Any Core I7 users yet?

[Jeff Harper]

The shine of a Dell eventually wears off after purchase.

Problems that eventually come to surface, and that we've read about in this very thread:

Poor motherboard design, bad e-sata and/or firewire controllers. I've experienced the nightmare of poor firewire controllers from Dell, it was awful.

Inadequate power supplies that can/do cause myriad issues. I've experienced this too.

Limited/no expandability.

You cannot upgrade power supplies/mobos with these boxes, they are made to not be upgraded with non-Dell components.

When it is time to upgrade your mobo/chipset, you have to replace the whole unit.

Instead, buy a nice tower, with a large power supply, and put together a nice system and when a new chip comes out all you have to replace is the MOBO/CPU and possilby ram. If you don't want to do it yourself any Micocenter will assemble you parts for you for under $100.

At least two or three people in this thread purchased Dell boxes and unless I'm mistaken they regretted it.

[Mark Williams]

Got a really nice system built for HD editing by avadirect.com about 6 weeks ago for $1,500. I am running Edius 5 with HDSPARK card for realtime viewing on an HDTV. Specs. are below except I added a P2 card reader from Amtron to dump my HPX170 footage. This required the system to be 32-bit.

ANTEC, Nine Hundred Two Black Mid-Tower Case w/ Window, ATX, No PSU

CORSAIR, CMPSU-650TX TX Series Power Supply, 650W, 80 PLUS®, 24-pin ATX12V EPS12V, SLI Ready

ASUS, P6T Deluxe V2, LGA1366, Intel® X58, 6400 MT/s QPI, DDR3-2000MHz (O.C.) 24GB /6, PCIe x16 SLI CF /3, SATA 3 Gb/s RAID 5 /6, HDA, GbLAN /2, FW /2, ATX, Retail

INTEL, Core™ i7-920 Quad-Core 2.66GHz, LGA1366, 4.8 GT/s QPI, 8MB L3 Cache, 45nm, 130W, EM64T EIST VT XD

CORSAIR, 3GB (3 x 1GB) XMS3 PC3-12800 DDR3 1600MHz CL9 (9-9-9-24) 1.65V SDRAM DIMM, Non-ECC

SAPPHIRE, Radeon™ HD 4830 575MHz, 512MB GDDR3 1800MHz, PCIe x16 CrossFire, VGA+DVI, HDMI,

WESTERN DIGITAL, 160GB WD Caviar® SE (WD1600AAJS), SATA 3 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 8MB cache, system drive

WESTERN DIGITAL, 1TB WD Caviar® Black™ (WD1001FALS), SATA 3 Gb/s, 7200 RPM, 32MB Cache, video storage drive.

LITE-ON, iHAS324 Black 24x DVD±RW Dual-Layer Burner w/ Smart Erase, SATA,

SABRENT, CRW-UINB Black 65-in-1 Card Reader/Writer Drive, 3.5" Bay, Internal USB

CREATIVE, Sound Blaster® X-Fi Titanium, 7.1 channels, 24-bit 96KHz, PCIe x1

MICROSOFT, Wired Keyboard 500, Black, PS/2

MICROSOFT, Optical Wheel Mouse, PS/2 + USB, Black

MICROSOFT, Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit Edition w/ SP1, OEM

WARRANTY, Silver Warranty Package (3 Year Limited Parts, 3 Year Labor Warranty)

[Jeff Harper]

That does sound nice, but I would have preferred at least a 750 watt PSU, ditched the soundcard (I found the onboard audio of the P6t V2 is outstanding and frees up a slot) and I would personally have chosen a 64 bit OS and 12gb ram. All in all not a bad system Mark.

[Joe Parker]

I've only purchased 3 Dells (2 laptops, 1 desktop) and they all seem okay. I got what I paid for. No real complaints, anyway.

But this really isn't the thread to be discussing systems; this is about the new Intel CPU, the Core i7.

[Jeff Harper]

This thread has evolved into most all things i7, including various builds and brands of desktops as it relates to the i7.

