i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

I have an i7 920 running at 3.4Ghz, but I edit 4 cam projects that are 720 60p. While rendering isn't too much of an issue, I would like to get significantly better timeline performance.

If you have upgraded from an overclocked i7 920 to a 980 or 990X, please share your experience with me. I'd like the ability to run my ram faster, and with the 920 at 3.4 I'm stuck at around 1280, and I think I could get faster with the 990X. Not so sure with the 980, but I think I'd be stuck with slower ram speeds with it as well.

Let me add that I'd just go for it, but as most of us know the 990x is $1K, a whole lot of money to throw down on a processor. The 980 is very good, costs less, but it has locked multipliers, which means, I think, that my ram would be locked to a few less than ideal speeds.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Never mind, I ordered the 980, $500 was not worth the difference. If anyone want to share their overclocking settings on the P6T v2 Deluxe, please feel free!! I've been looking everywhere, can't find 'em.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Jeff, where did you buy your 980 and how much did you pay for it? I am presently on 920 also, looking at 980 or 990 before stocks dry up.

Can you share your timeline experience after upgrading?

Like you, rendering with 920 is ok but timeline performance for editing multicams and especially clips from native 5D2 is lagging a bit

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

I wanted 6 cores for improved preview performance, turns out I've read that Vegas only uses a single core for preview, which is unfortunate. Apparently it's all about processor speed, not cores. # of cores affects only rendering, I guess. I have not confirmed this but from what little I've found on the subject, it appears to be the case.

Newegg is where I buy everything for PC, no reason to look hardly anywhere else.

To speed up preview I've invested $$$ in the fastest drives money can buy and am running them on RAID 0 on a spanking new controller, no help.

The secret to utilizing the 980 will be oveclocking, since processor speed is so important. I'm already at 3.4 ghz, so I need to get up to 4 at least to make things worthwhile, I think.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

I did not know preview only uses 1 core. Need to research further

why did you not consider getting the sandy bridge and a new board? The rest of the components like HDD, PSU and RAMs can still be used.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

The best way for me to help you understand is to encourage you to google a term such as "best processor for video editing". You can then make your own decision.

Sandy Bridge are fine chips, but for raw power, as it best work for video editing, the higher end i7 9XXX chips are acknowledged as best still.

The 980 is my choice because it has six cores, is fast, and reportedly can overclock to 4ghz with the stock fan, and it only costs $600. The 990x costs $1K, and has the ability to clock faster using more tweaking, but I don't think the gain in speed would worth $400. The decision is a personal one, in the end.

For best preview ability, I would guess the chip with the fastest speed you can find would be the best. For overall, and system stability, multitasking, etc the Gulftown six core are king, but not because I say it, but because the numbers do.

The next generation or round of chips to come out, from what I've read, are not supposed to include anything that will outperform the 990X by too much, so I feel it is safe to go ahead and make the purchase.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

You only preview one frame at a time, no matter how short that time is.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

John, I'm still trying to make out what the difference is.

I see a tad bit of improvement in preview, with four lines of 720p I could edit before, but with much motion in the frame it bogged down. Now it is smoother for sure.

Wow, my temps are 1/2 half compared to before, that is phenomenal, I just noticed. My temps were fine before, but I'm running 4.0ghz and rendering 720p with effects and my temps are at 41C, that is crazy cool.

I'm going to take it to 4.5ghz and see what happens, now THAT might make a really huge difference.

I

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

John, I cannot give a definitive answer about preview, but the processor renders VERY fast, that is for sure, it seems to be going at double the speed of before at my current 3.7ghz. I can't yet get a stable 4.0 OC.

It's rendering HD like it was SD, pretty amazing, I must say.

It's rendering 44 minutes of 720 60p video with pan and cropped photos, and color correction, and more, in 23 minutes.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

I'm sorry guys, but I can confirm that adding more cores does NOT speed up previewing. I have a bunch of oc'd 920 boxes, and a few 6 core 980's. They all preview at about the same speed.

Rendering, however, is another issue.

