CPU upgrades

[claydoh]

Heh, not sure if this is the best topic for this thread

I recently got an HP 6000 Pro Small Form Factor PC off ebay for under 60 dollars, sans hard drive. Nice system, the most powerful computer I have ever owned.

It has a Pentium E6300 core 2 duo 2.80Ghz processor. The specs say I can go up to an E8600 3.33GHz core 2 duo, or even up to a core 2 quad Q9650 3.0GHz.

My question is: assuming I found a reasonably priced (ie cheap and likely used) , is a core 2 quad worth the money over the fastest core 2 duo?

The PC currently is just an XBMC/torrent/btsync/quassel core box for the most part.

[oshunluvr]

In a word: Yes.

Depends on your use. If you're transcoding media or sorting large amount of data, definitely yes. Also you should notice notice a difference when using virtual machines. XBMC can gobble up CPU cycle's depending on how you're set up.

Other than that sort of stuff, you won't see a worthwhile improvement because your bottle neck's will be elsewhere. Don't forget to add some $$ for improved cooling. Those 95W and up Yorkfield CPU's crank out some BTU's. I have an overclocked Q6600 that can rip a DVD just under 80% of playback time - roughly 45-50 minutes to encode an hour of video at high def and dolby aac.

The real downside is the money spent may not go too far because the old mobo or some other part may die. Also - better run a power check and make sure your PSU is capable of supplying enough juice. Power supplies are the first place manufacturers cut back to make extra money on their PC's. Newegg has a power calculator on it's PSU page.

[claydoh]

Hmmm didn't think about the PSU, which is non-standard and 240 watts. I didn't notice any power supply options in any of the specs for this PC other than this one, so I was assuming that all the processors listed as options used the same one.

No biggie. I can add another 14 Gb ram still so there is room to play with hardware

[oshunluvr]

With a single nVidia 8800GT card (overclocked), 8 GB RAM (2 sticks), 4 hard drives and the Q6600 also overclocked along with the usual accessories - a 750 watt PSU couldn't cut it. It would work fine on cool days, but as soon as the room temp crept over 70ish it would shut itself off. An upgrade to a more efficient 1000 watter did the trick. Now I run 16 GB RAM and dual video cards, no problem.

IMO, 240W is the bare minimum for that system so any major jump in power usage - like a lot more RAM or hungrier CPU - might cause issues. Also just my opinion: but just because the mobo can support a more powerful CPU doesn't mean the PSU can. I strongly suggest some math is in order before spending hard earned computer bucks.

[Buddlespit]

Also, if you get yourself a monster cpu, you can always upgrade around it. The downside is that I'm not sure you can upgrade an intel system the way you can upgrade an amd system.
I tend to upgrade my system in steps, ie: get the fastest, biggest cpu to fit my board, max out the ram, replace the board when amd releases a new chipset that supports my cpu and can be upgraded (amd am3/am3+), upgrade the cpu or memory to for the new board, then upgrade the other, etc al, rinse and repeat. Then I upgrade the wife's desktop with my old hardware, then upgrade the server with my wife's old hardware.

[claydoh]

I don't see why I can't

I used to do the same, upgrade as I went along. It seems much more expensive these days.

I purposefully bought the small form factor box (which isn't all that small!) both for the price and the limits it places on me, so I don't go wasting money I don't really have. It gives me different challenges on what to research and pick.

Sent from my DNA using Tapatalk, like that really matters

[SteveRiley]

Depends on your use. If you're transcoding media or sorting large amount of data, definitely yes. Also you should notice notice a difference when using virtual machines. XBMC can gobble up CPU cycle's depending on how you're set up.

Yeah...when I was researching what to get for my son's gaming rig, I was surprised that the near-universal recognition was fewer faster cores are better than more slower cores. The reason is that very little software is written to intentionally take advantage of running simultaneous threads on multiple cores. I suspect this is true beyond games and reflects the general state of most applications.

roughly 45-50 minutes to encode an hour of video at high def and dolby aac.

How big are the resulting files? Why not just dump the VOB straight to disk and leave it at that? I know you've got oodles of storage space

[oshunluvr]

How big are the resulting files? Why not just dump the VOB straight to disk and leave it at that? I know you've got oodles of storage space

Affirmative on the storage space but I use a multitude of playback devices (PCs, tablets, phones, smart TVs, media player/DVR, DLNA server, etc) and most of them won't pay VOBs directly. There's also the issue of bandwidth (some of the devices are wireless) and portability. I generally use a mp4 container as all the devices seem to handle that the best. mkv works pretty well but every now and then I have a slight issue with it, so I opt for mp4. Occasionally, my mom or one of my sons will borrow a video so size matters.

In answer to your primary question: Roughly 1.2 to 1.4gb per hour for 1080p and Dolby 5.1. If I resize to 720p and stereo I can get it down to 300-500mb. I don't bother removing advertisements or previews/coming attractions. The effort isn't worth the 50mb, but I do remove alternate audio tracks. I store files at 1080p and re-encode them to 720p when needed for a specific purposes, like loading my tablet with movies or TV shows for a trip.

