New PC now or wait? Q9400 vs i7 920. Thinking out loud

My PC is starting to annoy me. If I render something large in Proshow Gold my CPU temp spikes and I get a constant loud annoying tone from the speaker until I reboot. It'll be overheating. It's an AMD X2 4800+, with stock cooler. It's mostly fast enough, but rending lots of RAWs can take some time, and i'd like it to be more responsive. I need to process about 30,000 RAW files in the next 4 months (22 weddings), plus make albums, render DVDs, etc. The bulk of the work is Feb and March next year.

I'm undecided whether I should get a high end Core2Quad now, a low end Core i7 now, or wait until Jan and get an i7 then. Benchmarks aren't conclusive about performance. According to Toms Hardware the Q9400 is about the same speed as the i920 in Photoshop tests (lots of filters), but the i920 is about twice as fast in the 3D rendering tests, and is twice to three times faster in the Xvid/Divx tests. My workload is 60% working with and batch converting RAW files, 30% making albums (PhotoJunction and Photoshop), and 10% rendering Proshow DVDs. My best guess is the 3D rendering is the best model for my main task, batch conversion, as on my dual core the hard drives barely tick over and the CPUs are max'd out, which tells me it's not disk limited.

I priced out the two systems, at my usual local retailer, even though the parts aren't quite available yet prices are there. NB I can't order from Newegg or outside New Zealand, they won't ship here.

Things like motherboard and video card I just picked at random, i'll do more research before I actually buy. Here's what I came up with:
- Intel Q9400, Intel G33 based board, 8GB Corsair RAM, a hard drive, Vista Business, Asus 9600GT 512MB video card, and a mid range CoolerMaster case: NZ$2070.
- Intel i920 (NZ$700 online), motherboard (guess $350 since can't actually find one), 6GB DDR3 1600 NZ$500, the rest the same: NZ$3250

Seems to me that the entry level i920 will cost about $1000 more than the Core2Quad machine. I don't really want to spend $3K on a PC though, that seems excessive, though I can afford it if I choose to. I don't want to use anything from the current PC, as it has some odd quirks that could be either power supply or motherboard related, plus I want a quieter case too. I think the i920 will be 50-100% faster for the types of tasks i'll do.

There are three other things to consider:
- If I wait until Jan will the price drop much?
- Will future i7 chips be a drop in replacement for the i920? If so I may be able to double performance again with an upgrade in 2 years. I've read they might be changing to another socket again before too long, even though the socket the i7 uses is new.
- The New Zealand dollar is REALLY weak right now. If I wait it might strengthen a little, making things cheaper. It might get worse too.

Thoughts are welcome!

Well for motherboard, I would get a P-series or X-series chipset, not the G-series if you go with a current chip.

New release chips don't drop in price that quickly usually. It may drop the price of the Q9400 though.

With Intel - you can't always say that a future i7 chip will be a drop in replacement - it may, it may not. One would think - with the memory controller on the i7 chip itself that it would increase the longevity of the motherboard, but I generally figure Intel will do something that will make it need a new board.

$3000 is $1700US approximately. I don't think I'd spend that much on a system either.

One thing to try is to get some Arctic Alumina thermal paste. Clean your CPU and heatsink of whatever thermal paste is currently on there. Alcohol pads work well for this. Then apply the Arctic Alumina and put the heatsink back on - blow any dust out of the heatsink - make sure the fan is turning well.

http://www.arcticsilve​r.com/arctic_alumina.h​tm

If it's overheating when full load it may throttle the speed down and cause lower performance. It's a cheap way to find out and I'd recommend the Arctic Alumina anyway for a new chip.

tim wrote in post #6671030
My PC is starting to annoy me. If I render something large in Proshow Gold my CPU temp spikes and I get a constant loud annoying tone from the speaker until I reboot. It'll be overheating. It's an AMD X2 4800+, with stock cooler. It's mostly fast enough, but rending lots of RAWs can take some time, and i'd like it to be more responsive. I need to process about 30,000 RAW files in the next 4 months (22 weddings), plus make albums, render DVDs, etc. The bulk of the work is Feb and March next year.

I'm undecided whether I should get a high end Core2Quad now, a low end Core i7 now, or wait until Jan and get an i7 then. Benchmarks aren't conclusive about performance. According to Toms Hardware the Q9400 is about the same speed as the i920 in Photoshop tests (lots of filters), but the i920 is about twice as fast in the 3D rendering tests, and is twice to three times faster in the Xvid/Divx tests. My workload is 60% working with and batch converting RAW files, 30% making albums (PhotoJunction and Photoshop), and 10% rendering Proshow DVDs. My best guess is the 3D rendering is the best model for my main task, batch conversion, as on my dual core the hard drives barely tick over and the CPUs are max'd out, which tells me it's not disk limited.

I priced out the two systems, at my usual local retailer, even though the parts aren't quite available yet prices are there. NB I can't order from Newegg or outside New Zealand, they won't ship here.

