Is there a place for i5/i7 in schools?

[jamesfed]

Hi all,

 

I was just wondering if anyone on here has been able to justify buying PCs in their schools the Intel i5/i7 or AMD Phenom II processors?

 

Not that I'm looking into getting any (Atom/Athlon II works fine here!) I'm merely looking for some insights especially now that RM are trying to tout i5 in their models.

 

Personally I consider these processors to be designed for gaming and that money could be better spent on higher speed RAM (and similar).

 

Thanks,

James

[kmount]

People asked the same question about Quad Cores etc.

 

The reality is that as demands increase (media, etc) equipment demands will grow also.

[jamesfed]

People asked the same question about Quad Cores etc.

 

The reality is that as demands increase (media, etc) equipment demands will grow also.

 

Good point - its just that I've never seen Photoshop (CS2) max out an Athlon II 240 (which I use as my CPU) and even Windows Live Movie Maker (running Windows 7) has a hard time of taking too long to encode the amount of HD video that the kids could ever be using.

[pete]

Yes, in specialised areas where the extra grunt will be used.

 

Bear in mind that you can do quite a lot with something heavy like Solidworks before you need more than a low-end core2 and integrated graphics.

 

They normally run out of ram before they hit cpu limitations.

[teejay]

There is also the power consumption to consider, the i5/7 consume far less power and run cooler than the older processors.

[localzuk]

It isn't about buying stuff to match what we do now, its about buying stuff that'll still be working efficiently in 3 - 5 years time. Can you safely say that non-i5/Phenom II processors will handle everything that's asked of them in 4 years time?

 

I bought Core 2 Duo 2.1Ghz processor machines 3 years ago, with 2GB RAM thinking they'd last at least 4 years. True, they are lasting, but they are starting to crawl a little.

 

And maxing out an i7 is easy. Get Photoshop open, and do some batch processing.

[jamesfed]

There is also the power consumption to consider, the i5/7 consume far less power and run cooler than the older processors.

 

Too true - power consumption is always something I like to try and be mindful of - its more a thing of would Atom/Athlon/i3 be more sutible for a 'standard' school PC?

[kmount]

I hear what you're saying but "amount of HD video that the kids could ever be using" is what will change, I remember when Powerpoint was enough, then came Illuminatus, Opus, each increasing the demand and pushing the bar from the previous. The role of computing in the wider world will help drive the requirements within the education system too. Imagine what is going to happen with the Project Natal (kinetic or whatever it is now) coming out, you can imagine a PC-esque version coming along that will need some horse power.

 

It won't be long (it might already be here!) before some shiny new app comes along specifically designed to run optimised on that cpu family and once the curriculum gets hold of it things will change.

[ZeroHour]

It isn't about buying stuff to match what we do now, its about buying stuff that'll still be working efficiently in 3 - 5 years time. Can you safely say that non-i5/Phenom II processors will handle everything that's asked of them in 4 years time?

 

I bought Core 2 Duo 2.1Ghz processor machines 3 years ago, with 2GB RAM thinking they'd last at least 4 years. True, they are lasting, but they are starting to crawl a little.

 

And maxing out an i7 is easy. Get Photoshop open, and do some batch processing.

 

Pretty much what localz says, depending on your refurb cycle you have to ask will those pc's be fit for use in their last year of use or will it be a crawl.

We are buying i5's this year but our refurb is 5-6 years.

[jamesfed]

Certainly going to be an interesting future - again were not looking at replacement PCs right now (and even if we were I think we'd be going thin client at the moment) but it’s an interesting discussion.

 

One thing I was thinking about is how dual cores have been around for quite some time (since Windows XP) and here we are with Windows 7 and they still run great - will Windows 8 be any different? Especially if the use of graphics card acceleration gets more entangled into computer software design.

