Thanks all for your input. Really appreciate it! I did some testing today, I went to the nearest hardware shop and did some benchmark by myself with some of my friends. Time was limited and I couldn`t get my hands on some screenshots but I noted down some of the results and want to share with you.
Below are my findings:
PC1 - Asus P6T, Corei7 920@3.8 and 6Gb of DDR3 mem with GTX260
PC2 - Asus P45 deluxe, Q9650@4.2 and 8Gb of DDR3 mem with GTX260
PC3 - Asus P35 WIFI Deluxe, Q6600@3.4 and 2Gb of DDR3 mem with GTX8800 (my own pc)
I ran PCMarkVantage (only benchmark app installed on Asus p6t and p45), well..P6T destroyed both P35 and P45.
Now, interestingly, I load my Wmware with Vista 64 and start Vegas 8.1, both P6t and P45 were running Vista 64 with trial version of vegas 8.1. I rendered x-men III from mpeg II to mpeg4 (Sony AVC 1920x1080, 50i). Guess what??
1: Forget about my Q6600, both P6t and P45 finished rendering way before my Quad, shame on me!!....I stopped the rendering process.
2: P6T running all eight threads/4 cores (it was not at 100% thou, it looked like the cpu was running only at 75%) finished with total time 36 minutes.
3: NOW. old brother Q9650 well oc-ed at 4.2, running at 92-95% of CPU usage while rendering finished at 33 minutes.
Explanation I got from the folks at the store;
- Quad at 4.2 will beat Core i7 at 3.8, I must OC both at same speed to see the difference.
- HDD is different, I have 500GB Samsung, P6t has a WD Black (not sure what this means) and P45 has a seagate 1000GB.
Can anyone help me to understand what all this means? I don`t want to lie, but i am really a newbie when it comes to PC hardware, thus I decided to join toms` forum for knowledge. I thought Core i7 is best in rendering but ...does it depends on speed/oc? Please share give me your feedback.
*Apologies if my English is broken, I am french.
Thanks!!