Is I7 920 more stable than I7 2600K?

Amadou

Amadou

Carbonite Member
I tried two systems with Premiere. When playing back the timeline, the I7 920 would play back all the way to the end of a 2 hours project. The I7 2600K would crash 1 hour into the project. Same graphic card. Does this make sense to anybody?
 
System specs:

Premiere CS3 + WIN XP 32 SP 3 + I7 920 + ASUS P8P67 + 8MB + RAEDON HD 5750 (NO CRASH)

Premiere CS3 + WIN XP 32 SP 3 + I7 2600K + ASUS P6X58D-E + 8MB + RAEDON HD 5750 (CRASH AFTER 1 HOUR OF PLAYBACK)

Premiere CS3 + WIN XP 32 SP 3 + Q-9300 QUAD CORE + ASUS P5E + 4MB + RAEDON HD 5750 (CRASH AFTER 40 MINUTES OF PLAYBACK)

Clean Windows install. Latest Motherboard drivers.
 
Hi
It could be the CPU...
I would put it almost last on a suspect list.
Intel has a HUGE investment in making all it's CPUs 86 code compatible and consistant.
That also includes extensions that CS3 might use.

I don't think CS3 uses any new extensions in an I7 2600K beyond what it would use in the 920 (not sure though...).

However when you say I7 2600K I think overclock (people buy them to overclock). Run it without any overclock on CPU or GPU.
Also run conservative memory timings etc. If you can swap out memory and try again that can often uncover crash causes.
Check heat.

I would treat it like any other crash and gather all information about it, logs etc.
Then try to reproduce it.
With CS3 I would look closely at what video spec you are playing back and with what codec. CS3 "liked" some video flavors much more than others.
I think the video spec will be the number one suspect.

The fact that you have a machine that it will play back on helps you know that video is alright.
Does it crash at exactly the same spot on the same machine. Anything unusual going on in the video at that time.
Try transcoding the video and see if it plays.
Try transcoding it back and see.
Try another video with same specs.

Hope this gives you some leads - best of luck.
 
None of the processors are overclocked.
The crashes never occur at the same spot.
The crashes will only occur under Win XP 32. They will not occur under Win 7 64. (This rules out the overheating theory.)
Again, only the I7 900 series do not crash under XP 32. The Q9300 and I7 2600K will crash.

It could be linked to the chipset. This said I have no explanation other than to conclude the I7 900 series is more stable than the others. We have returned the I7 2600K to the store and exchanged it for a I7 960. The reason for this post is to attempt to get some expert theories about this surprising result.
 
It could simply be the motherboard. Could be the individual motherboard, too, and not the whole series. Could be the RAM -- bad brand, bad individual sticks, etc. Concluding that it must be the processor is very premature.
 
Hi

+1

Above post is showing you best path and advice.

Good luck. (these things are frustrating and sometimes not worth solving)
 
Hi - Again

Maybe best solution is to move to Win7 64 and CS5.5.

My own experience and I believe many others is that CS5 and above brought a whole new level of stability.
Especially if you are shooting with some of the new codecs.

Just a thought as I believe you mentioned CS3.

Good Luck
 
I tried CS5 and didn't like the following:

(1) When scrubbing the timeline, the image have larger pixels and I get the stairwell effect. It is not until I let go of the mouse buttong that the image becomes full resolution.

(2) When scrubbing the timeline, the image is not very smooth. It appears to be catching up, and I only get a few frames a second.

(3) When opening a CS3 project, all audio files are re-rendered in CS5, and you have to wait for it (not knowing if the audio will sound the same or not).

(4) The overall feel of CS5 is that it is a heavy program. CS3 feels light and slick in comparison.

We tried CS4 when it came out and went back to CS3. When CS5 came out, we tried it, and again we went back to CS3. I will not say anything about Win 7 which is a step down in user friendliness from XP. We were also lucky enough to have purchased ULTRA before Adobe bought Serious Magic. As a result we have the full ULTRA options and not just the CS5 downgraded version.

The only reason one would switch to WIN 7 and CS5 is for the 64 bit. So far, however, I have yet to see CS5 being as smooth and efficient as CS3.
 
Except for the audio from importing a CS3 project into a CS5 project (which wouldn't be an issue once projects start originating in CS5), pretty much all your issues are simple fixes by changing some default settings.

Plus, there is more to CS5 than the 64bit thing (the Mercury Playback Engine being a big one). I mean, you just described CS3 as being a slick program... but one that crashes on random computers. I personally find CS5 to be a pretty slick and efficient program, especially compared to CS3 and 4.
 
