E8500 vs X2 7750

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Is an Intel E8500 system worth paying 30 more bucks than a AMD 7750 system.

  • Yes

    Votes: 44 83.0%

  • No

    Votes: 9 17.0%
  • Total voters
    53
Onboard raid 5 is good for 15mb/s which is rubbish. I am suggesting if he does a lot of photoshop work to save a few dollars on some components and save up for an Areca raid card. It's a valuable piece of hardware and will last a long time. As for the 9350e being rubbish I completely disagree. I just changed from the 3gig dual core to the 9350e and it is heaps better in games. In COD4 the intel was playable up to 1680x1050 on medium settings and I am now running at 1920x1200 with everything on max and it is still smoother in pameplay than the intel. The intel has a higher maximum framerate but the AMD has a more consistant framerate and is a lot smoother. The AMD is also quicker in Vista and converts RAW files in Photoshop %15 quicker than the intel. The Intel might look good on paper but the AMD is better in the real world.
 

Do I really need to post benchmarks?

I've worked with onboard RAID 5 before, and it's fine. Get Intel raid though, not Nvidia (Intel's is quite good, Nvidia's is not). A 4 disk array is good for 200MB/s or more. Also, as stated above, a hardware RAID card is too expensive for any budget build, and I would almost never recommend it. Oh, and if you really want a fast and responsive system for general usage, get 6-8 gigs of RAM and 64 bit Vista. I've never had one as responsive as my current one (12 gigs of RAM and Vista Ultimate x64).

As for the 9350e, it is absolutely garbage as far as I'm concerned. It's $170, while the Phenom 9950 is only $165 (if you absolutely must have AMD), and the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 is only $20 more. The 6600 is the best of all of these, as it easily overclocks to 3.4GHz or more. As for the "more consistent framerate", you can say what you want, but the truth of the matter is that the Intel tests better in every case. I've gamed on the Intels before too (not the AMDs), and I've never seen a consistency problem.

For photoshop and vista, the AMD is quicker than the intel duals for the most part, but the 9350e is such a slow quad that even the Intel E8500 and 8600 probably beat it, and the Intel quads just flatten it in every case. Basically, unless you are fanatical about low power consumption, it is not the CPU for you, as it is not even close to worth the money compared to either the Phenom 9950 or the Q6600.
 
The onboard intel raid 5 has a file copy speed of 15mb/s which has been tested and proven many times. As for the 9350e it's the cheapest quad in Australia and is $100 cheaper than the E8500. As for Gaming performance I have both an intel 3gig dual core and the 9350e and as I stated the AMD is far superior on a 24" screen. I have had friends try the 9350e and they all agree the AMD is a lot better in gameplay than the Intel. Yes the Intel is quicker at 1024x768 but it's a different story at 1920x1200. The AMD has superior memory speed and caching which makes it more playable at 1920x1200. Try it for yourself.
 
The other night I reorganised 300gig of images and defraged 1.3tb of files. If I was using onboard raid 5 I would still be waiting. You also missed what I said. I suggested he save up for the raid card if he does a lot of photoshop work. It's priceless for what I do and the best piece of hardware I have ever purchased. Also what are you going to do with your onboard raid 5 when the motherboard dies. Onboard raid 5 is a waste of time. Your better off with an external backup drive or the raid card.
 

File copy speed? How specifically? From the volume? To the volume? From one spot on the volume to another?

I'll test it. I bet it is higher than 15MB/s.

Oh, and if the motherboard dies, you're fine. Any motherboard with the Intel ICH9R raid controller can see the Intel RAID. Last I checked, that doesn't exactly limit me that much.

Of course, I wouldn't recommend RAID 5 as a primary drive for most people anyways. The system with the RAID 5 is my dad's - he uses it for photos, so wanted the redundancy and large capacity. My system has a pair of 300GB Velociraptors in RAID 0, also on the Intel controller.
 