I should add the complaints about specific brands seemed to have been with regard to the lower end models, the bargain boxes. I have used Dell in the past, had half a dozen of them. I have used their business class support and found it to be the greatest.

I think a common problem occurs when purchasing a common desktop unit and attempting to use it as a video editing workstation. Sometimes it will work out.

However in my last experience I had a Precision and attempted to run the max number of drives the case would hold, plus 4 externals, I filled all of the card slots, and couldn't figure why it acted sporadically. I finally realized I was underpowered.

Even after I built my current unit with a 650 or 700 watt power supply (forget what it is) I ended up adding a second 500watt power supply to smooth things out. Of course my issues stemmed from overclocking, which everyone doesn't do, but that ability is what gives the 920 so much value.

This is the advantage of having a nice case, I was able to actually add a second power supply.

So yes, Dell, HP, any brand can work out fine, but if you are going to push your system hard it is a lot easier in the end to have a case in which you can swap components as needed.

Building their own isn't for everyone, of course, so I apologize for having been pushy about it previously. I have just found that for my situation building my own has worked out so much better.

[Anthony Arago]

I guess I'm confused, both Intel Core 2 Quad and Intel i7 Processors have 4 cores to my knowledge. What makes the i7 Processor more powerful? I'm looking to get an i7 powered machine but am wondering about the difference.

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Anthony Arago

I guess I'm confused, both Intel Core 2 Quad and Intel i7 Processors have 4 cores to my knowledge. What makes the i7 Processor more powerful? I'm looking to get an i7 powered machine but am wondering about the difference.

Lots of differences. A big die shrink (less power per unit of processing), and a new architecture that (theoretically) allows Hyperthreading on EACH core, for a theoretical (and highly dependent on the app) 8 simultaneous threads.

Why was Core 2 Duo a huge leap over Core duo when both had two cores? Lots of changes "under the hood."

I also think i7 finally uses a built in memory controller (like AMD has had for nearly 3 years) which greatly speeds up access from the CPU instruction / program counter (the part of the CPU that actually does the computations) to main memory (RAM) where the data being computed is stored.

[Danny Fye]

Well, assuming I don't have to go to the potty room when UPS arrives and that my new build works and all, I will be a Core I7 user by this time tomorrow, 09-26-2009.

The only thing I hate is having to watch for UPS all day long.

The fun part will be building it once I get the goodies!

By the way, I looked at a number of Dell, HP's and all and having built most of the systems I ever had, I just can't stand that proprietary stuff they use! Horrible!!! If one wants to be creative and customize the system one has to pay too much for the proprietary stuff to do so.

A lot of the extra stuff is greatly overpriced.

Also the clutter on the C: drive from trialware to junkware is a no go for me.

And for a bonus, it is supposed to storm all day as well. At least it will be cooler...

I will let you all know what my results are once I get the new system built. Render test of HD, playability on the timeline and all.

I may be off-line for a bit while I build this critter.

Danny Fye
VidMus Video - Music Productions

[Joe Parker]

Don't get your hopes up. I built one last week and on a day to day basis it's really no faster than our single core systems.

Oh, Vegas pumps up all 8 cores while rendering. But that bogs the system down (even when I kick it down to low priority), so I still do my rendering during breaks. It may render faster, but I just don't see it as a big deal.

Presumably this situation will improve as software authors, and the OS itself, learns to make better use of multiple CPUs.

[Danny Fye]

Originally Posted by Joe Parker

Don't get your hopes up. I built one last week and on a day to day basis it's really no faster than our single core systems.

Being that I am editing *.m2ts files and am not using any intermediate files I should get an improvement especially with rendering.

And even if I don't see any improvement at all I still have to get a new system because the current one has a bad Gigabyte controller in that it has thermal and probably cold solder joint problems making it unreliable.

Motherboard is a very good design but quality control went out the window on this particular model. Lots of bad reviews.

