Have you ever had that nagging sensation that your computer was slower than it used to be? Or that your brand new laptop seemed much more sluggish than an old tower PC you once had? Dan Luu, a computer engineer who has previously worked at Google and Microsoft, had the same sensation, so he did what the rest of us would not: He decided to test a whole slew of computational devices ranging from desktops built in 1977 to computers and tablets built this year. And he learned that that nagging sensation was spot on—over the last 30 years, computers have actually gotten slower in one particular way.
Not computationally speaking, of course. Modern computers are capable of complex calculations that would be impossible for the earliest processors of the personal computing age. The Apple IIe, which ended up being the “fastest” desktop/laptop computer Luu tested, is capable of performing just 0.43 million instructions per second (MIPS) with its MOS 6502 processor. The Intel i7-7700k, found in the most powerful computer Luu tested, is capable of over 27,000 MIPS.
But Luu wasn’t testing how fast a computer processes complex data sets. Luu was interested in testing how the responsiveness of computers to human interaction had changed over the last three decades, and in that case, the Apple IIe is significantly faster than any modern computer.
https://gizmodo.com/the-one-way-your-laptop-is-actually-slower-than-a-30-ye-1821608743
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday January 01 2018, @03:29AM
You missed an important point: it's not my choice. If you want to talk the guy into buying new hardware, I will thank you. Or give him the $. If I push his budget he'll move everything to a godaddy and I'll lose the gig. Right now it's a fun challenge for me that pays a little.
Some of the P3s I'm remembering have case fans that barely turn, and I've never gotten them to spin up. It's been a few years since I've run any of them. The aforementioned servers seem to have 14 very noisy fans. I might have exaggerated but it's a lot. It's crazy they run full-speed- the servers have plenty of temp sensing, fan speed sensing, and should be able to control fan speed. I've never found any way to do it but I haven't tried very hard either.