Moving from i5 to i7? Is it worth it? (Upgrade time)

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Way2much

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Hey guys.

I'm upgrading next month and therefore I'm doing some research and preparation before I buy the actual parts. I'm considering an i7 (most likely the new 4790k) because I game as well as video edit. I use Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, Premiere and Sony Vegas 12; I also do a fair bit of encoding with Handbrake and I know hyperthreading will help these tasks.

What I want to know is will it help these specific tasks enough to warrant the increase in price, it's not a matter of can I afford it because I can, it's really about SHOULD I really get this or is it even worth it. I was thinking if I don't get this, I'll probably get a 4670k. I have a 3470 right now and I want an unlocked CPU.


P.S I was thinking to get a 7950 with this because they're quite cheap nowadays and upgrade my 12gb to 16gb Thoughts?

Thank you.
 
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volcanoscout
Go for the 4790K. I use some of the same programs for work and thought I could make do with a 4670K that I bought 6 months ago. I just ordered a 4790K to replace it. For editing and rendering, HT makes a big difference. If you do decide to go with the i5, you might as well get the 4690K for the improved temp characteristics for about the same price.

If you do a lot of work on the Adobe programs and Vegas, aside from HT, adding RAM and an SSD scratch drive will really improve performance.
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volcanoscout

volcanoscout

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Go for the 4790K. I use some of the same programs for work and thought I could make do with a 4670K that I bought 6 months ago. I just ordered a 4790K to replace it. For editing and rendering, HT makes a big difference. If you do decide to go with the i5, you might as well get the 4690K for the improved temp characteristics for about the same price.

If you do a lot of work on the Adobe programs and Vegas, aside from HT, adding RAM and an SSD scratch drive will really improve performance.
 
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EasyLover

EasyLover

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Dec 30, 2013
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I7 is recommended in scenarios where not only gaming is required but user is involved in heavy graphics rendering apps. These apps utilize CPU resources at their full like 99% or so. Hence powerful CPU having more cores and hyper threading comes in very handy for these particular requirements.

In your case you will definitely be benefited by choosing i7 4790k.

You would need 16gigs of RAM for these heavy tasks.

Hope this helps
 
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You could also wait until the new CPU's start coming out this fall/winter. They are going to cost a lot, but they also might drive down the price of the i7 Haswell series.

Another route would be a Xeon e3 1231v3/1230v3 because they're server grade so they should be much more reliable, and they cost less. Only downsides are they have a slightly lower per core clock speed, they have no built in GPU, and they can't be OC'd easily, if at all. They are cheaper by about $100 though, and use less power, and still have hyper threading. I'm buying one for my build, it's near i5 price with near i7 speed + hyper threading.
 
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EasyLover

EasyLover

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I can understand where you are coming from :) OP wants unlocked CPU which is why Xeon based CPU was not in my recommendation. Good suggestion though.
 
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Guest

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Yup, my bad. I missed that part, an i7 is the only suitable option then. :)
 
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Way2much

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Thanks for the quick reply's guys. I'm actually considering a Xeon but chances are I'm probably going to go with the 4790k as it seems the increase in price does in fact warrant the price. I may however, wait for the price to drop in the fall but we'll see. Case is pretty much closed.
 
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volcanoscout

volcanoscout

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You may be well aware of this already, but there are several places where editing systems can get seriously bottlenecked, particularly the Adobe programs. Getting an HT-capable CPU fixes one. RAM and scratch disk are the other major choke points.

For basic, casual use, 8 or 16GB of RAM and sectioning off a portion of a non-dedicated drive for use as a scratch disk are fine. For heavy and/or professional use, install a cheap SSD as a dedicated scratch disk (no OS or other applications or files). I use a Samsung 840 Evo 250GB, which works very well but have found that to be overkill - a cheap 120GB that you can ride hard and put away wet would be a better choice. As far as RAM goes, while Haswell and Haswell-E chips are supposed to scale better with higher speeds (2400 CAS 9 is the sweet spot, if you can find it), Adobe efficiency seems to top out at 1866. The quantity of RAM, however, will make a big difference - it will use as much as you can throw at it. I have 32GB of 1866/9, which suits my use, but I can max it out without effort - if I could justify the expense, I'm sure I could put 64GB to good use.

The difference in performance from adding an SSD scratch and lots of RAM is pretty amazing.
 
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Way2much

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I know about the other bottlenecks. I currently have an external hard drive where I keep my cache files and I am looking to get an SSD for my PC because right now, My current build is running off an 1tb hard drive with a 2tb & 250gb external hard drives for other files. But again it's a matter of performance gains , is it worth the investment? My current build is plenty fast so how much faster will adding an SSD increase it by?. And about the RAM, I definitely am thinking about getting 16gb or even more because I can max out my 12gb without trying.

 
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volcanoscout

volcanoscout

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Depends on your usage - for the CS6 machine I built a couple of months ago, I used two 840 EVO 250GB, one for OS and applications and one for scratch. For bulk storage I used three 2TB 7200RPM HDDs. Compared to an HDD OS (with a scratch partition?) and external storage (USB 2.0/3.0), the SSD OS combined with a cheap SSD scratch and SATA3 HDDs for storage will be MUCH faster all around. Boot, applications, file retrieval and transfer will all benefit greatly. Whether the speed is worth it is a personal judgement. I consider it money well spent.
 
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Way2much

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I see. Well what SSD would you recommend for OS? The same one that you have? If was to get a SSD for scratch uses, I'd probably get something like a 120gb Samsung SSD or something, as they are pretty cheap. Also by OS, you mean OS and programs right?

P.S why are Sandisk SSD's so cheap compared to the rest of the other SSDs?
 
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volcanoscout

volcanoscout

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For OS, I'm partial to the Samsung 840s because of their price-to-performance ratio and reliability statistics, but there are other high-quality options. I use a Pro 256 GB in my work/gaming desktop and EVO 250 GB in three other PCs including a CS6 machine. You can use smaller ones as a boot drive, but below 250GB the performance falls off (probably not noticeable in daily use) and you have to keep an eye on space available. I don't like running programs off multiple drives (i.e. OS and frequently used programs on C: drive, larger or less frequently used programs on a storage drive) so I got one big enough to hold all of my programs and a large amount of temp files, like my download folder and working file folders.
Once or twice a month I'll go through the files and transfer non-action items to HDD storage, but even with heavy use and large files I don't think I've ever gone over about 75% of capacity.

With Sandisk SSDs, depending on models compared, you can see 10-30% performance difference in Samsung 840 EVO's favor, and more with the 840 Pros. I don't know about their reliability or pricing, as I stopped looking at them after I saw the performance differential, but if I could get one cheap I wouldn't hesitate to use one for a scratch drive. If your scratch drive fails, so what? You'll have to deal with the hassle of calling in the warranty and replacing, but you won't lose any permanent files or even periodic temp saved files - those will all still be on your OS or storage drives. It won't affect your system operability either. You'll want to designate scratch space on one of your other drives until you get the replacement installed, but that's not a big deal either.
 
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Way2much

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Alright. I'm most likely gonna get one of those 840 EVOs for OS and possibly one of those cheap Sandisk ones as a scratch disk. Thanks for your help man.
 
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Way2much

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It's a possibility, as I will gain hyperthreading but I don't think Xeon's are very future-proof as I can't overclock them, which is one of my main reasons for wanting to upgrade in the first place; I already have an i5 3470.
 
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volcanoscout

volcanoscout

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No sweat. Let us know how the new setup works for you.
 
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