6600 vs 9650 - will a 9650 be faster?

LarsHD wrote on 10/4/2009, 9:50 AM

Hi! I have a Q 6600 sitting on my P5KR motherboard. 8 GB ram. VIsta 64.

QUESTION: Will updating to a 9650 processor give me anything except $ 300 or so less on my account? Is the the better performance of Intels Q 9650 noticeable when working with Vegas 9`.

I'm asking as I will most likely update the entire PC next year anyway and if update from a 6600 to a 9650 cpu isn't really noticeable I may jump directly to something dramaticall better in Jan-10.

If indeed there is a noticeable difference, is the 9650 working well? As far as satability etc the 6600 has worked well.

Best and thanks in advance
Lars

Comments

Hulk wrote on 10/4/2009, 10:22 AM

Clock-for-clock there won't be much of a difference in V8 between the Q6600 and Q9650. The Q9650 has some additional SSE instructions but they don't seem to make a big difference in Vegas. Also keep in mind that cache size doesn't make a big difference in video editing/encoding performance as most operations are streamed, unlike gaming where larger cache does make a difference.

As far as stability both processors are quite stable when paired with the correct motherboard. If you have an older mobo, say a P5B Deluxe or something of that nature then there have been reports of problems with the Penryn (Q9400, 9550, 9650, ...) cores even after BIOS updates.

I would not upgrade to the 9650. Too much money for too little gains. One option would be to overclock the last bit of performance out of your 6600. If you are running stock you can most likely overclock to 3.2GHz with a small increase in Vcore and a better CPU cooler. Much cheaper than a new CPU.

If you must upgrade I suggest moving to an I 860 for a significant performance increase. It will cost more like $500 as you will need a new mobo and RAM as well but you will be moving to a newer (faster) CPU core architecture, hyperthreading (8 cores), and faster memory subsystem (integrated memory controller).

That's my take on it anyway.

- Mark

LarsHD wrote on 10/4/2009, 11:40 AM

MKany thanks Mark for your advice. Yes, it does like the update isn't really worth the money.

1.
About overclocking - I have no experience from this, what are the steps to consider here. How do I do it, just raise the frequency in the BIOS in the P5KR? 5% 10%. What about other parameters?
Or perhaps overclocking too wouldn't be resulting in a real noticeable performance increase.

I guess the question is: What is the aboslutely fastest and best performing machine for Vegas? And what can I expect from "the fastest" machine? Will pro titler render bouncing characters in real times during a dissolve between two streams of 1920x1080 video? Etc.

Will all the various dissolves / wipes be realtime? Does *any* computer (incl a MacPro) provide true real time full frame rate performance (assuming "perfect" disk streaming of course).

I just love smooth real time performance. Like when you're working with music... But I gues perhaps we are not there just yet? Or are we? If I want to spend $ 20.000 on a PC can I get this performance I'm looking for you think...?

Today I can run two streams of 1920x1080 MXF video and maintain full frame rate during a dissolve. Throwing in moving text etc I will see stutter / depart from real time.

Best
Lars

Hulk wrote on 10/4/2009, 1:28 PM

Overclocking is not difficult but you should do a search and read up on it a bit. Here are some of the basics.
As for overclocking you generally want to increase your FSB (front side buss) speed a bit. For example your Q6600 has a 9x multiplier. You can lower that a bit in the BIOS but you cannot increase it unless you have an "Extreme Edition" CPU.

So right how your stock FSB is 266MHz and 266x9=2.4GHz.

Now as you increase your FSB you will also be overclocking your memory unless you change your memory divider. If I were you I'd probably lower the multi to 8 and increase the FSB to 333Mhz, assuming your memory can handle it. That would give you a nice easy 3GHz. A fast and easy increase of 25%.

Now that being said not all processors will overclock easily but Q6600's *generally* go 3.2-3.6 with just a little Vcore increase. You'll also need a good CPU cooler as it will produce more heat when all of those cores are cooking at full steam.

Like I said do little research and just try to go for a nice conservative o/c to get the last bit of performance out of your CPU.

As for real time Vegas performance. Well that's been the holy grail of non-hardware based NLE's for years now. Funny thing is we were there (or nearly with many operations) with Vegas and SD projects. Now with HD and more complex storage schemes (like AVCHD and even HDV) we took a few steps backward performance-wise.

