Worthwhile to upgrade this system now, or wait?

[kamikazekyle]

Pretty much as the topic. More specific requirements and notes below.

1. What YOUR PC will be used for. That means what types of tasks you'll be performing.
Gaming (Very Heavy: Daily), Video Encoding (Very Heavy: up to Daily), Video Editing/Capture (Moderate w/ some post-effects, but does include 1080p capture or higher if I FRAPS stuff), Virtualization (Light/Moderate - 1-2 Guests max at once), Photo Editing (Light/Moderate), Word Processing/Office/Browsing/Etc


2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread

$1200-$1500; higher if a video card upgrade is worth it


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

United States

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.

nVidia compatible hardware is required. I have a Quadro card I utilize for quad video out plus an existing 285GTX, so unless AMD/ATI gear plays nice with an existing Quadro card, I'll need nVidia gear. That is, unless someone can give me a 6 monitor video-out solution plus my other upgrades within my budget that improves current performance 😛


5. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts, and if so, what those parts are.
DVD Burner (IDE), Hard drives (2x500GB SATA RAID 0 planned, 1x80GB SATA), Powersupply (Enermax 1000W), case (Antech 900), Floppy Drive, accessories and monitors. I already have an OS license. Basically, I'd just need the CPU/Mobo/RAM/Heatsink.


6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads.
Dug around a bit, but most builds don't hit the level of performance I desire. Thinking an i7 930 or higher with 6-12GB+ of DDR3. Unsure on the mobo since I missed a generation or three. I was also debating on using SSD's for the OS and primary applications/games. It looks like if I go all out with an i7 980, my encode speeds will be 2.5 times as fast (well, going on stock speeds for both processors). I think my video card should be OK for the time being.


7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.
Overclocking as high as I can on 3rd party air (CPU only).


8. What resolution YOU plan on gaming with.
2048 x 1152 on a 23" screen


9. WHEN do you plan to build it?
Either 1 month, or >9 months, depending if it's worthwile to upgrade now or not.

CURRENT CORE HARDWARE:
QX6700 overclocked to ~3.14 GHz
4 GB DDR2-633
EVGA 122-CK-NF68-A1 Mobo
nVidia 285GTX 1GB
Quadro NVS 450
Plus the stuff I'm carrying over

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:
-Need onboard Firewire 400/800, or a cheap but good addon card, for video capture
-SATA3 with minimum of 4 ports and SoftRAID would be nice, though in a pinch I could softRAID in Windows.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:
Gaming seems to be OK for most of the stuff I play, though getting long in the tooth and very game dependent. Some newer games I'm having to turn settings down. I think the most recent "demanding" game I've played was Just Cause 2, and I get about 40FPS average in the bench without AA and everything maxxed. Thankfully, I don't really like to use AA all that much and barely notice it at the PPI I play at, so that lets me eek out a bit more frames in games. With AA, fuggedaboutit for new stuff. I can forsee with the next iteration of game engines, however, I'd probably get hit hard.

Encoding and drive performance are what's getting me, at the moment. I do a lot of high profile h264 with even heavy options, so a 480p encode usually hits about 20 FPS +/- per pass. Then I also wind up maintaining a low profile version for compatability, so that increases net encode times by 20%. I do a lot of multitasking with memory heavy stuff, and I can feel my hard drive slowing me down. Hence the SSD bit. Last night I was doing a backup, system image, download @ 3.3 MB/s, and gaming. Even Diablo 2 hiccuped up loads.

So, anyway, the rig is mostly satisfying most games at the moment (though I wish encodes were faster). I'm just not sure if it's worth it to upgrade now, or just wait for the Next Big Thing (tm).

If it helps, games I'm planning on getting soon (or when they come out for future releases): Civ 5, StarCraft 2, Final Fantasy 14, Metro 2033, Diablo 3, Infamous, and probably a few more that I haven't gotten around to playing yet. Current encoders: x264, Handbrake, FFDShow, Nero's version of MP4, and once in a blue moon DivX or XviD if someone requests it.

 

[Syran]

I'm almost of the wait and see category, maybe look at picking up some items like an SSD that you can use in your upgraded machine later. If you use the SSD for encoding, you definitely want something with TRIM support as you will be copying files to and from it a lot; since anything of huge size will kill a lot of your budget. May want to also check out the WD Caviar Black's, which are very speedy large drives. If you don't plan to encode on the SSD, maybe check out the Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid, it's pretty speedy after a boot or 2, I'm using one in my i7 laptop, and saw quite an improvement on boot and load times of often used games and windows.

The matter of fact is there are AMD 6-way eyefinity cards that would allow 6 monitors on one video card (all using displayport). They start at about $450 on the egg, and increase to over $1k for the insane XFX 5970.

Anyway, Sandybridge could be something interesting, it may have built in video, but the cpu abilities are sounding quite promising, and AMD's 6xxx series is supposed to show up in time for the holidays in some rumors...

 

[mfenn]

By "SATA3", do you mean SATA 3Gb/s or SATA 6Gb/s? If you're talking about SATA 3Gb/s, then pretty much any modern motherboard will support that. If you're talking about SATA 6Gb/s, I would have to ask "Why?". The only drives that can even take advantage of SATA 6Gb/s are SSDs, and you didn't mention anything about a 4-way RAID0 setup. Mechanical HDD's will not exceed the limits of SATA 3Gb/s within the useful lifespan of this system.

Anyway, using an 80GB SATA drive as your system drive is a terrible idea since it will be horribly slow by moderns standards. Either go for a new, fast HDD (F3 or WDC Black) or an SSD.

That being said, you may want to just get an SSD now and wait for the 6 and 8 core Sandy Bridge parts to come out. A Kentsfield at over 3GHz is nothing to sneeze at. That being said, an 875K will give you a quick and easy OC to 4GHz. With 4GB DIMMs being under $100, you can also easily go to 16GB.

 

[kamikazekyle]

SATA III (6 Gb/s). I wanted it mostly for my storage upgrades later on in which I chunk in a larger SATA III SSD, like a C300 or something and upgrade the RAID array. Mechanical drives certainly aren't going to go anywhere near teh max throughput. I was kinda planning on redoing the storage a year+ after the system upgrade (cept maybe sooner for the OS drive).

That 80 Gig drive is a leftover from, um, a "while" ago 😛 And yea, it does hold my OS. My RAID is a pair of Segate 7200.10's that I cycled out of my main server when I upgraded to 2TB drives in its RAID. They serve me OK for bulk storage.

Syran, I've been out of the ATI loop for a while, so I heard about the 5000 series from seeing other recommendations here, but had no idea they had 6-out cards. That 5970 is just..wow 😛

Anyway, I think I'll hold off for a while longer. I'll get a reasonably priced 64GB range SSD for my OS/App drive to tide me over, and wait on the new CPU architectures and video cards to come out. I might also be upgrading my server as a separate project (only need about a $300 investment to bring that up to a decent spec), which I could then farm out some non-time-sensitive encoding to it.

Thanks all for the help. I really do appreaciate it.