Time for an Upgrade: Should I build a new system or Update MB and CPU?

[lpj8]

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. My PC will be used for mainly HD video/photo editing. I use Photoshop, and Sony Vegas 8.

2. What YOUR budget is. If I'm upgrading a couple components, I'd like to keep it under $350

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from. USA

4. IF YOU have a brand preference. That means, are you an Intel-Fanboy, AMD-Fanboy, ATI-Fanboy, nVidia-Fanboy, Seagate-Fanboy, WD-Fanboy, etc, etc, etc, you get the picture. No Preference

5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are. See below

6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads. Yep

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds. I'll overclock on Air.

8. WHEN do you plan to build it? Within a month

I built this computer two years ago, and its starting to show it age. I will be doing a lot of video editing with HDV footage, and I also edit photos.

My system now is:

Antec LifeStyle SONATA II Piano Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 450W SmartPower 2.0 Power Supply

AMD Atholon 64 Processor 3500+ 2.21GHz

ASUS Socket 939 Motherboard

WD 250 GB 3.0 Sata Hard Drive

2 Gig Ram

SAPPHIRE 100106SR-RD Radeon X850XT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card

I thought about just upgrading my CPU, but it looks to me that if I upgrade my CPU, I should upgrade my motherboard while I'm at it.

GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX All Solid Capacitor Intel Motherboard GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale

Would this be a significant upgrade in terms of performance, or would $300 be better spent elsewhere (e.g., videocard +RAM)? Or should I just start over from scratch?

Thanks in advance for all suggestions!

 

[DarkRogue]

Video encoding is usually best paired with a quad core processor, I believe.

Also, I am thinking about doing some video editing myself, does it require some sort of 'scratch disk' like Photoshop? If so, you could probably get a quick drive to be a dedicated scratch/temp drive and speed everything up a bit. I think you'd get the most use out of a quad core and possibly some extra RAM though.

 

[lpj8]

Thanks for your quick reply. I've looked at the Q6600. It looks like a beast of a CPU. Is it worth $25 extra for what I'll be doing? I know that Sony Vegas 8 is multithreaded, but I'm not sure that it would utilize all 4 cores.

 

[DarkRogue]

Generally speaking, most games don't fully utilize multi cores, so Dual cores are good enough for general gaming, as games usually tax the video card more heavily (at higher resolutions.) However, if video encoding is your 'main' thing, it will definitely be worth it to go quad core as it's essentially 2 more CPU's there to do work for you. I believe there is actually a thread in the CPU forums about an X264 benchmark, they have a chart there with the results from various users and the quad cores always trump the dual cores. In fact the chart looks exactly like this:

45nm quad
65nm quad
45nm duo
65nm duo
everything else

If possible I'd suggest a 45nm Yorkfield quad core, as the Q6600 is being replaced by these - budget permitting of course. If not, the Q6600 is a fine CPU.