Best Processor for Image / Movie Rendering - AMD Phenom II X4 or X6 or Intel i7?

Here are some charts to look at:

Rendering:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2...

Video Editing:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-2...

I would do a summary but I'm going to bed.  

I dont think theres much that beats an I7-980x but editing and rendering are two things the x6 1090t does well. Given the price differential its hard to not give it serious consideration imo.

How abt going for X4 965? it seems a real value for money processor... or x6 1055? will there be much performance drop in rendering of images or movies in these two as compared to x6 1090t? the charts at the above links on toms hardware did not seem to indicate too much of a difference in most tests... moreover, i7 950 and > are out of question as they r too expensive at the moment...  

you can compare various CPUs in video benchmarks here

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/2

Ok well you've established your budget.

I would think that the Phenom II 965 is too close in price to the Phenom II X6 1055T. At $160 and $185 respectively. Instead I would be looking at either the 955 or the 1055T, pick which one you can afford. You can also OC the 955 to match the 965 anyway.

thanks, will look at these options then... but what abt the performance drop? is it going to be a matter of minutes (more than 10 0r 15 mins) in rendering and editing large image / video files? or even more? also pls. suggest a good MOBO for AMD with DDR3 and USB 3.0 and a decent graphic card as well ... and what is the min. power supply i should go for (in Watts) ? thanks  

Hello, well it depends on how long the renderings take.

From the chart it can be seen:
955 : 266
1055T : 218

218/266 x100 = 82
Therefore the 955 will be 18% slower then the 1055T

So if you doing a render which takes 1 hour with the 1055T it will take 73 minutes with the 955. Note that this is not highly accurate but instead gives you a bit of an idea.

If you can afford the 1055T then get it, if not get the 955.

With the motherboard you may want a second PCIe slot to be able to add another graphics card. Though it is not highly required you may want to think about it. Though that is more required for gaming.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

For a graphics card I'd say a HD5770 will best suit you, your not doing much gaming right? For $140 then $130 with the mail in rebate.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

For a PSU if your going with the 5770 a 450W would give you some room. But make sure its a quality brand.

Hope that helps.

yeah, thanks, that gives a fair amount of idea what to expect from these chips ...  
and for mobo... not much gaming ... that's right ...   so can i go in with just the onboard solution? what do u think? will that do for rendering purposes? and can u also suggest an nVidia card, just in case ... thanks  

A graphics card is not really required for 3D modelling though it can be helpful. In the program the view port is rendered using the graphics processor, IGP can handle this mostly. Though you can add options to make the view port look better and this takes more processing which the IGP will struggle with.

I run Autodesk Inventor 2011 on the i3's IGP. It runs pretty fine though it has a bit of a problem with a few features as it is not supported well enough. It can render a simple model easily though I haven't tried a really complex one.

I'd say you could skip the graphics card then chuck one in later if you need it.

The good nVidia cards are not really suited for your application. The GTX 460 768mb is at $160 which is a lot more. Why do you not like ATI cards? They are very good and very energy efficient, the 5770 is great at $130.

The question is far too broad. Which i7 are you referring to? The i7-8xx series or the i7-9xx series? Even then, an i7-920 is not comparable to an i7-980X in either performance or price.

A few things:

1. Is the software you use heavily threaded?

2. Max Budget?

3. Pro level work (as in job,etc)?

4. Mission critical (again, as in job,meeting deadlines, etc)?


Good to see some one else using Inventor. Yeah, for simple stuff the i3s,etc are fine. Once you start to do massively complex assemblies, huge patterns (think 1000*1000 matrix with 1mm pins) then the i3/i5 and even the stock i7s become really slow.

As for Inventor Studio, it is multi threaded so will benefit from having more cores/threads. HOWEVER, the main CAD functions (extrusions,etc) are NOT multithreaded and most of these functions can't be threaded due to their nature.


edit:

@OP:
If this is for true pro level work, you probably should be looking at a 2P Xeon/Opteron based setup. This will be ~$2500 or more easily. Also, if you are running CS5 (esp. Premier CS5) you probably should get a nVidia based card due to the CUDA acceleration. For Pr CS5, the Mercury playback engine can really use the GPU very well. There is a pretty big difference between a non CUDA acceleration vs CUDA acceleration for this program.

Thanks everybody   i primarily use Corel Draw, Adobe Photoshop, Premiere, and Maya and 3d Max to some extent ... so pls. let me know if i need to use a dedicated graphic card to speed up the processing... and i am not against ATI at all ... after all it is supposed to be most suitable solution for AMD !!  

2GB render files.! Are you kidding.? Which resolutions do you render or play at.? Regardless of the CPU, you'll be requiring a good amount of RAM surely..

^ Most certainly, unless OP wishes to wait forever. If it is indeed 2GB sized renderings, I would say absolutely go with a 2P set up with at least 12x DIMMs so you can get about 24GB RAM easily. Obviously, you can go beyond 24GB but those 8GB RAM DIMMs are damn expensive.

actually, it is 1-2GB image files or other multimedia files ... meant for advertising purposes ...