Yes, try copying a folder of images from one section to another within the raid 5 and time how long it takes. My raid 5 manages 100 mb/s on a bad day. The intel raid 5 is good for 15-20 mb/s, a highpoint software based card is good for 40-45 mb/s and the Areca is 80-120 mb/s depending on how new the drives are and how many you have. My drives are almost two years old so they area little dated.
 
I am running two 320gig drives in raid 0 as a boot and they are also sliced wich gives them the same performance as two Velociraptors in RAID 0. I'm getting 190 mb/s read and write and 8ms response from two old drives. My raid 5 has six 320 gig drives and manages 500 mb/s read and write as well as the 100 mb/s file copy speed. The Areca raid card is a lot better value than the raptors. Also try copying 50gig of files from one folder to another. The Areca does it in under 10 minutes.
 
50 gigs of images moved within the drives?

Sure. I'll post benchmark results when I'm done. I'll time it.

Note: the array in question is 4 Seagate Barracuda ES 500 GB drives on the Intel RAID controller. The write-back cache is enabled.

EDIT: I can't get a good 50 gig folder (the main stuff on the drive is in my dad's "my documents", which I can't access), but here's the result for a 2GB copy:

Time taken: 50 seconds
Speed: Hovered around 40 MB/s

In addition, it's excellent at big writes - if I copy stuff from the other drive onto the RAID 5, it holds over 100MB/s, and the same is true for copies the other way (off of the RAID 5).

It's not as good as dedicated hardware RAID, no, but it is certainly not bad. Definitely not bad enough to make a RAID card worth it for someone on a budget. Also, the Intel controller is even better at RAID 0, so that is a viable option (plus it takes fewer drives). One thing to do is ensure that the write back cache is enabled though - this allows for a significant performance boost.
 
Don't get me wrong. The Intel matrix raid is very good for an onboard raid but it's just not in the same league as a hardware based raid card. Before I purchased my first four chanel controller I thought it was terribly overpriced. Now I have two four chanel cards and one twelve chanel card and I wouldn't have it any other way. It gives you unmatched performance and reliability and is the one piece of hardware that doesn't get outdated like cpu's and graphics cards. If you buy an Areca-1210 from newegg for $290 now you will be able to sell it in two years time for $220. Is there any other piece of hardware that holds it's value like that.
 
I'll never argue that onboard can match a dedicated card for RAID, but I will say that RAID cards are not worth it for anyone on any semblance of a budget for their computer. It adds $300 or more to an area that most people won't even spend $200 on (you can get a pair of terabyte drives for $250), and it simply isn't worth the expense for most. Instead, more RAM and a faster CPU tend to have a larger impact on performance.
 
Ok that's a lot better than when I tested it or when it was reviewed on toms. Buying two terabyte drives is a good option but it's still only good if you have less than 1tb of files. The other thing is so many people will spend $300 on a faster cpu, new graphics card or 10000rpm drives. In that situation the raid card is better value and will give you a bigger performance increase and you won't loose money on it. Anyway I need to do some work and finish editing a few images. If you would like to see some of my work I have included a web link in the more info option.

Regards, Mal
 
I just want to explain to everyone why drive speed is so important in Photoshop and the cpu is a lot less important. For one photoshop really isn't optomised for quad cores and most of the time will only use a single core. This is especially true when applying filters. Also photoshop uses a lot of memory because every time you edit an image every action is recorded in the history and this information is stored as non-paged memory in the ram. It will keep recording actions in the non-paged memory untill it runs out of space, then it will start transferring this information to the scratch disk on your hard drive. This is when your system stalls and you have to wait for more space to become available so photoshop can process your last request. It doesn't matter if you have a dual socket quad xeon running at 4gig. It's still only as fast as the drive your using. A lot of actions in photoshot chew up heaps of data and the cpu will sit there running at %10 waiting for the hard drive to catch up. Even with eight hard drives on the Areca raid card I can't get more than %75 cpu usage on a dual core when converting RAW files. I would rather have an E5200 with a good raid setup than an i7 with a single 7200 rpm drive. Ram, drive speed and latency are the three things you should be looking at if you want a good workstation.
 
