Computer Crossroad?

I recently upgraded to a 1Ds MKII and the 17 meg files are a bit too much for my current system. I'm currently using a Core Duo X2 processor with 3 gigs of RAM. I'm considering a computer upgrade, but keeping in mind my budget I see my choices are to add memory or replace my motherboard/processor/​RAM.

If I upgrade just my memory I can max out at 8 gigs for about $120. If I go the motherboard/processor/​RAM route I can get into a Athelon II X4 640 for about $250 or a Phenom II X4 965 (Black Edition?) for about $300. I could also go a step up from there into a Phenom II X6 1055T for about $320. Each of these prices on new systems assumes 8 gigs RAM and each motherboard would be USB3 and SATA 6 compatable.

I have no way to measure the impact to my processing speed though and haven't a clue as to whether it's worth just adding RAM or replacing the boards. If it's the later, is there enough difference to warrent the extra cost of the X6? Here's the information I'm basing these upgrades on. I'm new enough to photography that I have a ton of things to buy, so saving this money would be extremely helpful. However, I don't want to be pennywise and pound foolish either. Any advice out there?

I would look into an Intel Sandy Bridge setup, it would be significantly faster and not much more. Here's a series of benchmarksbetween the x6 1055t and i5-2500K. The i5-2400 is about 7% slower than the 2500K.

If you're on a budget, I would get this combo and this ramfrom Newegg unless MC has a better deal for 8GB 1.5 volt DDR3. That puts you up at 327$.

Actually that SB build totals the same as the AMD hexacore build. If you can spend up to 327$ I would recommend the SB build for sure.

I'm not familiar with a Sandy Bridge setup, can you elaborate?

The benchmark site is great, but it's funny that a lot of the comparisons show the various configurations faster on some things, slower on others. Even comparing the Athlon X4 against the Phenom X6, the Athlon wins in quite a few comparisons. Not PS, but many others.

I think you may be looking at some of the benchmarks wrong -- some of them are 'higher is better', while others (like photoshop) are 'lower is better'. Even the best Athlon X4 wins no benchmarks against the Phenom X6 1055t.

Sandy Bridge is Intel's current, recently released core architecture. It has exceptional performance in basically all areas, but has limited overclocking opportunities for the non-enthusiast components.

What sort of Core 2 Duo do you have? If you have the time, do you mind searching up and downloading CPU-Z and giving us the exact model of your Core 2 Duo? It'd help me better give you PC upgrade advice.

As a 1Ds Mark II owner any Core2Duo is a bottleneck, and any ram you buy for it will be EoL'd DDR2. IMO it's not worth upgrading. Any Core2Quad you buy will be overpriced compared to a low-end Sandy Bridge or AMD offering.

Sp1207 wrote in post #11700183
As a 1Ds Mark II owner any Core2Duo is a bottleneck, and any ram you buy for it will be EoL'd DDR2. IMO it's not worth upgrading. Any Core2Quad you buy will be overpriced compared to a low-end Sandy Bridge or AMD offering.

Still a pretty small performance boost though between DDR2 and DDR3, so I wouldn't base a decision based on the RAM itself.

And there's no point going AMD if he has a 45nm C2D. That's why I asked for a CPU-Z test. A 65nm C2D to a PII would show a nice performance boost, whereas a 45nm C2D to PII would not.

r31ncarnat3d wrote in post #11700298
Still a pretty small performance boost though between DDR2 and DDR3, so I wouldn't base a decision based on the RAM itself.

And there's no point going AMD if he has a 45nm C2D. That's why I asked for a CPU-Z test. A 65nm C2D to a PII would show a nice performance boost, whereas a 45nm C2D to PII would not.

No, but any DDR2 purchased today is more expensive and unusable in any future builds, so it's not really a smart investment.

And that's not true. A Phenom II X4 is a decent upgrade from any C2D. It's only the 45nm C2Q that could match Phenom II X4s, and the Phenom IIs come in x6 flavors.

