Need help deciding on some computer upgrades

[dory_breaux]

Hey guys,
I need some guidance deciding on cpu/ram upgrades for my editing computer. For use with CreativeSuite (mainly Premiere, AfterEffects, Photoshop but also Illustrator and Flash), Lightroom and 3DS Max. The highest rez footage I work with is uncompressed 1080p.
I'm torn between;
AMD Phenom II X6 2.8G and 8gb ram
or
AMD Phenom II x4 3.2G and 16gb ram

Coming from an Athalon II x2 2.6G and 3gb ram would I notice the extra cores or extra speed/ram more?
Oh yeah, power supply is 500W but I doubt that makes a huge difference...

Thanks!

 

[Kegan]

Don't know too much about the AMD chipsets these days, but more RAM is always greatly utilized. As for your PSU...500w? I'd at LEAST upgrade to 1000w or 1250w.

Kegan

 

[kylevant]

You still going AMD? rogar-Shock(DBG): 500W PSU should be fine, anything above 700W is overkill, unless you're running a huge beast with like 5 RAID drives and a massive graphics card. Although AMDs are known to suck more power than Intel's...

Hey guys,
The highest rez footage I work with is uncompressed 1080p.

You sure it's uncompressed? How do you even get your hard drive to play something like that with such a huge bitrate? Is it SataIII or SSD?

Edit: Check out http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-sixcore-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-1055t-reviewed/12, Intel's quad cores are mostly equaling or experiencing better performance than AMD - so AMD needs 6 cores to try and compete with Intel's 4 cores. :shocked:

 

[dory_breaux]

Thanks dudes!
I cant work with uncompressed in realtime, reality is I usually am working with SD or TIFF image sequences. Very occasionally though I'll end up with a uncompressed HD file for whatever reason.

I know Intel experiences better performance, but I experience an ever-shrinking budget. So therefore...