Ivy Bridge (Real stoopid question)

How is your current machine letting you down?

If you can run games without a CPU related problem, then hold on to see if Haswell or beyond is worth it.

I'm do video rendering, and the 2600k rapes the six core in every park. So therefore I was thinking about an upgrade. Any more thoughts?

I thought the AMD six cores weren't too bad on video rendering??? Is the extra waiting time that problematic for you?

Sure a 2600K will be better than what you have now, but I'm assuming you must be somewhat budget conscious in the first place to have the specs you have, so that is why I thought you might be better waiting to see what Haswell brings as it might be quite significant.

Having said that, Haswell probably won't be out till June or July 2013, irrespective of what any current roadmap states.

it depends how much time a 2600k would knock off, like a 10min video will take 35min to render on the six core. But if the 2600k does it in 12 then thats worth it i suppose!

I have a 1055T as well - you should be able to get ~10% OC on it (even with locked multipliers). Then it comes down to what program you're using for rendering.

Most rendering programs take advantage of as many cores/threads as they can use. And real cores >> HT virtual cores. So, even clocked lower, the AMD won't fall too far behind the 2600k (since it's a 4 core with 4 more virtual cores). Check out your CPU usage when you're rendering - if it's 100% on all 6 cores, you're in good shape.

I've looked at upgrading myself - but it seems that in most of the work I do (mostly VMs and development, some video editing) it's not worth it. I would bet that your 10 min video times would drop from 35min to maybe 28-30 min with the 2600k. (Think about it- the Intel proc is better no doubt, but it's not 3x better! (35->12?)) I may well upgrade from my AMD platform to Ivy Bridge when the 3750/3770s come out, but I want to see some benchmarks first.

I use sony Vegas 10 and when when rendering it's about 70% on all cores   Any ideas Improvements to my build which may speed up rendering?

It would cost $450-550 to switch platforms to a i7-2600k. It hardly seems worth it unless editing video is a job.

Just looking at the Tom's benchmarks. With the HD transcoding, the 1055T takes 79 seconds to the i7-2600k's 58 seconds. If we assume that translates perfectly to your time example (which I'm sure it doesn't) then you could get improvements down to 25.7 minutes.

So you think I should wait and maybe get a new build like next year around june?

Wait for Ivy Bridge  

If you get a new motherboard like I did, like the P8p67 Pro, it is Sandybridge but already has the new BIOS for IVY Bridge processors. So you could get a Sandy Bridge and then Ivy Bridge later. But I would just wait it out.

Hmm, what is the transcode job youre running? If youre only using 70% of the 1055, it doesnt seem to be cpu limited.

Not sure what that means, I just render the videos. It's GPU related as well, and ram related. But 8GB of ram I think is enough.

Oh, can you check your ram usage and gpu usage during the render?

How do I check RAM and GPU usage?

RAM you can see in the windows task manager. For nVidia gpus im not sure - AMD has a monitor built into the catalyst control center (I have all AMD cards)

RAM: Use Resource Monitor in Windows (click Start and type "Resource Monitor").
GPU: Use GPU-Z, second tab.

CPU was anywhere from 65% - 80%
RAM 3.90GB / 8GB So not really pushing my computer!

Maybe it was GPU then - can you try GPU-z?

405 MHz (WTF WHY IS IT SO LOW THIS IS A GTX 460 Super clocked lol)
810MHz on the shaders
2000MHz on the mem

This is odd. Have i been ripped off with the GPU lol?

Any other idea lol

(I posted the RAM GPU usage above)

no, play or open a game once then minimize it, ur gpu goes from low to high during 3d/2d workloads to cut heat and power when its not needed

Okay it jumped up to 805Mhz, but it does not do that while rendering therefore it's cant be GPU reliant! WTF DOES SONY VEGAS USE LOL!

That would indicate that the Vegas program isnt using the gpu then....hmm

So...Sony vegas does not rely on the CPU hence the fact mine only goes up to around 65% the GPU is not even being used. And the RAM bearly moved over 3.5GB. Maybe it needs to copy it to the HDD. So maybe my HDD is slow? I thought it was 7200RPM though?! This is weird.

In some cases, the hard drive plays a role, but only with uncompressed files in most cases.

