My Q6600 is a little slow - i7 or wait?

About a year ago I upgraded from an old Athlon X2 to a Q6600, good cooler and RAM, and Asus motherboard. It was much faster, but since then i've started using the 18MP 7D, and between clicking on an image in ACR and seeing the rendered image it takes a second to render, with settings. It's just a little annoying.

An i7 upgrade isn't too expensive, but I wonder if it's worth holding off for the next iteration of the CPU. Any ideas when this might happen? Can anyone who uses Lightroom or Bridge comment on real world performance increases from Q6600 to i7 920 (or similar)?

I could try overclocking again, but the performance gains of 10-15% didn't seem worth the bother when I tried it last time.

I'd go for it Tim. The new i7s are truly a "quad core".

I can't compare the performance from a Q series to an i7 as I came from an Athlon 3000+. I also only use a 1DMKII and a 30D. In LR I render 1:1 previews at about 1 per second (same with exports). I render during import so as soon as I begin working I have full previews. I love how fast the i7 system is.

That being said, are you considering an i7-860 or i7-9xx?

If you upgrade to i7 900, you'll get a chance to use six and eight core processors within two years, not sure if the i7 800 line will have the same.

Performance wise, it'll be a decent jump (especially with overclocking), but it won't be a 200-500% increase (or much much more in the case above). Think the q6600 is rated for 45gflop while i7 920 is rated for 75. So if you overclocked before, the performance gains just won't be that great. Unless you absolutely need the extra speed now, might as well wait another year for the six core processors (12 thread), that will definitely be worth the upgrade.

I was considering the i7 920. A six core i7 chip would definitely be worthwhile, the i7 is on the borderline really. Maybe i'll overclock this chip a little.

Productivity is important though, I have a dozen weddings in the next two months and I spend far more time behind the computer than behind the camera.

tim wrote in post #9280257
I was considering the i7 920. A six core i7 chip would definitely be worthwhile, the i7 is on the borderline really. Maybe i'll overclock this chip a little.

Productivity is important though, I have a dozen weddings in the next two months and I spend far more time behind the computer than behind the camera.

You could always OC the i7 as well. Guys are getting over 4GHz easily with air cooling.

In2Photos wrote in post #9280278
You could always OC the i7 as well. Guys are getting over 4GHz easily with air cooling.

+1 on this. Just watch the case, you'll need a lot of air flowing, and it'll be quite the heater during winter (and summer). My (non-OCed) system idles around 200W (with 2408WFP monitor, three internal hdd and three external, damn 4850 graphics card), peaks at maybe 350W full load (only way to do that for me is to render previews in LR2 AND play far cry 2). Since my case has only a front and rear fan (and PSU fan, but it's a small 50-60mm fan), temps get pretty high, gpu idles at almost 70, cpu idles around 40, and load temps are 90/60... You'll have to get some nice fans if your case doesn't have them yet.

The i7 overclocks automatically too, as well as the manual stuf. For some reason my Q6600 idles at about 45C on a warm day, probably because I was the one who put the heatsink and fan on!

I agree with the others on overclocking. You can overclock the 920 w/o a hiccup.

Render a 7D file in 1 second?!! Wow. The render time for a 5D Mark II RAW file on my Powerbook G4 is 1.5-2 minutes. I hope that new iMac I just bought brings joyous tidings.

What I mean is if I open half a dozen images in ACR, then click on one, it takes 0.5 - 1 seconds until it shows the image complete with any adjustments already made using the sliders. It's just an annoying lag, I can live with it if I have to.

Have you ever tried batching from LR Tim? Batching in LR on a i7 is a dream. Real fast I tell ya.

I've batched from ACR, i'm doing it right now, it takes about two seconds per 7D image. I'm more interested in interactive speed, as batching can happen in the background.

I see. You'll be impressed with the i7 then.

Here's my 2 cents (as usual right)

I got myself an i7-920 (Acer M7720-492 if not mistaken)
266Ghz (8 cores) (NO-Overclock. Don't know how w/ this motherboard)
6GB Ram
74G WD Raptor (for LR catalog)
640G Main HD w/ 20G for Camera Raw Cache
Win Vista 64 Home Premium (Just got the Win7 upgrade in the mail. Have not started to the upgrade yet)

I'm LOVING it...

Exports 400+ 18MP RAW image to full JPG w/ 240ppi in ~15mins. (that's ~2mins per picture)

Rendering of images when I use LR is also quick ~1sec for the image to be available for editing and the Sliders are very responsive as well. No more lags which annoys the heck out of me compared to my old Core Duo 1.8Gz machine

BTW : What programs do you guys use to check temperature and power utilisation etc? I'm new into this Windows Stuffs. (I'm a linux guy who uses Windows for photography only)

PS : Web surfing is also _very_ fast which is a surprise to me actually.