upgrade duo to quad, do I have to reinstall OS?

[bacardi/avt]

This might sound like a stupid question, but here goes:

Do I need to reinstall Windows XP Pro if I upgrade my CPU from a E6600 to a Q6600 (duo to quad)?

[Video Head]

yes

[guns1inger]

Maybe. Maybe not. If you have to change motherboards, then it may be best, however the first thing to try is a repair install of XP. Boot from your XP disc, and go through the standard install routine. The time you are offered a repair option through the repair console, chose to continue to install windows. Eventually the setup will look for already installed versions of windows, and will then offer you the chance to install a new version or repair the existing one. Choose to repair at this point. Setup will delete all the windows files and reinstall them, changing any drivers that are necessary, but keeping the registry and installed software in place.

I have done this many times, including for complete motherboard and system changes, and while it has failed a couple of times, it has produced a stable system the vast majority of times.

[jagabo]

For a motherboard replacement I agree with guns1inger -- a repair reinstall usually works.

[thymej]

Dudes,

If you already have a dual core installed, Windows already has the multiCPU HAL installed. If you put the new Q6600 and goto task-manager, performance tab, and see four CPU graphs, you should not have to re-install anything.

If you check now with the E6600 installed, you should see only two CPU graphs on the performance tap. When you boot with the new CPU in, Windows should find new hardware.

I changed a motherboard and CPU two times now without re-installing XP SP2. I allowed XP to go through the many found new hardware over and over again. Never had to re-install XP. NOTE: I re-installed anyway once I had time (a week or two later). I just let Windows XP find all the new hardware When I did not have time.

NOTE, and this is a BIG NOTE, if you are changing a motherboard going from IDE to SATA, then XP may not boot.

[DVDDave]

Dudes,

If you already have a dual core installed, Windows already has the multiCPU HAL installed. If you put the new Q6600 and goto task-manager, performance tab, and see four CPU graphs, you should not have to re-install anything.

If you check now with the E6600 installed, you should see only two CPU graphs on the performance tap. When you boot with the new CPU in, Windows should find new hardware.

I changed a motherboard and CPU two times now without re-installing XP SP2. I allowed XP to go through the many found new hardware over and over again. Never had to re-install XP. NOTE: I re-installed anyway once I had time (a week or two later). I just let Windows XP find all the new hardware When I did not have time.

NOTE, and this is a BIG NOTE, if you are changing a motherboard going from IDE to SATA, then XP may not boot.

I agree----i have removed hard drives with XP on them and installed them on completely different systems. XP will do the search thing, and when all is said and done, i have never had to re load......just my own experience, and i have done this many, many times. on occasion, i have had to reactivate XP, but that is it.......

I am getting ready to order a Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W which is currently on back order from newegg.com , it is suppose to smoke the Q6600

[jagabo]

i have removed hard drives with XP on them and installed them on completely different systems. XP will do the search thing, and when all is said and done, i have never had to re load......just my own experience,

I've done it many times too. And a lot of the time I've had to do a repair reinstall.

In any case, the OP's computer won't require a reinstall if he's just changing the CPU.

[TBoneit]

In many cases it depends on the Motherboard Chipset & driver whether or not XP works when you change motherboards.

In my experience over 70% of the time a repair install is needed. Sometimes XP loads and finds new hardware and I say "Hooray!" I just saved an hour of my time. OTOH when I do need to repair install I'm working on other computers so it evens out.

[budz]

I am getting ready to order a Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W which is currently on back order from newegg.com , it is suppose to smoke the Q6600

Yeah, I'm waiting on Newegg as well for the E8400 Wolfdale cpu. I'm betting Intel's marketing ploy is to make that cpu scarce just to inflate the price.

To OP: You shouldn't have to reinstall XP with just changing out a cpu.

[Webster]

I am getting ready to order a Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz 6MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W which is currently on back order from newegg.com , it is suppose to smoke the Q6600

Yeah, I'm waiting on Newegg as well for the E8400 Wolfdale cpu. I'm betting Intel's marketing ploy is to make that cpu scarce just to inflate the price.

Does anyone know if the E8400 is the same as the Xeon E3110? 'cause the spec. looked the same but the E3110 is at a cheaper price and is also easy to OC too.

To OP: You shouldn't have to reinstall XP at all, I've done it several times without problem.

[bacardi/avt]

Thanx for all the fast replies!

Ok, So I have to try and see what happens then. By the way I do not think I need to change anything else in my system at this point so the only thing to (maybe) upgrade is the CPU.

