How big a difference would this make?

I'm torn between a balls-in upgrade or a toned down budgeted upgrade system. I'll keep this short and sweet though to what I want. Basically it will have to be for Gaming and Video editing. I want to know what sort of difference performance wise I'd expect to see if I had them side by side.


First Choice - Cheap Options
i5 2500k (£160), Simple P67 Board (£100), 8GB RAM(£60), Harvest my old machines PSU, Case and Drive and GFX (temporarily) til I get a 6850. Sell my old bits in a cheap casePSu bundle for £200, Keep my 22" Monitors

Second Choice - Balls In Option
i7 2600K, P67 Sabretooth, 16GB Ram, Corsair 130 quid case sexy case, New good PSU, BluRay drive and 6870/6950 GFX and upgrade to a good 24" clarity screen.

Both will also have 2x 1TB Raid0 Sata 6Gbp/s drives and a Black Magic Intensity Pro capture device and another hrd drive for that, Both Procs would be overclocked to 4GHz at least.

What you think, worth the ball-in option even though I'm not minted? My computer is my life so I dont mind spending the extra but not sure ifits the right route. Or would I be better with a 6 core AMD build?

I'd prefer an SSD over 2 HDD's in raid..

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Originally Posted by r_j_k_p

I'd prefer an SSD over 2 HDD's in raid..

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So would I but the two TB sata 3 drives are cheap as chips and I couldn't spend 150 quid on 160GB SSD when I can get two TB or even 3x500GB for less than 100 quid.

OK, so you seem keen on RAID 0. What is your intended backup strategy?

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Originally Posted by smargh

OK, so you seem keen on RAID 0. What is your intended backup strategy?

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The trashcan ;) Despite the fact that my co-worker just fried two drives I don't seem to be put off by Raid-0. He was running 4 drives. I would do only 2 for safety but its simply because its the fastest option for under £100. Its something I've wanted to try for a while but not 100% clued in on whether it would bottleneck if I had a backup strategy.

Maybe 2x 500GB drives with a 1TB backup but with the 2x 500GB in Sata 6Gbp/s Raid-0 wouldnt the 1TB bottleneck during backups?

The Z68 is being released soon and Gigabyte is stopping production of P67 based motherboards in favour of Z68 based ones AFAIK.

Bulldozer is being released at the end of June so unless you really need to replace your Q6600 based PC now I would wait until then.

I would say keep with Q6600 and then just upgrade your GFX card, you finding what you've got struggling in anyway ?

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Originally Posted by Behemoth

I would say keep with Q6600 and then just upgrade your GFX card, you finding what you've got struggling in anyway ?

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GFX is fine tbh, its video rendering that takes forever :(

Splintered different questions to different thread so as not to detract from my original questions.

For video editing, the 2600K would be worth it over the 2500K. Unless you are going balls-out for 4.8+GHz, a basic P67/Z68 will be fine. If you work with effects allot, the extra 8GB may be worth it, but if it is just straight transcoding the 8GB will be enough. However, with the 16GB, you could have a RAM disk if you ever needed a few GBs of super-fast storage.

I would lean towards new drives over a new case unless it is in a highly visable position. I think people get unduely worried over RAID0, my house has owned 40+ HDDs over about 10 years and never had one go wrong, but we may just be lucky?

New monitor could be a good shout, Aria do a 23" Dell IPS one for £200 at the moment. I have found just having a new monitor can make the whole feel of the computer completely different.

Your Corsair HX520 will be fine.

If video encoding is your main use for the CPU I would consider waiting for Bulldozer. I suspect it will have decent video encoding performance.

However,if you are staying with Intel I would wait for the Z68 chipset:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/z68-ex...iew-32138.html

It seems with the Lucidlogix Virtu software you can use Quick Sync even with a discrete card.

Anyone got a heads-up on the price point for the Z68s? A cheap one thats got a couple of PCI-Express slots, support for Sata 6Gbp/s Raid-0 (for a GFX card and Video Capture card) I render videos with Sony Vegas with a ton of effects mostly but sometimes I'll be using Adobe After Effects.

So would you recommend my 520HW PSU with a 2600K, Z68, two 500GB drives in Raid-0, 1TB to backup (if that can be done?) and my old 640GB for my vido capture device. Thinking maybe a 6950 or 560 now and a BluRay reader. Wow this is getting silly now prices now :D I can do it through for the love of computers :P

I'm tentative to use my Antec300 due to problems with the front panel, I want a fresh machine I think.