OT: i5-750 vs i7-860 for Vegas ??

xberk wrote on 10/23/2009, 12:25 PM

Doing a build on a new machine for Vegas and Win7 .. Fry's has the i5-750 with Gigabyte GA-P55-U3DR motherboard for combo price of $199.95 .. The best deal on the i7-860 is a combo with the Asus P7P55D motherboard for combo price of $399.95. I know the i5 chip lacks hyperthreading. This has been discussed before but hoping to get latest opinion. I hate wasting money. Don't mind spending it for noticeably faster render or preview. Any thoughts?

Comments

rs170a wrote on 10/23/2009, 1:00 PM

According to AnandTech Bench (beta) Intel Core i5 750 vs. Intel Core i7 860 , there doesn't appear to be too much difference.

Mike

rmack350 wrote on 10/23/2009, 1:05 PM

Keep in mind that hyperthreading doesn't increase the number of physical cores, it just allows each core to behave like two. This could be a big help when there are a lot of little tasks to do but I'd think that a monolithic job like a render wouldn't be helped much by splitting each physical core into two virtual cores. But this is probably an oversimplification - Vegas could have 4 render threads going and 20 or so process threads, plus whatever the OS has running. Hyperthreading ought to allow the system to quickly execute small tasks without conflicting with the render.

I'd choose the I7 if my budget allowed. If the budget was tight I don't think I'd regret the I5.

Rob Mack

xberk wrote on 10/23/2009, 8:12 PM

Thanks Mike and Rob --- my buddy and I got the last two i5-750 combos at our local Fry's (they sold out all they had within hours considering the $199.95 price for chip and motherboard - it's like the GIgabyte MoBoard is free). I also picked up the i7-860 combo and will decide shortly which to build. After looking at the excellent chart that Mike linked to above it seems to me that the i5 is the value and will make a noticeable difference to my current Q6600. I know the i7-860 is faster and the Asus board is probably great too but it seems I would not really SEE much difference compared tot he i5-750. Hmmmmmm. Which to build? This is a good problem to have.