Your opinion on setup please and is Q9450 for video ?

[dash1]

I'll be building a new rig for general use and some video and photo editing too Once in a blue moon I may play a strategy or Sim.
My budget is ~ $1000 without the LCD or softs.

I was allmost locked running XP on the Q6600 with 2 OR [???] 4G .
Now I hear of the new kid on the block, Should I hold for the new Quad
like the Q9450 ? I will not be using any OC but will need power for encoding
What MoBo will work well with it?
I will need on it a firewire .

 

[snarfies1]

Well, the Q9450 adds SSE4.1, which should speed up video encoding. The board I plan to use with it (Asus Rampage) does NOT have firewire, but I do most of my captures from analog sources, so...

 

[akhilles]

Most mid-range P35 boards will be fine. Just check out the manufacturer's site's cpu support list. They probably don't have the bios for the new cpu for a while.

 

[dash1]

So, anything like the P5K should be OK ?

Should I get the 4G memory eventhough only ~3 will show up ?

And last Q on the case: Will the Sonata 3 will be OK for a system drive plus
2 for prog and video , floppy and DVD drive ?

 

[dagger]

You should check if your current motherboard can support the Q9450 with a bios update. The P35 chipset is old. There is no reason to get another P35 motherboard if you already have one that can support 45mn quad. If it can't, it's probably better to go for the new X35 chipset motherboard, even though it costs $60-$100 more, since it has far more headroom for either upgrade or overclocking. The new Yorkfield chip (Q9450 etc) performs about 20% better than Kentsfield(Q6600 etc) at the same clock setting. Which means at stock speed, your new righ will only be around 20% faster, so don't expect a leap in performance, unless you are willing to overclock.

Video editing software can eat up ram, so you should get as much as possible and get a 64bit OS. Remember, once the PC ran out of ram, and starts to use page file, it'll lag everything down and may even become unresponsive. Avoid it at any cost.

 

[akhilles]

It depends. I upgrade every 6-9 months. My sig will look different come this fall. I have no reason to splurge on the mobo. If you don't plan to upgrade for a year or longer, you should get the X38/X48 as they support the latest technology. Bear in mind that they're not cheap.

4GB. DDR2 is on the way out & the price will go up. It's rock bottom now. Again, if you don't upgrade for a while, get 4-8GB.

The Sonata III comes with a quality Earthwatts 500W that can power 8800GTS 512. Look at the power requirement of the video card on the web. newegg or the manufacturer.

 

[dash1]

This is going to be a new setup.
Videoediting is still mostly on 32 XP, thats why I was debating
and now leaning toard 3G [2X1+ 1X1].Graphics card is not a main issue
so I still not shure if 8600GT or somthing else [???]
In the CPU I think I will go for Q9300 or[?] Q9450,
So, I could still use some help regarding which spesific MOBO ???

 

[jaguarskx]

Regarding RAM, I would simply buy two sticks of 2GB RAM. That's what I just bought for my next rig even though I'll am still using Win XP. I think I'll skip Vista and wait for Windows 7.

The 8600GT should be good enough for the occasional Sim or Strategy game.

The extra cache in the Q9450 could help boost video encoding performance a little bit. At least that's what I'm hoping since I just ordered the Q9450.

I ordered the Abit IP35 Pro. Unfortunately I got version 1.1 which does not support the newer 45nm CPUs (Wolfdales and Yorkfields). Per Abit's website v1.2 support the newer 45nm CPUs and v1.6 improves compatibility. In the worst case scenario, I will not be able to boot with the Q9450 in which case I'll drop in my E6600 to flash the BIOS.