Should I upgrade from my Pentium D 930+ now to a Q6600 or E8400 or E2180?

[tracerit]

Here's my current system:

Pentium D 930+ 3Ghz
Gigabyte DS3-L P35
2GB DDR2
Gigabyte 7600GT 512MB passively cooled


I watch lots of 1080p stuff and my CPU doesn't seem to be able to handle it. I could get a new video card to take over the processing, but I havne't found one that's silent and cheap enough to justify an upgrade since I rarely play games.

I'm considering one of the following routes:

1. Upgrade to a E2180, overclock it, keep everything else. keep this system for 1.5-2 years.

2. Upgrade to a E8400/Q6600, keep everything else. keep for 2 years.

3. wait until Nehalem comes out later this year/early 09. do a full upgrade.

I'd like to go with 3, but what kind of pricing are we looking at for Nehalem? Over or under $300 for a the CPU?

 

[o1die]

I would wait for nehalem, and see if the last of the socket 775's come down in price before deciding if the performance difference is worth it. I just bought an old socket 754 turion 64 for $12 new. It's amazing how much folks waste on cpus.

 

[Gaurav Duggal]

How about overclocking your current setup. But the Pentium D @ 3ghz should handle HD video. My Pentium D 820 at stock 2.8GHZ handles 1080 videos just fine with maximum CPU utilisation at 52% or so. If you find it does not it could be overheating and throttling.

I'd suggest going with a cheap E2160 and overclock it to a modest 2.4Ghz or so. It will not require any fancy cooling. I think you can do it easily on the stock cooler. It will be much faster than your current Pentium D.

The Pentium E2160 was $60 last time I checked. If you sell your Pentium D on Ebay or somewhere else you could easily be looking at a $30 or so upgrade.

 

[hnzw rui]

What 1080p stuff are you referring to and what player are you using? The 7600GT features at least some hardware acceleration for HD decoding so maybe you're just not taking advantage of it. Media Player Classic HC is free and has DirectX video acceleration support. That's one avenue you can check before spending money.

Still, at current prices for the E2160, it's a very good stopper while waiting for Nehalem. I doubt a Nehalem based set-up would be inexpensive at launch so I say buy the E2160 now and wait until prices stabilize before jumping on the Nehalem bandwagon.

 

[Arkaign]

I'd suggest an alternative 5-stage upgrade to a real powerhouse.

(1)- Buy a 2180 Cpu, overclock it.
(2)- Grab a 9600GT or so.
(3)- Get 4GB of decent DDR2-6400/4-4-4-12
(4)- Sell 2180 for nearly what you pay for it, get a Q9450 when prices hit ~$200.

At this point, it will probably be July/August, your total net out of pocket will be well under $500, and you can probably o/c to ~3.6ghz pretty easily.

 

[tracerit]

I think i'll go with what most of you are saying and go low with an E2160 type CPU. Not too keen with overclocking and I'd like to keep a cool quiet processor. I saw this thread on the forum about 45nm "E2160" level CPUs coming out, specifically a E3140. Probably going to wait until June when that comes out and get one of those. And then wait a few months after Nehalem gets settled and prices drop. Thanks for the suggestions guys.

My current setup plays 1080p fine... for about a minute then it lags for about 2-3 seconds every other 20-30 minutes. I made sure no other programs were running in the background, it also maxes out my CPU usage causing my fan to spin louder making for a bad movie watching experience. Hopefully this CPU upgrade will fix that

 

[hnzw rui]

I'm running my E2160 at 2.40 GHz at stock vcore (BIOS 1.275, CPU-Z 1.25 ) with just the measly stock HSF. At that overclock, idle and load temps I'm getting are around the same as when I was running it on stock 1.80 GHz (35C & 58C). CPU fan at ~1400 RPM. Inside the Antec P182, I couldn't hear it at all. At 2.40, the E2160 should play most hi def videos you throw at it given the proper codec (CoreAVC for h.264).

