32GB of ram, a PCI-E raid card, a PCI-E video card and an i5-3570k.

 

[Squilliam]

I thought that would be a white case

Both colors are available.
black makes me feel sad LOL.
But dwelling in a north facing flat and being in winter maybe is why I think that.

Either way I think that case looks wonderous.
As for the color choice.. maybe this is what matters the most, more than what hardware you choose

White has a window and I'm not really a fan of windows. Everything else in the lounge is black, PS3, 360, Amp, TV, Wii, PS2 so I wouldn't want to get just one white case.

You should consider laptop drives... You can get them in 1TB 7200RPM flavors now, and you can cram two laptop drives into the same space as a single desktop drive. Thus, a case with "only" two HDD bays can hold four laptop drives.

Case in point: I'm using a MicroATX case to hold twelve spindle drives, one SSD, and a bluray player all within the "sanctioned" drive cage space. It acts as a Hyper-V host, along with 32GB of ram, a PCI-E raid card, a PCI-E video card and an i5-3570k.

Since I already have desktop drives that unfortunately wouldn't work for me.

 

[Blazkowicz]

There's both a window and a windowless version.
any way get what you need. there's the Corsair Vengeance C70 "military green" (sic) which I find funny (black version too), it has some original, distinctive features without being in the "roxxorz pro gamer" style that I don't like.

not telling you "get this" or "get that" at all, just chattering about cases.
I would like to add one or two laptop HDD in my PC too, just to add some storage. even old 250 or 320GB models or less, when I come across one. The low footprint is interesting.

 

[Squilliam]

It does look interesting