Dollars spent/saved on Older CPU system
angevin1
Registered Users Posts: 3,403 Major grins
Okay. Update on my Q6600 2.4 GHZ, 8GB RAm 64 bit machine.
I ordered and installed two items.
ITEM #1: QuadroFX-3800 Graphics card. I thought I'd be here , reporting in this forum on Friday eve or early Saturday, but Friday, after the cards installation and my profound disappointment I decided to contact Nvidia support. Their tech mechanism works by placing a phone call and leaving a mssg. for them to call you back, which they never did. So about three hours later I found a chat portal to chat with a tech. After waiting about 5 minutes in the chat queue, the chat session began. We started at 13:53 my time (EST) and I finished and closed the CHAT @ 2032 EST. It took about an hour and a half or close to two hours really, to get the first tech to upgrade me to a level 2 chat and recuse himself for a more techy kinda guy. The new tech asked a question or three then we decided to let him remotely control my computer. (Any of you who may have read some of my threads know I am toying with After Effects. Basically taking 1080i video, placing sequences into compositions and rendering all kinds of movies from the simple nature type to some more robust using fire and a wee bit of brimstone. So, it is rather intense for the machine to render and especially render RAM previews. Ram preview being a preview of a given composition in real time [hopefully] to see how the overall project is flowing.) So the guy makes certain I have this turned off in my windows, and that turned on and downloads/installs new drivers for my Mobo, etc. The opens After Effects and using a Graphics card monitoring tool, Begins viewing the RAM preview on a 3 layer project I have open. We adjust, we turn Open GL off/on, adjust some more and basically get it up to about 4fps max over the course of 6 seconds in a timeline. This is at Full resolution. At the end of our chat session, he told me he was going to try and replicate the scenario over the weekend there at work and see if he could figure out why we couldn't get a faster RAM preview, but he'd have to search for a computer with 8GB of RAM...He said they didn't have any with that much RAM...which I thought was totally strange.
When and if I talk with him tomorrow, as he promised, the first order of business is going to be apologizing to him. Later Friday night, I did what I ought to have done first. Read. And read a lot more than I like to...and I'm a reader, or at least thought I was. Adobe makes it very clear, not in their Marketing Hyperbole, but their engineers' do write in their info pages about adjusting After Effects for usage and what/when/how the Multisampling works, or when it doesn't and How OpenGL works and how it doesn't.
If you'll pardon the analogy, at first read it reminds me of my garage days. It reads like buying a fuel additive, adding it,
and then the customer says:
"I thought this stuff was supposed to make my car go faster?"
To which the Marketing man replies: "Oh, well it does sir, but really, it works better if you have a more powerful engine!"
And while I was chagrined at first breath with this thought, I did something else that made the overall truth in that statement, more palatable.
After Friday nights reading and adjusting session, I was squeezing more out of the Quadro FX 3800 and was feeling some better overall. I went ahead and reinstalled my two month old ATI HD5830 Card and found I could pretty much keep up or even out do the Quadro...which considering the huge price difference, my palate began to loose it's appetite.
Before I go on the how much trouble I ran into regarding my SSD installation, I'll cut to the chase and say, remember the fuel additive analogy? well turns out, he was right. As soon as I got my SSD configured, up and running with a clean WIn7 install with OS and Adobe Only on the SSD, the Quadro FX card ate the Ati's lunch, spit it out and kicked it over the side of the ship.....in the OpenGL dept in After Effects.
Intel X-25M SSD: Solid State Drive. Comes with a Sticker, that reads: "My SSD Rocks"
Also comes with a 1/2 size CD that has installation instructions in it in 68 different languages . It tells you to HOW-To install it, Then start computer and tell the BIOS to recognize New hard drive, if it doesn't auto magically recognize it. As far as I can tell, my bios doesn't have that feature. Installing it was not an issue. But, it DOES NOT come with drivers, and The computer didn't even recognize it was there until I found the firmware to upload at the Intel site. Then after doing that, and rebooting over and over seems, it did recognize it.
Here is actually where things take a turn for the worse somewhat. What I wanted was to do a clean install on the New SSD of my Win 7 OS and then re-install Adobe too. No issues with Adobe this time, but try as I might, I could not get a recovery disc to get my system image and place it on the SSD, it saw the SSD after needing to once again "mark it as ready", but it in no way would use it. Finally...and you perhaps know the feeling, I went and bought a new Win7 Full verison disc. My Win 7 I had been running was an Online Purchase and was the full version of Home prem.
