Diffferences in CPU and M/B

[SeagullSteve]

Looking at upgrading my current desktop and will be selfbuilding again. I have a couple of questions. The first is the CPU. I'm looking at either the Intel i5 2500k v the i7 2600k. Looking at the stats there seems to be very little in difference in perfomance. So what's the benefit of the i7 over the i5 and is it worth the additional £60/£70.

The second question is in relation to the motherboard. There seems to be several flavours - H, P, Q, Z. If I understand correctly the H isn't overclockable, whereas the P and Z is. But what are the other differnces and benefits.

 

[arad85]

Looking at upgrading my current desktop and will be selfbuilding again. I have a couple of questions. The first is the CPU. I'm looking at either the Intel i5 2500k v the i7 2600k. Looking at the stats there seems to be very little in difference in perfomance. So what's the benefit of the i7 over the i5 and is it worth the additional £60/£70.

It depends is the answer. To have a significant performance hike, you have to be able to use the hyperthreading available in the i7. Lightroom/Photoshop can use these threads, but only does so in bursts. Where the extra threads does come in handy is with video encoding. My i7 has all threads fully utilised when I'm doing the 2nd pass of a 2 pass video encode. In this case, it'll be 2x as fast as an i7 doing the same thing. IMHO, if you haven't factored in the cost of an SSD for your system disk, you'd be better off spending the £70 on one of those rather than the i7. If you're already up to £700-£800 on the cost of your build, what's the problem spending another £70?

The second question is in relation to the motherboard. There seems to be several flavours - H, P, Q, Z. If I understand correctly the H isn't overclockable, whereas the P and Z is. But what are the other differnces and benefits.

Correct. Any Hxx board with an ix-yyyyK is a waste of a K processor. As to other differences, take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1155

I'd go with P67 or Z68 depending on cost/features that you want. When I looiked, Asus seemed to offer best features/cost (P8P67 here).

 

[neil_g]

i'll second the P8P67 (i have the M-PRO version), its a million times better than that horrid gigabyte H61 i had (although that did appear to have some limited clocking options, although i never got to explore them before it was RMA'd).

with about 5 mins work you can easily get it clocked to 4.4Ghz and stable with a 2600k.

 

[arad85]

although that did appear to have some limited clocking options

The only option for overclocking on an H board are to adjust the board clock from 100MHz. Given everything is clocked from this clock, you can only up it a few % before the board becomes unstable. With the P and Z based boards, you can alter the CPU multiplier (which multiplies up the 100MHz clock) which gives you much more room for manoeuvre... Neil will have his set to a max of 44 - up from the standard 35 (3.4G + turbo + .1G when all 4 cores are running) giving a 25% overclock.

 

[neil_g]

The only option for overclocking on an H board are to adjust the board clock from 100MHz. Given everything is clocked from this clock, you can only up it a few % before the board becomes unstable. With the P and Z based boards, you can alter the CPU multiplier (which multiplies up the 100MHz clock) which gives you much more room for manoeuvre... Neil will have his set to a max of 44 - up from the standard 35 (3.4G + turbo + .1G when all 4 cores are running) giving a 25% overclock.

yeah it might of been that to be honest.

for note, dont change the BCLK. that was the cause of my instability at the end of my build log. for some reason the AI util let the BCLK increase to 102.1 or thereabouts so the memory was running at some stupid freq even though i set it to 100 so it failed to post quite often. reset the clock to 100x44 in the bios and its been fine.

 

[SeagullSteve]

It depends is the answer. To have a significant performance hike, you have to be able to use the hyperthreading available in the i7. Lightroom/Photoshop can use these threads, but only does so in bursts. Where the extra threads does come in handy is with video encoding. My i7 has all threads fully utilised when I'm doing the 2nd pass of a 2 pass video encode. In this case, it'll be 2x as fast as an i7 doing the same thing. IMHO, if you haven't factored in the cost of an SSD for your system disk, you'd be better off spending the £70 on one of those rather than the i7. If you're already up to £700-£800 on the cost of your build, what's the problem spending another £70?

