thoughts on upgrade options

[deadrats]

hello out there,

as the title suggests, i am contemplating an upgrade but find that i can't make up my mind which way to go, it seems that i can talk myself into any of the options i will details for a number of different reasons that i will also go into below. as such i would like some feedback on what your thoughts are.

relevant current hardware:

phenom 9500
4 gigs ddr2 667
msi motherboard (does not support phenom 2, does support up to 8 gigs ddr2 1066)

upgrade options:

1) keep motherboard, upgrade to black edition 9850 (fastest cpu supported), crank up the multiplier, upgrade to 8 gigs ddr2 1066

considerations: 9850 has a stock clock speed of 2.5ghz can probably be o/c'd to 2.8 stable with no voltage tweaks, probably won't result in more than a 25% bump in performance compared to current build, only positive is that this is the cheapest upgrade option by far (looking at about $200 in upgrades).

2) start over, go with new phenom 2 940 + ddr2 1066 + new motherboard

considerations: would give a substantial performance boost over current build, the 940 just came down in price already, good performance return on cost (with 4 gigs of ram, would probably end up spending about $400). only supports SSE4a, not SSE4.1 (the SSE4 standard, when applications say SSE4 optimized they really mean SSE4.1), lack of SSE4.1 support means that in applications that make proper use of SSE4.1 optimizations, such as tmpgenc (my go to encoding app) and avidemux (another application i frequently use) it is giving up up to 30% performance to SSE4.1 capable intel cpu's. also am2+ is a dead socket, no future upgrade path.

3) start over, go with q9550 + ddr2 1066 + new motherboard (the option i am currently leaning towards)

considerations: solid value, every review site i have seen puts this fairly close performance-wise to i7 920, supports SSE4.1, which as i mentioned above gives solid performance gains versus not using it. costs about the same as the i7 920 but supporting motherboards are significantly cheaper (in the $100 range). this path would cost me in the region of $500 for cpu + mb + ram.

4) start over, go with core i7 920 + ddr3 + new motherboard (on the surface a tempting option)

considerations (hold onto your hats): supporting motherboards cost an arm and a leg (in the $300-$500 range), 3 gig ddr3 kits are reasonably priced but numerous reviews show that this platform doesn't really start spreading it's wings until you go with 6 gig and 12 gig of ram; the kits cost $300 and up, excellent all around performer, ability to keep 8 threads in flight at the same time should result in the smoothest computing experience and excellent multi-tasking. intel engineers interviewed have said that debate still continues internally as to whether or not the l2 cache is too small, core i7 does support macro fusion (the ability of the intel cpu's to "fuse" 2 instructions together and execute them at the same time) in 64 bit mode, core 2 based cpu's only supported feature in 32 bit mode. dead socket and platform, little to no upgrade options, qpi is dead interface, tri-channel ddr3 also dead option, intel has already announced core i5 which will use dual channel ddr3 (not compatible with tri-channel), dmi (replaces qpi), new socket (1160 instead of 1366) and most importantly integrated pci-e controller. early benchmarks with engineering sample cpu's, engineering sample motherboards and beta drivers show a core i5 running at 2.13ghz as having similar performance to core i7 920 running at 2.66 ghz. rumors of an 8 core 16 thread monster that will most likely be core i5 based. no matter which way you slice it looks like core i7 will have a short life span.

core i5 benchmarks:

http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-7237-view-Intel-Core-i5-Lynnfield-benchmark.html

some more considerations: not mentioned above is amd's rumored 6 core phenom 2 based cpu that is supposedly going to be released in second half of 2009, also intel is rumored to already have engineering samples of the post-i5 cpu which has only 2 cores, HT and most importantly an integrated gpu. now some may say that a gpu integrated into the cpu die probably won't give better performance than a descrete graphics card and they would be right but that is not the point of the integrated gpu.

gpu's in general are floating point monsters, capable of floating point performance a general purpose cpu can only dream of. when we consider that since the P4 the vpu (vector point unit, also known as the SIMD unit) and the fpu have been integrated into a hybrid vpu/fpu, when we consider that both microsoft and amd in developer documentation suggest that fpu math is deprecated and advise that all floating point math be done via SSE and when we consider the increasingly greater role gpu's have been playing in general purpose computing (such as folding@home, scientific and business apps via CUDA) as well as the goal of opencl, it looks to me like the integrated gpu slated to be included in upcoming intel and amd cpu's is less targeted at the gaming crowd and more targeted at the general computing crowd, particularly those that use applications that make extensive use of floating point operations.

one last consideration: if i was to go with option 1 and add a 10k rpm raptor as the hdd my OS resides on, a pretty good hard drive controller card (i have 4 sata hdds that use the motherboards sata controller) and maybe a high performance nic (one that offloads tcp ip processing from the processor to the nic, typically used in servers) i think i would get multitasking capabilities comparable to option 4 though not the pure speed in any one application.

well, there you have it. part of me is loath to spend money on any of the above options as they all look like they will be yesterday's news inside of 6 months and quite frankly the core i5 looks like a compelling platform to wait for, but i do alot of video editing and transcoding and the performance boost would be quite welcome.

so what do you guys think, if you were in my shoes which way would you be leaning?

