This has been wracking my brain for a while... How the fuck do I explain to a normal person that a CPU's performance is more than simply whatever the clock speed is?
Can anyone help me come up with some analogies that'd help them understand the different variables involve (e.g., hyperthreading/pipelning of instructions)? I can't think of any good ones because there's too many factors. Plus I am dumb.
>>55035370
tell them clock speed is how many times a drummer hits the drum
tell them ipc is how many hits he can do whenever his arms go down
tell them multi-core is having two+ drummers and two+ drumsets
tell them hyperthreading is having two drummers and a single drumset
>>55035452
But that's still equating the clock for performance, isn't it?
What if they ask "What if you take an old-ass Pentium III and just click it to 5 GHz?"
>>55035497
it isn't.
1ghz core with ipc of 5 is just as fast as a 5ghz core with ipc 1.
![kM_lPhzP[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/a3RnA7t.jpg "kM_lPhzP[1].jpg")
>>55035452
>processor has two drummers
>>55035497
IPC. The guy who responded to the OP literally just told you. The pentium can only make one beat every time it swings it's arm, where as a skylake i5/i7 makes 20 beats with every arm swing, regardless of how many times they both can swing in the same frame of reference.
>>55035497
Tell him the drummer the way he hits the drum limits its speed.
>>55035452
do you have a food analogy?
>>55035626
Why the fuck do you need specific analogies?
>>55035370
You don't need analogies. The point of processors is to execute instructions. Newer processors can execute more instructions per clock than older ones, which gives them better performance at the same clock speed. It's a simple concept.
>>55035626
clock speed is how many times per second you can lift the fork
ipc is how much food your fork can carry
multicore is eating from two+ plates
hyperthreading is having more than one fork for each plate
How about engine RPM and displacement?
>>55035546
Tell the drummer he needs a new processor
clock speed is how fast you thrust inside her
ipc is how many thrusts until you get tired
multicore is fucking two women at once or more
hyperthreading is fucking one woman with your dick in her cunt and your balls in her ass
>>55035709
clock speed is how many times the dick is inserted
ipc is the dick length
multicore is two couples fucking
hyperthreading is internal combustion
Say you want to rip a CD, you processor has a list of instructions to rip that CD (or encode an mp3 whatever). Processor A has a clock speed of 2 Instructions/second and Processor B has a clock speed of 5 Instructions/second, processor B is obviously the better processor right? wrong! Processor A is newer, smarter and has better logic so it can encode an mp3 in only 200 instructions, Processor B needs 1000 instructions to encode an mp3.
you do the math.
Good enough?
>>55035759
>mp3
>not FLAC
shiggy
>>55035759
this only served to confuse me, can you provide a food analogy?
>>55035452
just do a car analogy people understand those better
>>55035653
>hyperthreading is having more than one fork for each plate
Does that mean there are diminishing returns with more virtual cores? ie having 1 extra fork gives more food consumed per extra fork than 4 more forks.
>>55035793
>americans
>>55035798
>Does that mean there are diminishing returns with more virtual cores?
Obviously?
>>55035653
>hyperthreading is having more than one fork for each plate
That doesn't make much sense though. I'd find it more analogous to an assembly line:
1. Get chunk of platic
2. Mould into shape of dick
3. Make it ribbed for pleasure
4. ???? dragons
5. Add company logos
6. Box that shit up
Where normally only one chunk of plastic can be going through each the process at a time, and it must complete all 6 steps until the next dragon dildo can start to become manufactured. So at any point in time, the 5 other steps of the manufacturing process are idling.
With hyperthreading, each step is being used, with the next chunk of dragon dildo plastic behind the other.
But, how the fuck do I weigh the basic concept of that analogy into something like "drummer drumming" or the "eating from a form" analogy.
Or maybe it just doesn't make sense because you're all either college students or NEETs who just read this shit off wikipedia?
New architecture = things are smaller = closer together = faster
Easy
>>55035822
Or to summarize, I meant that hyperthreading being "more than one fork per plate" makes it sound like there's simultaneous processing going on. There's not, it's just making sure steps aren't wasted idling.
Damn my tired jew brain.
