Background and Benchmarks
I've got real mixed emotions with this new i7.
For comparison
Previous system:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
4 Gig DDR2 RAM
Gigabyte M59-S5 SLI (nVidia 590a) Chipset
2 x 9800GT Graphics Cards (SLI)
1 x Hauppauge HVR1300
Windows Vista 32
Just for background, prior to the 9800GTs, I tried an ATI4670 in the AMD 4800 rig:
3DMark Vantage Score: P2961
CPU Score: 3130
GPU Score: 2909
I then added 1x9800GT in:
3DMark Vantage Score: P4464
CPU Score: 3453
GPU Score: 4948
I then added a second 9800GT for SLI:
3DMark Vantage Score: P10604
CPU Score: 20671
GPU Score: 9123
Needless to say I was blown away by that one.
Great. Really great. Trouble is, it was kind of creaking around the edges. Transcoding MPEG files was slow, Sims 2 was a little slow, startup times, had way too much data. Plus my mobo was only PCI Express x16 v1.1.
So what I figured, I should upgrade to a better CPU to help improve general performance (loading times, multitasking, game loading times etc), add better disks, and get PCI Express x16 v2 which should give me double the bandwidth, and this was my theory, I should see something approaching double the GPU score in in 3DMark Vantage.
So I built:
Intel i7 920
Gigabyte EX58 Extreme (X58 Chipset)
6 Gig DDR3 (1066) Memory
2 x 9800GT Graphics Cards (SLI)
Windows Vista 64
My new Benchmarks are:
3DMark Vantage Score: P12870
CPU Score: 37992
GPU Score: 10545
Problems
■So as I was saying, I have real mixed emotions. Clearly this i7 processor is something quite amazing. I can now transcode video in TMPGenc faster than real time, including resizing and adding colour correction, noise reduction etc. It's quite something to behold.
■The Sims 2 still takes a long time to download, but Im figuring most of that is actually data transfer from the disk. Curse The Sims 2.
■Vista is faster to load now, and faster to shut down.
■Unfortunately I havent quite got the same performance upgrade as I expected on swapping my 9800GTs from a PCI Express x16 v1.1 to v2.0 bus. It's actually quite poor. Don't know if I'm doing anything wrong or this is normal.
■Stupid motherboard designs mean that you can only do one thing! I only have two XFX 9800GTs, even though they're only single slot, I think the cooler is fractionally larger which means I cannot then use the PCI slot for my Hauppauge TV Tuner card because the gap is only around 2 mm.
■Stupid stupid stupid - why did I go for the Extreme over the UD5? It takes up a PCI Express X1 and an X4 slot with it's stupidly oversize cooler.
■Suppose I could go with a HVR2200 and stick that PCI X1 card in the third PCI Express X16 slot (didn't know you could do that), but that means yet more money! So now, either do away with one of the 9800GTs which I thought I might not need if I an get double the performance on a faster motherboard, or get rid of the TV Tuner!
Any thoughts on all of this?
Cheers
Simon
I've got real mixed emotions with this new i7.
For comparison
Previous system:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+
4 Gig DDR2 RAM
Gigabyte M59-S5 SLI (nVidia 590a) Chipset
2 x 9800GT Graphics Cards (SLI)
1 x Hauppauge HVR1300
Windows Vista 32
Just for background, prior to the 9800GTs, I tried an ATI4670 in the AMD 4800 rig:
3DMark Vantage Score: P2961
CPU Score: 3130
GPU Score: 2909
I then added 1x9800GT in:
3DMark Vantage Score: P4464
CPU Score: 3453
GPU Score: 4948
I then added a second 9800GT for SLI:
3DMark Vantage Score: P10604
CPU Score: 20671
GPU Score: 9123
Needless to say I was blown away by that one.
Great. Really great. Trouble is, it was kind of creaking around the edges. Transcoding MPEG files was slow, Sims 2 was a little slow, startup times, had way too much data. Plus my mobo was only PCI Express x16 v1.1.
So what I figured, I should upgrade to a better CPU to help improve general performance (loading times, multitasking, game loading times etc), add better disks, and get PCI Express x16 v2 which should give me double the bandwidth, and this was my theory, I should see something approaching double the GPU score in in 3DMark Vantage.
So I built:
Intel i7 920
Gigabyte EX58 Extreme (X58 Chipset)
6 Gig DDR3 (1066) Memory
2 x 9800GT Graphics Cards (SLI)
Windows Vista 64
My new Benchmarks are:
3DMark Vantage Score: P12870
CPU Score: 37992
GPU Score: 10545
Problems
■So as I was saying, I have real mixed emotions. Clearly this i7 processor is something quite amazing. I can now transcode video in TMPGenc faster than real time, including resizing and adding colour correction, noise reduction etc. It's quite something to behold.
■The Sims 2 still takes a long time to download, but Im figuring most of that is actually data transfer from the disk. Curse The Sims 2.
■Vista is faster to load now, and faster to shut down.
■Unfortunately I havent quite got the same performance upgrade as I expected on swapping my 9800GTs from a PCI Express x16 v1.1 to v2.0 bus. It's actually quite poor. Don't know if I'm doing anything wrong or this is normal.
■Stupid motherboard designs mean that you can only do one thing! I only have two XFX 9800GTs, even though they're only single slot, I think the cooler is fractionally larger which means I cannot then use the PCI slot for my Hauppauge TV Tuner card because the gap is only around 2 mm.
■Stupid stupid stupid - why did I go for the Extreme over the UD5? It takes up a PCI Express X1 and an X4 slot with it's stupidly oversize cooler.
■Suppose I could go with a HVR2200 and stick that PCI X1 card in the third PCI Express X16 slot (didn't know you could do that), but that means yet more money! So now, either do away with one of the 9800GTs which I thought I might not need if I an get double the performance on a faster motherboard, or get rid of the TV Tuner!
Any thoughts on all of this?
Cheers
Simon