Depending on how much editing is needed, some programs can use your video card to accelerate the rendering/compression. Look for programs that support Nvidia CUDA.

So what is sony vegas doing with my computer lol, why can't it use like 99% of my CPU and RAM then it might render quicker!

There must be something holding it back. What it is? i am not sure. I have not used Vegas.

One thing i found helped with some video rendering was to have 2 drives(not partitions) one for the input and one for the output. This effectively let the drive not have to jump from reading one spot to writing another over and over. Read, compress write to other drive.

This also helps considerably when backing up steam games(backup on another drive makes a huge difference and is the only way to get steam to actually nearly max out my old i7 920 system. Same reason, reading and writing to the same drive can be slow).

Okay then here is my long term goal lol check it out see what you think about the editing side

Intel 2600k (Cooled by the noctua NH-D14, and OC'ed to about 4.2GHz)
ASUS P67 seems like a good motherboard
8GB 1600Mhz
GTX 460 SC
750w PSU
SSD 64GB
2x 500GB

Not really far off just need SSD and 2 new HDD's and new CPU and Motherboard I can use all my old parts again lol. What you think of this in general?

I doubt sony vegas is slow because of HDD

I think you may just run into the same issue - cpu bottleneck would show 100% use, gpu isnt touched, etc. What does the upgrade solve?

Anyhow, with my 1055T, I transcode video in virtually real time (1080p 2 hour movie, mpeg4 to h.264 in 2:10 using handbrake) and it maxes the oc'd cores the whole time. And I move the files from one hdd to the other as inuke suggests. Its either the program or the hdds.

RE the program being slow-> if you google 'sony vegas slow' you get all sort of hits inluding this:

http://mobi.creativecow.net/thread/24/918270

Might be nothing you can do.

http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/917118

Alot of people on that post seem to have 2 HDD setups (one for input and one for output).

Before you upgrade I would try and get a spare HDD and see if it improves performance.

I tend to agree with the poster above.

If you did go for a 2600k, you may just end up with the same issue of slower renders and lower cpu usage.

That said, the 2600k will get you more then 4.2 on the Noctua heatsink of your choice.

The other post(linked above) shows no link to hard drive speeds as well.

Before going the new build route, maybe its worth giving your current cpu an overclock to see if it helps.

Agreed, you need to max out one or more of your components before planning to upgrade it.

Can you open up the Resource Monitor in Windows, and on the Disk tab check the 'Disk Queue Length' column, while you're running a render? If you're seeing values >1, it means your hard disk is the bottleneck.

http://s283.photobucket.com/albums/kk306/majorgibly/?ac...

I don't know what you mean but there is a picture which might help... Well is it the HDD?

it could be that its just using 4 threads and not utillising all 6 cores. Windows splits the loads between cores s o it may look like its using all cores when it's not. OVerclock or underclock the cpu to see if there is any change. If you underclock it and % useage remains the same, then its not using all the cores. If % useage goes up, then you know its being bottlenecked by another component.

I think it's the program....Chrome is writing to the HDD faster than Vegas.

WAIT WHAT LOL! What I do now lol?! Are you 100% sure.

Look at the "Write B/sec" column next to those two programs.

Are you using advanced effects in your videos? What kinds of files are you editing (MPEG/H.264/etc)?

WMV lol

start rendering something in sony vegas, then right click on your task bar and select "start task manager"

click on the processes tab, find the sony vegas 10 process, highlight it, right click on it, and turn the process priority up to its highest level and it should utilize more cpu

It says something like this may cause system to be unstable

The warning about instability is only an issue on older systems and with software that takes every ouch of cpu power.

I remember using that back in the day(P133 FTW) to keep winamp from skipping when I opened other apps.

I doubt it will be an issue to run in high(realtime if it lets you), but i am not sure it will help. It is not like you have another app taking the cpu power. If there was, you would see it in the task manager(and the combine of all apps would be pegging the cpu at 100%).

The suggestion of underclocking(as per iam2thecrowe) to see if it uses more is a very good one. If the cpu down clocked still uses the same % them its a limit of the program, if it uses more, then you have a bottleneck somewhere in the system(hard drive?)