New PCs... i3 or i5?

[Effluo]

I work for an IT reseller and have been a computer hardware enthusiast for years, somewhat obsessed with getting the best bang for your buck. Before working for the reseller I did a bit of a study into the computer hardware marketplace, found and documented huge widely effecting issues from the top Manufacturers and resellers.

I believe that most IT professionals and consumers alike take far too much of what's on the box as fact. Sadly there's little "information" from any computer hardware manufcaturer which isn't pure marketing tripe. The only way to actually get a good idea of the real performance/value is to look at benchmarks from independent review sites and individuals from forums.

 

Something else that I've learned from my research in terms of performance, is the obscene amounts of money spent on computer hardware by everyone most of which corresponds to a very small increase in performance, real time speed increases and reliability.

 

I don't know much about classroom management or how easily implemented having one room for Media work is, but I would certainly baulk at the idea of having i5 processors in every PC in the school would be a good investment.

 

SSD's are the only upgrade which would give a really noticeable speed increase right across the board. For me however, even SSD's are overkill for school's computers. For instance I would never recommend a SSD to a regular PC user, in fact, the only people I'd ever recommend a SSD to are computer hardware enthusiast or someone who either has a specific need or a load of money to burn on eeking out every last bit of performance...

 

 

@localzuk

My advice to you would be to actually check out the benchmarks, look at how the i5 beats the i3 at rendering an image or something by a couple of seconds, then compare those few seconds to the thousands of pounds extra that would be spent on them.

 

As I said, I wouldn't recommend a SSD or an i5 to a regular PC user, nor to a school, it's not needed...

 

 

Edit:

Use the money saved on training for the computer illiterate teachers, so far it seems to me as the biggest issues regarding IT in schools is that teachers not knowing how to work the technology they already have.

Edited August 3, 2011 by Effluo

[mrbios]

I partially beg to differ on the SSD front @Effluo

 

Personally we were able to easily make do with 40GB SSDs, anything larger has a huge £/GB margin and makes them extortionately expensive for a school. The 40GB ones on the other hand are about 1.4x the cost of the cheapest SATAII HDD so for every 2 SSDs you buy you could get 3 HDDs but the performance/cost benefit is overwhelmingly in favour of performance. Also note i'm comparing that to the costs of dirt cheap, slow access HDDs. I garuntee they're worth the purchase if a school can cope with very small amounts of local storage, unlike the processor argument where the performance benefit is only noticed when using very processor heavy applications which for the majority of schools is rare in an ICT room, the performance benefit for an SSD is noticed throughout the computers use from turning it on through to using all the applications.

 

I should probably add to the above, that reliability of course does need to be proven before people go buying hundreds of them for schools, and that's what i'm currently working on. If they prove more reliable and last longer than HDDs in both failure rate and performance over the course of a PCs lifespan then they practically pay for themselves.

Edited August 3, 2011 by mrbios

[localzuk]

I work for an IT reseller and have been a computer hardware enthusiast for years, somewhat obsessed with getting the best bang for your buck. Before working for the reseller I did a bit of a study into the computer hardware marketplace, found and documented huge widely effecting issues from the top Manufacturers and resellers.

I believe that most IT professionals and consumers alike take far too much of what's on the box as fact. Sadly there's little "information" from any computer hardware manufcaturer which isn't pure marketing tripe. The only way to actually get a good idea of the real performance/value is to look at benchmarks from independent review sites and individuals from forums.

 

Something else that I've learned from my research in terms of performance, is the obscene amounts of money spent on computer hardware by everyone most of which corresponds to a very small increase in performance, real time speed increases and reliability.

 

I don't know much about classroom management or how easily implemented having one room for Media work is, but I would certainly baulk at the idea of having i5 processors in every PC in the school would be a good investment.

 

SSD's are the only upgrade which would give a really noticeable speed increase right across the board. For me however, even SSD's are overkill for school's computers. For instance I would never recommend a SSD to a regular PC user, in fact, the only people I'd ever recommend a SSD to are computer hardware enthusiast or someone who either has a specific need or a load of money to burn on eeking out every last bit of performance...

