Q6600 or intel i7

[dracore]

may seem like a stupid question but im thinking of updrading to th I7 chip and im just woundering how much faster are the I7 chips compare to the quad core i have at the momment Q6600

i do alot with bluray and encoding!

any ideas welcome

[Atak_Snajpera]

around 30%

[rtjnyoface]

I have the i7 920. Beautiful... :).

[dracore]

sounds good then just wanted a faster cpu for the god prog that is ripbot :thanks:

[Shinigami-Sama]

30-40% clock per clock...
right now I have my my i7 920 @ 3.6ghz
after summer I'll and bump it to 4ghz, but I need to remount the heatsink... think I put to much paste on it

[Chengbin]

If you use x264, I believe Dark Shikari said that x264 with i7 is 40% faster than Conroe clock for clock. Since the Q6600 is 2.4Ghz and the i7-920 is 2.66Ghz, that around a 50% boost. Also, if your Q6600 is under a 32 bit OS, you'll get another 10% boost by using 64 bit x264 and avisynth.

Personally I wouldn't upgrade if I were you. The Q6600 is still quite a decent CPU in today's standards. When you upgrade, you have to upgrade your motherboard to an X58, which is like $250. If you don't have DDR3 RAM, you gotta shell out another $100 for that. That makes the upgrading cost to $600-650+tax.

[Dark Shikari]

If you use x264, I believe Dark Shikari said that x264 with i7 is 40% faster than Conroe clock for clock.Penryn, not Conroe, AFAIK.

[burfadel]

I personally wouldn't bother with the Core i7, I'd wait for the mainstream Core i5. The Core i5 has dual channel RAM instead of triple channel RAM, which doesn't really provide much benefit over dual channel RAM. Its a bit hard to compare as there is no dual channel mode in the Core i7. The Core i5 will also have architectural improvements, from what information you can fine it seems it will be faster per clock again than the current Core i7's. It will be a fair bit of a premium to pay by the time you consider the whole computer, not just the CPU itself. You need a new motherboard, the CPU, DDR3 RAM! (and a good speed DDR3, the slower more common DDR3 can be slower than DDR2).

For the moment at least, you'd probably be much better off buying a Q9550 and selling your q6600. This should be a fairly cheap transition, the most you may need to do is update your bios! Then, a few of months after the Core i5 comes out you can consider a proper upgrade then, since the prices will be more reasonable. There should also be some chipset improvements which may give you additional system performance over the current x58. Just to note, a core i5 uses a different incompatible socket to the core i7.

[Chengbin]

I forgot to add. I wouldn't bother buying another CPU unless it is significantly faster (like at least 200%) than my current CPU.

I got my first computer in grade 2, it was an AMD at 950MHz (I don't know the model). I went to a P4 @ 2.8Ghz 3 years later (it is roughly 3x faster when I did the test with WMV encoding). Then I went to a Q6600 3 years later, and I only did tests for x264 comparing them, and the Q6600 was around 6-7x faster. (P4s aren't that slow for other benchmarks, but it just has ridiculously slow floating point units that makes it slow for jobs like encoding).

[Sharktooth]

usually encoding tasks do not require strong FP units at all...

[IgorC]

around 30%
And your statements are based on ... ???

It depends on settings _strongly_.

On some near average settings i7 920 is 35,5% faster than Q9550 and 60% faster than Q6600.
http://www.fcenter.ru/forprint.shtml?online/articles/hardware/processors/25347

http://www.fcenter.ru/img/article/CPU/Core_i7/127195.png

[burfadel]

The Core i7 should be due for a new stepping before the end of the year...

[Chengbin]

And your statements are based on ... ???

It depends on settings _strongly_.

On some near average settings i7 920 is 35,5% faster than Q9550 and 60% faster than Q6600.
http://www.fcenter.ru/forprint.shtml?online/articles/hardware/processors/25347

http://www.fcenter.ru/img/article/CPU/Core_i7/127195.png

Where is Q6600??

