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is a move from a Q6600 to a Q9450 worth it for 3D rendering?

What a suprise! another OcUK member manages to justify buying an i7 because it's faster!

Of course it's faster that's why it's really expensive! :D

Tip: If when selecting an upgrade you do your homework and compare stuff and then end up your selection process by choosing pretty much the most expensive option then your doing something wrong! (and the marketing men are doing something right!).
 
What a suprise! another OcUK member manages to justify buying an i7 because it's faster!

Of course it's faster that's why it's really expensive! :D

Tip: If when selecting an upgrade you do your homework and compare stuff and then end up your selection process by choosing pretty much the most expensive option then your doing something wrong! (and the marketing men are doing something right!).

ok, im not entirely sure what your getting at here, but the total I came to was by adding up the CHEAPEST parts I could find that I knew I needed for an i7 (mobo, cpu and ram)
 
that really makes it crystal clear as to how useless an upgrade to a q9550 would be for render speeds :p
Well I wouldn't have said that myself, Yorkfields a nice upgrade, doesn't bring as many gains as say a complete i7 overhaul but it's cheaper and quite an easy upgrade, certainly not useless . . .

Anyway you know best so happy xmas and enjoy :)
 
Well I wouldn't have said that myself, Yorkfields a nice upgrade, doesn't bring as many gains as say a complete i7 overhaul but it's cheaper and quite an easy upgrade, certainly not useless . . .

Anyway you know best so happy xmas and enjoy :)

well I was just going by the cinebench scores on the previous page, clock for clock they seemed to be equal in regards to rendering performance.
 
well I was just going by the cinebench scores on the previous page, and clock for clock they were basically scoring the same for rendering performance.
I'm sure you were sambo_joseph! :)

You know the quest for knowledge and the forming of a strong opinion really should take a little time, I certainly wouldn't make my mind up over a £500-£750 pound purchase based on a single video review and several forum posts made by hardware obsessives! :D

I've got nothing against Maxishine (apart from him saying awesome 11 times in his video review), he seems like he is enjoying his hobby and in that review he does at least make half an effort to do an A-B comparisons but there is no mention of how the Core2 platform has it's memory set-up, I highly doubt he is running DDR2 at an effective 1332MHz (which is possible)and would make quite a big difference to the A-B encoding results.

The really great thing about i7 is the speed of the psuedo FSB and memory, out the box it can just wallop tons more data backwards and forwards from the memory to CPU, really ace but with a bit of know how it is possible to get great performance from Core 2 is you tweak your system just so. The other i7 feature that is quite unique is the hyper-threading, that would be really useful in muti-threaded apps!

I'm not saying that a highly tweaked Core 2 platform can beat an i7 but the margin would be quite reduced. Yes there are a lot of cool things about i7 but looking at it from a bang-for-buck perspective it may not be as good a gain for the cash and effort involved at this time.

Some may argue that an i7 is a no-brainer for those who have splurged big bucks on a top end Core2 Quad, on the surface this would seem to make sense however from a bang-for-buck stance there is nothing sensible about buying an extreme processor £££ :o

Some common reasons to upgrade to i7

  • I'm bored to death with the LGA775 platform and fancy a play with something new
  • I'm an extreme bencmarker and I need a good system to make the most of my Tri-SLI
  • I hate upgrading but I now feel my socket A Barton system is holding me back
  • I've been working hard and really need some retail therapy
  • I'm a multi-media profesional and I could in theory make the money back on the i7 platform in a week or two through added productivity
  • I want the best no matter the cost
  • My ePeen has suffered abit of eShrivel since i7 launched

I still think a small low cost/effort upgrade has its merits, I wouldn't have said Kentsfield to Yorkfield was a waste of time, bit of a new toy, faster computer, bit of retail therapy and something to tinker with until i7 prices and tech settle down a bit! :cool:
 
just saw some reviews and benchmarks and the i7's seem to be much faster than the c2q for rendering, so def worth going for a i7 if your doing 3d work.
 
Of course it's faster that's why it's really expensive! :D


Intel Core i7 920 2.66Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366) - OEM
£199.99 ex VAT
£229.99 inc VAT

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 LGA775 'Yorkfield' 2.66GHz 12MB-cache (1333FSB) Processor - Retail
£229.99 ex VAT
£264.49 inc VAT



As we can see from above: The i7 chip is cheaper than Q9450
 
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I still think a small low cost/effort upgrade has its merits, I wouldn't have said Kentsfield to Yorkfield was a waste of time, bit of a new toy, faster computer, bit of retail therapy and something to tinker with until i7 prices and tech settle down a bit! :cool:


It will cost the OP 120 quid after the sale of his Q6600.

Your advice is for the OP to waste 120 quid for 200mhz gain.

Now this £120 could be put towards a new mobo for i7.

Your arguement is flawed. The reason being: It makes no sense at all to throw 120 quid at a current system to see very little gains.

whats there to tinker with putting virtually the same CPU in?

He will be FSB limited anyway due to the low multi of the Q9450.

It a dull boring and worthless upgrade on every level.
 
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Intel Core i7 920 2.66Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366) - Retail

Gigabyte EX58-UD3R Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard

G.Skill 2GB DDR3 HK PC2-10666C8 1333MHz (2x1GB) CAS8 Dual Channel Kit

Total : £464.57

Thats what I would do and maybe get some more DDR3 down the line.

Off set the cost of selling your old bits.

Q6600 110-120
Mobo 50-60
Ram 30-35


Total cost of upgrade to i7


£259


A bargain imo. :D

Why spend £120 on another S775 chip?