Keep in mind though that for the price of that kind of a hard drive array, you could easily get a pair of 150 gig velociraptors to run in RAID 0 on the Intel controller as a scratch array, get a terabyte drive or two for storage and backups, and still be at a lower cost overall hard drive setup. It just doesn't seem like a price effective way to get speed within this kind of budget.

Oh, and I would also say that RAM quantity is massively important as well when building a photoshop rig - if one is running 64 bit vista on a rig with 8 gigs of RAM, photoshop could merrily chew its way through 4 gigs before having to go to disk, while a 32 bit machine will never allow for over 2 gigs of RAM to be used by any one program.
 
He should get two 640gig drives and run then in a raid 0 with an external backup then six months down the track get the four chanel card and an extra drive. The Areca 1210 with an extra drive costs the same as two 150gig Velociraptors but has the same performance with ten times the service life and he would also have 1.2tb of storage with the redundency features of raid 5.
 
Ok i looked of them raid cards and they cost more than my motherboard and processor together...i dnt think that is in my budget and im not that impatient...i can wait 4 more seconds...with a standard drive...i still am a college student..i dnt have my degree yet!

college means broke...i am buying a completely new system...new everything sata cables....case....pw supply....fans...heatsink...keyboard...everything...and i dnt wanna play no more than 1550...with shipping and handling...

I think i will drop the whole dual core talk and go with the quad core..because it looks like their better suit of long term anyways...i managed to setup a i7 system..without my blu ray and with only a 4830...because i can easily add another 4830..and the blu ray later when i get the money...plus i hear the 4830 on crossfire...challenges a 260 and 4870...

but i can still go for the Q6600 but im afraid amd gonna release something better that the same price range...so ima just wait..for this ces show and see what happens in the coming weeks...im sure i should have my build together by the end of the month..mayb sooner.. but still im glad i joined this site you guys are soo helpful..even if yall disagree is almost everythin lol

NO MORE RAID TALK lol...unless it comes built into the board...which maybe be the case with the i7 systems
 
wait....malcomk's last comment makes sense...raid seems confusing...im understanding that it offers more performance but at what cost? I will not spend more than 200 bucks on hard drives...most likely no more than 150..that all drives...and accessories.
 
Point proven. You dont need RAID or RAID cards, good decision.

Also, 4830's in crossfire is a good decision as well, they will beat a 4870 and a GTX 260.
 
thats honestly not a bad choice...but im not just a causal gamer im a avid video and photo editor...so i dnt think the 5400 will be enuff...will it?
 
If i was building a machine that was fast and just for the casual gamer i would skip the expensive processors and go right for a Athlon X2 5400 black and overclock it to 3.2ghz.

5400 Black - 66.00
Good Cpu Fan - 30-40
Motherboard of your choice - 75-125
8 Gigs of DDR2 6400 - 88.00
X64 Vista - Free 😉
Seagate 1TB 7200rpm drive - 149.99
Sapphire 4830 HD - 109.99
Case of your choice - 100-150
Sony Blu Ray drive -79.99
22X Dvd burner - 22.99

Grand total of 828.99 plus shipping.
Click to expand...

where do you get vista for free? pirated?



not really, I have one but I only got it to hold me over until phenom II is out.



Actually my 5400+ paired with a HD4850 plays everything I've thrown at it. Crysis is playable at medium/mainstream settings with no AA at 1680x1050. Nothing spectacular but gets the job done. Never tried photoshop or multimedia programs but i doubt it would be very good.
 
Hey Kirvinb, I am just trying to explain how drive speed and redundancy features are more important than the cpu you choose when building a workstation. A weeks work is worth a lot more than the cost of a raid card. Ok if your on a strict budget get a single 640gb WD Caviar Black drive and a matching external drive with e-sata. Also go for the Intel E5200 because you really can't beat it for value. Yes I really do like the AMD quads but they are out of your price range and the new Phenon is going to be around $300 US which doesn't make it a viable short term upgrade option. As for the cpu cooler just use the standard one or get the larger copper cored one off ebay for a few dollars. Also while on ebay look for a second hand Antec or Lian li computer case in your local area. People don't normally buy second hand computer cases so they go for peanuts. Usually a tenth of retail price and you don't have to pay for postage. You could also get a good Antec power supply the same way.