[INFRATOM]

The technical stuff you went through means a computer over $3000 + What do you want that computer to do? A $600 to $800 computer can re-encode a 2 hour movie in 53 minutes, an i7 core could do it in 20 minutes but at a cost of $1000 more. Bells and whistles would cost extra $$.

[deadrats]

The technical stuff you went through means a computer over $3000 + What do you want that computer to do? A $600 to $800 computer can re-encode a 2 hour movie in 53 minutes, an i7 core could do it in 20 minutes but at a cost of $1000 more. Bells and whistles would cost extra $$.

$3000? no where near, already have:

phenom 9500
msi motherboard
4 gigs ddr2 667
3 500 gig hdd's and 1 640 gig hdd, all sata
audigy sound card
geforce 7900 gt oc

74 gig 10k rpm hdd costs about $100, sata controller card is about $150, 8 gigs of ddr2 1066 is about $140 and a phenom 9850 is about $140, that's about $560 worth of upgrades.

the q9550 is about $280, an intel motherboard that supports it is about $100 and the ram i already mentioned.

as for encoding times, my current setup can do faster than real time 720x480 mpeg-2/ac3 encodes/transcodes, but i rarely do those, i mostly do 1080p/720p h264 encodes with either lcpm or ac3 audio, even a core i7 965 can't do real time 1080p h264 encodes, at least not at any acceptable bit rates.

my setup takes anywhere from 4 hours to 10 hours to encode/transcode a movie, depending on running time of movie, whether i use divx or h264, and whether the target resolution is 720p or 1080p. i would like to cut those times in half (if possible) at a reasonably price; obviously i could spend 10 grand and buy a pro-level hardware encoding card that does all the encoding in hardware.

i'm just having a hard time deciding...

[redwudz]

I just replaced a Phenom 9500 with a Phenom II 920, OC'd to 3.3Ghz. Too bad your MB wasn't AM2+. https://forum.videohelp.com/topic362953.html

Presently I would recommend a Intel quad CPU over a Phenom if you have to replace the MB anyway. I have a Q9300 in one of my computers, also OC'd to 3.3Ghz, using DDR2 1200 RAM. Both systems run circles around my AMD 9500, which is one of the oldest Phenoms. The Phenom II was also much easier to OC than the Intel quad or the older Phenom.

Just my opinion, but the i7 is a bit too new and too expensive to set up at present. There are performance gains over the existing quads, but I'll wait a bit longer. Intel has mentioned bringing out a lower priced i7 line this spring, so that's another option. A overclocked Q9550 with DDR2 1066 or DDR2 1200 RAM would be plenty fast. I'd also recommend the Gigabyte MBs, never had a problem with them.

[budz]

As already mentioned get a Intel Quad. My suggestion is get a Q9550 with a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P or UD3R. Those 2 model motherboards are the most popular for overclocking as it has many bios options to choose when overclocking Intel Core2Duo & Quad core cpu's.

The Q9550 price has dropped in the last week. Or a Q9400 would good as well but the Q9550 overclocks better if you're into overclocking.

[deadrats]

I just replaced a Phenom 9500 with a Phenom II 920, OC'd to 3.3Ghz. Too bad your MB wasn't AM2+. https://forum.videohelp.com/topic362953.html

Presently I would recommend a Intel quad CPU over a Phenom if you have to replace the MB anyway. I have a Q9300 in one of my computers, also OC'd to 3.3Ghz, using DDR2 1200 RAM. Both systems run circles around my AMD 9500, which is one of the oldest Phenoms. The Phenom II was also much easier to OC than the Intel quad or the older Phenom.

Just my opinion, but the i7 is a bit too new and too expensive to set up at present. There are performance gains over the existing quads, but I'll wait a bit longer. Intel has mentioned bringing out a lower priced i7 line this spring, so that's another option. A overclocked Q9550 with DDR2 1066 or DDR2 1200 RAM would be plenty fast. I'd also recommend the Gigabyte MBs, never had a problem with them.

actually my motherboard is am2+, specifically this one:

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K9A2_CF-F_V2&class=mb

but near as i can tell it doesn't "officially" support the phenom 2 (if it did i would jump all over it now that the 940 is about $230), and from what i hear amd itself has only given the thumbs up as far as phenom 2 support on am2+ motherboards to only 3 motherboards, all high end models.

i'm a bit perplexed by your recommendation of going with the q9300 over the phenom 2, from the benchmarks you posted it seems like the phenom 2 is slightly faster than the q9300 in your encode test.

oh, and what was the resolution of the test encode?