 

 

@localzuk

My advice to you would be to actually check out the benchmarks, look at how the i5 beats the i3 at rendering an image or something by a couple of seconds, then compare those few seconds to the thousands of pounds extra that would be spent on them.

 

As I said, I wouldn't recommend a SSD or an i5 to a regular PC user, nor to a school, it's not needed...

 

 

Edit:

Use the money saved on training for the computer illiterate teachers, so far it seems to me as the biggest issues regarding IT in schools is that teachers not knowing how to work the technology they already have.

 

Again, you're doing what I complained about earlier - a 'one size fits all' approach. Also, you specifically say you've not worked in education - you're a reseller, so you do not know the day to do demands of our equipment.

 

Having seen the speed improvements that SSDs offer, even for normal day to day users, I would say the exact opposite of what you're saying. A couple of seconds here, a couple of seconds there, it all soon adds up to minutes, and minutes wasted waiting for things are minutes not learning things.

 

Also, you're basing your view on what software does with the chips now, and not in 4 years time etc...

 

So, yes, I agree people should do their research properly (which is why I get 'try before you buy' models of PCs we buy for classrooms to test them out thoroughly beforehand), but to blanket state schools and normal users don't need i5s and SSDs is presumptuous to say the least.

 

I partially beg to differ on the SSD front @Effluo

 

Personally we were able to easily make do with 40GB SSDs, anything larger has a huge £/GB margin and makes them extortionately expensive for a school. The 40GB ones on the other hand are about 1.4x the cost of the cheapest SATAII HDD so for every 2 SSDs you buy you could get 3 HDDs but the performance/cost benefit is overwhelmingly in favour of performance. Also note i'm comparing that to the costs of dirt cheap, slow access HDDs. I garuntee they're worth the purchase if a school can cope with very small amounts of local storage, unlike the processor argument where the performance benefit is only noticed when using very processor heavy applications which for the majority of schools is rare in an ICT room, the performance benefit for an SSD is noticed throughout the computers use from turning it on through to using all the applications.

 

I should probably add to the above, that reliability of course does need to be proven before people go buying hundreds of them for schools, and that's what i'm currently working on. If they prove more reliable and last longer than HDDs in both failure rate and performance over the course of a PCs lifespan then they practically pay for themselves.

 

Throw in the lower power usage, lower heat production to it too and it could make the difference between needing aircon or not.

[Effluo]

I completely agree and you're dead right that SSD are the only upgrade which will make a significant difference to the daily speed in running ALL the PC's in a school and that they would be a much smarter investment than i5's, but both are still overkill when you look at the price : performance ratio.

 

The 40GB ones on the other hand are about 1.4x the cost of the cheapest SATAII HDD so for every 2 SSDs you buy you could get 3 HDDs but the performance/cost benefit is overwhelmingly in favour of performance.

If this were the case, then SSD would be a no-brainer and a good investment, but considering the prices you quoted on the op in your other thread.(£56)

And considering you could buy 250GB Samsung F3's (some of the fastest disc drives going) for around £25 each, you'll find that your SSD's cost over twice as much. (unless I'm missing something)

 

Around £30/machine, if you can afford to have only 40GB of storage it's not a bad upgrade, not a bad upgrade at all.

Although, there would still be a decision to be made and I can respect that you felt it was worth it, but I'd take a bit more convincing.

