March, 2013

Building a new computer, 2013

See my previous notes as of March, 2012.

It has been a year since I built a computer based on an Intel i5-2500K chip. My other computer (at the office), burned itself up (it was a dual core AMD X2 system). The plastic rivet holding the chipset fan broke or popped off, the chipset fan came loose, and the chipset chip self destructed. So it was time for a new computer. Too bad. Even though this computer was nearly 8 years old, it was still fast enough to do what I expected of it.

Of course you can't just buy a motherboard (unless you scrounge around on Ebay, which is not a bad idea given how people love to do upgrades). You buy a new motherboard, and a new processor, and memory. In my case the processor turned out to be an i7-3770K.

It was affordable ($240) to fill the motherboard up to the max with 32G of ram. As they say, extra ram is the cheapest and most effective upgrade.

What about that i7 processor?

Read my analysis of the i5 versus the i7.

The i7 has 4 cores, but each core can run two hyperthreads, so to linux it looks like an 8 processor machine. The i7-3770K runs at 3.5 Ghz, and can run a single core in what it calls "Turbo" mode at 3.9 Ghz. The K indicates that it has an unlocked multiplier, which means that I could overclock it if I wanted to (and if I wanted to buy a special heatsink). Along with 4 cores, it has an on chip graphics unit (the intel 4000 igp). It has an 8M L3 cache, and 4 256K L2 caches. This particular i7 fits into an LGA 1155 socket. I came close to buying a LGA 2011 socket machine, but let the sales guys talk me out of it. More on this below, but I am now quite convinced that they steered me right. The intel parts with 3xxx model numbers are "Ivy Bridge" chips. The older parts with 2xxx model numbers are Sandy Bridge chips. Ivy Bridge uses a 22 nm process, whereas the older Sandy Bridge parts used a 32 nm process. Among other things this allows the Ivy bridge parts to use less power (the i7-3770K is a 77 watt part, whereas the i5-2500K is a 95 watt part).

The i7-3770K has 1400 million transistors, as compared to 995 million for the i5-2500K. The i7 die is smaller, 160 mm^2 as compared to 216 mm^2.
Smaller die, lower power, yet more transistors.

What about Socket 2011 and Ivy Bridge?

The LGA 2011 with 2011 connections would hopefully offer something over the 1155 pins in LGA 1155, but it is not clear at this time (March, 2013) just what. In particular, no Ivy Bridge processors are available for the LGA 2011. I had some remorse about not getting an LGA 2011 motherboard, but that is fading quickly as I study the LGA 2011 processor choices. The store I visited had two choices, the i7-3820 (notice, no "K"), which is a quad core 3.6 Ghz processor, Sandy Bridge, running at 130 watts. 10M/1M cache; $320. The other choice was the i7-3920K, which is a six core 3.2Ghz processor, Sandy Bridge, running at 130 watts, 12M/1.5M cache, $600. The sales guys told me that if I was only going to buy the i7-3820, I would be better off with the LGA 1155 i7-3770K chip, and now that I have done my homework, I agree with their advice. Even the 6 core i7-3820, at a premium price would give me 2 extra cores, but a lower clock rate -- not clear that this is a win for something like a photoshop machine that is still running hard in just one thread. I like a cooler, lower power CPU.

Haswell (see below) is due to come out in late 2013, and it is very likely that it will introduce a new socket. If so, the LGA 2011 is going to have a short and not very interesting life. I am convinced that there are few if any reasons to go to the socket 2011 unless you just absolutely have to have 6 cores right now. There are great processor options for LGA 1155. Don't ask me what the extra 850 or so pins are all about.

As for overclocking, I am getting conflicting information as for Sandy Bridge versus Ivy Bridge. Both overclock readily to 4.5 Ghz. (The word is go with 1.1 volt and 4.5 GHz) For those who want to go even more radical than this, the word is that there are thermal issues with the Ivy Bridge package. Something about the thermal compound in the LGA 1155 Ivy Bridge heat spreader.
A direction I do not intend to explore.

Haswell

Holy Cow! The following article has a Haswell chip (the i7-4770K) chip getting benchmarked. The article was published just the day before I am typing this: It is pretty clear that the first digit (the "4" in 4770) indicates the "generation", which is 2 for Sandy Bridge, 3 for Ivy Bridge, 4 for Haswell.