>>55035812
Soz family i am not good at computer
>>55035832
>a professor is faster because things are closer together
>>55035798
yes. hyperthreading can have a negative impact in performance at high loads. 4 core non-hyperthreading cpu performs better than a 2 core 4 thread cpu at intensive workloads. in desktop and gaming usage it's unnoticeable (lots of idle time waiting for buses, user input, timers etc).
>>55035832
but i dont want less food i want more.
>>55035860
but the food is closer together
>>55035759
>OMG MATH.
>>55035370
this post >>55035759 explained SIMD
>>55035822
You're thinking of pipelining, not hyperthreading.
>>55035928
It doesn't explain SIMD in the slightest.
>>55035759
>has better logic
This is stupid.
The logic is always the same across all computers with the same architecture.
Just say it's not about clock speed and don't explain because technologically stupid people don't listen and don't want to know why either even if they're fully capable of understanding. They want you to pick out the CPU for them and handhold them the whole way through because googling "is cpu clock speed all that matters" is too much work.
Don't ever let anyone know you know anything about technology either because all people do is send you links of crap and saying if its a good buy or not. Like fuck if I know, just read the spec sheet and decide if it works for your lifestyle leave me alone holy shit.
>>55035971
an 1ipc processor with simd floating point multiplication will finish multiplying matrices faster than a 1ipc processor without them at the same clock speed
an 1ipc processor with mp3 encoding instructions will finish its job faster than a 2ipc processor without them at the same clock speed.
ofc there are exceptions. they made that "strlen() instruction" to speed things up but turned out using multiple instructions was faster, i don't remember why right now.
Processors are extremely complex, even fairly decent analogies don't properly explain pipelines, cache, latency, number of ALUs... Forget about normies, if they want to buy an old CPU and overclock it it's their problem.
a cake isn't just great because of the amount of sugar used
>>55036071
Yep, it's just too involved. If I manage to make an analogy for one aspect, then the concreteness of it makes all the other aspects not work.
My hope was this thread was to get at least one aspect across that was more than just the clock rate, even if the analogy is mostly-wrong.
Explaining CPUs to normies is like explaining SpaceChem to them. It just can't be done, and they won't even begin to grasp the basic concept of it unless they actually care to look into it themselves. Which they won't do, because abstract thinking takes too much effort.
>>55035931
Oh shit, you're right anon. Thank you.
>>55035370
It's like a pipe.Its not just the flow rate (GHz) but also the width (how many instructions per cycle). Multiple cores are like multiple pipes.
First of all YOU need to understand why. You can't explain it because you don't know wtf you're talking about.
>>55036230
Practising explaining a complicated subject helps you understand the material.
>>55036230
OP here. I abide to the idea that if one cannot explain a concept, then they don't understand it well enough.
For what it is worth, I am designing my own CPU (with a few basic ALU operations like addition and equality) in a gate-simulation program, and it has stuff like RAM and registers in it as well. It can do basic shit like address RAM and get/store values into RAM and a coupe ALU registers. So I do kind of know a little bit, even if my basic shit is absolutely nowhere near an actual CPU can do.
Actual, real-world CPUs and all the advanced shit they do is fucking magic to me though. I have no real idea how shit like having multiple cores or pipelining or all the magic shit in there works.
Do you have any recommended readings for getting a basic overview of how modern CPUs might work? It's all an enigma to me at the moment because I'm starting with absolute kiddy shit and thought I'd work my way up to there eventually.
IPC (at stock clocks) + overclocks percentage
For example, my 3770K stock is 3.5 Ghz. Add in 30% overclock and it becomes 4.5 Ghz (It can go higher, but its a respectable overclock)
AMD 8350 stock is 4 Ghz. Add in 20% overclock and its 4.8 Ghz (It can go higher, but thats a respectable one)
>http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-3770K-vs-AMD-FX-8350/1317vs1489
Here's a benchmark average from ~26000 people. Its roughly 30% faster than 8350 on single/multi benches.
So lets say 3.5Ghz 3770K is 1.3 and 4.0Ghz 8350 is 1.0 on scale. If you add 30% overclock on 3770K, that number becomes 1.7. If you do 20% on 8350, it become 1.2
On normal stock, the 3770K is about 30% better, on both overclock 3770K is about 40% better. On only 8350 overclock, the 3770K is about 8% faster at 4.8 Ghz OC vs 3.5 Ghz stock. On 4.5 Ghz OC 3770K vs 4.0 AMD, the difference is about 70% in favor of 3770K.
