Yearly Archives: 2013

Haswell for the desktop

Hackintosh

Does it make sense to upgrade?

I asked my computer builder FU Steve to pen a few words on upgrades of Intel CPUs in Hackintosh machines.

* * * * *

AnandTech just ran an interesting piece on a high-end PC equipped with an overclocked Intel i7 Haswell CPU, the CPU which obsoletes the current Ivy Bridge. They use a very high-end ($700+) graphics card which muddies the waters somewhat, but their conclusions regarding the new CPU are clear.


Click the picture to read the full review.

AnandTech’s expert has written a fine no-punches-pulled review. It’s a site I like to visit for hard-core analysis compared with the likes of Gizmodo or TechCrunch which mostly seem to uncritically repeat press releases accompanied by puerile writing.

Haswell comes in many flavors (I count over 60 on Intel’s excellent site) but maybe a key comparison is between the i5 mobile version found in the 2013 MacBook Air and the overclocked i7 in the machine reviewed by AnandTech. Here is the comparison from Intel’s site, and I have extracted a section below:

Apart from the speed differences, the desktop Haswells can support 32GB of RAM, compared with a maximum of 16GB for the mobile i5, so for heavy-duty video processing, the desktop version may make sense offering higher CPU speed as well as doubled maximum memory support.

As I wrote earlier, the 2013 MacBook Air is a significant improvement over even the 2012 model, with doubled battery life and 30% faster graphics, making even so early an upgrade seem like common sense. But what about the Hackintosh?

AnandTech’s review, above, concludes that the gains in CPU performance are negligible in moving from Ivy Bridge to Haswell. The low 70 watt idle power consumption is hardly a reason to upgrade; Thomas’s HP100+ idles at 100 watts, and that includes a pair of HDDs, a pair of SSDs, a GTX660 GPU, 16GB of RAM, a wi-fi card, a Z68 motherbooard and five fans. 30 watts saved is irrelevant. You will never recover the cost.

Most Hackintosh users have one of Core2Duo/Core2Quad (2010 and prior), Sandy Bridge (2011) or IvyBridge (2012) CPUs in their machines. Here are my thoughts on the wisdom of upgrading.

Intel Atom: Commonly found in hacked netbooks. Upgrade immediately. Way too slow for modern CPU-intensive applications.

Core2Duo/Core2Quad: Thomas’s current Hack started with a Q9550 Core 2Quad, 2.83GHz stock, which I overclocked to 3.6GHz. An upgrade to anything later makes sense, doubling CPU speed. You will need a new motherboard, new, faster memory and a new CPU. It makes sense to jump right to Haswell as it’s the current design. The cheaper i5 is fine for all but heavy video processing, and 8GB is more than adequate. There’s no need to overclock (i5 or i7 with the ‘K’ suffix in the model number can be overclocked and run a few dollars more) unless you are into intense video processing.

For video consider the i7 and 32GB of RAM. For regular still photography processing, no separate GPU is needed, a substantial saving. Just use the integrated HD4600 which comes with the i5 and i7 versions of the CPU.

Used Intel CPUs retain remarkable resale values. There is still strong demand for the Core2Quad and in fact, I sold mine 2 years ago for more than it cost new! Newer graphics boards also make sense. Used ones have little value. The still photographer gets best price/benefit from something like an nVidia GTX 660 (which Thomas now uses) though for most even something as inexpensive as a used 9800GT will be fine. Easily found for $30. The videographer should go with a GTX660ti or GTX680. The latest GTX7xx cards are too bleeding edge to be a safe choice.

Sandy Bridge: No upgrade needed. Ivy Bridge does not offer enough advantage, though you can apply a BIOS update to most Gigabyte motherboards which will permit the use of Ivy Bridge on a Sandy Bridge motherboard as both use the same socket. If you want more CPU speed consider upgrading an i3 to an i5 or an i5 to an i7 for a 50% speed increase from each step. Used Intel CPUs retain remarkable resale values. Sandy Bridge desktop CPUs can support up to 32Gb of RAM.

Ivy Bridge: Upgrading to Haswell makes no sense. You need a new motherboard and CPU for negligible benefits. Ivy Bridge desktop CPUs can support up to 32Gb of RAM.

* * * * *

Thank you, FU.

Enough with the Cloud, already

Computing

The insidious creep of property theft.

The premise which has it that computing’s Cloud exists for users’ convenience is fundamentally flawed. The goal of the Cloud is to wrest control of the user’s data from his local disk storage to the vendor’s storage on his disks. That data can then be examined and parsed without the owner’s knowledge, hacked and resold for profit. The user’s convenience has nothing to do with it. Google Reader is a perfect example of this realization dawning on one of America’s biggest businesses.