Just another £139 sees the OP a cutting edge rendering monster in i7 :D
 
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Your arguement is flawed
I'm not argueing easy :confused:

All I've done is make a reasonable claim that going from Kentsfield to Yorkfield has some merit. Everything is not as black and white as you always seem to see things.

Also a Q9450 at £250+ is not really what I am suggesting lol, you seem to always have a way of bending figures to suit your viewpoint!

Anyways I'm happy to always give my viewpoint and I'm not too fussed which system sambo_joseph goes for in the end. I'm happy with my Wolfdale just as you are happy with your laptop! :o

Your advice is for the OP to waste 120 quid for 200mhz gain.
No that's not my *advice*, I'm saying for the right price and little effort switching out an older 65nm quad for a newer 45nm Quad isn't as dumb a suggestion as you are making out. Spend more money, get even bigger gains, nothing new there huh! :p

It's always horses for courses and hardware is meant to be played with and enjoyed. If I were a budding professional multi-media producer and using a 65nm quad (which I wouldn't be) I would be interested in getting as much bang for buck as possible with my hardware.

A nice cheap upgrade (not £120 you tit) that bought some incremental improvements is an option, nothing wrong with micro upgrades otherwise we would all be holding onto out systems for 2-3 years at a time!

As always spend more, get more, but how much is enough?
 
easycorei7spec2008ry9.jpg


Thats what I would do and maybe get some more DDR3 down the line.

Off set the cost of selling your old bits.

Q6600 110-120
Mobo 50-60
Ram 30-35


Total cost of upgrade to i7


£259


A bargain imo. :D

Interesting to see the way you number crunch things, also that's an interesting selection of memory! You think 2GB is enough for a Multi-media power user?

I think apart from the ridiculous way you blur financial figures to lend weight to your viewpoint your opinion is valid. At the very least I've not seen a Core i7 spec as cheap as your above, in my mind a phat multimedia *Maxishine* Core i7 subsystem looked like this:

corei7db3.jpg


And I was thinking of around £60 to easyshuffle a 65nm Quad to 45nm! :cool:
 
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And I was thinking of around £60 to easyshuffle a 65nm Quad to 45nm! :cool:


60?

How do you work that out?


Why spend £250 on an x58 PT6 mobo when you can buy the gigabyte for for 154?

Its seems you are playing the figures game to overprice the cost of upgrading.

Add £20 and get this then:D

G.Skill 3GB DDR3 NQ PC3-10666C9 1333MHz (3x1GB) Triple Channel DDR3 (F3-10666CL9T-3GBNQ)


£71.99 ex VAT
£82.79 inc VAT


3gb is enough for the time being for most using 32bit Vista.

More than enough Bandwidth and processing power to destroy that old s775 system.;)


The point is that getting a i7 system does not cost as much as people make out.
 
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UD3R is its just limited to 4 slots, maybe one that supports crossfire and SLi to not limit future options. GA-EX58-UD4P at £185 will do.
 
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Its seems you are playing the figures game to overprice the cost of upgrading
No not at all, I just didn't spec an i7 system recently and that was the last rough quote I had in mind!

The point is that getting a i7 system does not cost as much as people make out.
It's a fair point, it's got around £250 cheaper than when I last looked so thanks for making this clear, you can be useful sometimes in your own twisted way! :p

newcorei72008rr6.jpg


anyway cmon you lazy dog, lets have a new number crunch of the easyshuffle i7 rendering machine!

Hopefully we can arrive at a realistic figure, once we done that and looked at the relative performance between the two a bang-for-buck conclusion can be reached

3Gb will need a tri-channel board (UD3R is two channel), preferably one that supports crossfire and SLi to not limit future options. GA-EX58-UD4P at £185 will do.

Thanks for clearing that up!
 
UD3R will work in 3 channel mode, correct me if I am wrong, but I guess that is what is stated when one read about it, thus 3 white stots, 3x1, 3x2, or 3x4, guess this is why
also the max is speced to 16 GB , (this will be 2 channel dual 4 GB), max 3 channel will then be 12 GB with upcomming
4GB modules

Memory:

1. 4 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 16 GB of system memory (Note 1)
2. Dual/3 channel memory architecture
3. Support for DDR3 2000+/1333/1066/800 MHz memory modules
 
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Lol you're right its even written on the board. Just limited to only 4 mem slots and no SLi. Might as well go straight to a 6Gb kit in that case. The memory configuration is a lttle odd. 4 sticks gives tri-channel. So you can't double up for dual channel or tri (obviously)



Just looking at cheaper boards the vanilla P6T looks interesting. 3 PCI-e slots and 6 mem slots.

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=179&l3=815&l4=0&model=2731&modelmenu=1
http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=534
 
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Given that you're looking to increase your rendering horsepower, have you considered building a second machine? I don't know the specifics but doesn't most 3D rendering software support distributed rendering?

Could someone please enlighting me about WHAT software that actually
use networked rendering, I mean realistically,. ???? I digged the subject
some time ago, did a lot of googles, spend hours reading, it seems like it
is only Sonys Vegas that uses this amongst normal pc-users, and when
I spend a few evenings to read all threads about it on their forum, then
the picture was that almost no-one used it,. far to troubled and nerded
 
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UD3R is a nice offer I think, very close to "normal" prices for a MB, give it 3x2 GB and
upgrade to 3x4 when time is right, its under 200 USD on that big un-mentionable bay
now,. with the new EU-rules it means that at least here in DK it can soon be ordered
from US whithout the special taxes and fees that was before, the good quality pcb-
cupper, the good T.I. firewire chip, gigabytes ram-compatibility + general good build

Now I just need to get rid of my P5Q and QX9650, wonder what they are worth,....
 
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