With the motherboard go for either the Gigabyte or DFI P45 boards for $100- $110. Now the best feature of the intel chipset is it's matrix raid. With your single drive go into the raid manager and set your drive to JBOD or raid 1. Either of these settings should work. Then create a 150GB partition for installing the OS. You will also have to install the raid driver during the install by using a usb pen drive. The other 450GB will become a storage area for your media work. Ok, you might be scratching your head wondering why do this. When you partition the drive inside the raid manager the drive is actually being sliced which is a different type of partitioning. By slicing the drive the hard drives heads will only pass over the 150GB of drive space on the edge of each platter. This has the effect of reducing the drives latency from 12-13ms to 7-8ms. By doing this your turning your $80 drive into a $200 Velociraptor. The only difference is your $80 drive has an extra 450GB of space and is a lot more reliable.

The second reason for partitioning is to keep your work on a seperate partition to the operating system. If the OS gets corrupted you can do a fresh install and you don't loose any of your precious work. This is the cheap way of setting up a workstation without using the raid card. The only problem is when you start running out of space. Then you end up with multiple external drives and your data is spread all over the place. Then it is time to buy the raid card but for now this setup will be just fine. Remember backup on a regular basis. The hard drive is still the slowest and most unreliable component in any computer. BTW the HD 4850 is the best value card on the market. There is always going to be a newer faster card so don't spent too much on it. As for a screen check out what specials DELL has on offer. They sometimes have special discount codes and the shipping is free. Anyway if you have any questions let me know.

Regards, Mal
 
Wow...thats very informative...ok so drives latency being lowered really increases performance im seeing...now doing this seem like it doesn't take too much work...but still what kind of performance will we be talking about...i have never used a Velociraptor so i dont know how fast they are...I have used a 1st generation raptor and the only thing i really noticed was the windows started a few seconds quicker and the file write copy was alot faster..very nice additions but nothing worth paying for the price increase.

My question is what kind of a performance increase should i expect 10 20% or more vs and standard setup.?
 
Yes it just speeds things up but this feature is free on the intel chipset so you might as well use it. The performance improvement depends on the application but it certainly speeds up the OS, programs and hard drive intensive aplications. Your getting the performance of a 10000rpm drive for free so give it a go. Also keeping your work on a different partition is a lot safer. I actually have two partitions on my boot drives. One partition has XP installed and the other has Vista. If Vista plays up I can just restart the system and select XP at start up and keep working. It's cheap insurance. Also Windows 7 is coming out this year so I would recommend using a free copy of XP untill then. Windows 7 is faster than XP but with the features of Vista. I know we shouldn't use pirate OS but I can't see the point of buying Vista if 7 is coming out.
 
Just think of it in the same way as overclocking an e5200 to the speed of the e8500. It's free and gives you better performance.
 
MalcolmK you speak some serious crap with your raid cards and AMD quads and COD4 - check your facts.

Higher end Intel motherboards come with onboard Raid0/1/5 etc - why bother with a card that cost more then the motherboard? And you obviously dont know the limitations of Raid 5 - corruption spreads as do virus's - more common then hardware failure and can loose all your data, aswell as if your Raid card dies - what good is that? If anything, a Raid0 setup and a dvd burner to back up important data is all he needs (if he wants raid0).

First you say hdd performance is important, then you say SSD's arnt any good? there a 100x better then your Raid5 setup for general usage (Intel X25m/e) - check out the reviews.

Your AMD 9350e is a sad sad processor lacking in everything, refrain from posting BS about it, even the 9500 is a sad processor, check how many reports on the forums here of people ditching a slow a$$ quad for an 8 series AMD (tri core) or even overhauling the system to a dual core Intel.

Phenom II's - yes, perhaps wait, or if you dont want to then stick with intel. Im not expecting much from Phenom II - a 45nm phenom - no major changes etc.
 
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