If you believe that, then you are naïve. Google is discontinuing its RSS aggregator to force users to migrate to Google+, where Google can collect and resell your web behavior to all at sundry, and tough if you don’t know about it. It’s their competitor for the no less disingenuous Facebook. And while these vendors are selling everything about you, you pay for the privilege with inflated phone bills so that they can distribute your data free of charge, while proclaiming such utter nonsense as ‘net neutrality’ and ‘information wants to be free’. That they continue to do so, successfully at that, says more about consumers than I want to contemplate.

Like most Google ‘free’ products, Reader had one of the poorest user interfaces it’s possible to imagine. That fired entrepreneurial spirits and great front ends to Reader’s database like NetNewsWire and Reeder came along and provided an exceptional user experience. Because much of an RSS feed was downloaded by these products, the experience without fast wi-fi was excellent for subsequent reading. You may not have been able to get at the full story fast, but you got the crux of it and you got that immediately.

But with Reader being discontinued on June 30, you must migrate to a new product unless you prefer to have your identity appropriated and resold by Google.

Thus I have tried a couple of alternatives. Feedly seemed promising but on some of my machines it refuses to import my (many) Google Reader feeds. That makes it essentially useless – as useless as trying to get Apple’s iCloud to synch Bookmarks in Safari across many devices. I wrote enthusiastically about Feedly a while back but I was wrong owing to this debilitating error. For the life of me, I cannot find a fix in their help pages.

More recently I have tried the ridiculously named Inoreader. It imported my Google Reader feeds fine but access is slow and the product is useless without wi-fi. The interface does not compare with NetNewsWire or Reeder, but those two services are seemingly silent on what they will do after June 30, 2013 passes, and Google Reader disappears.

More fool me for having used Google Reader in the first place, disregarding my own instincts about this business.

I suppose complaining about the Cloud is rather like Canute trying to reverse the waves, but I’m sure he was pretty miffed when the royal toes got soaked, and I am no less upset.

Every place I now go on the internet comes with loud demands that I join Facebook, or Google+ or any one of many other ‘social’ sites. I do not want to be ‘social’. I prefer to choose my own friends, not have them chosen for me. When I tried Twitter a while back my feed was inundated with messages from strangers of no interest to me. I quickly closed the account, though it was not easy to do. I constantly get messages from Linkedin users who want to share their profile with me. Why would I care about a stranger’s job aspirations? As for Facebook, well, I haven’t the faintest interest in exchanging images of my latest tattoo or dog with all and sundry and I certainly do not wish to hang out with a bunch of 10 year olds using US public school grammar. I want solid, hard information reliably delivered, information whose sources I choose. I want it fast and I do not want my profile being resold by my friendly Cloud provider.

And I also want to own my software (and forget those probably illegal agreements – with software, possession is ownership in my book, and I do not need your permission to use something I have paid for), not becoming a slave of the likes of Adobe who now insist I pay rent to access the latest versions of Photoshop in …. yes, you guessed it, the Cloud. Once I cease paying rent I may still have access to my locally stored images, but if they are in the wrong file format, I may no longer be able to process them. Why would anyone agree to that or be forced to adopt workarounds by storing in DNG or TIFF?

And if you believe one word of what a Facebook or a Google says about your security well, frankly you deserve one another. Here’s a search of the NYT on two comically contradictory words:

Facebook security

My advice to you? Close your Facebook account and cease being a marketable product. And view everything Google does with the most intense suspicion. You are a product to be sold. You are not the customer. Their advertiser is. And fight the Cloud with all your might to keep your data in your home, not on remote servers. Finally, for heaven’s sake, do not cave and sign up for Photoshop in the cloud. You do not need the latest purported features and your money is better spent on a standalone product whose entrepreneurial creator can use the capital and will allow you to retain future processing access to your pictures.

The future of NetNewsWire and Reeder:

Neither of these messages make me optimistic:

MacBook Air 2013 – Part II

Macintosh

Better than the 2012.

Part I appears here.

Moving from the 2012 MacBook Air to the 2013 involves no learning curve. Ergonomically the machines are identical.

If you are moving from an earlier model, before wiping it clean for sale do remember to deactivate iTunes (limit is 5 activations) and Photoshop (limit is 2 activations). For iTunes it’s in the Store menu option, for PS it’s under Help.

As usual, I migrated applications and data using Migration Assistant, a speedy and seamless process.

In terms of start-up speed, meaning a working display after opening the lid (there’s no need to ever power the machine off) it’s very noticeable that start-up is considerably faster. The occasional 2-5 second wait (it’s not consistent) with the 2012 is gone, the screen lighting up either instantaneously or 1 second after opening. Apple mentioned this in their roll-out and it appears to be true, not their usual hype. Nice.

Some test data:

MBA 2013 and 2012, Geekbench 64.

The 2013 CPU is marginally slower but you do not notice this in practice.

Graphics, as measured by Cinebench, are far faster, thanks to the new HD5000 integrated GPU in the 2013 model; the 2012 uses the HD4000 CPU, integrated with the Ivy Bridge CPU:

Cinebench 2013 and 2012. The 2013 is 31% faster.