 

It's certainly a close one

[mac_shinobi]

I know this is not school or network related and no doubt will get flamed for over buying or over paying for what I purchased a month or two ago ( 16gb RAM Kit which gave me a total of 18gb of RAM and a 240 Gb 6Gbps SSD with sandforce controller etc for my home 2008 mac pro but when launching process monitor on OS X

 

1. I always have free RAM regardless of what I am doing whether it be video editing , playing itunes at the same time etc

2. I've checked the amount of virtual ram / page outs it has used in the last month and I think it's not gone more then 1mb of page outs, last time I checked it used less then 214kb of virtual memory

 

Even launching every app I have and using a number of them, virtual desktops, playing movies, itunes music, it doesn't even flinch and the mac pro I have is from 2008 so not an i5 or i7 or even the latest Xeon CPU, RAM, Bus speeds are slower etc etc but it still goes like off of a shovel

 

I am not saying you need that much ram or that much capacity on an SSD but if you had a 64 bit OS, either 4 or 8gb of ram and a small capacity SSD of your choice ie 40 or 60gb as the boot drive it makes a lot of difference, choice of motherboard , cpu etc would depend on what the machine was going to be used for ie

 

Using it for SIMS which gets used 5 times a day for about 10 mins per use would be a waste vs using a machine like this in say Design and Tech or somewhere that they will make use of the hardware using CAD CAM software / video editing / graphics editing etc etc would make more sense

 

Just my worthless £0.02

[mac_shinobi]

I completely agree and you're dead right that SSD are the only upgrade which will make a significant difference to the daily speed in running ALL the PC's in a school and that they would be a much smarter investment than i5's, but both are still overkill when you look at the price : performance ratio.

 

 

If this were the case, then SSD would be a no-brainer and a good investment, but considering the prices you quoted on the op in your other thread.(£56)

And considering you could buy 250GB Samsung F3's (some of the fastest disc drives going) for around £25 each, you'll find that your SSD's cost over twice as much. (unless I'm missing something)

 

Around £30/machine, if you can afford to have only 40GB of storage it's not a bad upgrade, not a bad upgrade at all.

Although, there would still be a decision to be made and I can respect that you felt it was worth it, but I'd take a bit more convincing.

 

It's certainly a close one

 

the 300gb WD Raptors are about £120 vs £60

 

I appreicate you get less capacity on the SSD but its still faster for the most part depending on which SSD then a WD Raptor but again depends on the users needs, do they need more storage space or are they after faster read / write speeds etc

[Effluo]

Again, you're doing what I complained about earlier - a 'one size fits all' approach. Also, you specifically say you've not worked in education - you're a reseller, so you do not know the day to do demands of our equipment.

 

Also, you're basing your view on what software does with the chips now, and not in 4 years time etc...

 

I don't know where you're getting the impression that I'm suggesting that, "one size fits all". Most of my research and the work I do and done in the past involves getting the right PC and the best value for the specific user's needs.

 

Have I worked in Education? No, is it relevant? Yes totally, but not necessarily with what we're talking about here. We're talking about computer hardware and it's price performance benefits, value to the end user, this is something which I've been working and studying/researching for a number of years.

I figure, when buying or building a new computer, for an organisation or just for yourself you should first look at the specific needs, secondly look at the budget and then look at the benchmarks. That's how you get the best value and the process doesn't change no matter what organisation you're in.

 

I also noticed there that you spoke about futureproofing and how software will work with software in 4 years from now?

Well sadly future-proofing, well it doesn't really exist. If there is any kind of future-proofing example they tend to come in very minor forms. (ie USB 3.0 - 2nd PCI-E slot for future GPU improvement)

 

 

Finally you're calling me presumptious, well I am not so sure about that, but I am really quite sceptical that i5's will lead to an improvement of students as you said it, "learning things" :/

 

That doesn't make any sense to me

[mrbios]

If this were the case, then SSD would be a no-brainer and a good investment, but considering the prices you quoted on the op in your other thread.(£56)

And considering you could buy 250GB Samsung F3's (some of the fastest disc drives going) for around £25 each, you'll find that your SSD's cost over twice as much. (unless I'm missing something)

 

Around £30/machine, if you can afford to have only 40GB of storage it's not a bad upgrade, not a bad upgrade at all.

Although, there would still be a decision to be made and I can respect that you felt it was worth it, but I'd take a bit more convincing.

