I7 or Q9650

[InTheCity]

I'm currently running a Q6600, with a 8800 GTS Card and 4gigs of Ram.
It's a 2 year old system

I have a $2000 bugdet to either upgrade or buy new.

Would you trade up to the Q9650 and stick with the LGA 775 board,
throw on XP 64bit, up the ram to 16gigs, 2 x GTX 295,
another 24" monitor + solid state drive, same case.

Or would you buy new

I7 940, only 8 gigs of Ram, 1 GTX 295, 500gig 10000rpm harddrive
new case, new operating system.

Both will cost me around $2000

Also, and kind of unrelated. Will the SkullTrail board take 2 Q9650's?
Or will only accept the Extreme editions?

Thanks

 

[gkay09]

Well obviously the core i7...

U would not want to spend tat much cash on a old platform...in the future u would have to change to the newer socket...so spending $2000, u shuld go with the i7...

As for the i7, get the 920 and not the 940...there is no much difference between them except the extra price premium...the core i7 920, overclocks better than its big brothers...and there is no point spending extra money on the 940 or the 965...
U can invest the saved money for another graphics card...

As for ur question abt the skulltrail, No the Q9650 wont fit...its a 775 pin cpu and the skulltrail supports oly 771 pin cpus
here is the compatibility list...
http://processormatch.intel.com/CompDB/SearchResult.aspx?Boardname=d5400xs

 

[mi1ez]

And get 6/12Gigs of RAM for the i7. +1 for the 920. the 940 doesn't OC better.

Why would you want the 16G of RAM anyway? What are you planning on doing with it? I'd also say to go Vista 64 rather than XP 64. I'm not sure how well the GTX295 scales, but 1 will be so much better than your 8800GTS anyway you'll still be more than happy.

 

[ministerpaul]

Core I7...WOW!

 

[InTheCity]

Thanks for the advice.

I think the I7 is special in my line of work (www.project1media.com)
although I can't help this feeling like I should wait until an 8 core is released.

 

[ministerpaul]

You'll be waiting a while for a eight core for PC. Windows can barely handle a Quad. Mac already has an 16 core system in the works 2 xeon eight core chips on mb. The already have an eight core on the market. I would recommend mac for a media business.

 

[InTheCity]

I'd love to buy a mac, but it's not geared towards my work flow in the 3d Environment.