Please Help Young Turks Obtain a Computer | 19 comments (19 topical, 0 hidden)
My Hummble Opinion (3.67 / 3)
Never buy the best cpu on the market, its just not worth it. Tech addicts usually disagree emphatically, but lets face it, there is no reasoning with tech addicts. These people grind up video cards and free base em.

For the price of 1 high end CPU that cuts processing time a fraction, you can get 5 cpus.

How to build a render farm (I know render farms are a great option for 3d, I image its the same with video editing)

Get fast results and save money

Im looking to upgrade myself, and the AMD phenom 2 for under $200 is a great option for me. It may take a few seconds longer to process "whatever" but the extra few seconds arnt worth the extra cost. Also keep in mind, (Ive seen people do this alot) many time people spend a fortune on cpus and neglect the memory and motherboard and other hardware. If you create a weak link, the lil extra cpu power wont show. If I buy last years "best-cutting edge stuff", I get a bitching system at a fraction of the cost.

by Smokin on 07/21/2009 11:09:19 PM EST

Ditto (none / 0)
The fastest processor is not always worth the cost.  The same results can often be obtained for less expense, even if the solution is a bit more complicated.

by EveningStarNM on 07/22/2009 07:39:39 AM EST

[ Parent ]
Dito to building your own (none / 0)
I did some number crunching that I thought I would share.

An i7 965 would = 15,608.00 (cinibench score representing CPU power)
For the same cost of the i7, you can get 5 AMD Phenoms_2x4 940(over clocked) which would = 61,800 (Cinibench score)

Thats 4 times more processing power than the i7 at the same cost. Granted I havnt factored in the other parts required for a render farm, but still should come close to what one would spend for parts to build a high end workstation.

by Smokin on 07/22/2009 10:14:06 AM EST

[ Parent ]
965? (none / 0)
The I7 920 is the obvious choice here, it had huge overclocking headroom and paired with an excellent $40 air cooler it can be overclocked to 4.0 gz+. It's the exact same processor as the I7 965, it's just factory clocked lower. And is 1/3 the cost.  

On the other hand the Phenom II 940 is killer at the price and Newegg has some fantastic combo deals on it right now. Pair it with a 275 GTX (for the CUDA app) and $800 will buy a killer video conversion/processing system.

 

by spigzone on 07/23/2009 10:49:12 PM EST

[ Parent ]

Please Help Young Turks Obtain a Computer | 19 comments (19 topical, 0 hidden)