Linux Takes Another Shot At Fixing Visual Glitches & GPU Hangs For Intel Sandy Bridge

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux Takes Another Shot At Fixing Visual Glitches & GPU Hangs For Intel Sandy Bridge

Intel Sandy Bridge processors launched 12 years ago this month and if you still are relying on these 32nm CPUs, it's really time to consider an upgrade for not only the performance but also security and power efficiency reasons. But if you are content with still churning away on a Sandy Bridge desktop under Linux, picked up for upstream and marked for back-porting is another attempt at dealing with visual glitches and GPU hangs that have been affecting some users with the integrated graphics...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-SNB-Disable-RC6p-Again

[Linuxhippy]

the habbit of recommending upgrading hardware at the beginning of every article regarding driver fixes for an old piece of hardware is getting a bit ... boring.
in case someone still runs a sandy bridge machine, i guess he/she has a good reason to do so.

[Sethox]

the habbit of recommending upgrading hardware at the beginning of every article regarding driver fixes for an old piece of hardware is getting a bit ... boring.
in case someone still runs a sandy bridge machine, i guess he/she has a good reason to do so.

It's boring because it's a standard. Those that has the hardware must feel good that Linux continues to support it, AKA a benefit of Open Source community. Continued support is good for a reason. This is good news because the Linux community at least using some resources for established hardware, now if they succeed is another case.

I'm with you Linuxhippy though, Sandy Bridge era of CPUs feels a bit wasted of resources.. but again, got to feel good to gain continued support if I had a Sandy Bridge CPU.

[Damnshock]

Running a Sandy Bridge here and I see absolutely no need to upgrade.

My computer still runs all the games I want, compiles everything I need and runs the VMs I need.

I've only been thinking of replacing it for two reasons:
- concerns that some hardware might die any day now
- power consumption: the new AMD Ryzen 9 7900 looks very appealing for this :-)

We'll see during this 2023

[sinepgib]

12 years ago was just 2010. My 2012 laptop (a bit younger but barely) works quite well. I gave it away to a friend's mother last year tho, I always end up using my employers' so it wasn't really worth keeping just accumulating dust. Besides, it was a badly designed HP and the screen hinges broke, so it's only usable as a poor man's desktop. But it's fast enough and runs Windows 10 without hitches.
Previously she used something that only supported Windows XP until it broke. She'd just use Word (LibreOffice now I think) anyway, she uses it strictly for work.

[royce]

the habbit of recommending upgrading hardware at the beginning of every article regarding driver fixes for an old piece of hardware is getting a bit ... boring.
in case someone still runs a sandy bridge machine, i guess he/she has a good reason to do so.

I have an i7-2600k desktop PC for music production I built many years ago that still works well for that use case. I have no reason to upgrade until something breaks.

[Linuxhippy]

I'm with you Linuxhippy though, Sandy Bridge era of CPUs feels a bit wasted of resources.. but again, got to feel good to gain continued support if I had a Sandy Bridge CPU.

Seems my post was not well written - what I ment is I am a bit tired of michael recommending hw upgrades every post which is dedicated to some old hardware - because most users doing so have a good reason (either it still fits their need, or they can not upgrade for another good reason.)
I also agree, as a linux user I am accustomed to receiving driver updates long after the manufacturer has abandoned the product which is actually a great thing. I run a ivy bridge media station myself and don't see any need to upgrade it.

[darkbasic]

I still have half a dozen Sandy Bridge machines in service and I have no plans to upgrade them, thanks.

[M@GOid]

Another one here using a decade old CPU. My Core i5 Thinkpad T430 was holding well for my needs and now that I managed to grab a quad-core i7 for a unsupported upgrade, will allow me to keep it for many more years, especially with Firefox enabling video hardware acceleration, so it keeps cool while watching full HD videos.

[skeevy420]

Running a Sandy Bridge here and I see absolutely no need to upgrade.

My computer still runs all the games I want, compiles everything I need and runs the VMs I need.

I've only been thinking of replacing it for two reasons:
- concerns that some hardware might die any day now
- power consumption: the new AMD Ryzen 9 7900 looks very appealing for this :-)

We'll see during this 2023

I went from 8c16t Westmere (48GB DDR3 1333) to 6c12t Zen 2 (32GB DDR4 3600) and it was a night and day difference. I used to say the same things you said and then I woke up to a dead PC that forced me to upgrade and realized the difference between what I thought was good enough and newer hardware.

I need a new power supply and more ram now since the PS5 and its NVMe is really upping the ram requirements for games. Instead of implementing DirectStorage and whatnot they're doing what I did before I had an SSD when I had 48GB of ram -- copy the game to ram and run it from there.

Michael isn't wrong in suggesting that. The cheapest modern Intel or AMD processors will run circles around anything from that era.

Personally, I'd upgrade to Zen 2 or Zen 3 if I was trying to save a buck. It's a bit more mature and better supported as well as AM4 & DDR4 prices are coming down. I say that because I can get 2K to 4K 60FPS High/Ultra with a 4650G paired with a 6700 XT. Things are getting so powerful that you don't have to look at the best hardware for great gaming performance.

It's funny, with FSR I can't tell the difference between 2K and 4K in a lot of games outside of GPU fan noise.