Another 'which CPU do I want' thread, 7D editing.

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seedubb

Member
I've been editing HDV footage comfortably for a while, but having recently bought a 7D, it is definitely time for some long-overdue upgrades.

My CPU & Mobo are the main culprits, and I've been recommended an i5-760 with an Asus P7P55D-E Motherboard.

Does anyone have any experience with an i5-760 and 7D footage?

I am currently running all footage through Neoscene before getting to work in PPro CS5, all in Windows 7 64-bit. I also plan to match the 4GB RAM I have at the moment, but moving up to DDR3, adding another 4GB in some weeks.

I had my eyes on the i5-2500K but was told to steer clear due to teething problems. Would this be worth missing out on more power to avoid some issues that would surely be ironed out?

Any pointers/advice appreciated!
 
A budget would be nice... how much are willing to spend. Instead of an i5, I recommend the i7 950 which can be had for $200 at microcenter if there's one around you.
 
Apologies, an i5-760 near me is £160 which is about my budget limit for CPU as the other components will need to be bought at the same time.

i7-950 is £230 over here! Wonder why such a steep difference.

So I'm looking around £300 for CPU & Mobo,

Thanks.
 
You need sit back and ask yourself if spending a few hundred on a minor upgrade is worth it...you may be disappointed.

The i7-2600K is the best deal these days. It's designed to be OC'd and people are regularly getting 4Ghz+ on regular cooling.

I'm not sure what you're running now but if your budget is £300 and you plan on re-using your old RAM, it seems like a small upgrade which may not be worth it. Editing 1920x1080 h.264 is a *****. I run a dual quad core Xeon 3.0 with 24GB RAM and a GTX 470 and I still end up transcoding my AVCHD footage because it's just not smooth enough for larger projects.
 
OK, an i5-2500K is within budget for sure, I could stretch to an i7-2600K, but what kind of teething problems are people referring to with the Sandy Bridges? And how long does it usually take for these to be ironed out?

I'll not be re-using my RAM, as I'll have to upgrade to DDR3 to match the new motherboard. May as well get a the whole 8 gig together.

Could anyone recommend a motherboard for the i7-2600K?

Thanks,
 
ADK is currently designing editing systems with the i7-2600K and highly recommends it. You should be fine.

I personally like Asus boards. They make several models for that processor. Gigabyte is another brand I'd trust for quality.
 
I'm not sure what people mean by "teething problems". I can only assume it has to do with the fact that the new Sandy Bridge chipset was released less than a month ago so it's totally new....however, one must consider:

Intel has been doing this for a while.... It's not like they just started releasing CPU's. If Hyundai all of a sudden released a $90000 race car, I'd be weary of "teething problems". If Ferrari released a new race car this year, however, I wouldn't be so worried. Do you see my point?

All you need to do is google "sandy bridge benchmarks" or "2600k reviews" etc etc...

The motherboard you want would be a P67 chipset; not H67. The former allows OCing while the latter is "consumer geared".

Most brands on the market are good because...well...they have to be...it's a competitive market and the companies have to make good products to stay in business. Having said that, they're all made in Taiwan, but I digress.

Asus has always been good but you can't go wrong with most brands. Identify what you need and compare features and prices...One you're done that, READ REVIEWS on large sites such as Amazon or Newegg (popular in the USA).

Unless there's a specific manufacturer's defect somewhere, most motherboard will perform the same.


If you can hold on for 6-8 months, the Sandy Bridge 6-core monsters will come out later this year. Personally, that's what I'm going to get myself for Christmas 2011.
 
Thanks for the advice so far.

I've done more reading into the i7/i5's and decided to go for a Sandy Bridge, most likely the i7-2600k but now I am going to have to consider a new PSU into the budget, so that could sway choice of CPU.

An i7 Sandy Bridge, Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD3 and 8GB G.Skill RAM added in with my existing components - 2x1TB HDD 7200rpm, 1xDVD-RW, GeForce GT 240. What wattage PSU would anyone recommend, as I was told 750+ but on another site 410w, and receive varying results from PSU Calculators (none of which have sandy bridge options).

Now I need to decide whether to go for the H67 or P67 chipset, do I go for overclocking abilities or being able to utilize the Sandy Bridge's internal graphics processor? Bearing in mind I have no OC experience, and recently bought a GeForce GT 240, someone sway me! I'm leaning toward the P67 for OC I guess...
 
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seedubb said:
Now I need to decide whether to go for the H67 or P67 chipset, do I go for overclocking abilities or being able to utilize the Sandy Bridge's internal graphics processor? Bearing in mind I have no OC experience, and recently bought a GeForce GT 240, someone sway me! I'm leaning toward the P67 for OC I guess...
Click to expand...

You'll want a p67 or else you will have wasted the extra money on the i7 2600K. You cannot overclock on a h67 board.

You will also be unable to use the on-chip GPU on the 2600K with a p67 board. It's a small tradeoff to make for being able to hit 4.5ghz
 
-The 2600k is supposed to be overclocked...it's designed for it. Buying that chip and not OCing it is pointless; you're throwing away money.

-You'll want the P67 board.

-As far as power supply is concerned, the graphics card is usually the biggest component when taking PSU requirements into consideration. You should be fine with a 600+ and, honestly, they're not that expensive. Some good brands include: Antec, Enermax, Coolermaster, OCZ, Corsair, Thermaltake.

