My Linux PC upgrade, pics and some benchmarks

I don't know how about you guys, but I buy all my Christmas presents myself and I don't have to wait for the specific day

So after two years I really needed to upgrade my PC because I had some bad luck with previous setup, some stability issues in games (I had to stop playing Savage 2 completely even if I enjoyed the game).

I couldn't even use the whole 16 GB RAM because it was just randomly freezing but on 8 GB it was quite fine lately. Just before this I managed to get 72 days uptime on my desktop which I think is record because otherwise it would be either random power outage or complete system freeze. Also my 64 GB SSD got full some months ago so I had to move Starcraft and install HotS on HDD, they're just huge games. And I had to get back to use my older graphic card because the ATI HD5850 I bought originally for Bitcoin mining started to make some artifacts, before that it just died so I already returned it for repairs once. I plan to try it in my new system again but it will mostly likely be returned again.

As title says I have Arch Linux on my computer, I had been using it as my sole system for everything including gaming for many years. It's kinda different than usual Windows upgrade, some HW has great Linux support, some have poor and some brand new items may not be working at all so I didn't know how well it would go.

Nowadays it's not that bad but still Linux drivers and their performance have big impact on choosing the right graphics card. Recently Valve has been pushing the manufacturers thanks to the Steam port but from what I've read AMD drivers have bugs and problems like they used to back in the ATI days. Nvidia is still the safe choice when it comes to Linux gaming. I also had some bad experience with my previous card, so I picked the new GTX 650 Ti which isn't that bad for the money and it has reasonable power consumption. Also it's been way less noisy so far (I picked specifically the two fan version) so I like it.

My old board didn't support any Bulldozer or newer CPUs from AMD so I had all options open. AMD is still great for the value, in the past I avoided Intel platform due to both higher cost of motherboards and CPUs. This time I found okay equipped Intel board, only the CPU is quite more expensive that I planned to end up with. And 1155 platform is basically dead end now but I hope it will last at least another 2 years for me. Besides the new Ivy Bridge support the only difference is PCIe 3.0 support, I already had USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s in my previous setup. I still keep my older PSU, 16 GB (4x4) of Geil 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM, 64 GB Crucial SSD and 2x 2 TB 3 platter Samsung HDDs. And some barely working Asus DVD drive, I use it about twice per year anyway.

The SSD choice deserves mention too. The Samsung 830 is almost sold out now, I had hard time hunting the last of the few remaining pieces in my country. It has huge and proven track record, one endurance test managed to go on for more than 8 months of continuous writing before it started really degrading. It went over 6 Petabytes, still maintaining 300 MB/s write speed. New SSD drives can be cheaper but they use even smaller transistors in those NAND chips which means significantly less P/E cycles (program/erase) and less data longevity because the charge holding every 2 bits (in case of MLC) is smaller. TLC NAND cells are even worse. I value my data very high, that's also why I have both 2 TB HDDs in RAID 1. Modern high capacity disks have simply too high failure rate and losing 2 TB of data is just unimaginable. I highly recommend it to everyone, better yet make frequent backups to external HDD which also saves you from power supply failure which can damage every disk inside your computer.

One big change is buying more professional input device, this time I went only for mouse and got the Logitech G400. All those progaming mice are too expensive for me, I'm not playing too much to justify their cost. I never had any gaming devices before, I've been using Logitech cordless desktop for almost 4 years and I love the freedom of wireless setup. Keyboard is still doing good so I'll keep it for some time but the mouse has random freezes for second from time to time. I haven't lost game due to it but it's annoying enough and the mouse with it's cheap plastics is at the end of it's life (see photo). On the other hand having wired mouse is quite annoying too, it will take me some time to get used to it. It also has some extra buttons, I already accidentally pressed few times one of the back/forward buttons, it's just needs a bit different grip. One thing I noticed is that the right button is much easier to press than the left button, it's kinda strange and I'm not sure if it's serious enough defect, will need to try it more in games. Middle button is harder to scroll, it's more similar to another laser Logitech mouse I use at work.

