Professional OC'ing

monkey_boy · 11 Dec 2009 at 08:53

Hi All,

I'm looking at some new high-ish spec PCs for work. I'll be looking to get 3 machines in total for upto £750 each, excluding all peripherals.

Looking around the website, I think the Titan Goliath is the closest to what I'm looking for but I would welcome any further advice. The machines will be used for video editing, video encoding, Photoshop, a little bit of 2D CAD and some fairly complex powerpoint presentations. Usually, more than one of these will be going on at the same time on the same machine. This has to all stay on 32 bit, Windows 7 Ultimate (Volume License).

My questions then are:

Am I looking at the right kind of spec for what I want to do?

Does the overclocked machine I posted above come with a warranty for the CPU even though it's overclocked?

Where can I find comparative benchmark scores for the OD'd i7 920 vs the Standard i7 920?

Do OcUK do any extended warranty?

Is there anything else I need to consider that I haven't mentioned?

Thanks,

monkey_boy · 11 Dec 2009 at 11:19

MCH said:
u might need 16GB of ram to handle those complex powerpoint presentations ...

Thanks for your input

Ease said:
Although I'm sure sarcasm has the potential to be incredibly helpful, this is not the place for it.

monkey_boy, 32-bit limits the amount of RAM (memory) you can access, to 3gb, which will restrict how much multi-tasking you can do, and will slow down CAD stuff quite a lot. I recommend 64-bit. You won't need to worry about different hardware as the vast majority of modern CPUs (and ALL of the i7s and i5s) can handle either 32bit or 64bit.

OcUK supply a one year warranty, despite the overclock, but you'd have to send them a webnote to ask about an extended warranty. I'm fairly sure they'll be able to accomodate you.

You're unlikely to find any benchmarks specifically for "Intel Core i7 920 2.66Ghz D0 Overclocked to 3.40GHz" as a CPU can be overclocked to a huge array of different values, at the very least everything between 2.66GHz and 3.40GHz on this CPU, which is 74 different values.

I suspect, unless you are keen on Gaming as well (although I can see you didn't mention it) you would probably be better off choosing a slightly less powerful machine. I would recommend this:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-210-OK&groupid=43&catid=1445&subcat=

It is Quad-core, so still powerful, with 4gb of RAM (plenty, and if you are insistant on 32-bit, only wastes 1gb rather than 3gb like the Goliath), and with a better graphics card as standard than the Goliath. Plus you'll save £900 in total, and I'm fairly sure you'll barely notice the difference in power!

Great post, thank you. The 64bit issue is one that I'm working around to. I know that the amount of addressable is reduced to 3Gb, so my thinking is that getting faster components should go some way to compensating for that shortfall?

All of the other workstations use 32-bit software, and we have volume licenses for most of the software we use and have already bought individual licenses for the less mainstream software, and making the change to 64-bit would more than double the cost of the upgrade. The choice at the moment is to either replace 3 machines and remain on 32-bit or replace one for now and move to 64-bit. Are the limitations of 32-bit worth scrapping the upgrade for the other two machines?

Gaming isn't an issue as these PCs are for a small dept at work.

monkey_boy · 11 Dec 2009 at 11:23

MCH said:
u gotta admit complex powerpoint presentations made u laugh come onnnn

As I'm sure you know, working with slow office apps is one of the most frustrating things known to man. It would be nice if I can replace these machines so that while they're encoding or rendering, the user can be doing something else that is still quite demanding at the same time.

monkey_boy · 11 Dec 2009 at 11:43

I was aware of that. Is it the case that although windows will be able to see all of the RAM, none of the 32-bit apps will be able to use anything over the 3Gb limit?

monkey_boy · 11 Dec 2009 at 11:58

Vir said:
No that's no problem. The OS takes care of the ram and how much can be given to a program(, as far as I'm aware).

That changes things! How would 64-bit apps improve the performance then?

monkey_boy · 11 Dec 2009 at 12:48

MCH said:
take console evolution , 8bit 16 bit 32 bit 64 bit 128 bit etc etc higher is better its all u need to know

so it would be in your best interests to try and get hold of some windows 7 64 bit software if u can

You obviously don't realise how patronising you are. I'm not messing around with my home PC to try and squeeze out a few extra fps for FarCry or whatever the latest is. I'm looking for a fast but stable system that is suitable for it's application. I need to understand what the pro's and con's are of each different setup and balance that against whatever increase in cost it might bring, so it is not just a case of 'higher is better it's all u need to know'.

monkey_boy · 11 Dec 2009 at 13:21

Ease said:
each application can still use a different 2gb of the total amount.

That was going to be my next question. Thanks. I'm trying to find a difinitive source on this 2gb/3gb thing. I have always been aware of the limitation and know that windows only displays a certain amount, but I can't find and hard and fast information about the interaction of 32-bit Apps with a 64-bit OS.

monkey_boy · 11 Dec 2009 at 14:10

doggs said:
Yep, 32 bit applications (without PAE) are limited to 2Gb memory.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx

Brilliant, thanks.

MCH said:
that comment i made was serious but ill put it this way, for the amount of money you are spending on a system it would be sacrilege to run it on 32bit, its like buying a ferrari and limiting it to 100mph which is probably enough for most people but then whats the point in buying it and you'll just get anoyyed when some Vauxhall overtakes you . If you want the best for your money budget for 64 bit.

Point noted thanks. The Ferrari and the Ariel Atom are both very quick cars, but in very different ways. The first thing I need to figure out is whether the users need something that will do 0-60 as quickly as possible, or whether they need something that will sit at 150mph all day. If they need the Ferrari, then we'll have to figure it out, even if it means doing it a bit at a time. If the Ariel Atom will do what they're after then we can look at moving to Ferraris when the funding allows.

gurusan said:
you will see benefits video encoding and such with 64bit as these are very memory intensive applications.

Otherwise just go with a socket 1156 setup and 4gb ram. As previously said, you will have 3gb wasted if you go for a 6gb i7 setup.

Thanks.

monkey_boy · 11 Dec 2009 at 14:23

MCH said:
yeh thats a fair point , go ahead with the purchase of that comp as it is a nice offer for a pre-built machine , but straight away i'd be looking into getting a good deal on windows 7 64 bit software . If you have this system with 64bit you wont have any problems with any of the applications you want to run even if you are running 2/3 of them at the same time.

Not sure if any1 else has answered this yet but the warranty will be voided if the CPU is overclocked unless you buy a pre-overclocked machine but they are not worth the money as you wont see a massive performance gain for what you are doing. However if you give them a ring they might be able to sort some sort of overclock out with a warranty since you are gona be spending a nice chunk of money.

Thanks. I've had a few questions answered here. I think all that remains is to pop a note in the presales forum to sort out the OcUK specific stuff.

Thanks everyone.