That said, it makes almost no sense to go to anything short of X6/Nahalem/Sandy Bridge form a Core2Duo, as anything less than that would be 'decent' upgrade, whereas SB/Nahalem would be significant.

http://www.tomshardwar​e.com …-Photoshop-CS-4,1387.html

This chart gives you some idea of the order of magnitude of speed improvement you can expect...

All new machines come with Win7-64 bit which recognizes and used more than 4gb of Ram which really makes the difference in Photoshop...(get a minimum of 6gb)

...and as a price comparison, you can get an HP refurb. with the i7-860/8gb Ram/1Tb HDD for $600...

I'm not a big fan of those Tom's charts.

1. No one edits photos by applying 6 filters.
2. Different filters multithread differently, most care much more about single-threaded performance than multicore like the ones they use.
3. They're missing the SB processors.

Most of what you are talking about is way over my head. I dabble in computers when I need to and have built my last two. But once built, I don't stay in touch with technology and end up relearning things as needed (like now).

If the advise is to replace, then I'm hoping to fall in a step or two behind latest and greatest and hit the sweet spot with respect to dollars saved and performance gained. I am looking for that sweet spot. Hopefully, my video card and hard drives are compatable.

I am running WIndows 7 64 bit full version, and can transfer the license if need be.

I really appreciate all of you taking the time to lend some advice.

Here are the screen dumps from CPU-Z. Hopefully this helps.

Sp1207 wrote in post #11700858
I'm not a big fan of those Tom's charts.

1. No one edits photos by applying 6 filters.
2. Different filters multithread differently, most care much more about single-threaded performance than multicore like the ones they use.
3. They're missing the SB processors.

OP didn't ask about SB (sandy bridge)...just AMDs

As for Tom's charts, they are comparitive not absolute criteria...
Here's another chart....
http://www.xbitlabs.co​m …mark-highend_7.html#sect0

and another
http://www.anandtech.c​om/bench/CPU/25

Jon,

I think right now the 'sweet spot' is probably going to be Intel's i5-2600k which goes for about $225 right now at places like Newegg. In that price range, nothing really comes close from AMD (or even the slightly older Intel's in that price range, for that matter) from the benches I've seen in Photoshop and Lightroom. If you can stomach that much $$$ for an upgrade, that's definitely your best bet!

This i5 is light years ahead of your Athlon X2 6000+....and you will feel like you are driving a Ferrari! I was using an even older Athlon X2 in one of my boxes before I upgraded to an i7 a year ago, and the difference was night and day. And these new i5's bench slightly higher (in LR and PS) than my i7 of last year.

If there's a convenient MicroCenter near where you can easily get to, they will typically offer this CPU for even less...just as a means to get you in the door. But for many (like me), there's no MC near where I live....so it's just easier to order it from the likes of Newegg and pay no sales tax (in your case)!

So basically you're looking at:
$225 for your i5-2600k cpu
$70-80 for 8gb of memory
$90-100 for a 1155 motherboard

Sometimes you can find a combo deal that will help you cut those costs a little, but those come and go. Didn't see any just now at Newegg.

Your 6600 video card looks fine to me for photo editing (128-bit, etc.)....so you likely won't need to upgrade here.

~Matt

Your bottleneck is definitely going to be that AMD x2 CPU. I recently upgraded from an AMD X2 6400, very similar to yours, to an Intel i5-760 quad-core, and the difference is incredible. I definitely recommend the CPU I got, or one similar.

Thanks guys for all the help so far. Reading through your suggestions and searching through the links, it looks like the best way for me to go is buying a Sandy Beach i5-2600K, which appears to be pretty new to the marketplace. I don't see them offered at Microcentre, is that because they are so new?

If I'm going to spend that much then I'll probably have to wait a few months till my tax return comes back. In the mean time I'll keep looking to find a combo deal if one pops up. Is there a step down from there worth considering? Or should I stick to this and wait it out? It's all subjective, which makes answering a question like this all the harder.

Even with the benchmarks, I still don't have a good handle on all these processor differences. But it does seem that the new egg $430 price is hard to beat if the processors that much better. Scott's suggestion in the post above would cost me pretty close to that, and appears to be a step down in processing so it seems like it's worth waiting.