How do I determine if a CPU is better than another one?

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨hackysphere@lemmy.ca⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

I’m looking at some old Intel and Pentium CPUs that are in a NUC. Are cores and max clock speed the only things that matter? Would a Pentium be good enough to run Immich? I have a i7-4790, and the NUCs I’m looking at range from a Pentium J5005 to a i3-1115G4. I do run Docker, does that affect anything?

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EmoPolarbear@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
CPUbenchmark.net is the best way to compare 2 CPUs.

Directly comparing cores and speed is only useful across the same architecture, comparing brands and different generations should only be done via benchmarks.

I can’t provide any feedback about if those CPUs are enough for immich as I do not use it.

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- catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This is my go-to for a first look. You might want to see if the CPUs also support special features like encoding/decoding acceleration, because doing stuff like that in hardware is much, much faster than doing it in software with regular instruction pipelines.
  
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- seaQueue@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  +1, this is my first stop too
  
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- exu@feditown.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Maybe add Geekbench, but only within the same architecture. Tests between different architectures are not comparable.
  
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daddy32@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Don’t forget to compare a consumption too, or perhaps “performance per watt” metric. If plan to run this CPU in a server, this makes a difference in the electricity bill - especially for always on server.

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Ludrol@szmer.info ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I think more important is compute per watt and idle power consumption than raw max compute power.

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atzanteol@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Docker doesn’t make a difference. Containers run natively and with no emulation.

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GreatRam@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Buy a used tiny/mini/micro from eBay. Best bang for buck and good efficiency. I got a Dell with a 9500T for $110.

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- evidences@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This the route I went too, a couple years ago I found a tiny form factor Lenovo with a 6500t on eBay for a little under 70 bucks shipped and then I found a tiny Dell with a 9500t on my local Craigslist for 100 bucks.
  
  They’re good little boxes.
  
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poVoq@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
In terms of raw CPU power, you will rarely have issues with anything newer than 10 years old. But some built in video conversion hardware can differ significantly and power consumption is usually also lower for newer CPUs.

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- seaQueue@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I don’t encourage people to buy anything older than ~2016 or Skylake era. Older chips, even powerful ones, tend to eat enough power that they’re more expensive over time (usually less than a year after purchase) and newer more power efficient parts.
  
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patrlim@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Look at benchmarks.

Single or multi-core performance will matter more depending on your workload.

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possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Look at generation first. Look at ram speed, clock speed, number of cores and cache after checking the generation

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Presi300@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
For desktop CPUs… Higher number = better. That’s it. i5 > i3 > pentium… etc. For laptop CPUs… Good luck

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- GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s worth mentioning that with a large generational gap, the newer low-end CPU will often outperform the older high-end. An i3-1115G4 (11th gen) should outperform an i7-4790 (4th gen), at least in single-core performance. And it’ll do it while using a lot less power.
  
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francisco_1844@discuss.online ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If you just do a search for <cpu1 model> vs <cpu2 model> often times you get pointed to sites that can do that comparison for you.

For example searching for: J5005 vs i3-1115G4

gave me several links one of which was Intel Core i3-1115G4 vs Pentium Silver J5005 - UserBenchmark

There were several other sites with similar headers.

As for best one for Docker, that too you can search. Specially if you use something like perplexity.ai and you ask which of those two is better for docker it gives you a nice comparison along with which areas one is better than the other as it pertains to using Docker. Suspect you can get similar good info from using any Large Language Models (LLM) like ChatGPT or Claude.ai (both of which have free plans)

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- reisub@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I would avoid the userbenchmark site, the owners are heavily biased against AMD, so their benchmarks cannot be trusted
  
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  - cron@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That’s true for AMD/Intel comparisons. It doesn’t really matter when comparing one vendor.
    
    But you’re right, it is not really trustworthy
    
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