Here is my OPINION on this.
Vegas is slowly but surely getting better at
1. Utilizing available cores
2. Utilizing available SSE instructions

At this point in time throwing the latest and greatest at Vegas will produce very good results but I don't think you'll be real time for many operations, the titler being one. Someone with a dual cpu i7 could step in and tell us more about this.

It is my OPINION that the price/performance curve starts to flatten out after the i860. Sure, you'll get a few percent better performance but you pay hundreds of percent more. More OPINION. Vegas still needs to be better optimized for multicores and SSE instructions. I don't think all 8 i7 cores are floored on preview. And even if they are I have a feeling the latest SSE instructions are being utilized to the max.

Not to the detriment of Sony. Developing software is like medical triage. The most serious problems get attention first. Optimizations such as the ones I mention are probably pretty far down the list. Which is as it should be as we first and foremost need a reliable NLE. But I have also seen slow but steady progress in the optimization area.

I guess what I'm saying is that half of the performance equation is thowing lots of cores and cpus cycles at Vegas (dual CPU i7 would be the tops here) but the other half the Vegas engineers have to take care of.

If I were to build a purpose build Vegas editing system right now I'd get a i860 and overclock it perhaps 1 speed grade or a i920 system and overclock it 3 or 4 speed grades. For my needs a dual cpu system isn't worth it. That's not saying it's not for others though!

As for the Mac. Remember that Macs run on EXACTLY the same hardware as PCs these days. The only difference is the Mac hardware is much more expensive and you can't build one yourself. The upside is you can't buy a crap Mac system loaded with a lot of junk software. Both have their strong and weak points. But it's a moot issue with Vegas as it is PC only.

As I said, all of the above is my take.

- Mark

farss wrote on 10/4/2009, 2:48 PM

One way to get closer to video nirvana is to avoid using high compression codecs. The FCP people have always leant towards the DVCPro codecs and they take one heck of a load off the CPU.
You can do the same with Vegas. Uncompressed video is the lightest thing for the CPU to handle. It only imposses a data bandwidth load but that's one that can be solved by throwing money at the problem. $20K gives you enough money for a pretty fast disk array and motherboard designed for handling the bandwidth.

Bob.

JJKizak wrote on 10/4/2009, 3:12 PM

It will do the render test 15 seconds faster with 8 gig ram, Vista 64 bit, no overclocking.
JJK

srode wrote on 10/4/2009, 6:42 PM

A Q6600 will run 3.33Ghz easily but you need good cooling - I use a thermalrite Ultra 120 which is pretty tall but it keeps my 6600 @3.33 Ghz nicely cooled under 100% load. The 120 Ultra may not fit in all cases, but there are other options including pelteir junction coolers.

. Based purely the information in the render test thread, there's not much improvement with a 9650 over an overclocked 6600 if any. Even with both overclocked the improvement is marginal.

Jeff9329 wrote on 10/5/2009, 11:49 AM

Lars:

I went from the Q6600 to the Q9650 when the Q9650 had the first price drop. This is on my primary Vegas Pro editing machine.

The Q9650 was a pretty significant, but not totally earth shattering performance increase over the Q6600. I think I remember an occasional stutter on AVCHD files with the Q6600, not totally sure. But I can say the Q9650 has no problem at all with AVCHD.

I run a mild 5% overclock on my ASUS P5K Deluxe WiFi/AP motherboard, totally stable.

I would reccomend the upgrade. I would start bidding on some on Ebay and buying one if you can get a good price.

Christian de Godzinsky wrote on 10/6/2009, 3:02 AM

Hi,

Qx9650 is faster than the 6600. But how much is hard to tell. It depends on how the software is written (I'm not sure Vegas uses all the new SSE instructions - has anybody any real infor about that?). However, typically the Qx9650 has a huge overclocking potential (assuming your mobo supports it). I'm running mine at 3,82GHz and its rock solid. It runs circles around some basic i7 models running at stock speeds...

You could check the NewRendertest thread, there are some 6600 versus 9650 comparisons, together with system specs. Also some i7's are starting to show...

Christian