Best use of a Quad Core...

Nakatomi2010

So I'll be getting a Core 2 Quad processor in a little while but I was wondering which of my two capable machines would best benefit from it....

There's the Gaming rig which would use it for the pure processing power (Though it's already got a Core 2 Duo E6300 in it)... And there's my Media Center PC... The Media Center PC is primarily used for watching TV on one user account while its also setup to have a second user account log in from behind to do downloads and file management, and things of that nature, from a laptop while watching TV.... The Media Center PC also does occasional DVD Ripping for my DVD collection which I try to keep hard copies of my movies on the HDD (1.5TB total capacity)... Now, if I upgrade the Gaming rig the Dual Core will go here, but I was wondering if perhaps due to the amount of simultaneous processing that I do on the media center PC if perhaps I shouldn't put the quad core in it instead... Though it might also not have its full potential realized in that machine..... Thoughts?

The media center PC it'd be going into is the very one linked in my sig... Though its had a few upgrades since then, the motherboard/processor is all the same....

Rhino

I would think that is over kill for a media PC?

If you want to rip a DVD, can't you just throw it in before you go to bed or work? If your not there watching it, what does it matter if it rips in 15 minutes or 5 hours? It'll be done by the time you wake up/get home.

Also, even if you have a bunch of DVDs to rip and you sit there watching the console; are you certain that the DVD ripping software is multi threaded or can be run more then once (assuming you have more then 1 dvd drive).

Nakatomi2010

Rhino wrote: »

I would think that is over kill for a media PC?

If you want to rip a DVD, can't you just throw it in before you go to bed or work? If your not there watching it, what does it matter if it rips in 15 minutes or 5 hours? It'll be done by the time you wake up/get home.

Also, even if you have a bunch of DVDs to rip and you sit there watching the console; are you certain that the DVD ripping software is multi threaded or can be run more then once (assuming you have more then 1 dvd drive).

I do batch rippings, in that I'm in the process of converting about 200+ DVDs to .avi files.... On the single core it takes about 6 hours per DVD, and and I've had my batch rippings take over 24 hours to complete their run sometimes... But my dual core gaming rig can do each DVD in about 3 hours (time cut in half, obviously).... Also, you have the ability to set the affinity for programs in the task manager so I can tell Media Center to run solely on Core 4, DVD ripping to run solely on core 3, Bit torrent to run on Core 2, so on and so forth..... biggest thing that's been stopping me from the project is the sheer time it takes currenty to do each DVD, then I need to go back and resync the audio on all the DVDs that failed, or redo the dVDs if the program took the wron video track..

Not to mention my plans for adding a HDDVD/BluRAY combo drive in the future which I already know needs a massive amount of processing power to do properly...

saggio

If you do a lot of video file conversion, you might want to wait for the new Penryn based processors from Intel to drop (I don't know off the top of my head when they are supposed to be out, but sometime in November). They are drop-in compatible with most current intel boards right now, and they have SEE4, which is a fucking monster when it comes to dealing with video file conversion. The bench marks I last looked at saw a 100% increase in performance - that's without the SEE4 enabled converter, too.

However, if you want to go with the sub-$300 Q6600 (that's what I did a month ago, and I don't regret it one little bit) you'll still get improved performance over what you have running right now. You have to keep in mind, also, that most games are not optimized for SMP (more than one processor core) - so while you may get an increase in the stuff you'll able to run all at once, unless the application or game (or whatever) you are running is optimized for a lot of threads, you will start to get diminishing increases. That's why alot of builders right now are recommending a fast 2.8 or 3.0Ghz dual core over the Q6600 (which runs at 2.4).

Finally, if you feel relatively comfortable with your computer, you may want to investigate mild overclocking. I know that the Q6600 came out with a new stepping a couple of months ago and it can overclock really well - of course, you are going to want to have enough cooling to handle the overclock, and a board that's not gonna fry your chip.

I hope that helps.

Nakatomi2010

saggio wrote: »

If you do a lot of video file conversion, you might want to wait for the new Penryn based processors from Intel to drop (I don't know off the top of my head when they are supposed to be out, but sometime in November). They are drop-in compatible with most current intel boards right now, and they have SEE4, which is a fucking monster when it comes to dealing with video file conversion. The bench marks I last looked at saw a 100% increase in performance - that's without the SEE4 enabled converter, too.

However, if you want to go with the sub-$300 Q6600 (that's what I did a month ago, and I don't regret it one little bit) you'll still get improved performance over what you have running right now. You have to keep in mind, also, that most games are not optimized for SMP (more than one processor core) - so while you may get an increase in the stuff you'll able to run all at once, unless the application or game (or whatever) you are running is optimized for a lot of threads, you will start to get diminishing increases. That's why alot of builders right now are recommending a fast 2.8 or 3.0Ghz dual core over the Q6600 (which runs at 2.4).

Finally, if you feel relatively comfortable with your computer, you may want to investigate mild overclocking. I know that the Q6600 came out with a new stepping a couple of months ago and it can overclock really well - of course, you are going to want to have enough cooling to handle the overclock, and a board that's not gonna fry your chip.

I hope that helps.

I'm buying it as part of the Retailedge bundle, so for 250 I get Q6700, motherboard and Vista home Premium...

Blake T

Why don't you just jam the quad core into your gaming rig and rip everything from there?

Or hell rip shit from your gaming rig and you HTPC.

Nakatomi2010

Blaket wrote: »

Why don't you just jam the quad core into your gaming rig and rip everything from there?

Or hell rip shit from your gaming rig and you HTPC.

can't rip while playing games....

Blake T

I see.

Do you play games 24 hours a day?

Nakatomi2010

Blaket wrote: »

I see.

Do you play games 24 hours a day?

I've already got 2 computers turned on 24/7.. I've got my Home Server (Pentium D 930, and it keeps a concurrent backup of the Media Center Pc... So a 1.32TB backup), and my Media Center PC, there's no need to add a third machine if it's not needed... Plus who knows when I want to play games, but I don't want to have to wait for a rip to finish... I put my gaming rig to sleep, if I want to play a game, takes 5 seconds to wake up and 10 more to get my game on....