Dual E5645 vs. Single i7 990x ?

[scottstachiw]

I have a CPU budget of $1000. My choices are two E5645's at 2.4Ghz each or one of the i7 990x at 3.4Ghz.

The computer will be used for two things: #1. HD Video Editing and encoding, #2. 4 camera HD live video broadcasting and recording.

Will the 6 extra cores of the dual setup outweight the speed of the single 990x? Are there other benefits of either CPU specificially for high bandwidth applications?

Any help and direction is appreciated!

-Scott

 

[scottstachiw]

Thank you for the welcome and the advice!

If I went the dual xeon route I was planning on the SR-2 motherboard with 48GB of ram. I would also be able to OC the Xeons from 2.4 to 3.2. Maybe even higher but 3.2 to be safe.

My biggest concern is the HD live broadcasting. I will be using 4 Blackmagic Decklink Intensity cards and the CPU will need to encode the HD video from all 4 cards and upload to the inernet as well as save a seperate file directly to the RAID array all at the same time. Not to mention run the broadcast software and the OS. Even though the clock speed fo the dual xeons is slower than the 990x, will the extra cores and seperate processors allow for faster throughput of high bandwidth requirements and encoding tasks?

 

[king smp]

with OPs multi threaded encoding and other mutlthreaded apps
going with cheaper dual Xeons with more cores especially if at stable OC
and investing in better HDs (maybe OS SSD boot drive with two mechanicals in Raid 0) and possibly 12gb ram would be a good way to go

 

[scottstachiw]

Thanks again Dadiggle. I didn't really understand the overhead issue with multi processors. Thanks for the offer to pick some parts for me. I know for sure I will need one of the EVGA motherboards because I need as many PCIe slots as possible. I would like to keep the total budget between $3000 and $3500. But for a significant performance gain I am willing to spend a little more.

Thanks,

-Scott