You should be able to get your 980 to over 4ghz pretty easily if you have the right cooling... I don't want to turn this into an overclocking thread, but what mobo do you have, and what heatsink?

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Jeff, I'm contemplating a new computer so I'd be interested in your full machine specs too.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Adam, thanks for chiming in. Stock i7 980 fan, and a Sabertooth X58. My temps are fine, I think.. around 65F at up to 4.2 while rendering. it's the correct/getting enough voltage, or whatever that is tripping me up. I don't know how to overclock, I am using settings that worked for my i7 920 that I got off the web 4 or 5 years ago, and then adjusting here and there, and I can't find a similar guide for the 980 with everything spelled out, and I've spend days looking. My temps now are around 65-70 at 3.7, the same as before when at 4 and 4.2 when I render HD which takes the unit to about 75% load, which is pretty darned good, I think. Actually the load is changing constantly during render from 48% to up around 90%, and peaking at 100% at times. At idle temps are in high 30s, low 40s.

The cooler that comes with the 980 is very good, people are commonly using it for up to 4 and even beyond, or so they claim. If you have the chip you know that I suppose. My temps rendering full HD, etc never topped low 70s at 4.2, which was phenomenal, but halfway through a render it would freeze. I'm afraid to start increasing voltages, etc so I found that I am stable at 3.7. I do know about the stress tests, but just wanted to get up and running ASAP due to my backlog, and already spent days looking for this crap, so I'm staying where I'm at unless a guide comes along.

Mike, I had a P6T vs Deluxe, not a bad board, and I would have kept it for the upgrade, but I got dust on the contacts where the CPU goes on the MOBO, and I bent a couple of them trying to get the dust out, so I ditched it to be safe.

I'm happy with the inexpensive, 8 SATA, 2 Estata connector, USB 3.0 Sabertooth X58 board. It's inexpensive, works great for overclocking, and has firewire too, which I still need now and then. It's a very popular board, so there is a lot of support for it, which is partly why I chose it.

My 12GB ram is some cheap GSkill DDR3 ram, works very well, it's very old, like my old board, and I've got it at 1567 with my overclock. GSkill is a best buy for RAM, in my book. I had Dominator, a better product, but I got some dead sticks, and said forget it and went with GSKILL and have been happy for years with it.

That's all to my system. I've got a great cheap case, but I don't recommend it because it has no dust filters, and it gets very dirty fast. Holds 10 drives though, it's a coolermaster HAF90, or something like that.

You didn't ask about hard drives, but if you want fast, I got the new Adaptec 6805E SAS raid hardware contoller for like $280, and I stuck a couple of Cheetah 600GB 15K SAS drives in RAID 0, and it does fly for a scratch drive. It's the coolest part of my system. They are the fastest drives on the planet, depending on who you talk to.

When the new windows comes out I'm going to use the controller for my OS also, and I cannot wait. SSD I'm not completely sold on, though I know they beat the Cheetah in some ways, but for longevity and consistency, the Cheetahs are king, at least that's what I'd like to believe.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

I think what is coolest between the drives and the processor, is when I open a 4 camera project, everything appears on the timeline instantly, there is no lag, etc. It's just there, like it's no big deal.

A project that resides on my storage drives, which are 2tb drives, it can take a minute for thumbnails to appear and stuff. That has sped up a bit with the newer processor, but the slower drives still bog the process down. It's not a huge deal, but the difference is quite noticeable. So, a faster drive helps, and a faster processor helps, but when I have faster of both it's huge. No weak links. I just wish all my drives were as fast as the SAS drives.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Hey Jeff

I have an i7 2600 3.5GHz and compared to the old DuoCare 2.2GHz rendering an MTS file (say a 5 minute clip) takes close to 15 minutes on the DuoCore and under 2 minutes on the i7....with simple clips it pretty much renders in about 1/3rd of real time!!!

Now I was previously shooting in 720 50P at 24 mbps (we are PAL here) and I found that in preview the 2nd monitor display drops from full frame down to half within a few seconds (even with a single track). Now the same shoot at the same bitrate done at 1080i stays in full res the entire clip regardless of length.