I originally bought a different MOBO from the Egg and it went bad and they sent me this one as a replacement because they no longer had the original one. At first that was a good deal because this one cost a fair amount more but since it had poor quality control it turned out not so good.

Also, my Windows install was for the original mobo and I took a chance to see if it would behave on this one and it basically did. Still, not the best way of getting reliability. With the thermal problems and the strange way of using Windows I had a double whammy!

The Windows is an OEM version so a re-install on another mobo wasn't an option that I thought I could get away with. Surprised I did this!

Puter always crashed after using Vegas extensively but not while using it. Am I lucky or what!

Anyway, performance difference in my case is a bonus if I get better results and considering everything and the reviews I read I probably will.

So now for my nightly nap so I can watch for UPS starting around 9 am in the morning...

Danny Fye
VidMus Video - Music Productions

[Anthony Arago]

Originally Posted by Jason Robinson

Lots of differences. A big die shrink (less power per unit of processing), and a new architecture that (theoretically) allows Hyperthreading on EACH core, for a theoretical (and highly dependent on the app) 8 simultaneous threads.

Why was Core 2 Duo a huge leap over Core duo when both had two cores? Lots of changes "under the hood."

I also think i7 finally uses a built in memory controller (like AMD has had for nearly 3 years) which greatly speeds up access from the CPU instruction / program counter (the part of the CPU that actually does the computations) to main memory (RAM) where the data being computed is stored.

Oh, thanks for the info!

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Jason Robinson

Lots of differences. A big die shrink (less power per unit of processing),

By this I mean less electrical power (aka wattage) due to the reduced die size. Small CPU chip means less power wasted routing signals across long distances.

[Bryan Daugherty]

I am considering taking the i7 plunge and have a configuration I would like your thoughts on. I am upgrading from a C2Q Q6600 2.4 GHz XP pro 32-bit w/ 4GB ram on an Asus P5N-E SLI. I am looking at splitting my purchase from NewEgg and Tiger. So here are the pieces.

From NewEgg:
MB: Asus P7P55D Deluxe LGA 1156
Processor: Core i7 860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz
Heatsink: Cooler Master RR-910-HTX3
Ram: Corsair 8GB (4x2GB) 240-pin 1600 DDR3 SDRAM
PSU: Cooler Master Real Power Pro 1000w RS-A00-EMBA
HDD:4x 1TB Hitachi Deskstar 0A38016
Case:NZXT Whisper
Optical:LITE-ON Blu-ray Burner DH-4B1S-08 or Pioneer BDR-203 Blu-ray Burner from Tiger
Card Reader:Vantec UGT-CR955-BK

From Tiger:
O/S:XP Pro 64-bit
Other:3M AKT90LE Adjustable Keyboard tray

Total cost of Build: $1981.67 with shipping.

Transfer from Previous Computer:
Video Card: 2x GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR2
HDD: 1x 1 TB Hitachi Deckstar and 1x 750GB Hitachi Deckstar
Controller:FW800 PCIe card

So what do you guys think of this configuration?

[Joe Parker]

The lone review on that mobo doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. I went with the tried and true 5 egg EVGA instead.

When playing a bit at overclocking, I discovered a huge X58 following on EVGA's forums also, making things lots easier.

Newegg.com - EVGA 141-BL-E757-TR LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX X58 SLI LE Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

[Jason Robinson]

Originally Posted by Bryan Daugherty

I am considering taking the i7 plunge and have a configuration I would like your thoughts on. I am upgrading from a C2Q Q6600 2.4 GHz XP pro 32-bit w/ 4GB ram on an Asus P5N-E SLI. I am looking at splitting my purchase from NewEgg and Tiger. So here are the pieces.
.....
So what do you guys think of this configuration?

I don't know. going from a quad core to a quad core, even if it is a new architecture seems like you wont' get that huge of a performance bump for the money.

But if you need to squeeze every minute out of your renders, then I'm sure it will be an improvement. The real question is what is the $ per render minute and is it worth it?