[skell]

Strangely, our new Head of Art just requested the following PC:

 

Athlon (Quad Core) 955 Phenom II

Performance Power Supply

Case with good Cooling - tower case

Graphics, ATI top-end HD series 1 gig card

Sata II hard drive fast spin speed or SCII hard drive

26" Iiyama top-end monitor

 

Up until now, we only have one workstation in the school with a quad core CPU *cough* mine *cough* but this machine blows this one out of the water. The stupid thing is that I have no idea what he wants it for yet. I sincerely doubt he needs something this powerful.

 

At the other end of the scale, we've also just bought an Acer Revo 3160 for one our accountants which was £200. Fantastic for what she uses it for.

 

The rest of our machines are mostly Pentium 4's, (some of which have hyper threading!) and Athlon 64's. We've slowly replaced some of the older ones with Pentium Dual cores, which again are cheap and get the job done. We consider these to last at least 4 years, barring component failure.

 

I would consider replacing our existing IT suites with Core i5's as the machines in there haven't changed in 5 years and are starting to chug. As ZeroHour said, it depends on the refurb cycle and what they're going to be used for. Generally, in our case anyway, more RAM will help speed up a machine more than a multi-core system would.

[Ric_]

We have 2 i7 workstatiosn but you can guess where they are ;-) (they were bought specifically for virtualisation though)

 

I buy a lot of used kit and currently find Core2 (dual and quad) and dual Xeon is powerful enough for anything.

[3s-gtech]

We bought a bunch of Phenom II quad core machines for Technology last year (which I built from parts to save costs), as SolidWorks is pretty intensive. Otherwise, it's Athlons and Pentium Dual Cores here.

[ZeroHour]

Strangely, our new Head of Art just requested the following PC:

 

Athlon (Quad Core) 955 Phenom II

Performance Power Supply

Case with good Cooling - tower case

Graphics, ATI top-end HD series 1 gig card

Sata II hard drive fast spin speed or SCII hard drive

26" Iiyama top-end monitor

 

Up until now, we only have one workstation in the school with a quad core CPU *cough* mine *cough* but this machine blows this one out of the water. The stupid thing is that I have no idea what he wants it for yet. I sincerely doubt he needs something this powerful.

 

That would be rejected here, staff cant come with specs, only with tasks the pc is required to perform. We decide what is the best spec for the job.

Does he happen to have local admin rights?

[skell]

He hasn't even started yet! I too am not keen on staff laying out specs to me, especially when he got them from his "teccy" friend (his words). I want to find out what he wants it for, then suggest a resonable spec.

[Arthur]

I was just wondering if anyone on here has been able to justify buying PCs in their schools the Intel i5/i7 or AMD Phenom II processors?

Overall there isn't a huge difference between some of the Core 2 Duo's and Core i5's so I would have thought it would be quite easy to justify going for computers which use the latest processors? e.g.

 

Core 2 Duo E8600 (3.33GHz) vs Core i5-650 (3.2GHz)

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/54?vs=144

[synaesthesia]

Why not? I3 is the Core Celeron, hence the lowest most sane folks would look for in a new system is a Core i5. i7 would be a bit much for everyday use but in media suites and the likes they'd be rather handy indeed.

[tmcd35]

Strangely, our new Head of Art just requested the following PC:

 

Athlon (Quad Core) 955 Phenom II

Performance Power Supply

Case with good Cooling - tower case

Graphics, ATI top-end HD series 1 gig card

Sata II hard drive fast spin speed or SCII hard drive

26" Iiyama top-end monitor

 

 

Interesting spec. I'd atleast hope it's accompanied with a request for a copy of Lightwave 3D and not a copy of Battlefield: Bad Company 2

[Arthur]

It isn't about buying stuff to match what we do now, its about buying stuff that'll still be working efficiently in 3 - 5 years time. Can you safely say that non-i5/Phenom II processors will handle everything that's asked of them in 4 years time?

This is what I do too. We still have some Athlon XP-based computers in our school and they are so sloooooow!!! Thankfully we will be replacing them this month.