 

[SpeedEng66]

with your setup you should have no prob with hd..

now the question is do you have pure-video decoder for the 7600?

 

[tracerit]

720p is fine but for instance i tried watching this file in 1080p (Planet Earth) and it would lag every other second. I checked on nvidia's site and my 7600GT is listed under supported PureVideo features, but it looks like a software solution.

 

[tracerit]

i just installed the purevideo software. and wow, what a difference, no more lagging and chugging with that same file that i had problems with earlier! CPU usage with this Pentium D is still around 80% causing my CPU fan to spin like crazy. Hopefully this upgrade to the E2160 will lower that.

 

[SpeedEng66]

Originally posted by: tracerit
i just installed the purevideo software. and wow, what a difference, no more lagging and chugging with that same file that i had problems with earlier! CPU usage with this Pentium D is still around 80% causing my CPU fan to spin like crazy. Hopefully this upgrade to the E2160 will lower that.

wow still @ 80%

quick q what os are you using??

also under purevideo decoder setting menu is everything setup correctly (hardware assist on?)

and what was the cpu ult before pure video?

when I had 805 it was around 60-75% using 6600 (with P-V)

 

[tracerit]

using WinXP SP2. I can't access the PureVideo settings. It installed into a folder but the only program is nStant Media. I don't remember the CPU usage before this, but 80% is pretty bad already.

 

[SpeedEng66]

Originally posted by: tracerit
using WinXP SP2. I can't access the PureVideo settings. It installed into a folder but the only program is nStant Media. I don't remember the CPU usage before this, but 80% is pretty bad already.

whan your playing any dvd playback (or pretty much any video media)
look in your task bar there should be a nv logo double click that and then set up..

 

[Gaurav Duggal]

I was running an HD Video file (1080) with power DVD without hardware acceleration and I got CPU usage 80% average. When I enabled Hardware acceleration it dropped to 30%-40%.

Download Power DVD trial version. Then download Purevideo. Install both and enable Hardware acceleration in configure window in power DVD.

 

[panfist]

I went from a pentium D 930 to an E8400 and I couldn't be happier. I bought mine on launch day for $250 shipped next day. My computer went from sounding like a jet engine to being nearly silent.

The performance increase wasn't that great considering that I had my 930 overclocked to 3.8GHz, and now my e8400 tops out at 3.4GHz (due to a lower multiplier- I'm sure if my motherboard could push the FSB higher the e8400 could go much higher).

I never had a problem playing back any HD video with the pentium D 930 though. I think you would be better off purchasing CoreAVC, the fastest and most advanced codec available for decoding HD video. If you want to use hardware accelerated HD playback you are stuck using PowerDVD, whereas CoreAVC lets you use any player you want. My CPU usage was 30-40% playing back 1080p content, when I had the pentium D.

How fast is your RAM? With the cheap price of RAM these days, you really should be running 800MHz ddr2. I noticed a big difference in the windows experience going from 533MHz to 800MHz RAM with my pentium D.

Hope this info helps!

 

[The-Noid]

+1 arkagain.

 

[cmv]

Originally posted by: tracerit
i just installed the purevideo software. and wow, what a difference, no more lagging and chugging with that same file that i had problems with earlier! CPU usage with this Pentium D is still around 80% causing my CPU fan to spin like crazy. Hopefully this upgrade to the E2160 will lower that.

That sounds more like it. I was going to say PureVideo isn't included by default. I've got a Celeron D 340 (2.93 Ghz) and it can play all of the broadcast ATSC HDTV files which range up to 1080i and it typically peaks at 75% cpu (using XvMC with 1024x768 virtual display to SVideo as only have an old 4:3 CRT TV).

I like arkagain's plan too -- I got in on the e2180 deal at TigerDirect and I mulled over a Q6600 but June/July is soon enough to get something better. One other option is to get either a Celeron 420 or Celeron e1200 and do the BSEL mod. I only suggest this as e2180 prices (and even Celeron prices) seem to have stabilized or gone up slightly. But the deals are sure to return. I can tell you how a Celeron 420 BSEL moded does with ATSC HDTV in a couple days (I run Linux so my load with XvMC will probably be slightly higher than yours as PureVideo has further enhancements over those provided by the Linux Nvidia driver). My Celeron 420 is for the PVR as 35w max is great!