I have a feeling that double frame rate preview in Vegas is pretty tough on the processor ... as 99% of my stuff goes down to SD DVD anyway, I just shoot in 1080 and get magic previews...of course I am supposing that you are working with your GH2 footage still which is only 720 and if it's also hacked you are running at a much higher bit rate! You might still have an issue with 720 even at 4.0GHz!!!

Chris

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Chris, you've hit upon it, I guess, my 60p footage is the culprit. I get by fine with 4 cameras, and right now I'm editing four cameras and it is smooth as silk, but I'm using Cineform for edtiting, I haven't tried it with the original clips, but I think I'll switch over to the HD clips for awhile and see how it does. I use Gearshift to switch back and forth instantly (very cool, I think).

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Yeah, with 720p in multicam it's perfect. But you've given me an idea, that I can shoot with the GH2s in 1080i as well as with my XA10, so they would all match and it would be 1080. I usually use the GH1 as well which only shoots 1080 in 24p in a 1080 60i wrapper, not sure how that would match the other footage, what do you think? If I shot with the GH1 in 1080 24p in the 60i wrapper, would it show up as 1080i footage? I've never shot in that mode.

If I stick with three cameras instead of 4, 2 GH2s and the XA10, I could have matching 1080i footage. Interesting idea! And since I use HD link for transcoding to SD, it would all resize the same, and probably look great. I'd lose the progressive, though.

So do you think 1080i would work out and look as good as 720p? Just thought of the fact that I use Vimeo, and I'm not sure if it does 1080 or not, I think it might.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Hey Jeff

On my DuoCore I had no option but to transcode and was using Upshift (it does a good job with interlaced but doesn't handle progressive very well!!) Your Cineform files will allow great previews as they are no where as compressed as AVCHD. What bugged me was sitting waiting for maybe 100 wedding clips to transcode so I could use them..that killed a good 2 hours!!!

If you are going to shoot at double frame rate you need to decide if you would rather take the extra time to transcode and have great looking previews or save time and put up with half resolution!! On 50P mine switches within a few seconds right down to 660x370 on the 19" monitor and, of course, looks decidedly fuzzy!!! However the poor preview is only in your mind as the final render will still be pristine!!!!

It's purely the fact that IF you did happen to expose badly or were a little soft on focus it's hard to tell at half resolution!!!! You are probably better off transcoding to Cineform and at least having sharp previews so if you get a bit of soft focus you know to cut it out!!!

As far as I know the i7 980 is actually better than my i7 2600 (it costs more here!!!)

Chris

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Chris, I don't use Gearshift files for the reason you mention, too fuzzy.

2600 is a great chip, just has fewer cores. Since processor speed has more to do with previewing than cores, your preview should be excellent. I think that's why they call the 2600 a gamers's chip, it's fast, easily overclockable, and games don't benefit from extra cores.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Jeff, out of curiosity, what graphics card are you using?

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Hi Mike

According to Sony, it doesn't matter what video card you use as the software doesn't take advantage of it. I'm just using my onboard card and it's fine. However, that's only the case up to Version 10!! The new version 11 will provide stunning previews using Nvidia's card BUT the downside is they are not exactly cheap!!!! They were talking ridiculous prices the last time I looked!!

Chris

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Thanks Chris. I know what you mean about ridiculous prices.
I saw card prices in the 4 figure range being tossed around like we were all independently wealthy.
I don't know about you but I don't (and never will) be in that category :)

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Mike I use the GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 but don't recommend it.

Here's what happened to me. I went to Microcenter and purchased a sub $100 card (I am partial to EVGA brand cards, but it doesn't really matter, IMO).

Card worked great. I had second thoughts, and ordered a $250 card from Newegg and took the cheaper card back for a refund.

My system was more responsive with the first card, which you can imagine was quite irritating. I wasted almost $200. I was tired of messing with my PC at that point and just kept the damned thing, but it's still a sore spot.

So I'd get the best I could for under $100 if I did it all again. The larger card takes two addtional ac feeds, so it takes a lot more power, and probably sucks some of the life out of my PC, I imagine.