Keep in mind that if you get a bare minimum PSU today (say, 600w) and decide to upgrade your CPU, Graphics card, or add more hard drives in the future, you may need to get a new PSU. Unlike CPU's, motherboards, and most other components, power supplies go through fewer changes. If you buy, for example, a 800-1kw PSU today, you won't have to worry about upgrading it for a long time.
 
Phil1076 said:
Keep in mind that if you get a bare minimum PSU today (say, 600w) and decide to upgrade your CPU, Graphics card, or add more hard drives in the future, you may need to get a new PSU. Unlike CPU's, motherboards, and most other components, power supplies go through fewer changes. If you buy, for example, a 800-1kw PSU today, you won't have to worry about upgrading it for a long time.
Click to expand...

I would disagree with this assessment. In the past 5 years of upgrading my PC, the power requirements have gone down not up. What I would do is spring for a power supply that is efficent. Anything with an 80 Plus rating will deliver.

Each CPU intel releases, the TDP goes down. Just about every GPU that Nvidia/Ati releases has a lower TDP. As chips are manufactured into smaller dies, and most are just overclocked laptop parts, the wattage requirements will go down.

Not all power supplies are equal though. While the watage rating is a Peak rating, you'll want to look at a site like HardOCP which reviews power supplies and makes sure that the DC supplied at those loads remains constant. A quality power supply will last multiple PCs. 1000Watts is over kill for any editing PC, no matter how many drives you can shove into a full tower ATX case.

Newegg's power supply calculator seems to be pretty inflated, and rightfully so. They want to sell you the biggest, most expensive power supply possible.
 
i7-2600K is now out of stock for another 10 days, but I can pick up an i5-2500K this afternoon...

Is hyper-threading something I am going to be dramatically missing out on when it comes to h264 editing? Bearing in mind, I'm upgrading from an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ so any upgrade is going to be an improvement.

Would an overclocked i5-2600K be reaching stock i7 speed?

Sorry for all the questions, and thanks for all the help
 
However, the i7-2600 is in stock and cheaper of course than the 2600K. As I have no experience in overclocking, I'm not likely to start experimenting with it straight away and so maybe I will be able to save a little cash, upgrade quicker, and still make use of Hyper-Threading when working with CS5?

Note, I am still adding questions marks after everything in case I am missing something obvious!
 
Now, cooling is something again I have no experience with.

What specifics am I looking for, Does it just have to be the same socket, 1155, as the CPU?
And thermal paste, I read it's sometimes substituted for a padded layer under the cooler, but how common is this and is one option better than the other?

Now I'm this close to buying, how tricky is a mobo, psu, cpu & fan installation going to be for someone who's only installed drives, ram and gpu before?

[EDIT] Or do all i5/i7's come with stock cooling as standard? Some sites list heat sink as an included accessory and some don't, and (sorry) do heat sinks include the fan?
 
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For rendering video, the hyperthreading makes about a 30% difference. I'd say it would be worth the wait to buy the i7 over the i5, if video is your main intent for this PC. Imagine how much time you save knocking 30% off a 24 hour render.

Overclocking is dead simple on the i7-2600K. It's a matter of setting a multiplier number in a piece of software you install in Windows now. It has a GUI, and some boards will even auto overclock, gaining you more performance. I've heard that 4.3ghz is fairly easy with stock cooling.

In terms of trickyness of doing the install yourself, If you're getting into the system and swaping out components, it's not going to be much more difficult putting it together. Just make sure that you mount the board to the case properly, and that you don't short out the back of the motherboard to the metal case. After that it's pretty easy to get the rest going.

When it comes to aftermarket cooling you need to make sure that you can mount it to the 1155 socket holes. Other coolers won't mount to the board properly.
 
Thanks Demistate, I'm very almost there now then.

I have an i7-2600K in the shopping basket, along with the Intel DP67DE board (only P67 board left in stock) and Corsair 650W TX. 2x4GB Corsair 1333MHz RAM on the way too, just for now, will grab another 4GB next month.

Here I go!
 
OK, I have all components here and ready for the install. I'm a little concerned with being grounded before I get to work though. Everything I read online seems to contradict what I read somewhere else.

I know, I should have bought an ESD wrist band, so now I'm looking at grounding myself through touching my PC Case every so often. Some sites say to leave the PSU plugged in (powered off) and touch the case, some say it should never be plugged in while you're in there, power or no power.

I intend to set my PC on a tiled table, and not move it or walk across carpet throughout the whole procedure. What other household means of grounding yourself is there? Light fittings, taps etc...

I intend on removing all existing components - Then in the following order installing PSU, build Mobo & CPU & Fan out of case, install Mobo, CPU & Fan, install RAM, install GPU. Should I wait until everything is in there before I go connecting all power cables?

Confused yet eager!

Thanks,
 
Well, I guess you'll need to change your motherboard as current Sandy Bridge motherboards have problems.

While doing so, change it to a H one instead of P. While nVidia CUDA is the way to for now, Sandy Bridge's internal Media Engine will probably be the next best thing.
Given it's an Intel feature not to mention it's an built-in feature of the processor, I think it'll be utilized rather soon. This, however, is nothing but a speculation but it's better to spend a few more bucks now than being sorry later.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3922/intels-sandy-bridge-architecture-exposed/6
 
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