[oshunluvr]

Also, if you get yourself a monster cpu, you can always upgrade around it. The downside is that I'm not sure you can upgrade an intel system the way you can upgrade an amd system.
I tend to upgrade my system in steps, ie: get the fastest, biggest cpu to fit my board, max out the ram, replace the board when amd releases a new chipset that supports my cpu and can be upgraded (amd am3/am3+), upgrade the cpu or memory to for the new board, then upgrade the other, etc al, rinse and repeat. Then I upgrade the wife's desktop with my old hardware, then upgrade the server with my wife's old hardware.

Generally I agree with the premise, but unless you're planning on shopping for used hardware, good luck finding an LGA775 mobo worth having. Plus, add in quickly becoming defunct DDR2 RAM and lack of basic performance items like SATA III and USB 3.0 and quickly the money spent is out-the-window. By mid-year we'll have DDR4 RAM out and DDR2 will become more expensive than DDR3 and so on.

My personal upgrade path is sort of the opposite: Buy the most expensive and featured motherboard I can justify. Then, buy the most cost-effective (or just cheap) CPU and RAM. 1-2 years down the road, higher performance CPUs and RAM will always eventually become cheaper - at least until total phase-out begins - so I can upgrade easily and at a lower cost. Motherboards do not generally go down in price (excluding sales and close-outs of course) whereas CPUs and RAM always do.

Of course, the differences in our methods may have to do with AMD vs. Intel. Of late, Intel has changed sockets much more rapidly than AMD and the socket differences aren't compatible. My Q6600 LGA775 is no longer available nor are modern motherboards that support it. I suppose one could buy a cheap mobo with the latest socket design and upgrade that direction, but I'd rather have the features and usability that a high-end mobo offers more than a 10% increase in CPU speed. In my opinion, the user gets more for the money that way.

[oshunluvr]

Back to the OP and Steve's comments: Unless you specifically need 4 cores, stick with the faster and cheaper dual core and you'll see a larger daily improvement in speed with a lower cost, lower wattage requirements, and less cooling needs.

[SteveRiley]

I don't bother removing advertisements or previews/coming attractions.

I have noticed lately -- or, more precisely, my family has increasingly been griping about -- more PUOs (prohibited user operations) at the beginnings of DVDs. These include not being allowed to get to the menu or even skipping past previews. In the past, I've seen that ripping just the main video-containing VOB to a hard disk removes all these annoyances. Have you ever considered that?

[claydoh]

Lol there is always this lolz
I am a cheep bastid, and sometimes I get bored when i can't sleep
(though I doubt my oem motherboard would even recognize the xeon)

[oshunluvr]

I have noticed lately -- or, more precisely, my family has increasingly been griping about -- more PUOs (prohibited user operations) at the beginnings of DVDs. These include not being allowed to get to the menu or even skipping past previews. In the past, I've seen that ripping just the main video-containing VOB to a hard disk removes all these annoyances. Have you ever considered that?

[Disclaimer: This is only for archival storage and personal use.]

That's basically what I do, I just use a compressed container. I rarely care about the add-on stuff so 95%-ish of my DVDs are just rips of the main title. Handbrake does an excellent job detecting the correct "title" to rip (by length) and in most cases can correctly detect the chapters and default audio track - all without any real user interaction. I generally, browse through what it detects to verify and adjust a bit.

My reference to commercials and previews was really about TV shows I record. I have a Korean made dual tuner ATSC/Clear-QAM DVR that is not smart enough to deliver it's recordings elsewhere on my network. Also, it records in raw "transport stream" so an hour of 1080p is 7gb. If it's a show I want to save or watch on another device, I sometimes transcode those recordings to mp4 and put them on the main server.

I actually started doing it because my daughter had/has a collection of kid movies and junk on DVD. I didn't want her shoving her dirty little hands into my Bose Lifestyle system so I wanted a safer way to provide her entertainment. It also has the side-benefit of preserving the original DVDs from kid-handling damage.

I've only ran into one DVD that wasn't rip-able. Many have some sort of protection but it usually is just title spoofing: The playback device thinks it's watching title 0 but the movie is actually on title 32 or whatever. VLC will show you the actual title that's playing so you know which one to grab. Audio sync is another way they mess with you, but avconv can fix that in a jiffy.

If you have a TV capable of playing from a USB drive, you can easily have 5-6 movies on a single thumb drive or 100's on a good portable USB hd. Also, if you want to have a little fun do this: Rip the FBI warnings and Movie studio credits (these usually reside in their own titles). Then add them to the beginning of your home vacation videos! Or maybe I'm too easily entertained .

[oshunluvr]

Lol there is always this lolz
I am a cheep bastid, and sometimes I get bored when i can't sleep
(though I doubt my oem motherboard would even recognize the xeon)

That's kinda cool actually. I've never heard of that. I good way to extend the useful life of an aging system. I wonder if you replaced your BIOS with coreboot if you could smoothly make this work. Likely, by the time you get done you'll have expended more money and time than it's worth. Still be a fun project though.

[claydoh]

That's kinda cool actually. I've never heard of that. I good way to extend the useful life of an aging system. I wonder if you replaced your BIOS with coreboot if you could smoothly make this work. Likely, by the time you get done you'll have expended more money and time than it's worth. Still be a fun project though.

Since my expenditure has been 55 dollars for the PC, and 14 for a slim gpu card that promptly died, (blown capacitor ) my budget has not been busted, yet. The thing is not slow at all for what I do with it right now, so I don't really mess with it.

I am losing my nerdness I think.