AT collective thoughts on CPU's

[Mellman]

Ok...Long and the short is, I need a new media encoding rig...well, i want one.

I currently have 3.2GHZ dual xeons, 2GB ram.

Which will be the best bang for the buck? I think an E6600 system is going to run me around $800 for mobo/ram/cpu

Single 165 Opty? i hear these OC well, but what is a mobo/cpu going to cost - so i can keep my DDR1 ram. Same with 246's, I can prolly OC a little, but the advantage here is I can get a mobo that supports dual core, and goto dual dual core opty's eventually.

How bad do the E6600's kill the 165 OC'd Opty's?

 

[RichUK]

Originally posted by: Mellman
Ok...Long and the short is, I need a new media encoding rig...well, i want one.

I currently have 3.2GHZ dual xeons, 2GB ram.

Which will be the best bang for the buck? I think an E6600 system is going to run me around $800 for mobo/ram/cpu

Single 165 Opty? i hear these OC well, but what is a mobo/cpu going to cost - so i can keep my DDR1 ram. Same with 246's, I can prolly OC a little, but the advantage here is I can get a mobo that supports dual core, and goto dual dual core opty's eventually.

How bad do the E6600's kill the 165 OC'd Opty's?

Bad really bad, especially if your focus is on encoding.

What is your budget?

Because the best scenario for you would be a processor from the Core 2 Duo range, with 2GB's of RAM, and a good motherboard that will suffice for a Kentsfield drop in later on down the line.

Kentsfield is basically two Core 2 Duo?s with a total of 8MB?s of L2 cache, and will best any other 4 core setup.

I would probably recommend an OEM e6300 (cheap) with the rest (mobo RAM etc), which you can swap out later on down the line for a single socket quadcore Kentsfield.

Also you can give the E6300 a slight OC to tide you over.

If i was to recommend a motherboard, at the moment, depending on what mobo feature you require, it would have to be the Asus P5B Delux. Then any decent 2GB worth of RAM. This board supports the Kentsfield, so a dual core to quad core upgrade is easy.

 

[myocardia]

It all depends on how high you overclock the Opty 165. A 165 @3.0 Ghz is roughly the equivalent of a 6600 @ stock speed. Of course, that isn't exactly a fair comparison, is it? With both at stock speed, the 6600 is a minimum of 50% faster, although in media encoding, my guess would be more like 60% faster.

If I were you, I'd probably go with an Asus P5W DH, or other 975x motherboard, and an E6600, although that would cost you more than $600, with no RAM. With a light overclock (2.66-2.75 Ghz), you'd have a very fast media encoding machine.

 

[Mellman]

yeah - the problem is an e6600, mobo, and 2 gigs is going to be in the range of $800 would it not?

I've got an offer right now from someone for a 165, mobo, and 2 gigs of ram (and i could use my current 2 gigs for total of 4 gigs) for $400

Budget COULD be endless...sure, but i'm trying to keep it reasonable.

and I think i'd almost have to go with a 6600 - for the extra 2mb of l2 cache, I feel that'd make a hefty difference on the encoding setup.

I'd run the e6600 at at least 3Ghz, and I'd try to get as close to 3.5Ghz as possible without going too crazy...

So according to : http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=185555

It looks like the 3.6Ghz 6600 is about 2x as fast as the 165 OC'ed to 3Ghz. An upgrade path to quad core would be nice i suppose...so long as they actually keep their cpu's on the same socket etc...

-matt

 

[DrMrLordX]

As you can see, there's a reason why that Opteron 165, board, and RAM are going for $400. Someone is obviously desperate to get rid of it *P

Go with the E6600; you will want all the CPU power you can get on a dedicated encoding rig.

 

[lopri]

Rich is right in that E6600 will decimate Opteron 165 in video encoding. Also from your current rig (dual Xeons) to Opteron 165 can hardly be considered upgrade (without overclocking, that is). Either you stay with your setup or bite the bullet and get the E6600. It'll be worthwhile and you will waste much less time staring at the screen.

 

[Dexion]

hmm.. hate to say downgrade, but why not go with a E6300 or E6400, get a Gigabyte DS3. Even at 3Ghz it'll trash any AMD setup even an FX-62! Of course people will argue that the 4MB cache would be bettter, but only at a sacrifice of 3-5% decrease in speed for the 2mb..the overclocking and greater FSB would compensate for it.

That would only cost around $600 for the mobo, cpu and ram...and you can get some decent hardware to go with it.

 

[VooDooAddict]

I agree with RichUK. If you need to upgrade now, get a setup with the cheapest Core 2 Duo CPU you can find and upgrade to Core 2 Quad at the end of the year.

However, I'm not sure you really need to upgrade just yet. Dual Xeons, while not as snappy as a Core 2 Duo is no slouch. It's still a very powerful rig. Maybe there's a problem with the system you didn't mention and it's forcing you to upgrade?

Personally I'm waiting till Core 2 Quad is actually out so I can 100% sure the motherboard will work for me. At that time my Dual Xeon 2.66 rig will be getting retired.

 

[Mellman]

Originally posted by: VooDooAddict
I agree with RichUK. If you need to upgrade now, get a setup with the cheapest Core 2 Duo CPU you can find and upgrade to Core 2 Quad at the end of the year.

However, I'm not sure you really need to upgrade just yet. Dual Xeons, while not as snappy as a Core 2 Duo is no slouch. It's still a very powerful rig. Maybe there's a problem with the system you didn't mention and it's forcing you to upgrade?

Personally I'm waiting till Core 2 Quad is actually out so I can 100% sure the motherboard will work for me. At that time my Dual Xeon 2.66 rig will be getting retired.

are you a psychiatrist?

Yeah, ive recently experienced some stability issues with my current 3.2Ghz xeons (they're 1.6LV's OC'ed) I havnt tried to troubleshoot it at all, got my first paycheck from work and was like OO TOYS!

It'll encode, and do it very fast, then get 1/2 way through and freeze up the whole system. i need to look into if its temps or what...but i dont have as much time as i used to now that I started work...

maybe i'll hold off...because a quadcore would certainly be sweet...but i imagine those will run me $800-1000+ just for the cpu?

 

[firewolfsm]

I'd get an E6400 and a DS3, with 2GB of ram; that should come to under $600. The E6400 generally OC better than the 6600s (making up for the cache difference) because the 6600s are the worst Conroe cores with the better ones being used for the 67/6800.

GeIL 2x 1GB DDR2 667 - $190
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDe...ProductCode=85002-31&prodlist=shopping

Gigabyte 965P DS3 - $150
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=MB-965PDS3#

2.13GHz 2MB - $230
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=80859

 

[Mellman]

Ok - Now what about the woodcrest xeons?

How's a dual 2ghz woodcrest compare to a 3.5ghz conroe? Im curious about overclocking on the woodcrests too - do they OC as well as the conroes?

 

[DrMrLordX]

The Woodcrests are as fast clock-per-clock as Conroe, though the faster ones run on a higher FSB than current Conroe processors.

As far as overclocking on those goes, no idea, but I'd put my money on a 3.5 ghz Conroe since it's easier to utilize 2 cores than it is 4. You could probably hit 3.5 ghz on a Conroe for less than $1k.

 

[Mellman]

well - I'd be able to utilize 4 cores with video encoding, but i think im going to go with a 6300 or 6400 and try to stay around $600 - that way i can go quad core if i need/want later on.

-Matt