These numbers matches the Average User bench and Peak Overclock.
Clock isn't anything without IPC. IPC @ stock clock + OC percentage vs IPC @ stock + OC %
IPC is to find the average between single core/multicore performance.
>>55035848
>implying things don't take time to travel distances
>>55035452
Clock speed is engines max rpms.
Ipc is gear ratio or horsepower.
Multi-core is all wheel drive with an extra engine for the second axle. Tell them to imagine a car with more than 2 axles.
Hyperthreading is an engine+an electric motor powering an axle.
>>55035370
Say you want to multiply huge numbers, that's what you want to do. To achieve that you just hire four school kids, everybody is very specialized and good at their thing. The first kid picks the numbers to multiply and gives the number to the multiplier kid. The multiplier kid is pretty good at multiplying numbers. When he's done with that he gives all multiplications to the addition kid who's fucking great at adding numbers (to multiply you need to multiply with every digit and then add those up, in case you don't remember). He then gives the final result to some kid that has really nice handwriting. He writes the final result down in a table or something. The clock rate is the number of complete multiplications you can do in a given time frame (say, two in a minute)
So, basically: How do I multiply more numbers faster?
1.) You make the kids work faster. Hit them or something. Problem is, if you overdo it, they will fuck things up. They also might get some sort PTSD and you have to find new kids to do your multiplications.
2.) You hire more kids that can work in parallel. That might not always work. Maybe you only get two numbers in one clock and you can't assign all teams two numbers at the same time. Who knows, maybe they just don't like each other for some weird school kid reason.
3.) You get better kids. Maybe some Chinese prodigy freaks. Hey, you even heard of some circus tier kid that can pick the two numbers, multiply, add and write them down at the same time.
>>55035370
>How the fuck do I explain to a normal person that a CPU's performance is more than simply whatever the clock speed is?
You don't.
Let them be idiots.
Are cpus even getting noticeably faster?
My i7 920 from 2009 still seems breddy fast.
>>55036424
wiki.osdev.org I read some of the articles there, very low level and a glimpse into how x86 does things. Also brofist, as I'm laying out a processor aswell. Then you could look at Chuck Moore's work, as he tries to cut out all the crap in computing, which I found very fascinating.
ICE CREAM ANALOGY IS BESTU
Clock speed is licks per tick.
IPC is how big your tongue is.
Multi core is licking it with a friend.
Hyperthreading is licking two scoops at once.
Clock speed is like a metronome, the cpu is like a musician, and some instruments can play more than one note at once, eg flute=1note, bass guitar maximum of 4 at once, piano maybe 10 at once, or something.
>>55038425
I still use a core2duo from 2007. It does all I need and I probably won't replace it for a few years yet.
>>55035370
2 is better than 1
>>55035370
Give them a basic overview of how IPC works and then show them the cow2beef image.
Its not hard you are just lazy.
>>55035452
Do you have shemale porn analogy?
>>55039720
Interesting image, it looks like my boss, Mr. Goldberg. no lie.
The only analogy youll ever need:
Three things to consider. The clock speed (can be changed*) and the physical architecture of the chip (can not be changed). The number of cores.
Think of workers needing to move a big pile of rocks from point A to point B.
The number or workers to perform the task represents the number of cores.
The size of the workers' shovel is the architecture (i.e how many trips it will take)
The speed at which the workers move from point A to B represents the clock speed.
Make sense?
>>55035370
Can't be bothered reading the thread but the best analogy is a mother walking with her daughter alongside her.
They cover the same distance but the little girls legs race along to keep up with her mothers' slower, longer strides.
>>55035370
>>55039743
cow2beef coming through
>>55035370
Clock speed is engine RPM. Higher is generally better, but definitely not the only thing that matters.
Okay here's a food analogy.
Assume you have a bag of Cheetos. Clock speed is the number of times you put you hand in the bag and bring it to you face. Multi-core/architecture etc is how many Cheetos you grab at a time. There's no need for specific analogies for each IPC element.
>>55035370
Couldn't you use some kind of analogy with a combustion engine or cars?
>>55035452
>drummer
this kills the CPU
>>55035370
CPU = Bicycle.
Clock rate = cadence.
