I7 vs AMD Phenom II X4 940 performance?

[cohenfive]

i'm in the market for a new pc and need some advice. primary use of the pc will not be for gaming but will be for manipulation of large digital images (raw files, 14mb and eventually probably a bit higher). i've found a local custom pc build with great kit (8gb ram, atx 4870 video, 1tb raid hd, etc), but it 'only' has an amd phenom 940 cpu. i'm wondering how that would stack up in performance relative to an i7 in the same configuration for what i need. i presume the i7 would be a bit faster given it's architecture, but i'm not sure if any difference will be major, minor, not not really noticeable. thanks!

 

[Rhoxed]

i7 will be much faster but for video editing etc. im sure you will be more than happy with the 940 system

 

[21stHermit]

Because converting RAW files is a serial process, it does not require massive amounts of memory. Rather you are loading a ~20MB RAW file, and saving a JPEG or a much larger TIFF. Hence memory speed and HDD write speed are the important factors.

AMD has had IMC since dirt, whereas Intel is just now doing that on their Core CPU's. I would also expect the slow HDD write to be a parallel process, hence it wouldn't have a major affect.

I've never seen a RAW conversion benchmark, I suggest jumping on some of the Photo Review forums and see what people are using. The closest comparable benchmark to RAW would be WinRAR and WinZIP file conversion.

 

[cohenfive]

thanks, i was planning on asking the same question over there. the amd machine is obviously cheaper, but i'm trying to figure out whether the difference is between, say 10 seconds and 11 seconds or 15-20 seconds. makes a big difference. for example i did a weekend looking at raptors and have 3gb of images. my current pc (win p4/2gb ram) is totally not up to the task anymore....

 

[cohenfive]

just looked at some benchmark performance info and it does indeed look like there is a very large performance difference, at least for what i want to do. i guess i'll be passing on the amd machine and hoping for some bing/hp deals!

 

[grimpr]

Prepare to replace your jaw...

A demonstration of Microsofts new ConCRT showing almost 100% linear performance on manipulating 60 Megapixel Phase One RAW files on a AMD 48 Core machine.

http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/SVR10

Adobe promises blazing features on its upcoming CS5 suite for Nvidia/CUDA cards.

http://blogs.adobe.com/genesisproject/2009/11/technology_sneek_peek_adobe_me.html