I certainly don't propose using video encoding. It will be a phote editing, normal office type apps, and no doubt the kids will want games on it too.

Spending another £70 isn't a problem IF it's of benefit. I don't want to spend that £70 what I spend it on never gets used.

I was already factoring an SSD, just unsure whether 60GB or 120GB - see previous arguement

Correct. Any Hxx board with an ix-yyyyK is a waste of a K processor. As to other differences, take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1155

That was helpful - ta.

I'd go with P67 or Z68 depending on cost/features that you want. When I looiked, Asus seemed to offer best features/cost (P8P67 here).

I was origianlly going down the P67 route and the Asus was on my short list. I noticed the Z68 this morning whilst looking for bundles and it seemed to indicated that it offered the "best of P and H boards".

 

[FruitFlakes]

Go for the 2500K and spend the money saved on a decent cooler to clock it up to 4+GHZ. There's hardly any difference between them aside from hyperthreading, and since you said you won't be doing much video encoding then it'll be more than enough. The 2500K is a beast of a CPU.

Or you could wait a little while longer and see what AMD's Bulldozer CPUs will offer. They could be better or they may force a change in Intel's pricing.

 

[arad85]

Go for the 2500K and spend the money saved on a decent cooler to clock it up to 4+GHZ. There's hardly any difference between them aside from hyperthreading, and since you said you won't be doing much video encoding then it'll be more than enough. The 2500K is a beast of a CPU.

PS/LR does utilise all 8 cores, but the proportion of time it uses it is very small. Basically, even on 5D2 raw images, the processing is near instantaneous so you'll only see a small difference between i5 and i7. Whether that is noticeable to you is another matter...

I'd second the decent cooler. Factor £40-£50 for a decent cooler (I use Scythe Ninja and the CPU maxes out at 70 deg C at 4.3GHz)

 

[arad85]

I was origianlly going down the P67 route and the Asus was on my short list. I noticed the Z68 this morning whilst looking for bundles and it seemed to indicated that it offered the "best of P and H boards".

Depending on your graphics requirements, the onboard HD 3000 of the i5/i7 is more than man enough to handle PS/LR. You may save on a graphics card if you use a Z68 board with onboard gfx (not sure you can get this but).

You could also benefit from the SSD as disk cache that is available on Z68 boards (but that's more money again).

Also 8G memory minimum IMHO.

 

[SeagullSteve]

Depending on your graphics requirements, the onboard HD 3000 of the i5/i7 is more than man enough to handle PS/LR. You may save on a graphics card if you use a Z68 board with onboard gfx (not sure you can get this but).

You could also benefit from the SSD as disk cache that is available on Z68 boards (but that's more money again).

Also 8G memory minimum IMHO.

I'll be having a Graphics Cards - kids wouldn't forgive me. I am think of something along the lines of:

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail
ASUS P8P67 Intel P67 (REV B3) Socket 1155 DDR3 PCI-Express Motherboard
be quiet! Dark Rock Advanced CPU Cooler
16GB Corsair Vengeance Blue LP (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel
XFX ATI Radeon HD 6870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
2 x 2TB Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 3.5" SATA III Hard Drive
OCZ Solid 3 60GB 2.5" SATA-III Solid State Hard Drive
Antec 100 One Hundred Black Mid Tower Chassis
650W OCZ ZS Series ATX2.2 80PLUS Bronze Power Supply
LiteOn iHOS104-37 4x BD-ROM Drive / 8x DVD-ROM (Black) - OEM
Lite On DVD Writer, IHAS124, SATA, Black, OEM 24x Speed
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit SP1, Operating System, Single, - OEM
​

 

[arad85]

I'll be having a Graphics Cards - kids wouldn't forgive me. I am think of something along the lines of:

Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail
ASUS P8P67 Intel P67 (REV B3) Socket 1155 DDR3 PCI-Express Motherboard
be quiet! Dark Rock Advanced CPU Cooler
16GB Corsair Vengeance Blue LP (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel
XFX ATI Radeon HD 6870 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
2 x 2TB Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 3.5" SATA III Hard Drive
OCZ Solid 3 60GB 2.5" SATA-III Solid State Hard Drive
Antec 100 One Hundred Black Mid Tower Chassis
650W OCZ ZS Series ATX2.2 80PLUS Bronze Power Supply
LiteOn iHOS104-37 4x BD-ROM Drive / 8x DVD-ROM (Black) - OEM
Lite On DVD Writer, IHAS124, SATA, Black, OEM 24x Speed
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit SP1, Operating System, Single, - OEM
​

Looking good!!!

Having said that, if it were me, I'd swap the p67 for a Z68, drop a 2TB drive and substitute it for an SSD to use as a disk cache.. Also the green drives tend not to be the fastest... I'd go for a 7200rpm 64Mb cache one rather than the Seagate one...

 

[SeagullSteve]

Cheers Andy,
So are you saying have 2 SSD cards. What's the benefit of a disk cache - is it only when writing files? And what sort of difference will it make.

I was going to raid the hard drive, but have just realised that there is only 2 SATA-III connections on the M/B so see where you are coming from on the hard drive.

 

[RobertP]

Not studied the list but I'd go for a 120Gb SSD as the boot drive. 60 will mean you'll need to spend time making space on it in the future. I have nothing intentionally stored on mine and have 70 used and 50 free.

 

[arad85]

Cheers Andy,
So are you saying have 2 SSD cards. What's the benefit of a disk cache - is it only when writing files? And what sort of difference will it make.

I was going to raid the hard drive, but have just realised that there is only 2 SATA-III connections on the M/B so see where you are coming from on the hard drive.

Disk caching puts the (faster) SSD seamlessly in between the HDD and the CPU. The advantage is that you read/write to the file structure on the HDD, the system (it'll be a combination of s/w and h/w) stores the data to the SSD. No messing with 2 disk setups with limited storage - the often used files will be on the SSD, the ones you don't use often will be on the HDD. Take a look here for more info: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z68-express-lucidlogix-virtu-ssd-caching,2888-3.html

If you do decide on SSD for boot disk, I'd go with Roberts recommendation of a larger disk than you think you need. I have a 90G drive (84 formatted) 39G used, 45G free and that's with the page file moved off the drive... If I'd bought a 60G drive, I'd be worrying about space now....

If you do RAID the hard drive, make darned sure you have backups. I lost a drive in a RAID 0 array and had to rebuild the system. Fortunately, I had a backup...

Also, I think the SATA III on the HDDs is a marketing ploy. You can't read/write to the platters at a fast enough speed to warrant a SATA III interface. In fact, even the fastest disks (i.e. 15000rpm drives) can't saturate SATA II.

Thinking about it, why not get 2 x SATA II HDDs striped in a RAID 0 array and get an SSD for the disk cache (although it's probably worth checking you can cache a RAIDed disk set)... Best of both worlds then.

 

[arad85]

PS. If you do cache, you need to make sure that the read/write rates of the SSD are high (not all are) - otherwise you'll be limited there. System tuning with HDDs/SSDs is a fine balance.

 

[neil_g]

Not studied the list but I'd go for a 120Gb SSD as the boot drive. 60 will mean you'll need to spend time making space on it in the future. I have nothing intentionally stored on mine and have 70 used and 50 free.

I run a 60 as my boot, windows 7 install, cs3 and lr3 and will have 20gb free

That said nothing else is stored on it other than windows and programs, all docs are on the second drive or nas

 

[m3csl2004]

Get a crucial M4 SSD, not worth taking the risk on Sandforce controllers in my experience. Firmware 0009 increases the speed on the M4 drive aswell.

I'm not sure I'd bother with SSD cache if I had an SSD boot drive.