Things like motherboard and video card I just picked at random, i'll do more research before I actually buy. Here's what I came up with:
- Intel Q9400, Intel G33 based board, 8GB Corsair RAM, a hard drive, Vista Business, Asus 9600GT 512MB video card, and a mid range CoolerMaster case: NZ$2070.
- Intel i920 (NZ$700 online), motherboard (guess $350 since can't actually find one), 6GB DDR3 1600 NZ$500, the rest the same: NZ$3250

Seems to me that the entry level i920 will cost about $1000 more than the Core2Quad machine. I don't really want to spend $3K on a PC though, that seems excessive, though I can afford it if I choose to. I don't want to use anything from the current PC, as it has some odd quirks that could be either power supply or motherboard related, plus I want a quieter case too. I think the i920 will be 50-100% faster for the types of tasks i'll do.

There are three other things to consider:
- If I wait until Jan will the price drop much?
- Will future i7 chips be a drop in replacement for the i920? If so I may be able to double performance again with an upgrade in 2 years. I've read they might be changing to another socket again before too long, even though the socket the i7 uses is new.
- The New Zealand dollar is REALLY weak right now. If I wait it might strengthen a little, making things cheaper. It might get worse too.

Thoughts are welcome!

It's going to be expensive to go with an i7 for the foreseeable future. Motherboards are going to be more expensive than the actual CPU for a few months too. Prices will likely not drop more than 5% until after Christmas - maybe not even then. It's hard to predict the market, but history says prices will come down but not for at least 4-6 months then as supplies decrease prices will rise again.

Just about any motherboard from Asus, Gigabyte or Intel will be fine, particularly those above $150US. I would wait at least until Christmas to see what happens though. AMD is in a very bad situation with the i7 and all they can do is lower price to compete. I would wait to see if Intel lowers their prices to really rub out AMD - in the past they have, but they may also feel they have such an advantage they will just let AMD alone for now.

Ok maybe i7 will have to wait. I wonder if it's worth upgrading to a Q6600 system and overclocking it. A Q6600, an Asus P5Q motherboard, 8GB Kingston DDR2 1066MHz, and Vista Business is $1200. I'd also replace the fans in my PC to make it quieter, so another $100. Any thoughts about whether it's worth the bother? Alternately my PC isn't too bad, I can wait I just get impatient and the overheating's annoying.

I've already gotten some replacement heat transfer paste and reattached the stock cooler to the CPU, I don't think doing it again will help

tim wrote in post #6675141
Ok maybe i7 will have to wait. I wonder if it's worth upgrading to a Q6600 system and overclocking it. A Q6600, an Asus P5Q motherboard, 8GB Kingston DDR2 1066MHz, and Vista Business is $1200. I'd also replace the fans in my PC to make it quieter, so another $100. Any thoughts about whether it's worth the bother? Alternately my PC isn't too bad, I can wait I just get impatient and the overheating's annoying.

You could build a cheap Q6600 system now, then early next year get a new i7 system.

Then the Q600 would become a reliable back up system if needed, and you could completely ditch the old system that is sounding like it is becoming less and less reliable.

If I stick with XP and go with 4GB of RAM (more than enough for me) I could get a Q6600 for $780. That would double to quadruple my system speed and be a good short term upgrade. I can then wait until the i7 systems come down in price, sell the quad core system for a decent enough price as it'll still be pretty dang fast.

Can anyone recommend a motherboard for the Q6600? The list of available boards is here. Since i'm only planning on keeping it for 6 months I don't need a fancy one. I do want to have a go at overclocking though.

While i'm at it, how is this RAM? And can anyone recommend quiet fans for the system? Probably CPU cooler, and two case fans. I'll have to work out which ones are loudest and need to be replaced, but it could be the PSU fans that are loud. The cooling page is here.

Try this MB: http://www.pbtech.co.n​z/index.php?item=MBDAS​61236

Thanks Moppie. I just ordered:
- Q6600 (the more expensive CPUs didn't seem to give much extra performance)
- Asus P5Q SE/R (think this is the one you linked to - same specs at least)
- Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 7 (reviews well)
- Corsair DOMINATOR TWIN2X4096 2x2GB, DDR21066 (random choice)

Sweet, I built a machine for a mate a couple of months ago using the same CPU, board and ram, and it works very well and was very easy to put together.

I just hope this fixed the issues I have. The first is overheating, should be fine with that cooler. The other is after I turn the PC off I have to unplug the PC then plug it back in to get it to restart. If it's a motherboard issue this will fix it, but if it's a power supply i'll have to replace that.

I would replace the power supply as well, just to be sure.
Another $100 could save a lot of time and stress later on, especially if the old one pops and takes all the new bits with it.

I'll wait and see how it is, if it works reliably i'll keep it, if I have the same problem i'll get a new PS.

That's assuming the problems manifest the same way

Don't be cheap, buy the new PS

Let's see if there's anything wrong with the current PS first. The whole point of this upgrade is to do it on the cheap and save money for the big upgrade next year.

Does it make any difference if I have 800MHz DDR2 vs 1066MHz DDR2? Everything shipped but the RAM, I can buy DDR2-800 locally but the DDR2-1066 wouldn't be here until next week. I plan to overclock the CPU a little, but not much. What i've read suggests 800 should be fine.