For two bicycles with similar wheel sizes, higher cadence = faster. However, the wheel size may vary. Hence, the pedalling rate is not an accurate measure of speed.
>>55035370
Water analogies work. Equate clock speed to flow rate, hyperthreading to channel width, etc.
>>55035370
What about GPUs?
All my retarded friends seriously think that VRAM = Performance.
>>55042228
Tell them that a graphics card is like a mini computer. RAM isn't the only thing that matters.
>>55035370
what the fuck is that intel cover thing?
is there a CPU under that?
>>55042354
No idea. I'm just going to guess that it's a stylized heat-sink.
One question, why aren't CPU companies just writing TFLOPS instead of clock speeds and other shit?
>>55042429
Because TFLOPS are a measure for floating-point operations per second. That's however just an aspect of what a CPU can do. For some supercomputers and GPUs that may be the only interesting quantity, but not for a general purpose CPU. So you'd end up with yet another spec sheet number that has questionable relevance for the user. In the end all you can do is look at benchmarks that are as close to your computing needs as possible.
Considering building a gaming PC, which core should I choose? I wanted to pick the i7, but I heard it wasn't optimal.
>>55042714
i5 mate
>>55042737
Which k?
>>55042714
Honestly, the best choice if you want to go with Intel at the moment is a i3-6320 for gaming.
>>55042354
chipset
>>55042750
if you over clock k CPU and z Mobo, if you don't overclock nonK and Hmobo
>>55042766
What is z and hmobo?
>>55042766
>>55042788
And I've picked the 6600k with B-150M motherboard, is that okay?
>>55042788
type of chipset
Zxx or Hyy
>>55042806
No it's not. If you're going for 6600k You need a Z170m motherboard.
>>55042842
So is this okay?
>http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/RPD7Ps
>>55035539
Hello /mu/
>>55042856
do NOT fucking buy Win10, are you retarded?
Other than that, new GPUs are being released in just a few days from now, can you wait? RX 480 is probably going to kill everyone
>>55042924
It was done a few months ago, back when I was still a plebian. I guess I could wait for RX 480, since I'm pretty broke now.
Should I go for 7, 8.1 or XP?
>inb4 install gentoo
>>55035497
Instruction sets. If it takes 50 cycles to do a sine or square root while a modern processor does it in one...
>>55042943
>Should I go for 7, 8.1 or XP?
Just dl murphy78 version of Win7 from MDL or kat (but be careful, find verified uploader) and after that upgrade to Win10 if you really want to but i don't recommend it
It's easy, the more I there is the better.
Im order from worst to best us i3 i5 i7
>>55035370
>Low end. Atom
This one is a Toyota Prius driven by a liberal.
>Low-Mid end.
This one is a Toyota Prius driven by a fag.
>Mid end.
This one is a Ford Fusion driven by an average joe.
>Mid-High end.
This one is a Ford Mustang driven by a guy in a quarter life crisis.
>High End.
This one is a Lotus Elise driven by an average joe, pretending to be living the high life.
>Enthusiast
This one is a formula 1 car.
The task the CPU is performing is getting the contents of one warehouse to another warehouse by truck.
Clockspeed: How fast the trucks can go
IPC: How much one truck can carry at one time
Multi-core/SMP: How many trucks you have
For a big job that's easy to separate into lots of little pieces, you want more trucks, and then trucks that can carry more, and how fast they go is less important. But some jobs you can't separate like that, if you want one shipment delivered as fast as possible, the speed matters the most, and more trucks don't do you any good.
Even dumb blue-collar normies can understand this analogy.
>>55043780
>>Enthusiast
>This one is a formula 1 car.
Except most "enthusiasts" never have any needs that can leverage all that performance. Their usage of their "enthusiast" CPUs is like owning a Formula 1 car, but their racetrack is just backing out of their driveway.
I dont understand cpu and reading this thread isnt helping me either.
Use simple terms please. I bought an AMD cpu so it shows that I know nothing about cpu. Need to upgrade to a new intel one
>>55039644
what is IPC?
So the goal is to finish the ice cream ASAP?
>>55035848
This actually is true to some degree which is why the processes are typically described by size and then company. "Wow, AMD is moving from a 28nm to 14nm process! Things are looking up!"
Everyone here is confusing multicore and multi processors
>>55044852
because for broad-brush explaining to normies, the differences between the two aren't relevant.
