It is worth it to upgrade to a Q6700

[topdawgfla]

I have a Dell XPS 410 that is a few years old with an Intel E6600 Dual Core 2 CPU. I was fairly happy with its performance, until I recently started to encode/transcode HD Videos. It takes forever and a day (sometimes like almost 24 hours) for a job to process. Unfortunately, seeing that my dell motherboard has a chipset that only supports a FSB of 1066 MHZ, the fastest processor that I can upgrade my machine to is the Q6700, which is being sold at TigerDirect for $200. The question for you guys is as follows: Would upgrading to the Q6700 make a substantial difference in encoding time (It needs to cut it a least by half for it to be worth it in my view); or should I just save that $200 toward when I can save enough to get a new computer with a more modern processor.

P.S. I am encoding/transcoding 1080P Videos, using 2 Pass Method. I am running Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate with 4 GB of Ram, and 500 GB of HDD in Raid 0.

 

[obsidian86]

its an ok upgrade but a newer cpu would be better for $200

 

[Maziar]

Yes Q6700 would be great for you for your job,check tomshardware CPU charts for exact benchmarks:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-q3-2008/benchmarks,31.html

 

[jennyh]

I don't rate that as an upgrade. You could get a 940 phenom II and mobo for the same price if you sell your e6600 and mobo on ebay. The phenom II is faster than the q6700 in just about everything, including encoding. Finally, you'll be off a dead socket and onto one with a better upgrade path, not to mention you can overclock it as far as you want to go.

Honestly, look outside of intel and you'll see what you've been missing out on.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=80&p2=53

Thats a Q6600 losing 28/31 tests vs a 940 BE, the Q6700 wouldnt be much better, maybe winning 6-7 of them while losing the other 20ish.

 

[topdawgfla]

I don't rate that as an upgrade. You could get a 940 phenom II and mobo for the same price if you sell your e6600 and mobo on ebay. The phenom II is faster than the q6700 in just about everything, including encoding. Finally, you'll be off a dead socket and onto one with a better upgrade path, not to mention you can overclock it as far as you want to go.

Honestly, look outside of intel and you'll see what you've been missing out on.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=80&p2=53

Thats a Q6600 losing 28/31 tests vs a 940 BE, the Q6700 wouldnt be much better, maybe winning 6-7 of them while losing the other 20ish.

Hi Jennyh,

I appreciate the feedback, but I don't feel comfortable gutting my dell xps 410 (I woudl consider replacing the motherboard as such). It is one thing to upgrade the CPU, it is a different animal entirely to change the motherboard which in my view would require me to search for a motherboard that will be compatible for my dell xps 410 Case. I believe that my computer has a proprietary motherboard. To me the choice is either to upgrade to the Q6700 or try to save enough money to build a brand new computer.

 

[jennyh]

That's fair enough, not everybody is comfortable with doing that.

It's well worth trying though, and it's really quite easy as well - a simple case of unscrewing some screws and putting wires back in the way they were before. People are always looking for working dell parts too - you'd be suprised at how much you got for that working mobo.

 

[dunklegend]

I agree, you might be able to get a little $$ for your PC's parts.