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Topic: i7 processors vs others....

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I am looking to build a 2U rack mount computer just for DJ use and I want it to be as fast as a processor as I can afford so I know I can get a few years out of it. Here is my question. What is going to be the best and fastest when it come to DJing with music and video? My laptop is a few years old now and is flawless with music, so I don't think that will be a concern, but I want flawless video also. Is an Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz 8MB that much better than a Intel Core 2 Duo Wolfdale E8600 3.33GHz 6MB 1333MHz? These are the 2 options I was looking at when building it on partspc.com. I was also looking to use 4gig DDR3 1333 memory and Sapphire 100258-1GHDMI ATI Radeon HD4850 1GB DDR3 VGA/DVI/HDMI PCI.e 2.0 Video Card. So with this video card and memory what would be better the i7 or a fast dual core?
 
Posted Sun 10 Jan 10 @ 9:59 am
1) fastest is great , but how long it serves is probably an unrelated quality ........

2) lots of ram is nice ...... powerful graphic card with a gig of video memory is nice ..........

yet my old lappy with XP and 2 gigs of ram and a 64mb vid card still ran better than my 8gig desktop (vista home prem)........

unfortunately there are a lot of surprises out there in 64 bit- operating- system-land ..........

i do mobile work and strip clubs and do video in both scenarios .......about 50 hours a week .....at the strip club i do a 14hour long double shift at least once a week .....

i use an ati radeon 4350 w/ 1 gig vid ram ...... i forget now what directx ......may not be the latest n greatest ......same with the vid card drivers, may not be the latest......

after 2 months of trying with both vista (8!! gigs of ram) and windows 7 (both 64 bit home premium) the best i can manage with the video is this.....

i can not run the various plugins under hardware acceleration AND play a video without taking a big chance on a freeze up .......i'd say it's 50/50 or worse chance of a freeze .....the video will freeze but not the music.......so what i do is stop the effects , leave the hardware acceleration on and the video will be ok 99 out of a 100 ......however , there is another factor , i notice consistently that after running 5,6,7 hours the chances of a freeze increase no matter what else ......... so i play one tune off my emergency mp3 cd , reboot and come back .... that seems to reset the clock
(good for another 5,6,7 .....)

i am talking about very new rigs and vdj 6.0.5 ......

i recommend use the video card most highly regarded by a few different users , that choice i believe is gonna dictate your choice of motherboard ....if your operating system is 64 bit which it probably will be , then get more than 4 gig ram .....

start with video compatibility first because that will be the toughest issue ......

most likely the soundcard will work ok right out of the box ......

i say that because when i got the vista system and the win7 system , to my surprise my presonus firebox (firewire) worked fine with no tweaks (under xp it required a 2 page list of tweaks emailed to me from presonus to eliminate the skips.....)

btw .... awesome idea , building yer own ....good luck
 
Benchmarks are always subjective (especially TH) but here's one comparison:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/2009-desktop-cpu-charts/compare,1384.html?prod[2632]=on&prod[2617]=on


Copy and paste the link...
 
That site has some great info. Well I can always add ram. The 4 would be 2 sticks of 2gig with 4 total available. the site has 6 or 8 gig options, but it is only 800mhz DDR2. Video is my main concern that why I was looking at the 1gig video card and I won't go nVidia do to the problems I had with my laptop. Figure if it does not work, at least I can open the computer and change it, lol
 
you are going run into some problem building the 2U rack mount computer with the i7 cpu you can't use a Video card you got to use a mobo with Integrated video do build a lot of them.
 
why is that?
 
there is no space for video card but you should be fine with the Integrated video get a board that use alot of ram 16gig
 
doesn't that depend on the motherboard? If I get a regular size ATX motherboard shoulnt I be able to use the video card? The case I was looking at can take a full ATX motherboard. It is about 17.7" deep.
 
It's the height of the video card (+motherboard+motherboard mountings) you usually have to think about in these cases.
 
How about getting a riser card to help with this. That is what I did.
 
Thats definately the easiest solution :)
 
 


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