Unless someone is a gamer, the pricier cards, IMO, are not only a waste but a resource hog, and counterproductive. That's just my take on it.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

That sounds like your system has a CPU that simply cannot keep up with the demands of the higher-end cards (at least at the speed it's running at). The higher-end cards really need a faster CPU (or at least a greater overclock on your CPU) in order to be taken anywhere near their full advantage of (as far as productivity apps are concerned).

The same thing happened to me with an i7-920 and a GT 240 DDR5 versus a GTX 470: With the i7-920 clocked at anything below 3.3GHz, there is virtually zero performance difference between the GT 240 and the GTX 470. But once the CPU is overclocked beyond 3.6GHz, the difference in performance between the GT 240 and the GTX 470 started to become noticeable: The GT 240 is slower in both MPEG-2 and H.264 encoding than the GTX 470, especially on a system with a heavily overclocked CPU. Unfortunately, first-generation i7s at 3.4GHz simply aren't fast enough to show any significant performance differences between a $100 GPU and a $200 GPU.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

I was running at 3.4, but you may be right. But the same thing happened to me with a Dell OEM unit. I bought a Dell workstation that included a $3K video card, took it out sold it, put in a relatively inexpensive unit, and my system was snappier.

At any rate Randall, high end video cards seem to be of no benefit to me anyway. I'm on the internet, or I edit with Vegas. I run other programs like Dreamweaver, Fireworks so I just don't get anything from the extra GPU power anyway. I should have known better than to waste money on an $250 card, it was pretty stupid on my part. We all know Vegas doesn't care about GPU...yet.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

In your case, a card that's priced between $100 and $150 (such as a GT 545 DDR5 and a GTX 550 Ti) would be the best value. You would not want to go really low on the GPU (GT 520, anyone?), or else you might end up with a system that's as slow as or slower than an old Core 2 Quad in video editing.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Yes, don't go too low, but don't throw away money either, good advice.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

I agree. In fact, the only people who need a GTX 570 or even a GTX 560 Ti for video editing are those who run systems with heavily overclocked hexa-core i7s or heavily overclocked i7-2600K CPUs. Fortunately, my main editing system has an i7-2600K running at 4.5GHz, which does need that GTX 470.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Well Mike there you have it for video cards!

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Mike you better wait to do your build. I had no idea these chips were so close to being released. At the price I paid, I still did good to get six cores, and I could have done worse, but still wish I had waited.

Sandy Bridge E Core i7-3960X performance revealed early - TechSpot News

I do like my processor, I'm capturing DV tapes with Vegas, and converting HD video with Cineform, and editing in another instance of Vegas, and my CPU load is staying around 90%, which I think is good. My temps are at 70F, a little high, but that is below 75 which is the highest I like to go. If you hold out for the new chip, you'll love it, I'm sure.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Good grief Jeff. Just when you think it's safe to jump back into the computer buying waters, something newer and faster comes along.
I'm not a serious user (at home anyway, work is a different story, having finally gone HD) but it's been 4 (or is it 5) years since my last machine and it's time for a new one.
I guess I can be patient a bit longer :)
Thanks for the advice on the graphics card and the new chip. It is appreciated.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

mike,

i'd wait even longer till 11's out and about and you can get some idea from the first users as to what exactly is going on.

i'm following this with some interest as i'm happy with my existing set up but 'would' consider an upgrade to my gtx250 graphics card IF the 'promises' of better previewing is realised. frankly rendering is not a big deal since i usually batch render overnight.

it certainly seems they (the software/hardware manufacturers) will continue to create ongoing markets for both their wares no matter how (relatively) little advances there are technically.

just finished a major project and was thinking how, with an nle loaded with some pretty serious fx and a fast pc exactly how little i use the full potential of either. perhaps if i was doing serious music clips, higher end tvc's, etc., i might think the gains i'd get for spending on the higher end of ladder would be worth it, but it seems there's usually a sweet-spot one or two notches down from the cutting edge that i'm most comfortable with. ie. there's no way i would ever consider a $2k+ video card a sensible investment, but as above, i'd spend $500 for a NOTICEABLE improvement.

