Wow, things HAVE changed!!!

wacjac · 25 Jan 2009 at 09:29

Hi folks,

I used to frequent these parts daily many years ago when I used to build machines by the boatload. In the 4 or 5 year since I last looked into hardware I'm STUNNED at just how much things have progressed.... all of these new socket types/ quad this - dual that, and I'm kinda lost for my upcoming upgrade.

First things first though.... In a million years I 'aint moving over to Vista - I despise it with a passion, I truly do!! So whatever I do I must be able to use my XP Pro... will this cause me any slowdown or problems with a decent upgrade.....

I'm considering (I'm only doing a mobo, processor and ram upgrade, the rest is all OK)

1) Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping Socket 775 L2 8MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor

2) ASUS P5Q SE iP45 Socket 775 8 channel audio ATX Motherboard

3) OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2

Does this all look OK to you up-to-date-knowledgable-folk??

RJC · 25 Jan 2009 at 09:34

Is your XP Pro 64bit, otherwise you will only use approx 3-3.5 gig of ram.

sh4dy1981 · 25 Jan 2009 at 09:34

u could try getting 1066mhz ram if ur planning to oc. i had that cpu till i upgraded to i7. i had it in a abit ip35 pro and it was faultless. oc too 3.2ghz on air. what will ur uses for the system be?

wacjac · 25 Jan 2009 at 10:04

sh4dy1981 said:
what will ur uses for the system be?

No gaming at all... just graphics and video editing/ decoding. It can currently take my machine an hour to decode an MPG d/l movie to ISO... I'm hoping that a quad core will make a significant improvement?

AlexTrickle · 25 Jan 2009 at 10:46

wacjac said:
No gaming at all... just graphics and video editing/ decoding. It can currently take my machine an hour to decode an MPG d/l movie to ISO... I'm hoping that a quad core will make a significant improvement?

Using the correct multithreaded software and you will see a HUGE improvement!

wacjac · 25 Jan 2009 at 10:54

AlexTrickle said:
Using the correct multithreaded software and you will see a HUGE improvement!

...ahhh.... so there's software required then?

Steve2000 · 25 Jan 2009 at 10:59

wacjac said:
...ahhh.... so there's software required then?

No, but if you use software that is designed to work with 64 bit and utilise quad core technology then you will see a marked improvement.

neil3k · 25 Jan 2009 at 11:11

Asus boards arent keen on ocz ram

get corsair instead

DigitalReaper · 25 Jan 2009 at 11:20

I hear i7's are very good for media encoding, but they're kinda pricey once you take into account the mobo and ram. I have a similar spec to the one you're looking at (see sig) and it seems to handle video encoding just fine.

I use "MeGUI Modern Media Encoder" which seems to be pretty flexible in what it can encode/decode and utilizes all 4 cores. Does take a bit of getting used to though as it uses "AVISynth" scripts for input (these allow various processing of the source before encoding, e.g. cropping/scaling). They're just plain text and fairly simple though and once you get one made you can just copy/paste/edit for each encode.

Did an H264 encode a while back (1920x8??, 2 pass, very high settings) and it did take over half a day to encode but the results were fantastic. No noticable drop in quality from the original, 11.7GB -> 3.6GB (video only).

edit: just to say i'm on 32bit XP, not sure if there's a 64 bit version of the program, or if it even matters.

bennyB · 25 Jan 2009 at 12:25

DigitalReaper said:
edit: just to say i'm on 32bit XP, not sure if there's a 64 bit version of the program, or if it even matters.

There is but I wouldn't get it because I don't think the driver support is great for it. Basically you can go 32bit XP and only address up 3.5GB or Vista 64bit and use pretty much as much memory as you want.

But you said you don't like vista (not really sure why, hopefully you've at least tried it on a modern system with SP1 to come to that opinion) so I guess you're stuck with 32 bit XP...

Nick1881 · 25 Jan 2009 at 12:33

What are your current hard drives like? Moving to new Sata drives would also help the new system to be even faster. Also what PSU are you running? If its old it might not be kicking out the power it once was, worth thinking about.

chrislip · 25 Jan 2009 at 13:20

you could always install 2003 Server Enterprise. As long as you put the PAE switch in your boot.ini it will address up to 64GB RAM. I am running server 2003 R2 SP2 as my OS and can run everything that I normally would under XP, although I now have my 4GB RAM available as opposed to 3.15 under XP.

EsaT · 25 Jan 2009 at 15:02

wacjac said:
1) Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping Socket 775 L2 8MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor

No sense in old (relatively) power hogging model when even crippled edition of newer notably less consuming serie is faster:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core2quad-q9300_4.html#sect0

But those are uses where Nehalem shines so if intention is to use same PC again for long time it wouldn't be that expensive.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/intel-core-i7_13.html#sect0
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/intel-core-i7_14.html#sect0
(in heavily multithreaded work even Yorkfield gets crushed)

AlexTrickle said:
Using the correct multithreaded software and you will see a HUGE improvement!

Any today's good CPU will show big advantage compared to 4-5 old CPU unless software is complete POS.
(or some other parts like HDDs aren't bottleneck)

bennyB said:
Basically you can go 32bit XP and only address up 3.5GB or Vista 64bit and use pretty much as much memory as you want.

Xp Pro 64 wasn't made for gaming so that's why it hasn't been advertised.

But you said you don't like vista (not really sure why

Bloatware - bloaterware - Vista.
And some parts of user interface have been broken and replaced by catastrophic crapolas.

Strife212 · 25 Jan 2009 at 15:30

XP is completely out of date now, why not get a single core CPU while you're there?

wacjac · 25 Jan 2009 at 15:40

Strife212 said:
XP is completely out of date now, why not get a single core CPU while you're there?

I've had a few minutes playing around with Vista about three or four times now... from what I've seen it bares no resembalance at all to XP.... in fact it was like being in a fairytale...wishy, washy, floaty etc... no doubt I'd get used to it...but for now I'm sticking with XP (this is from a bloke who is always about 5 years behind a new O/S!!)

Aod · 25 Jan 2009 at 16:27

Strife212 said:
XP is completely out of date now, why not get a single core CPU while you're there?

oh no! it's so old it doesn't work properly anymore!

oh wait, it works fine and does everything Vista does. ooops.

lunarwolf · 25 Jan 2009 at 16:37

Aod said:
does everything Vista does. ooops.

not DX 10 just to name 1

, Vista is fine, but i can understand some hesitating upgrading if they have XP. Personally never been a fan of XP, would rather have kept my Win 2000 but had to make the switch, no doubt I will when Win 7 arrives

Bradley8988 · 25 Jan 2009 at 16:42

XP feels soo old because it is. Vista is as good an upgrade as any others iv made.

Aod · 25 Jan 2009 at 17:35

lunarwolf said:
not DX 10 just to name 1 , Vista is fine, but i can understand some hesitating upgrading if they have XP. Personally never been a fan of XP, would rather have kept my Win 2000 but had to make the switch, no doubt I will when Win 7 arrives

oh no! DX10! however will i manage to do real work with my computer that can't render DX10.

for me, using computers for work comes far and above using them for games.

anyway, DX10 is totally overrated.

bennyB · 25 Jan 2009 at 21:26

EsaT said:
Bloatware - bloaterware - Vista.
And some parts of user interface have been broken and replaced by catastrophic crapolas.

err ok.... :rolleyes:

if you still don't know what to choose have a look at this thread

I think you'll find most people on here tend to prefer vista, I'm even pretty sure there was a poll that was taken could back me up on that statement