New hardware summary:

AMD Athlon II X4 640 3 GHz -> Intel Core i5 3470 3.2 GHz (supports IEM, ESL)
Asus M4A87TD EVO -> Asrock H77 Pro4/MVP (supports White-Ra, Asian SC2 tourney)
Gigabyte AMD/ATI HD 5850 / Zotac Nvidia GT 240 -> Asus Nvidia GTX 650 Ti (supports GD Studio)
Samsung 830 256 GB SSD (supports Khan team in Proleague)
Logitech wireless mouse -> Logitech G400 (supports Dreamhack, CJ Entus)
Several Fractal design fans of various sizes
Battle.net Authenticator for enhanced security

The upgrade

I updated my whole system which in Linux means all the software packages including games installed by that system, it's one big advantage of Linux. I use more advanced distro, Arch, which requires more manual attention and maintenance but on the other hand you have system set up just like you want and everything is up to date, ready soon after it's released. So I did few needed changes, made sure everything is fine after reboot and went to the actual HW upgrade. I still use the old SSD with whole system and data, I have yet to transfer to the new one. I'm considering fresh system install since there has been significant changes over the years and there Arch now changed to systemd instead of good old init scripts so having new and clean, working setup may be preferred than just trying to make sure I ported everything correctly. I need to have free day for this so I'll do it after Homestory cup ends.

The new motherboard has some new fancy UEFI setup, I expected some special booting configuration for EFI but my last board was EFI too, just with old looking setup, my drive already had EFI boot partition. Anyway, everything booted fine, better than expected. Graphic card can be major roadblock sometimes but because I had already Nvidia setup with drivers ready it went without problems. Processor got automatically recognized and Linux uses the frequency scaling (Speed Step for Intel) from the start which was positive surprise. I wasn't sure if Turbo Boost is supported, the scaling governor shows only the regular frequencies from 1.6 GHz up to 3.2 GHz. But I found one utility, i7z, specially for Core ix CPUs which shows the correct frequencies and C states with time spent in each of them. So Turbo Boost indeed works. For AMD I used the frequency scaling too, it just needed to force the highest frequency for specific apps like Starcraft or Flash, most of the time system is switching on demand just like it should be. Besides keeping the CPU cooler it saves power and money in the long run which is especially significant for me as it runs 24/7 here.

Nvidia graphic card also works correctly and does the same frequency scaling as the CPU, also keeps the fan running low as needed. This time it's really quiet, probably thanks to the two fans there. When I got my GT 240 3 years ago there was problem with the Powermizer, the card ran at full power and it got fixed with new drivers more than half a year later, that's Linux support for you (it was relatively new card at the time).

6 Gb/s SATA ports for my SSDs work great, even faster than my old board, see graphs below. Network works just fine too, which is nice change from last time, I had some trouble enabling the right module in the kernel before, when some Realtek chip was new and barely supported.

The Logitech mouse works nicely too, even the special back/forward buttons got recognized right away. I like it has built-in DPI change buttons, otherwise I would probably have hard time changing it in Linux. I guess there are some Windows-only utilities, I didn't check those.

So basically everything works right out of the box as it should, I didn't have to manually install any drivers from CDs or hunt anything from the net besides one BIOS upgrade. It wasn't needed but I like to keep it up to date. Well, one thing was needed after all, the hardware sensors (other than for CPU temperature) needed one more kernel module to be loaded up so I added it. I heard Windows doesn't like changing more than few components and you have to have the CDs ready since it's not exactly rolling release distro but I don't know, I haven't tried installing it in a long time.

I kept Memtest running overnight, it got almost 5 passes in 9 hours and no errors. After that I run couple of benchmarks from the Phoronix Test Suite. During the kernel compilation CPU temperature maxed briefly at 68 C. The stock Intel fan isn't loud but it's quite small so I guess that's to be expected. My previous AMD Athlon got only to something like 55 C, it had more robust fan, much better mounting with metal screws instead of the 1155 socket plastic thingies which look very fragile. It also had higher TDP (95 W vs 77 W) and was much more cheaper, go figure. If I was also using the integrated GPU, maybe for video encoding some day, I think it would be baking at even higher temperature.

