q6600 or i7?

[Aszental]

Hey.

Well i have two options at the moment.

I'm running an e6600 with 6gig of ram and i'm finding that dual core really isn't cutting it... I want to move into a quadcore machine so that i can multi-task a little better.

My motherboard is a 965p-ds3 which basically only supports the q6600 quadcore.

I can either upgrade to that, or just build a whole new system based around the i7 chip.

So do you think its worth just going with the I& now? is the speed bump for photo work worth it for the i7?

Ty

[In2Photos]

I went i7 a few months ago when I upgraded from my single core AMD rig. I do not regret it one bit. Everything simply flies on this machine! The Q6600 means you can get more speed with less work right now though, whereas an i7 is a complete new build for the most part. So what is more important, the speed of the new machine (if so go i7) or the time and cost of the upgrade (if so go Q6600).

[Zepher]

Do you already have a decent second computer? If not, then I would suggest building a new i7 machine and keeping your current machine as is and use it as a secondary/backup machine.

i7 is soooooo much faster than a Q6600.

[binlerne]

If you have the money, definitely go i7. I'm posting on my own i7 build I just finished last night. :cool:

If you don't have money to upgrade your mb, ram and cpu together, you should look into another quad-core like the q9550.

[tim]

Hard to say how much more speed a Q6600 will get you. Google for benchmarks.

Q6600 = cheap option that's probably fast enough - it is for me and will be for a year or two
i7 = fast option

[enilm]

I think it depends on how often you update your computer. I kept my old system for about 3 years. It was an AMD x2 dual core. There's no way I was just going to upgrade to another AMD. I wasn't going for the intel e or q series either. Best thing that I did was get the new i7 because I know I won't be upgrading for at least another 2-3 years. If I were to want to upgrade earlier I know I'll at least have the board to support the new i7 and ddr3.

[ssabripo]

i7!!

[poloman]

I have a q6600 and like it.
There is a lot to be said for having a spare machine at your disposal. My video card died about a week ago. The symptoms were atypical for this kind of failure (cyclical crashing and rebooting). It took me a few hours to diagnose it. I also lost time cleaning the machine out and pulling and reseating memory cards. Fortunately, the motherboard has on board vga graphics that allowed me to work as the new video card was in transit.
If the timing had been different or if the problem had been more severe, I could have been in some trouble.

[Thalagyrt]

I've got a Q6600 running at 3.6 GHz... Pretty easy with the right tools. ;)

[nicksan]

Q6600 is probably good enough.
I used to have that proc. Good over clocker if you need to do so.
Great for multitasking...absolutely!

[Marloon]

so i just finished my i7 920 build... exporting 100 10MP pictures, wasnt all too fast. too about 4 minutes and something. it took quite a while. how did you get such high speeds of 2 minutes?

[Thalagyrt]

I pulled this graph and mirrored it from an article that's running on Slashdot... Right now the i7-920 is the best bang for the buck CPU there is on the market.

http://www.thalagyrt.com/files/value-cpu.gif

Green = AMD, Blue = Intel

[nphsbuckeye]

Wow, little difference rests between the 920 and 940, let alone the 965 for several times the price of the 920.

[In2Photos]

so i just finished my i7 920 build... exporting 100 10MP pictures, wasnt all too fast. too about 4 minutes and something. it took quite a while. how did you get such high speeds of 2 minutes?
I can export around 1 8MP image every second on my machine. So less than two minutes for 100 images. I have done nothing "extra" to my sytem to speed it up. What video card do you have? If Nvidia, there are some things that you need to check on for performance. See here for more info: http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=684747&highlight=Nvidia
I pulled this graph and mirrored it from an article that's running on Slashdot... Right now the i7-920 is the best bang for the buck CPU there is on the market.

Green = AMD, Blue = Intel
Is this stock speeds or based on the ability to OC?

[Thalagyrt]

Is this stock speeds or based on the ability to OC?

That's just based on stock speeds. Personally, I like my heavily overclocked Q6600, but there are people who don't want to mess around with voltages and in my case the voltage regulator circuit on the motherboard... ;)

[In2Photos]

That's just based on stock speeds. Personally, I like my heavily overclocked Q6600, but there are people who don't want to mess around with voltages and in my case the voltage regulator circuit on the motherboard... ;)
I figured as much since OCing depends a lot on other things besides just the CPU. Some will say that the value of certain CPUs can increase based on their ability to OC.

[sangosimo]

with image processing mhz will matter the most if you are comparing similar architectures. I would only go i7 if you are doing video stuff to take advantage of the newer sse4.1 instruction set.

q6600 is probably the best bang for buck quad and lga775 stuff is just cheaper than i7 stuff (ddr3 and motherboards). If you do get q6600 you should realize that your socket