[budz]

The Intel Q9400, Q9550 will run circles around any AMD Quad core cpu.

[Soopafresh]

You'd need the high end I7-965 in order to perform significantly better than the Q9550. Big price difference between the two.

[redwudz]

I have a fairly cheap MB in the AMD Phenom computer, a Micro-ATX Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H, similar to this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128360

But the MB you linked does show support for Phenom II CPUs. It lists all the X4 models in the CPU list, though you likely do have to update the BIOS. I opted for the 920, partially because of price and secondly because the computer is a HTPC and doesn't need a lot of performance. I did update the BIOS. All it needed for a OC was to raise the FSB to 236Mhz. Plays back Blu-ray with no problems using the on-board video.

Graysky's benchmark that I used is for a 720P (1280 X 720) X264 encode. http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=520 If you look here, there are the results of my Phenom 9500: https://forum.videohelp.com/topic347859.html#1825901

But I normally do Blu-ray to MKV encodes. I haven't tried one on the Phenom computer, but with the Intel it takes about six hours.

Those benchmarks don't mean a lot as the RAM on both computers needs a bit of fine tuning for optimum performance. The 9300 should be a bit faster as it uses DDR2 1200 RAM and the Phenom uses DDR2 1066.

But the Phenom PC's RAM is locked to about 944Mhz. If I OC the RAM, it should run a bit faster. The Intel RAM is running at 880Mhz instead of 1200Mhz, so it needs quite a bit of adjustments. But the process of OCing RAM results in a lot of BSODs and restarts, and I haven't taken the time to work with the settings because it's working fairly well at present. (And I'm lazy. )

[deadrats]

But the MB you linked does show support for Phenom II CPUs.

actually, no it doesn't. but after looking around msi's site a bit i did find links to beta bios updates that do add support for phenom 2 processors, only problem is that the update can only be run from a 32 bit OS, it refuses to run under XP 64, bummer.

if i can figure out how to run the update then this mb will support a phenom 2 940 and for $235 + another $70 for some ddr2 1066 i could end up with a really nice upgrade.

so, anyone have any ideas on how to get the bios update to run under XP 64?

[redwudz]

I had missed the part about XP64. That could be a problem. From what I've seen 64bit OS's seem to lag behind on OS updates and drivers. I still have a copy of XP64, but gave up on it quite a while back because of driver problems.

If that's the situation, then you may be better off considering a MB/RAM/CPU upgrade to a Intel system.

[deadrats]

I had missed the part about XP64. That could be a problem. From what I've seen 64bit OS's seem to lag behind on OS updates and drivers. I still have a copy of XP64, but gave up on it quite a while back because of driver problems.

If that's the situation, then you may be better off considering a MB/RAM/CPU upgrade to a Intel system.

ok, since you have both processors you are probably the best to answer this question: knowing what you know about both the phenom 2 920 and the q9300, if you were starting with a clean slate which would you choose and why.

edit: this adds a whole new wrinkle to the equation:

http://www.microcenter.com/storefronts/intel/nov_promo.html

a core i7 920 for $230!!! now i really don't know what to do.

[rallynavvie]

I want to see what uses all that memory

[redwudz]

If you want 'cutting edge', then the i7 setup is very good. But still overpriced at present to my way of thinking. A OC'd Q9550 would likely to be it's equal and for a lot lower price. IMO.

I selected the Q9300 over the older Q6600 because it's a lower power chip and so far, it has done all I wanted. I didn't choose the faster low power versions as I didn't want to expend the extra money. I wasn't planning on OCing the Q9300 as it was a economy setup.

The OCZ RAM was with a rebate, as was the motherboard. But it did overclock fairly well, and still runs reasonable temperatures. Even with the case and PS (Also rebated), the whole setup ran about $650. A i7 with MB and RAM would cost a lot more that I was prepared to spend. Maybe next year.

The XP Phenom II was to help out with HD playback in my HTPC computer. I rarely encode with it. I moved a BD ROM drive over to it along with the CPU upgrade. Since I already had a compatible AM2+ motherboard and good RAM, the only cost there was the CPU. I was surprised that it OC'd as well as it did, so I think I got good value for the price.

Anyway, that was my reasoning. Your situation may be different. Intel has hinted that more i7 CPU models will be released this spring, and by then the prices of compatible MB, RAM and CPU's may drop. And you will probably also see a price drop in the Q9XXX series.

EDIT: BTW, I'm no expert on the i7 platform, but AFAIK, the three RAM modules are the next step beyond dual channel memory.