 

[hnzw rui]

Originally posted by: cmv
That sounds more like it. I was going to say PureVideo isn't included by default. I've got a Celeron D 340 (2.93 Ghz) and it can play all of the broadcast ATSC HDTV files which range up to 1080i and it typically peaks at 75% cpu (using XvMC with 1024x768 virtual display to SVideo as only have an old 4:3 CRT TV).

I like arkagain's plan too -- I got in on the e2180 deal at TigerDirect and I mulled over a Q6600 but June/July is soon enough to get something better. One other option is to get either a Celeron 420 or Celeron e1200 and do the BSEL mod. I only suggest this as e2180 prices (and even Celeron prices) seem to have stabilized or gone up slightly. But the deals are sure to return. I can tell you how a Celeron 420 BSEL moded does with ATSC HDTV in a couple days (I run Linux so my load with XvMC will probably be slightly higher than yours as PureVideo has further enhancements over those provided by the Linux Nvidia driver). My Celeron 420 is for the PVR as 35w max is great!

x264 1080p is a far cry from ATSC MPEG2 1080i when it comes to system requirements. His current Pentium D is already more powerful than a Celeron 420. Celeron E1200's an option but is likely slower than the Pentium D without oc'ing.

 

[panfist]

Let me repeat myself, if you haven't tried the CoreAVC codec, you should because you probably don't need new hardware to playback 1080p.

If you -want- new hardware, that's a different story.

 

[happy medium]

Originally posted by: tracerit
Here's my current system:

Pentium D 930+ 3Ghz
Gigabyte DS3-L P35
2GB DDR2
Gigabyte 7600GT 512MB passively cooled


I watch lots of <<1080p stuff and my CPU doesn't seem to be able to handle it. I could get a new video card to take over the processing, but I havne't found one that's <<silent and cheap enough to justify an upgrade since I rarely play games.

I'm considering one of the following routes:

1. Upgrade to a E2180, overclock it, keep everything else. keep this system for 1.5-2 years.

2. Upgrade to a E8400/Q6600, keep everything else. keep for 2 years.

3. wait until Nehalem comes out later this year/early 09. do a full upgrade.

I'd like to go with 3, but what kind of pricing are we looking at for Nehalem? Over or under $300 for a the CPU?

Get a ati 3450 video card. They are cheap (50 bucks?) It will take most of the load of your cpu.

http://www.overclockersclub.co...wercolor_hd3450/16.htm

Heres one at newwegg for 40 bucks and a rebate. This should bring your cpu usage down to 10/15%.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814127336

 

[tutelary]

I have a passive 8500gt (gigabyte) with the DS3L and an E2180 and am very happy. It decodes 1080p just fine. (at stock)

 

[hnzw rui]

Originally posted by: happy medium
Get a ati 3450 video card. They are cheap (50 bucks?) It will take most of the load of your cpu.

This should bring your cpu usage down to 10/15%.

Not always. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, yes, but only with the appropriate player. If the 1080p content he's watching is downloaded from the internet, more likely than not, it won't play nice with hardware acceleration. Getting CoreAVC ($14.95 for SMP version) is probably a better option.

I have a Sapphire Radeon HD 3450, myself, mostly because my mobo doesn't have integrated graphics. Hardware acceleration is pretty nice for OTA HD (ATSC 720p/1080i @ ~8% CPU). Haven't tested with 1080p x264 yet, but there are many reports that files have to be encoded a certain way (max 3 bframes, etc) to take advantage of hardware acceleration.

 

[fire400]

core2quad

9600

4GB DDR800 4-4-4-12

done.

why wait for the end of the year. you've had wasted a spring, summer and fall.

-3 seasons with a slower computer. what are these people telling you? wait? hell no.

GG^