Why Do You Need All That Hardware? DistroTube
video description
Date: 2022-03-30
Related videos
Comments and reviews: 10
Eric
When we provision new laptops for folks at work, we provision them with 4+ cores, 32GB RAM and a 500-1000GB SSD. Most users will not -need- this much but it's cheap insurance that they can open as many tabs and office docs and pdfs as they want and really never run into a hardware limitation. Hardware is too cheap to let a lack of it ever get in the way of someone's productivity in an office environment. Many schools and businesses approach this the exact opposite, with a race to the bottom of the barrel for absolute minimum specifications to provide the bare minimum functionality, forgetting that the MOST EXPENSIVE part of almost any business operation is the LABOR cost. Saving $50 on RAM could cost $10,000 in additional labor time wasted over the life of the machine. Dual monitor vs single? Even if it only improves their productivity by 1% that $300 monitor will functionally -create- $5-10K worth of additional labor output over a 5 year service life. Buying a premium 4-6 core laptop instead of a basic 2 core? Again, even if it's only a 1% improvement in productivity that $200 upcharge could translate to many thousands worth of improved productivity.
The question I ask when selecting hardware is not -how much is required to do this task?- It is -How much hardware is required to ensure that hardware is never going to be the productivity bottleneck for the user?-
reply
When we provision new laptops for folks at work, we provision them with 4+ cores, 32GB RAM and a 500-1000GB SSD. Most users will not -need- this much but it's cheap insurance that they can open as many tabs and office docs and pdfs as they want and really never run into a hardware limitation. Hardware is too cheap to let a lack of it ever get in the way of someone's productivity in an office environment. Many schools and businesses approach this the exact opposite, with a race to the bottom of the barrel for absolute minimum specifications to provide the bare minimum functionality, forgetting that the MOST EXPENSIVE part of almost any business operation is the LABOR cost. Saving $50 on RAM could cost $10,000 in additional labor time wasted over the life of the machine. Dual monitor vs single? Even if it only improves their productivity by 1% that $300 monitor will functionally -create- $5-10K worth of additional labor output over a 5 year service life. Buying a premium 4-6 core laptop instead of a basic 2 core? Again, even if it's only a 1% improvement in productivity that $200 upcharge could translate to many thousands worth of improved productivity.
The question I ask when selecting hardware is not -how much is required to do this task?- It is -How much hardware is required to ensure that hardware is never going to be the productivity bottleneck for the user?-
reply
Eric
Honestly I found running VM's from a workstation (with 64GB RAM) to be far too restrictive and unstable. Running VM's from a proxmox(kvm/ceph) hyper converged cluster on old server hardware is far more stable/reliable than hosting the VM's on a workstation, and the services can stay up regardless of whatever shenanigan's my desktop computer gets itself into. I built a 4 node cluster from ebay supermicro X9 generation fat twins, fujitsu network cards, 3com switches, white label hard drives, cheap SSD's, and used server RAM. Cluster has 48 cores, 320GB RAM, 6TB SSD and 48TB HDD. Way better platform for spinning up VM's. It won't win any performance contests with the older CPU's running low speed (2620 V2s), but what it lacks in speed it makes up for with near 24/7 uptime for the VM services and much better stability for this than I have ever got running VM's on a workstation with any hypervisor.
reply
Honestly I found running VM's from a workstation (with 64GB RAM) to be far too restrictive and unstable. Running VM's from a proxmox(kvm/ceph) hyper converged cluster on old server hardware is far more stable/reliable than hosting the VM's on a workstation, and the services can stay up regardless of whatever shenanigan's my desktop computer gets itself into. I built a 4 node cluster from ebay supermicro X9 generation fat twins, fujitsu network cards, 3com switches, white label hard drives, cheap SSD's, and used server RAM. Cluster has 48 cores, 320GB RAM, 6TB SSD and 48TB HDD. Way better platform for spinning up VM's. It won't win any performance contests with the older CPU's running low speed (2620 V2s), but what it lacks in speed it makes up for with near 24/7 uptime for the VM services and much better stability for this than I have ever got running VM's on a workstation with any hypervisor.
reply
Alexander
Especially for you DT I did some benchmarking.
