Time for an upgrade? Asus P6T i7-920 CPU Nv285 (Hackintosh)

[redwood36]

Hello All,
I've had my current rig for a little less than 2 years and I'm wondering if its time for an upgrade. Photoshop drags its feet sometimes and I eventually realized I shot myself in the foot by not buying a directx11 card.

Heres My current build:

Asus P6T deluxe v2
I7 920 CPU
Nvidia GTX 285
6G
buncha different non SSD HD's
Corsair 750W PSU
Case
I have one special need- that is that I run a hackintosh simulaeneously with Windows, So if you know anything about that please keep that in mind. Otherwise please tell me what you think is best and I will work with that.

Additionally im not in any rush. I could easily wait a few months (since November is when all the cool releases are out for games) so if theres alot to be gained with that, let me know.

Thanks!

 

[WR2]

I have one special need- that is that I run a hackintosh simulaeneously with Windows

You mean like running a virtual machine with Windows on your Hackintosh?
VMware Fusion

Best Gaming CPUs For The Money: July 2011: Gaming CPU Hierarchy Chart
(Ok, you're not gaming but the performance requirement is roughly equivalent)
They give some good advice in terms of CPU upgrading:
You can use this hierarchy to compare the pricing between two processors, to see which one is a better deal, and also to determine if an upgrade is worthwhile. I don’t recommend upgrading your CPU unless the potential replacement is at least three tiers higher. Otherwise, the upgrade is somewhat parallel and you may not notice a worthwhile difference in [strike]game[/strike] performance.

As you can see your current CPU only has a single tier of better CPUs available at this moment.

Have you overclocked your i7-920 yet?
For a GPU upgrade: Best Graphics Cards For The Money: July 2011
and the August edition should be out shortly.

 

[redwood36]

Hi WR2, thanks for the reply. No by hackintosh what I mean is i boot into the OS and it runs properly on its own, without any intervention of Windows. 2 seperate HDDs

Thanks for the other suggestions. I dont OC my CPU,Ive never really tried to OC with the exception of this video card since it forces me to kind of. My other question is as to whether anyone thought i could do with a ram upgrade, or if I should just wait for september. Thanks!

additionally I wanted to ask as to whether SLI or crossfire are really supported by games and Adobe programs.

 

[megamanx00]

You're better off just overclocking your CPU. As for photoshop you can use a CUDA plugin to speed up many of the operations. Just Google it.

 

[WR2]

Roger, I know what a hackintosh is and what it can do for you.
The only way for 1 machine to run two operating systems at the same time is running one OS in a virtual machine. VMware Fusion is probably what you want.
Otherwise you'd be running your 2nd OS on a 2nd computer.

You could also run OSX in a VM under Windows 7.
Here is a how-to-guide on how it's done.

A Fermi Cuda GPGPU (like GTX 560Ti or even GTX 570) and a nudge on the i7-920's clock speed is a easy safe upgrade path till you find a CPU worth making a CPU/MB purchase. 920's are known for overclocking and your Asus P6T deluxe v2 will make easy and safe for you.

RAM upgrade. It would be fairly in-expensive to go from 6GB to 12GB.
Mushkin Enhanced Blackline 6GB (3 x 2GB) CAS7 DDR3 1600 $65 & free shipping
-> Note the first NewEgg reviewer of this RAM has his i7-920 CPU running at 3.8Ghz on motherboard a notch below yours.

 

[redwood36]

You're better off just overclocking your CPU. As for photoshop you can use a CUDA plugin to speed up many of the operations. Just Google it.

hi Megaman, I found this.is that what you are talking about. I'll try it, but im working with image files that are 14x17 600dpi or more (comic pages), with this effect that?

Thanks for the recommendations WR2, I was also saying that I am already running a hackintosh, and just want to maintain my current compatibility. I will try looking into overclocking, if Im really going to get some kind of performance boost. I will eventually probably upgrade the video card for directx11, but i suppose I should wait for september for that. Thanks!

 

[WR2]

Thanks for the recommendations WR2, I was also saying that I am already running a hackintosh,

Yes you did.
You also asked about running 'a hackintosh simulaeneously with Windows' which is why I suggested the Mac version of VMware.

 

[redwood36]

Yes you did.
You also asked about running 'a hackintosh simulaeneously with Windows' which is why I suggested the Mac version of VMware.

Ah i see the confusion, I meant simultaneously as in that I can boot into either or. ive been using Parallels to run windows in Lion (i need it for my scanner), but in general I dont feel a need for both at the same exact time at the moment. Thanks!

 

[WR2]

Ahhhhhhh..... dual boot option is not the same thing as running TWO different OSs on the same machine at the same time. Which is possible and can be handy at times.

You're talking sequentially now, not simultaneously.
How to Dual Boot Mac OS X and Windows 7

 

[redwood36]

Ahhhhhhh..... dual boot option is not the same thing as running TWO different OSs on the same machine at the same time. Which is possible and can be handy at times.

You're talking sequentially now, not simultaneously.
How to Dual Boot Mac OS X and Windows 7

Yeah its not very hard if you have the right components. Just formating a HD in GUID is hard.

 

[WR2]

Sorry, I think that link was for the Mac dual boot.
This link looks better.
Hackintosh Win7 / OSX dual boot install

I'm working a multi-boot Win7 64bit / Win7 32bit / Vista 32 / WinXP / Ubuntu Desktop system. A boot time menu makes choice of OS easy to slip into the 'OS du jour' when necessary.