I checked the results on www.tomshardware.com for Q6600 and E8400, and it looks to me as if the Q6600 would be the best choice when it comes to video encoding. Am I wrong?

The reason for me asking is the rumor that Intel will drop the price on the Q6600 in April. Can anyone confirm this?

[jagabo]

Ok, So I have to try and see what happens then. By the way I do not think I need to change anything else in my system at this point so the only thing to (maybe) upgrade is the CPU.

If your motherboard came out before the quad core processors were available you may have to update the BIOS.

I checked the results on www.tomshardware.com for Q6600 and E8400, and it looks to me as if the Q6600 would be the best choice when it comes to video encoding. Am I wrong?

It depends on what encoder you use. x264 is very good at using multiple cores, it scales almost linearly. But many encoders don't get much faster over 2 cores, xvid for example. If you are encoding multiple videos at the same time you can use more cores even if the encoders aren't well multithreaded.

The reason for me asking is the rumor that Intel will drop the price on the Q6600 in April. Can anyone confirm this?

I haven't heard anything specific but Intel tends to drop prices every quarter.

[TBoneit]

FWIW I am using the older TPMGEnc Xpress 3 and DVD Author 3 and they seem to recognize the 4 cores and use them fine. I did of course get the latest versions of their software off of their website.

So bottom line is it seems to depend on the software used which is better fast dual or Quad core processor. For me as I was sure mine would do a decent job with the quad teh choice was easy. In my testing it seems to be running nice and fast. On short clips the setup time has become a signifigant part of the total time. To clarify if I'm taking a bunch of short clips and adding them to become one the clicking ok for each clip in Xpress 3 is a pain. I may try the trial of Xpress 4 and if it offers the add others like TDA3 does I may spend the money just to make my life easier.

[bacardi/avt]

@jagabo... I have checked my bios already and it will need to be updated and Yes I am doing more h.264 encodes using x.264 in MeGui now, and less MPEG-2 encodes using CCE so I think iI will go with the Q6600 then.

And from what I can tell the E6600 and Q6600 use the same FSB speed. so in my mind Q6600 would be the option for me since the RAM was purchased with this in mind.

Just need to keep my fingers crossed and hope for a happy ending (not needing to reinstall)

[TBoneit]

Don't forget to do the Bios upgrade before changing processors. If you change CPUs and then go to flash the bios you may not even get video.

Good Luck, I'm loving the speed of my new Cheapo Q6600

[bacardi/avt]

To everyone that helped me with their answers:

Did the swap 20 minutes ago and it went without a problem. Everything seams to work fine, no re-install or even having to use repair consol.

Did a little test with MeGui encoding the lobby scene from Matrix.
This is the result:
E6600 - pass 1 : 96.78 FPS - pass 2 : 29.04 FPS
Q6600 - pass 1 : 106.4 FPS - pass 2 : 57.20 FPS
Major speed increase for the second pass.

Once again Thanx for the guidance!

[jagabo]

As it happens, I upgraded my Core 2 Duo to a Core 2 Quad last week too. I shut down Windows XP Pro, swapped the processors, and powered back up. There was no need for a repair reinstall, no request for the Windows CD, no request for activation. Not even any obvious new hardware detection/installation by the OS. Task Manager now shows four cores.

I ran a few before and after encoding tests

program: E6300 time -> Q6600 time
DgIndex+AviSynth+VirtualDub+Divx: 94 sec -> 57 sec
DgIndex+AviSynth+VirtualDub+Xvid: 365 sec -> 204 sec
DgIndex+AviSynth+TMPGEnc: 256 sec -> 146 sec
DgIndex+AviSynth+CCE: 87 sec -> 55 sec

Obviously, some of this is the higher clock speed (1.8 GHz vs 2.4 GHz) and some the additional cores.

[ddpool58]

This has been an interesting thread for me to read as I am now considering an upgrade from my old Pentium 4 2.8. I'm not a gamer, just interested in something that can handle a lot of video encoding and graphics editing.

The processors I'm considering are these:

Core 2 Duo E6750 (2.66)
Core 2 Duo E6850 (3.0)
Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4)

I've also seen the E8400 but I don't know much about that one. My biggest question is whether the quad core is better for me than a fast Core 2 Duo.

Any suggestions?

[aedipuss]

check out the encoding test results of different cpus here.
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=520#data

given the price/performance of the q6600 it's hard to pass up. it also as the chart shows overclocks nicely as many of the testers do. mines at 3.0 with no added voltage or tweaks other than changing the fsb. it would happily run 3.6 all day long and has booted into windows at 4.5GHz!