Here are some benchmarks: running a physics simulation (my own code, I know how it utilises hardware) around 1/2 minute under load maxing all cores as much as allowed on my machine : Just on mere 6 core 12 threads (i7) machine today (Nvidia 1660 gpu)
10 run average
i3: 28.011s
GNOME: 28.193s with freon monitoring.
Xmonad: 28.321s (slowest, but all within margin of error/variations)
no DE: 27.871 secs (fastest)
(i.e systemd muli-user.target instead of graphical.target or runlevel 3 for the oldies.
What do you conclude where the meaningful CPU cycles go ?
The bigger difference above can be made by linking against intel optimised MKL shaving off about 2 seconds instead of using the default eigen3 back-end I compiled against.
Show me yours :D
reply
Especially for you DT I did some benchmarking.
Here are some benchmarks: running a physics simulation (my own code, I know how it utilises hardware) around 1/2 minute under load maxing all cores as much as allowed on my machine : Just on mere 6 core 12 threads (i7) machine today (Nvidia 1660 gpu)
10 run average
i3: 28.011s
GNOME: 28.193s with freon monitoring.
Xmonad: 28.321s (slowest, but all within margin of error/variations)
no DE: 27.871 secs (fastest)
(i.e systemd muli-user.target instead of graphical.target or runlevel 3 for the oldies.
What do you conclude where the meaningful CPU cycles go ?
The bigger difference above can be made by linking against intel optimised MKL shaving off about 2 seconds instead of using the default eigen3 back-end I compiled against.
Show me yours :D
reply
Mr.
I am using 16 GB of RAM and a 32GB swap partition on an SSD. I didn't need it, per se, when I switched to Linux-I needed it on Windows for sure. After Linux, it barely breaks 6 GB. However, now that I am running Void on ZFS root, it frequently has to use swap, even. I can turn it down, if I would like. In fact, ZFS doesn't need RAM at all, it just speeds it along. But I get literally the same exact performance with ZFS using 2/3 of my RAM as I did when all that RAM was wasting, being unused. SHould I let ZFS only use 4 GB max? probably. But I am too lazy to tell it to do that, lol.
reply
I am using 16 GB of RAM and a 32GB swap partition on an SSD. I didn't need it, per se, when I switched to Linux-I needed it on Windows for sure. After Linux, it barely breaks 6 GB. However, now that I am running Void on ZFS root, it frequently has to use swap, even. I can turn it down, if I would like. In fact, ZFS doesn't need RAM at all, it just speeds it along. But I get literally the same exact performance with ZFS using 2/3 of my RAM as I did when all that RAM was wasting, being unused. SHould I let ZFS only use 4 GB max? probably. But I am too lazy to tell it to do that, lol.
reply
Alexander
I was just about to have another rant, but I'll leave it. Apart from ...
The initial memory allocation in any DE has nothing to how much memory will be free for use or how it is managed. It is such a common mistake for people to use htop and say look ..then conclude, it must be ... sausages.
It means just about ... ZERO, and says next to nothing about the impact, it has be taken in context with the given hardware also.
DT saying X is too much is quite frankly ... (substitute whatever comes to mind )
Note: Spreading misinformation is not useful.
reply
I was just about to have another rant, but I'll leave it. Apart from ...
The initial memory allocation in any DE has nothing to how much memory will be free for use or how it is managed. It is such a common mistake for people to use htop and say look ..then conclude, it must be ... sausages.
It means just about ... ZERO, and says next to nothing about the impact, it has be taken in context with the given hardware also.
DT saying X is too much is quite frankly ... (substitute whatever comes to mind )
Note: Spreading misinformation is not useful.
reply
itech
Yeah I get that all the time, and I don't even have a lot of powerful hardware. Why does my laptop have 32gb of ram?