Temperature Monitor (from Bresink) is not yet updated and cannot graphically display the Haswell CPU’s core temperatures, though it does display all the other sensors. SMC Fan control, however, does report the CPU temperature in the status bar. The CPU in the 2013 runs 10-20F cooler than in the 2012, rarely hitting 140F. 158F in the 2012 was common. These machines run hot, owing to poor cooling in the limited space available, the upshot being you can feel the warmth on your lap with stressful processes – like Cinebench. The new machine is noticeably cooler. As usual I’m running SMC Fan Control with a minimum setting for the one poncy fan of 3,500rpm. It’s not audible in practice. The stock speed is just too low for comfort and I rather prefer my vitals unfried.

I don’t have tools to objectively measure the key upgrade in the 2013, meaning battery life, but after a day’s use I can confirm my earlier estimate that the 4 hour life in the 11″ model has approximately doubled, owing to the lower power consumption Haswell CPU. Impressive.

My 2013 MBA has the minimum 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. The Lightroom (Version 5) and Photoshop (CS 5.1) experience remains excellent and no excuses need be made for the MBA 2013 as a photo processing machine. LR starts in 7 seconds, PS in 3-4. Exporting an image from LR to PS takes a scant 2 seconds. Add an external larger display and you have a fine photo processing machine.

The new faster 802-11ac wifi is present, but I have no means of testing this as my router does not support it, so I’m running 802-11n at 5GHz from an ancient single band Airport Extreme router.


802-11ac installed.

Scrolling in the 2012 model using two fingers on the the touchpad is excellent; in the 2013 it’s not as good, showing slight jerkiness owing to response delay. I’m confident this is something Apple will fix in an OS or firmware upgrade.

Sequential disk access (both machines use a Solid State 128GB drive) is 38% faster, measured with xbench:


2013 and 2012 disk access data.

I suspect the speed increase results from the use of a PCI connection for the SSD in the 2013 machine, compared to SATA3 in the 2012 version. Strangely random disk access is far slower in the newer machine but I have not seen any subjective slowdown. SSDs are nice for fast starts from cold (irrelevant here) and application loading, but if high volume storage is required with a MacBook Air then an external Thunderbolt (costly and very fast) or USB3 (cheap but slower) traditional hard disk drive is called for. Thuderbolt enclosures seem to start at $500+, a price point which will ensure they do not gain mass market acceptance. USB3 enclosures, like the Mediasonics I use for movie storage, run $100 for a 4-bay box. However, neither of my two Mediasonic boxes is seen by the 2013 MBA, whereas the 2012 was fine, so it looks like Mediasonic will have to issue a firmware upgrade. USB2 works fine with both, and both have the latest circuit boards.

The perpendicular Magsafe2 power connector continues over from the 2012. This is most certainly not an improvement on the right-angled MagSafe1 used in the 2010 model which had a far stronger magnet. The current connector is dislodged far too easily, but Apple has refused to listen to its users, not for the first time.

There is one small error in Mountain Lion on this machine. If you have multiple apps open and quit one, the menu bar disappears until any other app is clicked. Probably an error in the kernel which, I assume, has been modified to work with the new Haswell CPU. Not a big deal.

There’s really not much more to say. For $1,000 with a high resale value, the cost of ownership is low, the machine is as light and robust as can be, and is arguably the best bang for the buck in any laptop currently on the market. Resale value one year hence will be around $700, making the annual cost of ownership just $300.

The Good:

  • Runs cooler and faster than the 2012 model
  • $100 cheaper than the 2012
  • Very well made and robust given how slim it is
  • Doubled battery life compared with the 2012 model
  • Fast 128GB SSD
  • Excellent Intel HD5000 graphics processor
  • Retina Display is not missed in an 11″ screen
  • Wake from sleep is much quicker than in 2012
  • No Windows OS. Masochists can run Windows using Boot Camp or aftermarket software
  • Decent speakers for its small size
  • Full sized, backlit keyboard
  • Fine machine for Lightroom and Photoshop, though plugging in a larger display really helps
  • Familiar mechanical design has shown no major weak points over the past few years
  • Excellent resale value. Compare with any Windows laptop

The Bad:

  • Wretchedly weak magnet on the Magsafe2 power plug
  • Two finger touchpad scrolling is noticeably jerky. 2012 model was perfect in this regard **
  • Status bar at top of screen disappears when an application is exited
  • SDXC card reader available on the 13″ model only
  • You will have to buy two – one for your spouse

** I tracked down the cause of this. On my 3 display desktop I use an app named Mouse Locator which throws up a big green circle where the cursor last was if you ‘lose’ it. That app migrated over to my MBA years ago when I migrated all my apps over from the big machine. Disabling this app (in System Preferences) and restarting made the jerkiness go away. The app is not required on the MBA’s small screen so no loss.