of course all this is coming with a global market downturn, and christmas. i think i might have to really consider what my priorities are, other than a new pair of monitoring headphones (that's a joke in itself considering my hearing;-()

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Mike, I knew the chips were coming, and they often come before Christmas, but I had thought they were coming out this time next spring, boy I was wrong.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Leslie & Jeff, I think I"ll just crawl into my cave (after the pro 11 release, of course) and hibernate until next spring (fall for you Leslie) in the hope (yeah, right!!) that things will have settled down by then :)

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

You know Mike, it might happen that the prices on the 980, or the other six core i7 chips might drop in price just before or after the release of the new ones, so unless you're determined to wait it out, it might be a way to get great performance at a good price.

Othewise, who could blame you for sitting this one out?

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

I wouldn't bet on it. You see, when the Sandy Bridge CPUs came out early this year, the older Lynnfield and Clarkdale CPUs they replaced stayed at their original prices. In other words, the i5-760 remained at over $200 even after the i5-2500K came out at around the same price point. Similarly, when the LGA 1366 and LGA 1156 CPUs came out in 2009, the older quad-core and dual-core LGA 775 CPUs remained at their high price points ($200 to $300 for the quad-core Core 2 Quads) until their discontinuation (although some resellers sold them at reduced prices just to clear out inventory). And if history tells me, Intel only reduces prices on its existing CPUs if there is a newer, higher-clocked CPU of the exact same generation as the model being replaced or superceded (for example, a higher-clocked Bloomfield or Gulftown CPU pushes out the existing Bloomfield or Gulftown CPU within the $500 to $600 price range).

I suspect that Intel is locking the price of older CPUs at their then-current price point to divert sales to the newest line of CPUs.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

Well, so much for that idea. I don't remember prices dropping ever before, now that you mention it.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

There are two major factors in pricing on high end CPU's - NEITHER of which bodes well for better/cheaper pricing on a "high end" build.


AMD used to be relatively competitive... it's been a while. I used to buy AMD when I'd do a build for myself, mainly on price IF the AMD chip was competitive on performance... all recent builds (meaning several YEARS)have been Intel... While AMD makes some pretty decent CPUs (I did do one build for the inlaws on a low budget/ low use upgrade), as a practical matter, they have not been able to keep up with Intel when it comes to video rendering scores for a LONG time. Unfortunately this means if you're building a VIDEO production system, you're probably buying high end Intel CPU's with almost no "competition".

For "consumer" use (if they aren't buying a tablet, which is the more likely purchase), there really probably aren't many applications/uses for the faster and faster CPU's - that means that the computer is priced like a commodity, with "cheaper" being a major factor in purchase decisions - which means they don't make a lot of "high end" CPUs, meaning the prices aren't droppping anymore on THOSE - they are like killing a fly with a bazooka for the "average" user.

I'm actually setting up a small "net/notebook" for my primary use (light, portable, does more than a tablet, but almost as easy to carry around, and does all the "everyday" taks) - it does most everything OTHER THAN video at an adequate speed for my use - I'll turn the "room heater" on when I need "4 smokin' cores", hot running video card with fans a spinnin' and all that...


Boils down to the sad situation that there's ONE source, limited market, and toss in the bad economy for good measure, and the high end computer build is going to be far more expensive than we'd all like it to be!

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

All of which means that my trusty quad core will be with a while longer :)

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

I'd like to report that rendering 90 minutes of 720 60p to bluray is taking 40 minutes, much faster than with my older processor. When I have time in the near future I must play with getting a faster overclock, but who can complain at 2x rate? It's really a nice improvement, but admittedly a very expensive one. Since I'm quite behind in my work, I really do welcome the increased speed, but I cannot deny I should have waited, had I known about the newer processors coming.

Re: i7 990X or i7980 vs i7 920 overclocked, anyone upgraded?
 

I'd like to report my previous report was a fabrication. Well, not on purpose. I was rendering Cineform files, having forgot to switch to HD to render...so things are not quite as fast as I thought, but happily not much slower. Glad I caught the mistake before burning Bluray discs!