What are the advantages of i7/Xeon hyper-threading in this scenario?

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ACTechy

ACTechy

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I've got a friend who is currently running an i5-3450 rig for his home business machine. He's in web-based marketing/consultation, so he's constantly running 20+ chrome tabs, multiple windows explorer panes and other applications (photoshop, etc) for his business; serious multitasking. He's been running into 100% CPU usage situations, where pages/applications are loading slow. For his line of work in particular, time is money, so this is an issue.

Background out of the way, here's the question: would an i7/Xeon (think: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117286) run the above scenario substantially better than his current i5-3450? Are there benchmarks for that kind of thing?
How does Windows utilize hyper-threading in those situations? I'm assuming Windows would see 8 cores and use them as such, but he'd like some solid proof that the upgrade is worth the money and that he'll see a big jump in performance.

Couple things to clear up:
- he's running 16GB of RAM, not the problem
- wicked fast internet speeds
- SSD user
- he's a techie, and doesn't have bloatware/extra processes or anything running background
- Xeon would work fine, he uses a discrete graphics card and isn't overclocking, no worries there

Thanks all, would appreciate any knowledgeable replies!
 
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IInuyasha74
Sorry, been gone all day helping a friend set up a new system.

Anyways,
AcTechy haha I am glad you liked the analogies. I hope you don't mind if I use it a little more to answer one of you questions.
I think that he would probably see a minimum of 25% boost if the work thrown at it is as you said with numerous internet tabs open and smaller tasks. For areas like photoshop as Superfree pointed out, that the 3770k did on average 11 seconds faster than the 3470 which is itself a little faster than the 3450. That is not huge, but I would suspect that at a minimum this would be the result, however its hard to judge with so much else going, it could potentially do a lot better since its able to free up other resources faster. Still a 25%...
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superfreestyleer

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The difference between the i5-3450 and the E3-1230 would be marginal at best. The E3-1230 has the advantage of a slightly larger l3 cache and hyperthreading, but it wouldnt be massively noticeable. To get a truly noticeable change you would need to get something more like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116939
It has a much larger L3 cache with the hyperthreading, but also two additional cores. The issue with this is that A new motherboard would be required to house this significantly faster motherboard.
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-3450+%40+3.10GHz&id=820
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-4930K+%40+3.40GHz&id=2023

There are some benchmarks to show just how drastic the difference is. It would probably cost closer to 700 to make the upgrade, but pretty much anything else in that motherboard would be a negligible difference
 
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ACTechy

ACTechy

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Thanks superfree, good points all around. Do you know what PassMark scores consist of? Just curious.

I'm wondering if an i7-3770 would be a sizeable step up, in terms of staying with the same socket. According to passmark it would appear to get 50% better performance (6449 vs 9423)...but again, not sure how relevant passmark scores are, cause I don't know what they're made of.

You mentioned the cache size, how does the affect multi-tasking over core count? My original thinking was, 'he just needs more cores to operate more commands simultaneously,' but it doesn't sound like you think that's the way it would work out.

Thanks mate
 
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CTurbo

CTurbo

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I think more l3 cache and hyperthreading is exactly what he needs. I think ANY i7 or xeon would be a huge upgrade for his usage.

Of course more cores would be better too, but the price is high.

Ironically, this is a rare situation where the FX 8350 would be better too.
 
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IInuyasha74

IInuyasha74

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I actually disagree with Superfree.

I am not sure how PassMark does its ratings, but I have found it to be a rather poor comparison of CPUs.
Personally, I think the i7-3770k or a Xeon CPU would be exactly what he needs. Because of running so many applications and tabs at the same time, his CPU is working extremely hard to try to maintain them. It isn't really working very hard to compute it sounds like, but just to multitask so much. When that is the case, additional threads have significant impact.

I see you are a Graphics Card expert, lets look at it in terms of memory bandwidth on a GPU. lets say having an old single core CPU that only does one thread is like having a 64-bit interface on the GPU. Ignore Pentium 4 Hyperthreading, dual core CPUs would be like having 128-bit interface, and so on.

Obviously the architecture changes to allow faster performance, and the speed in Mhz changes, but there is still the limit of the max amount that can flow through that area at a time. The i5 is like have a 256-bit interface. Hyperthreaded cores are not quite as good as cores themselves, but it would be fair to look at an i7 or Xeon CPU in comparison as having a 384-bit interface.

Since the software is putting demand on moving so much through that interface, the i5 is running at top speed to try to push more data through more quickly, like if the RAM on a GPU were to try to overclock itself higher to get more bandwidth through, I know the vRAM doesn't do this but just an example. The i7 on the other hand won't have to push so hard because the interface is wider and so it can just let everything flow through without working as hard.