Because I use it to virtualise multiple machines, such as Kali Linux, when I'm on the go and it needs a decent amount of system resources. It's not like my little ultrabook has that much, geez.
Why do I have an expensive Ergodox keyboard?!
Because I work with it for 8 hours per weekday, and then I write, edit, and code. I mean. Why do you think I bought the freakin' thing? Just for a giggle?!
reply
Yeah I get that all the time, and I don't even have a lot of powerful hardware. Why does my laptop have 32gb of ram?
Because I use it to virtualise multiple machines, such as Kali Linux, when I'm on the go and it needs a decent amount of system resources. It's not like my little ultrabook has that much, geez.
Why do I have an expensive Ergodox keyboard?!
Because I work with it for 8 hours per weekday, and then I write, edit, and code. I mean. Why do you think I bought the freakin' thing? Just for a giggle?!
reply
Lexi
I rock a Ryzen 7 3700X and 32Gb of RAM. I find myself running out of system resources even with all of that! Most of what I use it for is gaming and virtualization, both of which benefit greatly from the 8 cores and 16 threads. 32Gb of RAM allows me to have a ton of things going without worrying about my system slowing down. So far, I haven't had any hiccups or slowdowns yet. I just can't run more than 2 VMs at a time ;)
reply
I rock a Ryzen 7 3700X and 32Gb of RAM. I find myself running out of system resources even with all of that! Most of what I use it for is gaming and virtualization, both of which benefit greatly from the 8 cores and 16 threads. 32Gb of RAM allows me to have a ton of things going without worrying about my system slowing down. So far, I haven't had any hiccups or slowdowns yet. I just can't run more than 2 VMs at a time ;)
reply
tronus98
Honest question... I realize how this may sound after this video. I just wanted to know how you exciter is working out in your audio rack? An exciter is one piece of gear that I've never gotten to own and nerd out on. I know a lot of guitars players like the BBE Sonic Stomp as a special sauce pedal (it's an exciter in a guitar effects pedal format). How have you found yourself using it? Thanks!
reply
Honest question... I realize how this may sound after this video. I just wanted to know how you exciter is working out in your audio rack? An exciter is one piece of gear that I've never gotten to own and nerd out on. I know a lot of guitars players like the BBE Sonic Stomp as a special sauce pedal (it's an exciter in a guitar effects pedal format). How have you found yourself using it? Thanks!
reply
unfa--
Funny you mention Kdenlive. I've expanded form 16 to 32 GB of RAM because of Kdenlive.
And a week later I discovered Olive video editor and I ditched Kdenlive to never return.
I kept the RAM though
Sometimes I need to add even more in SWAP on an SSD to keep my machine from crashing while doing some heavy 3D simulations or rendering in Blender.
TL;DR You can never have too much RAM.
reply
Funny you mention Kdenlive. I've expanded form 16 to 32 GB of RAM because of Kdenlive.
And a week later I discovered Olive video editor and I ditched Kdenlive to never return.
I kept the RAM though
Sometimes I need to add even more in SWAP on an SSD to keep my machine from crashing while doing some heavy 3D simulations or rendering in Blender.
TL;DR You can never have too much RAM.
reply
Simon
And here I am with only 8GB and I'm running Firefox(60+ tabs) and Blender, and have other stuff open too lol. It has become a burden to get by on just 8gig, although Linux does really well. I really need an upgrade! Dear Santa, DT said I need 64gig to run Blender haha. I've learnt Android Studio + emulator + firefox = my laptop crashes from lack of ram!
reply
And here I am with only 8GB and I'm running Firefox(60+ tabs) and Blender, and have other stuff open too lol. It has become a burden to get by on just 8gig, although Linux does really well. I really need an upgrade! Dear Santa, DT said I need 64gig to run Blender haha. I've learnt Android Studio + emulator + firefox = my laptop crashes from lack of ram!
reply
Add a review, comment
Other channel videos