BTW, r988 doesn't have Nehalem optimizations yet. If they used a more recent x264 for their testing, the differences are even larger.

[dracore]

got the i7 excellent chip a must have for any decent encoders
saved me alot of time now and made my work load alot faster


:thanks:

[smileBhappy]

you will see a noticable improvement with an i7 (especially for overlocking if your into that) but its all down to if you think the extra $$$ is worth it

[St Devious]

The Core i5 will also have architectural improvements, from what information you can fine it seems it will be faster per clock again than the current Core i7's.

Where did you read that ?

I don't think that's true.

[Atak_Snajpera]

Core i5 will be nothing more than castrated i7

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Nope. I read they have some improvements at least. For example the single-threading performance was improved by further improving the "Turbo Boost" technology.
But in contrast to the Core i7, the Core i5 doesn't use "QuickPath Interconnect". It uses the "Direct Media Interface" instead.

Also I read that some of the "faster" Core i5's will be sold under the "Core i7" brand. Because Intel says the marketing name should represent the performance, not the micro-architecture :rolleyes:

[St Devious]

Nope. I read they have some improvements at least. For example the single-threading performance was improved by further improving the "Turbo Boost" technology.

so that is only a kind of overclock. no changes to architecture though, right ?

Also I read that some of the "faster" Core i5's will be sold under the "Core i7" brand. Because Intel says the marketing name should represent the performance, not the micro-architecture :rolleyes:

that's true

[LoRd_MuldeR]

so that is only a kind of overclock. no changes to architecture though, right ?

As far as I understood there is a change that makes the "automated overclock" more effective. Did not see any benchmarks yet though.

Also the different interface (no more QuickPath) is an architectural change, isn't it ???

[St Devious]

As far as I understood there is a change that makes the "automated overclock" more effective. Did not see any benchmarks yet though.

yes Lynnfield has a better implementation of Turbo feature. It allows a higher overclock than Bloomfield.

Also the different interface (no more QuickPath) is an architectural change, isn't it ???

Depends on how you look at it. QPI and DMI are just busses that connect the something to something.

Intel's x58 platform also has DMI. Here QPI connects the CPU to the X58 chipset that provides 36 PCI-E 2.0 lanes. DMI is a bus that connects intel's X58 chipset to the ICHR10 Input Output hub responsible for providing SATA, LAN and USB connectivity. DMI is actually very slow but enough bandwidth for these devices.

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/intel/lynnfield/x58.jpg

DMI only provides about 2-4 GB/s of bandwidth while QPI does about 26 GB/s.

With the upcoming Core i5 or the Lynnfield platform, what Intel has done is integrate 16 PCI-E 2.0 lanes onto the CPU. Now there is no need for the X58 chipset and the CPU connects directly through DMI to the I/O HUB called the P55 PCH.

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/intel/nehalem/part3/lynnfield.png

[LoRd_MuldeR]

So Core i5 can only support one single PCIe 16x slot with its built-in PCIe controller, while Core i7 can support two PCIe 16x slots and still has 4 lanes free for the other PCIe slots.

On the other hand: If you only need one PCIe 16x slot (no SLI graphics), the built-in PCIe controller may be even faster, because we don't need to go all the way through the X58 chip...

[St Devious]

So Core i5 can only support one single PCIe 16x slot with its built-in PCIe controller, while Core i7 can support two PCIe 16x slots and still has 4 lanes free for the other PCIe slots.

yes. You can still have Crossfire or SLI but the PCI-E 2.0 slots will be in x8/x8 config then.

On the other hand: If you only need one PCIe 16x slot (no SLI graphics), the built-in PCIe controller may be even faster, because we don't need to go all the way through the X58 chip...

maybe, don't think this will give any additional performance.

[smileBhappy]

So Core i5 can only support one single PCIe 16x slot with its built-in PCIe controller, while Core i7 can support two PCIe 16x slots and still has 4 lanes free for the other PCIe slots.

But its all down to price at the end of the day, what you need and what you can afford. i7's being more expensive than i5's obviously.