 

It's certainly a close one

 

The main factor for going SSDs was for the Lower heat production - the building these PCs are now running in is just under 5 years old and never had air con installed in any of the 3 ICT rooms, the heat created by the PCs in there prior to the change over would make a day like to day literally unbareable to work in. We had them on for 24 hours solid starting yesterday mid day and today it's a perfectly comfortable temperature in there with the windows closed on a hot summers day, the other benefit of this is that the equipment should, in theory, last longer due to the lower room temperature.

 

Then when you throw in the huge Performance advantage and lower power consumption i'm sure you'll agree that makes everyone, including the finance manager who pays the electricity bills, a lot happier

 

EDIT: funny how it took someone who doesn't work in school IT to understand my point on the processor front too, but at the same time, not surprising.

Edited August 3, 2011 by mrbios

[nicklec]

Kind of worried about replying to your other thread now but you definitely miss the point. SSD and SAS are the drive type, you can get 10k RPM SAS drives which are probably more sensible than using SATA for higher IOP loads ... anyway SSD is a far too general term to use, theres at least 3 generations out there with different controllers and NAND, not to mention the 'benchmarks' for sandforce controllers are often skewed because they use compression, on un compressible data they trend towards intel's best drives.

 

Again i3 shouldn't really be compared to pentiums, completely different CPU(IGP).

 

We have thin clients in some of our IT rooms now (5w) but I expect the users to use the AC and/or open the windows (heh), because 30+ humans pump out a few watts too

Edited August 3, 2011 by nicklec

[mrbios]

Kind of worried about replying to your other thread now but you definitely miss the point. SSD and SAS are the drive type, you can get 10k RPM SAS drives which are probably more sensible than using SATA for higher IOP loads ... anyway SSD is a far too general term to use, theres at least 3 generations out there with different controllers and NAND, not to mention the 'benchmarks' for sandforce controllers are often skewed because they use compression, on un compressible data they trend towards intel's best drives.

 

Again i3 shouldn't really be compared to pentiums, completely different CPU(IGP).

 

We have thin clients in some of our IT rooms now (5w) but I expect the users to use the AC and/or open the windows (heh), because 30+ humans pump out a few watts too

 

I completely understand the difference between SAS and SSD, not sure where i've shown to have confused the two? My point is that SAS drives are a waste of money for the vast majority of uses schools are using them for, people on these boards are filling there servers and SANs with them and they're complete overkill for the jobs. SATA HDDs can do the jobs people are buying them for without breaking a sweat at half the cost. I'd not brung SSDs in to the equation with regards to the server and storage environment, they're purely desktop use only. I will yield to the fact they (SAS drives) may have a use for terminal servers, but then i don't have a great opinion of terminal servers but that's a personal thing rather than a technical reason

 

The i3s and Pentium Gxxx series should indeed be compared, they're here to do the same job, i'm unsure why you wouldn't want to compare them?

 

And i do agree a classroom of kids is far more heat than a classroom of PCs, but less heat output from PCs, as i've stated before will also increase the lifespan of the components within the room and make a more comfortable working space

 

EDIT: I thought i'd look in to why you wouldn't want to compare the i3 to the Gxxx series and i'll point out my findings... These are the differences between the i3 2100T and the G620T:

hyperthreading - Small performance gain in certain scenarios, not a lot of use on a student PC

AVX CPU extension - for virtualisation, no use on a student PC

Intel quick sync - Not an issue unless you're using them for a media PC as far as i can tell

intel intru 3D compatible - Not an issue unless you're using them for a media PC as far as i can tell

intel insider compatible - No use in a school environment i don't think

Intel clear video HD - Not an issue unless you're using them for a media PC as far as i can tell

Higher memory specification - Higher memory bandwidth allowing for a faster system, this being the only advantagous feature of the lot doesn't warrant the added cost.