I agree with Mike. 1 and 2 are adjustable user settings. 3 is done once per project. (And the files aren't actually rendered, they're conformed. The sound won't be altered at all.)

4 is just a very strange user observation. 5.5 is very much more stable and responsive than 3, especially on a modern system with 8GB+ of RAM.
 
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Plus, the further you get away from the hardware and OS that CS3 was developed on and for, the more problems you're going to see. As both hardware and Windows advance, CS3 will not keep up.
 
Well, this might be true but to me the real reason for upgrading is not about Windows or Adobe marketing plans but about needs. I upgraded from Premiere 5.1 to Premiere Pro 1.5 to upgrade from DV to HDV. When XD CAM HD came along, I upgraded to CS3. CS4 was a pointless upgrade so we skipped it. The only reason to upgrade to CS5 would be to use DSLR codecs (which I don't use). I would also like to draw attention to the fact software companies are not interested in video but in making money. They will keep on releasing new versions no matter what the need might be. The smart user is the one who upgrades when he needs it, not when Adobe tells him to. To that effect, we use a program called Ulead PhotoImpact 5.0. It is 15 years old but is incredibly versatile and simple. The program will do Photoshop type work with incredible simplicity. I use it every day and it blows everybody away. The Ulead went on to release 6 or seven more versions of the software until they dropped it. Guess what; any version above 5.0 is no good. We tried other versions and they were less versatile, slower and more complicated than 5.0. So do you seriously think I should have upgraded just because Ulead told me to? Right now, CS3 is stable as a rock and smooth as can be. Win XP has been totally mastered. It took a good learning curve to get rock solid systems set up. Now they work like a charm. Until XD CAM EX is obsolete, I would be crazy to upgrade.

I also would like to mention that I am not impressed by the image I get out of NVidia cards. I think ATI or Matrox yield much better images. Since Cuda engine works only with NVidia, I would not benefit from CUDA anyways if I wanted to stick with ATI. So here again, I'm not letting Adobe decide what video card I should be using.

This said, I will keep an open mind. What adjustments are people talking about in getting CS5 to perform as smoothly as CS3? Also, what do you mean by audio gets "conformed"? What does it get "conformed" to? What's the difference between "conformed" and "rendered"? If the audio were to remain the same, why would CS5 "conform" it?
 
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So I'm only on 5.0 because... wait for it... I haven't seen the need to upgrade to 5.5 yet :happy:. So this might be a bit different in 5.5. But in the corner of both the program and source/preview monitors is a bunch of stacked lines and an inverted triangle indicating a drop down menu. Click on that, and near the bottom of the menu you should see both "Playback Resolution" and Paused Resolution". Hover your mouse over either of these, and another menu pops ups indicating Full, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16. I think the default is 1/4, but I can't remember, it might be 1/2. In any event, simply selecting Full will give you full resolution for playback (or when you're paused). The logic of this is that by reducing resolution, you're computer is less likely to hiccup or get bogged down when editing. This in no way will affect that actual final product, it's only to reduce the strain on the CPU/GPU while playing the footage back.

I did a rough cut of a wedding last night using the handy dandy multi-cam tool with two streams of 1080p/24 AVCHD on a Q6600 quad core (yeah, I know, time to upgrade). The reduced resolution + MPE on a hacked GTS250 made my life significantly easier (for giggle I turned both off... I didn't giggle much, let's put it that way).

I totally get why you're wanting to stick with CS3 for now, but once you get CS5.5 setup up to your liking you really may find that it was worth the price to upgrade. I upgraded to CS4 only because of AVCHD support, and thought it was a joke. But CS5 has been a night and day impovement.
 
The only reason to upgrade to CS5 would be to use DSLR codecs (which I don't use).
Click to expand...

Oh, God no! There are many reasons 5.5 is better than 3.0. For starters, 5.5 is a native 64 bit application. That means better use of more memory. It also means more speed and better real time playback.

As for ATI producing a better image, again I fall back to "a very strange user observation". The graphics card by itself will not have any effect on final image quality. Using an nVidia card with hardware acceleration turned on, there are some features implemented which will have an effect on quality, mostly positive. Scaling for example. With hardware acceleration, CS5.5 uses much better scaling algorithms which improve the final image when the export is lower resolution that the original, such as HD to DVD.

By the way, you'll definitely want to be installing 5.5 onto Windows 7 Pro 64 bit. (Which by itself a far more stable OS than XP ever dreamed of being.) And definitely get at least 8GB of RAM. 12, 16 or even 24 is even better.
 
Why does CS5 conform audio when opening a CS3 file? I don't like unexpected transformations.
 
That officiel explanation tells us CS5 resamples 16bit audio to 32 bit audio. Resampling means the audio is modified.
 
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