 

Once SSDs become mainstream, it will be very interesting to see how long schools keep computers for. Would 7-8 years be feasible since I often find the HDD is the slowest component in old PCs?

[nicholab]

I believe it is better going for more machines that enable you to have a 3-4yr refresh cycle than getting more powerful machines and a 5-6yr.

[Arthur]

There is also the power consumption to consider, the i5/7 consume far less power and run cooler than the older processors.

One thing I don't like about Intel's new processors is their naming scheme. Just finding out the number of cores and threads each processor has, along with whether they have support for Turbo Boost, SSE4, VT-x, VT-d, EPT, AES-NI or TXT is an absolute nightmare.

 

Thankfully I came across the following spreadsheet today which makes it much less confusing. I wish AMD and Intel had something like this on their websites.

 

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=tLkQTUS_QrjYCXdpLILNzNQ&hl=en_GB#gid=0

Edited August 2, 2010 by Arthur

[dgsmith]

Why not? I3 is the Core Celeron

 

Not quite sure how you come to this conclusion. The i3 sits comfortably in the middle of the latest Clarkdale core lineup, with respective Pentium and Celeron branded CPUs behind it; see here.

 

We still run enough P4 3Ghz computers to make it worthwhile upgrading to Core 2, nevermind anything higher than that! I don't think we'll be going over to the Clarkdale family of processors any time soon, especially when the high end core 2 (E7000/E8000 series) processors are more than adaquate, even for the next few years (Arthur posted those benchmark figures above which proves the point that the difference between a high end core 2 and a core i5 is negligable).

[3s-gtech]

Our upgrade cycle means that PCs are not replaced, simply moved down the cahin, starting at the IT suites. It means that decent machines trickle down to all parts of the school, but it also means I'm still getting usage out of 9 year old PCs (Pentium III and Athlon Thunderbirds!) They still run XP fine when they have enough RAM, and are perfect for some older SEN programs. I don't find them slow, even with Sophos on - we run a fairly stripped out install.

[gshaw]

Last year we bought E8400s for our IT suites and a few other rooms as I wanted them to last the 4-5 year replacement cycle easily and be quick even if their main duties are Office, Sage and Internet... having said that we have loads of Flip Cameras now that will need to encode to DVD at some point so the CPU should come in handy

 

For the new rooms I've put in this year they're rather low use and in this case we wanted lower energy consumption so went for E7500s in a USFF case (got a very cheap price on Lenovo M58s and it was saving around 100 odd a unit compared to putting more power in) but they're DDR3 and feel quick as at the moment.

 

All depends what you're running on them... for any rooms with higher requirements up the spec, once i5 settles down and fully replaces the E8xxx range they'll be standard kit but I'd say that sweet spot is about 6 months away yet...

 

i7... for the power users and heavy imaging \ video or greedy IT support staff

[hotwired007]

Strangely, our new Head of Art just requested the following PC:

 

Athlon (Quad Core) 955 Phenom II

Performance Power Supply

Case with good Cooling - tower case

Graphics, ATI top-end HD series 1 gig card

Sata II hard drive fast spin speed or SCII hard drive

26" Iiyama top-end monitor

 

 

Give him a 10" netbook for the cheek... or do exactly what he says and accidently forget the RAM which he forgot to ask...

 

incidently i have:

 

Core2Duo 6600 (2.4Ghz) - hopefully soon to be Core2Quad 6700

8GB DDR2 800 RAM

320GB 7200RPM

NVIDIA GTS 250 512 DDR3

NVIDIA GT 220 512 DDR2

650w PSU

3x Benq G2222HDL 21.5" LED 1980x1080 Monitors

 

I'm the network manager and i run EVERYTHING i do from this PC... I'm really struggling with anyone justifying this as a teacher even a HoD... plus on the plus side the PC itself is mine so the school didnt pay for it...