The Best Processor

[allansusan2]

Hi The World:

I am not a gamer. However; I like Speed & Performance. Which is the best processor; an Intel i5/750 or the AMD 945. Please reply in layman's terms.

Thank you,

Allan

 

[iam2thecrowe]

i think overall the i5 750 is faster, particularly for games, but the amd 945 is a lot cheaper, and is nearly as fast in most threaded apps. The amd 965 would be more compareable in price to the i5, and would be faster overall.

 

[allansusan2]

Are you saying that that the two are more or less the same in speed or performance. To me, I am a fuss bag. I like speed and performance.

 

[hunter315]

Unless you are doing stuff that is very CPU heavy you wont notice a difference in the CPU speed so for an average user i would say go for the AMD 945 and make sure you get a nice quick hard drive, that is what really determines how snappy your user experience feels not the CPU.

 

[Timop]

^yup. But the 1055T is actually the 750/760s "competitor" so to speak.

However, for general desktop usage and internet, you'll barely notice the difference between an Athlon X2 and a i7, Get a SSD or a faster hard-drive and 4GB of RAM for "responsiveness".

 

[allansusan2]

Unless you are doing stuff that is very CPU heavy you wont notice a difference in the CPU speed so for an average user i would say go for the AMD 945 and make sure you get a nice quick hard drive, that is what really determines how snappy your user experience feels not the CPU.

Thank you very much; I will take it on board. You see at present I have a AMD 945. However; I have been hearing that the i5 Intel is better; but being a layman on technical terms I am getting a lot of different answers which makes it confusing. What would be your reply to this?

Allan

 

[hunter315]

Yes, it is better, but if you dont need that much power to begin with having more isnt going to improve performance at all. I wouldnt ever consider an upgrade from an AMD 945 to an i5 760, its only about 5-10% difference in some tasks, but if you arent doing CPU heavy work like video transcoding or image editing you arent going to be using your CPUs potential so having a better one wont help, reducing the lag time in other components with a quick HDD and low latency ram will make a much bigger difference.

 

[allansusan2]

Thank you.

 

[Shadow703793]

To me, I am a fuss bag. I like speed and performance.

That's nice. but WHAT do you plan to do with this PC??!?!? If you aren't going to use the PCs max power there is no need to get expensive stuff.

 

[allansusan2]

I eventually plan to use Photo Shop and a few more high end software. However; for the present I just want it to be extremely fast and perform well. Being extremely fast is most important to me. Also; I do not want it to be surplus to requirement.

Thank you,

Allan

 

[enzo matrix]

I eventually plan to use Photo Shop and a few more high end software. However; for the present I just want it to be extremely fast and perform well. Being extremely fast is most important to me. Also; I do not want it to be surplus to requirement.

Thank you,

Allan

If your motherboard supports it, the phenom II 1055t would be a reasonable upgrade. But I would only recommend it if you truly are unhappy with your current performance.

Being extremely fast is most important to me. Also; I do not want it to be surplus to requirement.
Bit of a confusing statement. You are the only one who knows what "surplus to requirement" is because only you know how fast you want to render in photoshop and do things with that and other software, minimum.

 

[allansusan2]

Being surplus to requirement means to me; to have a high spec computer without really using all the spec that I have. When you talk about the Phenom II 1055t; is this the processor? As I said above; what would you truly suggest for me to make my system faster with what I have now; when I start using Photo Shop, I do not want it to be solid in performance?

Thank you,

Allan

 

[allansusan2]

I will pick up your reply in the morning.

Again; thanks.

 

[Timop]

General Photoshop/Illustrator usage chugs RAM/Buffer, only filters utilizes the CPU performance on a heavy scale. So a healthy 8GB or a SSD would keep things in check and not slow things down when you're working with huge files more than a 1055T, pretty much same goes for the rest of the CS.

If you have 4GB of RAM now, Id say you'll be fine, upgrade when you get CS5. I run CS4 with a 5200+2GB DDR2, and it works fine for the most part,. No where near buttery smooth, but perfectly acceptable,

 

[randomizer]

Photoshop chews up RAM like it just gave up on a crash diet. Of course it depends on the project you're working on. Throw in a few thousand layers and 4GB of RAM is going to be very restrictive.

 

[allansusan2]

Please read all what all the people said above; then please agree or disagree what they said. Please remember I would like it to be faster now, before I get Photo Shop in or any other high end software. I just want it to be faster than what I have now. Please give me a straight forward answer.

Thank you. I will pick it up in the mornig.

Allan

 

[Timop]

Faster how?

the 945 is plenty fast, and if you have specific problems of it bring "slow" then you'll have to tell us. If you just want the notion of it being fast, get a 980X.

 

[allansusan2]

Photoshop chews up RAM like it just gave up on a crash diet. Of course it depends on the project you're working on. Throw in a few thousand layers and 4GB of RAM is going to be very restrictive.

At present I already have 4 gigs of DDR 3 Ram.

 

[allansusan2]

Maybe I am too fussy. I am probably what one would call a bit more of having an Intermediate knowledge about computers.

Faster how?

the 945 is plenty fast, and if you have specific problems of it bring "slow" then you'll have to tell us. If you just want the notion of it being fast, get a 980X.

 

[randomizer]

If all you use your computer for is general office things like surfing the 'net and word processing then the best way to improve performance is with an SSD. It will be the only upgrade that can make any of these tasks noticeably snappier, and it does so by quite a bit. They don't come cheap though. They also require a different way of using the system. You don't store all of your music on an SSD, since they provide little benefit for storage purposes. Where they excel is in general system responsiveness, boot time, and any task that makes alot of small file access at regular intervals (a database that gets regularly hammered will run great on a current-generation SSD, but will make a HDD suffer).

HDDs are about fast transfer rates of large files, and doing things one at a time. SSDs are about doing as many things as you can at once. This video (which uses an older SSD) kind of shows you what "doing as many things as you can at once" looks like with a HDD and SSD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Jz7IMwBt4

 

[iam2thecrowe]

put it this way, if you already have a 945, it is not worth changing over to an intel motherboard and cpu, just upgrade the CPU to the fastest available for the motherboard. Then as others have said, large file sizes in photoshop require lots of ram and hard drive access = get more ram (8gb should be plenty) and faster hard drive, maybe SSD.

 

[iqvl]

Avoid AMD platform if you want to get a SSD, because AMD does not support "Trim" and therefore SSDs will degrade much faster!!!

 

[randomizer]

That's nonsense. TRIM is part of the ATA interface standard. Only people running RAID have problems with TRIM, but that's an issue with the RAID controller drivers, not the chipsets.

 

[randomizer]

Don't worry, I have already deducted him 5 internets.

 

[allansusan2]

What....!!?
You need to loose points for that statement.
Kill your sources.

Thank you for your help.

Allan