My hardware jump

[StarsFan4Life]

I play a lot of TF2 and will soon be playing the new COD. I also do a ton of HD rendering. How much of a system boost will I see going from an AMD X2 5600+, 4GB DDR2-6400, EVGA 8600GTS 512B to a Phenom II 940 3.0ghz quad, 8gb pc2-1066, XFX ATI 4870 1GB.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life

I play a lot of TF2 and will soon be playing the new COD. I also do a ton of HD rendering.
How much of a system boost will I see going from an AMD X2 5600+, 4GB DDR2-6400, EVGA 8600GTS 512B to a Phenom II 940 3.0ghz quad, 8gb pc2-1066, XFX ATI 4870 1GB.

27.4%

 

[Marty502]

Heh.

That will be an inmense jump. The 8600GTS is a pig. Your CPU choice is good. Nobody goes wrong buying one of those.
I think the jump in HD rendering will be even more impressive than while gaming.

 

[Denithor]

I think Blain understated the increase you'll see. By at least a full 100%.

8600GTS is a craptastic card - even when it came out it was pretty worthless. For gaming you won't believe the improvement with the 4870.

For HD rendering - night and day difference from X2 5600+ to X4 940. Assuming you use multithreaded software you will probably see a 100-150% increase in rendering speed. Meaning your work will complete in half (or less) the time it takes now.

EDIT: But for rendering - you will be better off with an i7 setup if your budget will take the hit. Here's why.

 

[StarsFan4Life]

I'm trying to keep my PC silent too. Need a good silent PSU and 120mm fans....

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Originally posted by: Denithor
I think Blain understated the increase you'll see. By at least a full 100%.

8600GTS is a craptastic card - even when it came out it was pretty worthless. For gaming you won't believe the improvement with the 4870.

For HD rendering - night and day difference from X2 5600+ to X4 940. Assuming you use multithreaded software you will probably see a 100-150% increase in rendering speed. Meaning your work will complete in half (or less) the time it takes now.

Sony Vegas Pro 8.0c

and Blain was being a superb idiot...

 

[Denithor]

Note my edit.

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Originally posted by: Denithor
Note my edit.

A little out of my price range.....plus I would have to get a new motherboard and ram....nah.

 

[Denithor]

Ok - if you can reuse existing mobo/ram then yeah - just replace the X2 with an X4 and upgrade the GPU.

I saw X2 5600+ and figured you had an older s939 or AM2 (vs AM2+) board you would be replacing and at that point why not spend a few bucks extra for a serious performance upgrade?

Anyway - one final comment. I'd suggest replacing the CPU & GPU now, hold off on the memory. See how performance is with those two upgrades - you may not need 8GB (or just add another 4GB of DDR2-800). Especially with getting an X4 940 - you can overclock with the multiplier so no need for extreme speed memory.

 

[StarsFan4Life]

So I should stick with DDR2-6400 and not 1066? Won't the faster ram run at the faster speed without overclocking anything?

 

[Denithor]

Memory speed has minimal impact on real-world performance. Like going from 800 to 1066 will probably net you 1-2% max in most applications. So it's your call of whether a tiny improvement is worth $40-50.

For me - it's not. I'm perfectly happy running DDR2-800 sticks and everything is smooth.