Cache size is important and helpful, but not most important so not a big concern. As you can see though, I do think the same as it sounds he does just need to operate more commands simultaneously.

Here are a few benchmarks. Its not a purely multithreaded test, because it also deals with rendering, but it might help. Look at Cinebench.
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i5_3570k_review,14.html
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i7_3770k_and_3750_review_with_z77,16.html

Note from the base non-overclocked ones that the i7-3770k gets about 25% faster in this heavily threaded benchmark at the exact same frequency. Xeon would do the same as the i7-3770k, assuming you get one with a 3.5Ghz speed of course. Otherwise they aren't any different. Or if you get the i7-3770k, as you can see in the second link you can get even higher performance.
 
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superfreestyleer

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This is a much more relevant benchmark.it doesn't have the 3450on here, it has the 3470 on it which s only .1ghz difference. In the one test it shows a difference of 11 seconds between one photoshop render with the 3770k and the 3470. I don't know to what extent your friends time is worth, but I wouldn't deem that worthy of 300 dollars. There are certain scenarios where the 4930k significantly outperforms both by over minutes or more, but there are other times where it is a matter of seconds http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-performance-comparison,3370-13.html
 
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ACTechy

ACTechy

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@IInuyasha74 - that's some great stuff there, those benchmarks seem pretty helpful for this scenario. Thanks for that. (And I like the graphics analogies.) So if he throws in an i7-3770 (or Xeon equivalent) what kind of percentage increase would you think he would see in terms of smooth multitasking ability, over the i5-3450? Also, how much does the processor speed come into play when we're talking about rote multitasking? I guess in my mind, anything over like 3.2Ghz or so, if it had enough cores, would be fast enough to keep windows/tabs loading and populated...is there a level where the speed stops making a noticeable difference in the given scenario?

@ superfree - Yeah the photoshop thing isn't the primary, so not too concerned with photoshop benchmarks, thanks though :) He just doesn't want his multi-tasking to take a hit, just because he has loads of tabs and couple applications running at the same time.
 
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IInuyasha74

IInuyasha74

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Sorry, been gone all day helping a friend set up a new system.

Anyways,
AcTechy haha I am glad you liked the analogies. I hope you don't mind if I use it a little more to answer one of you questions.
I think that he would probably see a minimum of 25% boost if the work thrown at it is as you said with numerous internet tabs open and smaller tasks. For areas like photoshop as Superfree pointed out, that the 3770k did on average 11 seconds faster than the 3470 which is itself a little faster than the 3450. That is not huge, but I would suspect that at a minimum this would be the result, however its hard to judge with so much else going, it could potentially do a lot better since its able to free up other resources faster. Still a 25% boost in performance in general mixed with at least some boost in photoshop seems a good enough reason to me.

As for the important's of clock speed, this is where the graphics analogy comes back. If I have RAM clocked at 900Mhz on a 64 bit bus, I would get a total of 14.4GB/s in throughput. If I have RAM at 950Mhz on a 64-bit bus I would get a total of 15.2Gb/s in throughput.
With higher clock speed, more is accomplished faster. It is able to finish more calculations and push them out and start on something else faster. SO its better because it will just get through things faster.

Sorry my brains a bit tired today so I am having trouble explaining this one well. Just the clock speed should be very important and the higher should get through a lot more tasks faster. The only reason I wouldn't buy an i5-3470k or an i7-3770k CPU would be if I wanted to save a ton of money on Xeon which is like any i7 CPU in performance but $100 cheaper. Xeon would beat the i5 in multithreaded tasks, but if you overclocked an i5 as high as possible, it would come a lot closer than if you hadn't. Theoretically I think if you overclocked it high enough it could even beat the Xeon core in multithreaded tasks but that would probably be an overclock past 5Ghz at least.

I do agree that anything around 3.2 would be fast enough though. You won't see a huge difference over .1-.3Ghz. So just go with whats equitable. Then if he has a good motherboard you could budge the front side bus up a little and get a little more out of it, but really you will probably be fine with that.
Not to mention once you sell the old i5 the cost won't be so bad.
 
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IInuyasha74

IInuyasha74

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Actually they are nearly identical. Look at Intel's own records.
http://ark.intel.com/products/65732/
http://ark.intel.com/products/65719/

The difference? Practically non-existent. You lose a few very minor security technologies like "Anti-Theft", but if you are worried about someone stealing your desktop you have bigger worries I think.
 
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