[jagabo]

I picked the Q6600 for the same reasons. It was only US$230 so I could no longer resist. The only thing it's really missing is SSE4.

There are a lot of benchmarks at Toms Hardware:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/cpu_2007.html

[TBoneit]

Of the three you listed go with the quad core. It flies through the encoding. However I did have to upgrade to a newer version of the software I use to get the most from it.

So keep in mind the software you use or plan on upgrading it as a additional expense.

[ddpool58]

Thanks for all the comments. I had thought about what software I use most. I'm still using XP with my old Pinnacle Studio Plus v.9.4.3, which has worked well for me, although I know plenty of others have had trouble with Pinnacle. Tom's charts start with Pinnacle 11. My version probably won't know what to do with a quad core, so I might end up having to upgrade my software. Any guesses about how that one would perform?

[jagabo]

The Pinnacle Studio 11 benchmark at Toms appears to scale better with clock speed (within an architecture) than the number of cores. If Studio is your major concern you may be better off with a faster Core 2 Duo rather than a Core 2 Quad.

[ddpool58]

And see, that's what I keep coming back to! I guess I need to consider moving to another software program, but then Pinnacle is offering discounted upgrades to version 11, so I don't know what would be best in the long run. I'm not that familiar with other programs, but I guess I'd better read up on them.

[VirtualFM]

Well, I guess you people only had luck or I was very unlucky!

I just went through a hell of an 6h upgrade solving all kind of troubles, upgrading from E6600 to Q9550 and from 4Gb to 8Gb. This implied going through BIOS upgrading (without diskette drive or pen drive), tons of BIOS settings (as I had to reset everything to deafult after upgrading) until it recognized everything, including RAID and 8GB of RAM, and, well, it was hard but rewarding, as I wasa overcoming every obstacle... Until I hit my face into a concrete wall, wich was, the real CPU upgrade.

So, even if I already had a multiprocessor CPU (the E6600) and it says so in the Device manager (ACPI Multiprocessor), after I swaped CPUs to a Quad Q9550, correctly recognized by the motherboard, I CANNOT restart windows as it says that NTOSKRNL.EXE is corrupted or missing.

Just to make sure, I switched CPUs again back to the E6600, and sure thing, it booted and runned wthout any problems...

So, what should I do in order to make windows recognize this new CPU? Try that Repair thing in the Windows install CD (the second repair option).

My problem is that reinstaling everything from scratch will take at least 2 or 3 days (not becasue of windows itself, but because all of the millions of tiny applications and major ones... Photoshop CS3 alone takes hours! Then Max, XSI... Fusion... Damn, too many of them!

[budz]

try doing a repair w/cd if that fails you're stuck with having to do a clean install of xp. are you sure your boot order is correct in the mobo bios?

[deadrats]

x264 is very good at using multiple cores, it scales almost linearly. But many encoders don't get much faster over 2 cores, xvid for example. If you are encoding multiple videos at the same time you can use more cores even if the encoders aren't well multi threaded.

the reason x264 scales so well is because the developers "cheated" with their multi threading implementation. what x264 does is cuts the video file into even parts corresponding to how many threads you tell it to launch, assigns a part to each core and then joins all the pieces back together. the problem is that the cutting and then joining of the parts results in reduced quality at the point of separation. as the number of threads increases (near as i can tell there is no limit to the number of threads you can tell it to launch, presumably the limit is equal to the number of frames in the file) the overall quality of the final encode decreases.

the proper way to multi thread an application is to have it launch a thread to handle reading the file, a thread to handle writing the output, a thread to handle the audio, a thread to demux, a thread to handle the video, a thread to allocate ram, a thread to free ram, a thread for the gui, a thread to mux, a thread to buffer portions of the file into ram, and a thread to keep track of all the other threads and a thread to handle cleanup (so that locks don't happen).

the problem is that coding an application in a multi threaded fashion properly is very time consuming and beyond the skills of most programmers.

this is why no professional level encoding app uses x264 for h264 encoding (you can't show me a single blu-ray dvd that was encoded with that codec) despite it being free, they all license properly coded, expensive H264 codecs, codecs that get their speed gains from the use of extensive SIMD use and not by butchering the source file.

[jg0001]

In regards to the original question ->
if the ONLY change is the CPU, then NO, you do not and should not bother with a re-install.

If you change the motherboard, then I would probably feel differently, though it's really not as big a deal as some might think.