 

Overall the processors are very similar, both are second generation sandy bridges with the i3 just having a lot of media and virtualisation capabilities (and the obvious higher clock speed than the 620T). I don't claim to know the ins and outs of these CPUs in depth, but i certainly can't see any reason why you wouldn't compare one to the other on both price and performance? It's like saying "well an amd is very different to an intel, so we won't compare them"

Edited August 3, 2011 by mrbios

[pcstru]

I

If this were the case, then SSD would be a no-brainer and a good investment, but considering the prices you quoted on the op in your other thread.(£56)

And considering you could buy 250GB Samsung F3's (some of the fastest disc drives going) for around £25 each, you'll find that your SSD's cost over twice as much. (unless I'm missing something)

 

Faster boot times would make a big difference. Currently our classrooms keep PC's running all day, mostly because the boot time is long enough that it would take too big a chunk out of a lesson if they weren't sitting booted up and ready. I'd guess SSD's could pay for themselves in a reasonable time if we could then shut machines down during breaks and lunch. They don't need to have huge capacity as students keep files on the network storage, not on local discs.

 

Have to agree with much of the comments on schools wasting money on SAS. We have 2500 students, 300 teachers and another few hundred associate staff. Our SATA drives remain unconcerned dealing with peak demand.

[Effluo]

Currently our classrooms keep PC's running all day, mostly because the boot time is long enough that it would take too big a chunk out of a lesson if they weren't sitting booted up and ready. I'd guess SSD's could pay for themselves in a reasonable time if we could then shut machines down during breaks and lunch.

 

Something I certainly hadn't considered. I guess getting the teachers to push the students to shut down the computers will be a task in itself though

Well worth it of course. Thanks for the added insight

 

SSD's get another +1 XD

[glennda]

Something I certainly hadn't considered. I guess getting the teachers to push the students to shut down the computers will be a task in itself though

Well worth it of course. Thanks for the added insight

 

SSD's get another +1 XD

But that is where you use GPO to change the logoff button to shutdown and only allow them to do that on those machines - then it takes about 12 seconds to power on here.

[mrbios]

But that is where you use GPO to change the logoff button to shutdown and only allow them to do that on those machines - then it takes about 12 seconds to power on here.

 

Combine that with impero and the teachers can power off and power on entire classes themselves

[jamesfed]

Ok I'll throw it into the mix - the fastest PC in the school at the moment is my PC that sits on the back of my monitor.

 

Its a Zotac barebones custom build and the key part of it is the AMD Fusion APU sitting inside. Smaller than a postage stamp but with enough power for me to do EVERYTHING!

and that includes-

 

Photoshop CS2 (largest I've worked on was A1)

Windows Live Movie Maker HD editing

All the office applications

VirtualBox (8Gb of RAM and I've had about 4 VMs running on it at the same time)

A million IE9 tabs (well maybe not a million but you get the idea...)

and everything else that a IT tech does....

 

The processor is the E-350 (1.6ghz dual core and a 6310 graphics core) but the key part of it is the OCZ Vertex 3 SSD inside which kicks out fast application load times.

 

So my upshot is....for classroom use (even on multimedia editing) the world of the i3 is limited to low end gaming (and my E-350 runs Crysis 2 at low level anyway) and the thing you need to look at is the storage/RAM - that is where the 'speed' of a modern PC is.

[glennda]

Combine that with impero and the teachers can power off and power on entire classes themselves

 

they can here but would require them to walk around the room!

[mrbios]

they can here but would require them to walk around the room!

 

No WOL?

[glennda]

To wake them up yes but not shut them down

[mrbios]

To wake them up yes but not shut them down

 

Shutdown can be done from impero unless you've removed that setting from them? or you could make a little batch script with shutdown -t X -m \\PCname (where x = a time in seconds)

[glennda]

Shutdown can be done from impero unless you've removed that setting from them? or you could make a little batch script with shutdown -t X -m \\PCname (where x = a time in seconds)

 

I don't have impero and the shutdown script only works in they are local admins which i've just removed from all teachers!

[mrbios]

I don't have impero and the shutdown script only works in they are local admins which i've just removed from all teachers!

 

Ah sorry i thought you meant you meant you had impero from your previous reply, fair enough. You could set the batch file to run under another users credentials though.