E8300 Vs I7 920

[jmgreener]

OK, I don't want to beat a dead horse so I hope I am asking this a little differently than others. I have seen an HP q8300 with 8 GB DDR 3 ram, 1TB hard drive and an 25" HD Monitior for $999 (Costco) While I know the i7-920 is more advanced, newer, and can beat the crap out of the Q8300, my question is thus. I want to get into graphic arts and or animation. Also I want to get voice recognition software and music creation (Midi)? type programs. Bottom line, will the difference between a Q8300 and the I7 920 be significant? Can I OC the Q3000 and make up the dif? And will a SSHD and Faster Video card pick up the slack?

Once again, thanks to all who give me polite responses....
John

 

[Bluescreendeath]

How much is the i7?

The i7 will be noticeably faster in certain applications.

If you're willing to build it yourself, you can build a quality i7 computer for under $1000.

 

[deadlockedworld]

Many graphic design programs are very CPU intensive (thats why the high end Macs come with industrial class Xeon processors)

You want to get the i7 with at least 6 gigs of ram. You can buy a system cheaper than that though if you would like suggestions.

If thats the case let us know-
Do you have specific retailer loyalty?
Are you willing to purchase online?
Are you interested in assembling it yourself to save money?

 

[Maziar]

OK, I don't want to beat a dead horse so I hope I am asking this a little differently than others. I have seen an HP q8300 with 8 GB DDR 3 ram, 1TB hard drive and an 25" HD Monitior for $999 (Costco) While I know the i7-920 is more advanced, newer, and can beat the crap out of the Q8300, my question is thus. I want to get into graphic arts and or animation. Also I want to get voice recognition software and music creation (Midi)? type programs. Bottom line, will the difference between a Q8300 and the I7 920 be significant? Can I OC the Q3000 and make up the dif? And will a SSHD and Faster Video card pick up the slack?

Once again, thanks to all who give me polite responses....
John

Well i7 is faster no doubts about but it depends on how much will it cost for you to replace a Q8300 with it.
The tasks that you do benefit from a faster CPU,so getting an i7 will help but as i said how much will it cost for you ?

 

[OneWing_z]

I think another key portion of this discussion has to center around other parts and component questions, i.e.:

Do you require the monitor, keyboard and mouse that come with the Costco rig? If you get into building an i7 box, these may add to your expense.

Is the Costco rig at all upgradeable? In my experience, pre-built boxes are difficult, at best, to work in.

What is the quality of the other components in the Costco box? If it is using lower-end parts, the machine might only last a year or so, and generally there isn't much salvageable from pre-built rigs (again, my experience, may not be entirely true).

The other key part to this question lies in being honest with yourself about your desires. You state that you want to get into certain activities that require some fairly high-end work to take seriously, but you are looking at a $1000 budget. That budget doesn't tend to go well with taking video editing and other resource-hogging application work seriously. Can it be done? Sure, I think. But it would take some effort.

If this is a casual, potentially passing interest, I'd actually suggest spending a little more than the $1000 and getting an iMac. All in one and generally ready to do everything you are interested in out of the box with little to no additional software costs.

If this is a serious interest, I'd recommend busting your butt to get your budget higher and run with an i7 with 6gig's of ram, a very high quality hard drive (think WD Caviar Black), and a moderate to high-end video card for the animation and video editing.

If your interest lies somewhere in between those two, look at building an i5 machine on a motherboard that supports both the i5 and i7 chipsets with two PCI-E slots and a very decent power supply. This will give you headroom for upgrading your machine as your interest becomes more serious and can easily be built under your $1000 budget, including monitor.

My final piece of advice would be to find someone knowledgeable about the activities that you are looking to do on this machine and ask them about their hardware. People who are serious about animation and audio editing are usually very serious about their hardware and will have a much better idea of what you need in relation to your level of interest.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

For the things you want to do, you will be disappoited going with the Q8300. For $999, you can get a much better AMD quadcore and still have the sme amount of ram, HD, monitor size as the Costco pre-built system.

 

[Maziar]

First of all the OP has a Q8300 and according to the reviews its a good CPU,and even if the OP wants to upgrade,i7 would be the way to go for his/her tasks.

 

[hundredislandsboy]

First of all the OP has a Q8300 and according to the reviews its a good CPU,and even if the OP wants to upgrade,i7 would be the way to go for his/her tasks.

Thanks for the clarification. I guess the next question is "What is your budget for the upgrade?" You can go AMD, i5 or i7 quadcores and if you have major cash (ie you buy with company), then the best and fastest platform for animation and high-end video work is a dual Xeon 5590 w/ 3 large capacity SSDs (one for OS, one for raw data, one for rendered data)!

There are faster systems of course but if you had access to those (film industry, gov't), you wouldn't be posting on TH, lol.