Now about Flash. GPU accelerated video decoding works but Flash keeps crashing so often. Now i remember why I have disabled it even when it worked on my previous card. Accelerated rendering still works but encoding has to be software to keep it stable. This problem doesn't exist in standalone players like VLC or mplayer, they run just fine with the GPU. So it's mostly likely Adobe's fault, they don't care about non-Windows platforms after all. I hope HTML5 streaming comes soon, this would help us all.

A bit of system info from console, old system
+ Show Spoiler +


uname -a

Linux jnd3 3.5.4-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Sep 15 08:12:04 CEST 2012 x86_64
GNU/Linux

uptime

18:54:36 up 72 days,  5:17,  8 users,  load average: 0,27, 0,27, 0,22

free
-h

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2             25G   21G  3,2G  87%
/
/dev/sda3             34G   31G  2,9G  92% /home

df -h

             total       used      free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          7,8G       7,6G       164M         0B       34M       882M
-/+ buffers/cache:       6,7G       1,1G
Swap:           0B         0B        
0B

cat /proc/cpuinfo 

processor	: 0
vendor_id	: AuthenticAMD
cpu family	: 16
model		:
5
model name	: AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 640 Processor
stepping	: 3
microcode	: 0x10000c8
cpu MHz		:
3000.000
cache size	: 512 KB
physical id	: 0
siblings	: 4
core id		: 0
cpu cores	: 4
apicid		:
0
initial apicid	: 0
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 5
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme
de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall
nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc
extd_apicid pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse
3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt hw_pstate npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save
bogomips	: 6003.78
TLB
size	: 1024 4K pages
clflush size	: 64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 48 bits physical, 48
bits virtual
power management: ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate

processor	: 1
vendor_id	:
AuthenticAMD
cpu family	: 16
model		: 5
model name	: AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 640
Processor
stepping	: 3
microcode	: 0x10000c8
cpu MHz		: 3000.000
cache size	: 512 KB
physical
id	: 0
siblings	: 4
core id		: 1
cpu cores	: 4
apicid		: 1
initial apicid	: 1
fpu		:
yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 5
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8
apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb
rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc extd_apicid pni monitor cx16 popcnt
lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt
hw_pstate npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save
bogomips	: 6003.78
TLB size	: 1024 4K pages
clflush size	:
64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts
ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate

processor	: 2
vendor_id	: AuthenticAMD
cpu family	:
16
model		: 5
model name	: AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 640 Processor
stepping	: 3
microcode	:
0x10000c8
cpu MHz		: 3000.000
cache size	: 512 KB
physical id	: 0
siblings	: 4
core id		:
2
cpu cores	: 4
apicid		: 2
initial apicid	: 2
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	:
5
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36
clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow
constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc extd_apicid pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm
extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt hw_pstate npt lbrv
svm_lock nrip_save
bogomips	: 6003.78
TLB size	: 1024 4K pages
clflush size	:
64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts
ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate

processor	: 3
vendor_id	: AuthenticAMD
cpu family	:
16
model		: 5
model name	: AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 640 Processor
stepping	: 3
microcode	:
0x10000c8
cpu MHz		: 3000.000
cache size	: 512 KB
physical id	: 0
siblings	: 4
core id		:
3
cpu cores	: 4
apicid		: 3
initial apicid	: 3
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	:
5
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36
clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow
constant_tsc rep_good nopl nonstop_tsc extd_apicid pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm
extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt hw_pstate npt lbrv
svm_lock nrip_save
bogomips	: 6003.78
TLB size	: 1024 4K pages
clflush size	:
64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts
ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate

New system
+ Show Spoiler +


uname
-a

Linux jnd3 3.6.10-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Dec 11 09:40:17 CET 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux

free
-h
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           15G      1,4G        14G         0B       245M       408M
-/+ buffers/cache:       788M        14G
Swap:          0B         0B         0B

cpupower frequency-info

analyzing CPU 0:
  driver:
acpi-cpufreq
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 1 2 3
  CPUs which need to have
their frequency coordinated by software: 0
  maximum transition latency: 10.0 us.
  hardware
limits: 1.60 GHz - 3.20 GHz
  available frequency steps: 3.20 GHz, 3.20 GHz, 3.10 GHz, 3.00 GHz,
2.90 GHz, 2.70 GHz, 2.60 GHz, 2.50 GHz, 2.40 GHz, 2.30 GHz, 2.20 GHz, 2.10 GHz, 1.90 GHz, 1.80 GHz,
1.70 GHz, 1.60 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: powersave, ondemand, performance
  current
policy: frequency should be within 1.60 GHz and 3.20 GHz.
                  The governor
"ondemand" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  current CPU
frequency is 1.60 GHz.
  boost state support:
    Supported: yes
    Active: yes

cat
/proc/cpuinfo 

processor	: 0
vendor_id	: GenuineIntel
cpu family	: 6
model		: 58
model name	:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz
stepping	: 9
microcode	: 0x12
cpu MHz		: 1600.000
cache
size	: 6144 KB
physical id	: 0
siblings	: 4
core id		: 0
cpu cores	: 4
apicid		: 0
initial
apicid	: 0
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 13
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse
tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm
pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc
aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1
sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm ida arat epb xsaveopt pln
pts dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase smep erms
bogomips	: 6388.73
clflush
size	: 64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power
management:

processor	: 1
vendor_id	: GenuineIntel
cpu family	: 6
model		: 58
model name	:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz
stepping	: 9
microcode	: 0x12
cpu MHz		: 1600.000
cache
size	: 6144 KB
physical id	: 0
siblings	: 4
core id		: 1
cpu cores	: 4
apicid		: 2
initial
apicid	: 2
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 13
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse
tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm
pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc
aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1
sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm ida arat epb xsaveopt pln
pts dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase smep erms
bogomips	: 6388.73
clflush
size	: 64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power
management:

processor	: 2
vendor_id	: GenuineIntel
cpu family	: 6
model		: 58
model name	:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz
stepping	: 9
microcode	: 0x12
cpu MHz		: 1600.000
cache
size	: 6144 KB
physical id	: 0
siblings	: 4
core id		: 2
cpu cores	: 4
apicid		: 4
initial
apicid	: 4
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 13
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse
tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm
pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc
aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1
sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm ida arat epb xsaveopt pln
pts dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase smep erms
bogomips	: 6388.73
clflush
size	: 64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power
management:

processor	: 3
vendor_id	: GenuineIntel
cpu family	: 6
model		: 58
model name	:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz
stepping	: 9
microcode	: 0x12
cpu MHz		: 1600.000
cache
size	: 6144 KB
physical id	: 0
siblings	: 4
core id		: 3
cpu cores	: 4
apicid		: 6
initial
apicid	: 6
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 13
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse
tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm
pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc
aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1
sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm ida arat epb xsaveopt pln
pts dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase smep erms
bogomips	: 6388.73
clflush
size	: 64
cache_alignment	: 64
address sizes	: 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power
management:

Now some pics:

New and shiny Core i5 3470 in the socket:

Asrock H77 motherboard featuring PCIe 3.0, two more PCIe 2.0, few PCI slots and enough SATA ports:

Now the significantly upgraded items, 256 GB Samsung 830 and Asus GTX650 Ti 1 GB:

My old Logitech mouse has almost 4 years and it shows, completely different jump to G400:

New Crucial SSD as of 2 years ago:

Used and beaten up Crucial SSD as of today, in the same system:

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Old Crucial SSD in the new system:

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New Samsung SSD in the old system:

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New Samsung SSD in the new system:

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Couple of benchmarks, didn't have time for more thanks to Homestory cup:

Timed Linux kernel compilation: 116 seconds

7-zip compression comparison

Comparison of the same RAM sticks

If you happen to have similar system you can easily compare your results to mine with the Phoronix Test Suite.

This is my first try here in TL blogs, not sure how you guys like HW posts, I'm just testing the waters here (and the forum markup codes too).

My Linux PC upgrade, pics and some benchmarks

Completed

Ongoing

Upcoming