You can do Google searches on "Haswell". This is the up and coming (4th generation) Intel chip design (what ever happened to AMD). Part of what I hear is that Intel is paying more attention to the low power mobile market as studies show that laptops and mobile devices are claiming a larger and larger share of the processor market. The other thing I hear is that Intel is discussing abandoning sockets altogether and requiring devices to be soldered on the motherboards. This really upsets some people, but I am not sure that I am among them -- typically motherboard, processor, and memory all have to be bought together anyway -- and I have never done a processor upgrade where I have replaced a working cpu to get a bump in performance.

What the heck is "SoC" ?

Well, it seems that this stands for "system on a chip". I guess this is the direction we are heading with Intel integrating GPU functionality on chip with the i5 and i7 processors. To be able to call yourself an SoC rather than a microcontroller, you have to be able to run a full blown operating system like linux. AMD has something called the Geode which is an x86 based SoC targetting the embedded system market.

What about a motherboard?

There are skads of LGA 1155 motherboards out there, so just pick one by your favorite brand. I have been running Asus and Gigabyte motherboards for years and think highly of both of these. I hear good things about MSI, and lately ASRock seems to be getting recognition, but I have no experience with either of these. I am working with two full ATX size boards at present:

I went with a Gigabyte "G1 Sniper 3" motherboard (the previous motherboard was an Asus, and now they loose a sale because their 5 cent plastic rivet gave out). I am not entirely serious. Asus motherboards have treated me well, but Gigabyte is also on my good guy list. The guy at the shop claims that he does see fewer returned Gigabyte boards and he says that Gigabyte is better about returns than Asus when they do happen. The "sniper" thing is a bit much, but I will resist launching into a tirade about how violent video games are corrupting our youth.

The other board was an Asus P8Z77-V, which is another nice full size ATX board.

On board GPU

Too bad I am not using the HD graphics 4000 gpu, especially given that it occupies nearly as much chip area as all four cores. Maybe not using it will allow the die to run cooler? I would use it, except I run a dual head monitor setup. What I am reading indicates that the gpu would support dual head, in fact I read that the GMA-HD 4000 graphics on the i7 will support 3 displays.

Here is a good article:

The trick in running more than one monitor lies in the motherboard connectors. In addtion to one DVI-D connector, my Gigabyte board offers an analog VGA connector, an HDMI connector, and a "display port". In theory 4 different ways to connect a monitor. (The Gigabyte motherboard is a Z77 chipset board, if that matters).

To get dual head, I plugged in a PCIe graphics card with two DVI-D connectors and this worked perfectly with no hassle whatsoever. Both my monitors have DVI-D connectors, and I would very much prefer to use them. A plug in graphics card was the quick easy path, but now I am exploring possibilities of dual head with the i7 igp.

I shopped around and discovered there are cheap display port to DVI-D cables available (for under $20), but everything I tried to get a DVI monitor to work with the one I purchased failed. Even connecting only one monitor via the adapter. For all I know the adapter is faulty.

After this exercise, I inspected my monitors more closely and discovered that they both also have VGA connectors available. And; lo and behold; when I connect one via the DVI cable and the other via the VGA cable, I get dual head. It does somewhat annoy me to use the VGA cable, but to be honest, the display on the monitor looks just fine.

Gigabyte Board - Dual LAN - built in overclock - audio

The Gigabyte board has two LAN controllers (and two RJ-45 connectors). One is a Qualcomm Atheros "Killer" E2201 chip, the other is a good old Intel Gigabit ethernet. When I fired linux up, it had no clue what to do with the Atheros ethernet, but merrily set up the Intel chip as eth0 and that is what I am using. Thank heaven there are both options! The lack of Atheros drivers in the Linux 3.x kernels is a long standing problem that somebody needs to get fixed. It is not clear to me why they would put two network chips on the board, never mind two different chips, but I am glad they did. For what it might be worth, Bigfoot networks apparently developed the E2201, and was acquired by Qualcomm. I have no idea why they are enamored with the word "killer" and why their chip was chosen for this board.

In reading one review, I find that the Gigabyte board ships so that it overclocks the CPU one notch by default out of the box! A normal setup for an i7-3770K is to run the 4 cores at 39/39/38/37, some people run them all 39/39/39/39, but what this Gigabyte board does is to run them 40/40/40/40 !! Not widely advertised, and needs confirmation.

The Gigabyte board has a fancy audio setup from Creative Labs. What this means for me most likely is that it will never work under linux. It has the creative CA0132 chip in what they call "Creative Sound Core 3D". Maybe there is hope. Once user reports that the sound on his Gigabyte G1.Sniper.3 did work for a while (until a system update). He said it was working again after a full reinstall. So the situation is better than I might have hoped.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!