Anyway, went got the Win 7 at BB and came home and began a clean install...no joy...each time I wanted to do that, just like the recovery, the computer couldn't figure out what I wanted to do and was shutting down or going into the recovery console for me to use the old Main/C drive for clean install or recovery of my sys image.
The Install that worked: After perusing forums over and over trying to figureout what to do, how to do-it, etc, I just got a hair about putting in the New Win7 disc while on my Desktop of the old Main/C...voila, it began the install....AND, and it recognized my New SSD and was apparently happy to use it too..YAY...So all the normal screens came up and it asked about a thing or two early on, then Win7 went to work and told me it'd be awhile and would need to start/reboot perhaps several times during the process. I wanted to stick around and was glad I did. When it did the reboot and restarted, it actually took me right back to where I had been hours earlier with not recognizing or being able to use the SSD and wanting to begin a New Clean Install on my old main/C drive. I aborted the New (inst) install and when asked it I wanted to abort, said yes. it went to reboot the system again and as it did so, I quickly popped open the CD player and popped out the Win 7 disc as it rebooted and tried to slam closed...I barely made it!! When it did restart....it went right back to the Correct New Install on the SSD like nothing had ever occurred!
Win 7 actually completed the Install from there, though now each time it boots, it thinks it has a dual boot system and I get to choose which Win 7 I want...I may decide I want to keep it that way...just in case!
Finally little good news, eh?
Windows 7 experience: Q6600, 8GB RAM, WD 7200 680GB HDD, ATI HD5830
went from 5.6 to 7.1 with the addition of the SSD see screen shot below
Same system with Nvidia Quadro FX 3800 Graphics card: See below Screen Shot
If you look closely at the two screen shots, you see the ati card actually outdid the Nvidia card by 0.7 on the Windows Experience index. BOth of these are with the SSD ...
I may still be proven foolish for going about my upgrade in this manner, but really, I wanted to see what the big prob was with my old CPU. I think it turns out the old CPU is now the major hold up of After Effects working like the Fuel additive analogy...But, I learned that the HDD was a major hold up too. The SSD sped things up in every way I can think of. My Web Pages load quickly, My adobe stuff loads quickly, and So far, I am pleased.
My intention is to go ahead and put the MOBO/CPU/RAM in for the i7-930.....I believe I can justify the upgrade now that I know what I know as far where I was, where I have been and where I'd like to go.
I hope my thread here actually ends up helping someone wondering about their system they presently run and perhaps gives some insight as to what bottle-necks their system may have and what prospects for improvement versus dollars spent will render.
It's been a H of a weekend...I look forward to playing with my new toy that Helen over at Adorama worked so hard to help me with~
Cheers,
I ordered and installed two items.
ITEM #1: QuadroFX-3800 Graphics card. I thought I'd be here , reporting in this forum on Friday eve or early Saturday, but Friday, after the cards installation and my profound disappointment I decided to contact Nvidia support. Their tech mechanism works by placing a phone call and leaving a mssg. for them to call you back, which they never did. So about three hours later I found a chat portal to chat with a tech. After waiting about 5 minutes in the chat queue, the chat session began. We started at 13:53 my time (EST) and I finished and closed the CHAT @ 2032 EST. It took about an hour and a half or close to two hours really, to get the first tech to upgrade me to a level 2 chat and recuse himself for a more techy kinda guy. The new tech asked a question or three then we decided to let him remotely control my computer. (Any of you who may have read some of my threads know I am toying with After Effects. Basically taking 1080i video, placing sequences into compositions and rendering all kinds of movies from the simple nature type to some more robust using fire and a wee bit of brimstone. So, it is rather intense for the machine to render and especially render RAM previews. Ram preview being a preview of a given composition in real time [hopefully] to see how the overall project is flowing.) So the guy makes certain I have this turned off in my windows, and that turned on and downloads/installs new drivers for my Mobo, etc. The opens After Effects and using a Graphics card monitoring tool, Begins viewing the RAM preview on a 3 layer project I have open. We adjust, we turn Open GL off/on, adjust some more and basically get it up to about 4fps max over the course of 6 seconds in a timeline. This is at Full resolution. At the end of our chat session, he told me he was going to try and replicate the scenario over the weekend there at work and see if he could figure out why we couldn't get a faster RAM preview, but he'd have to search for a computer with 8GB of RAM...He said they didn't have any with that much RAM...which I thought was totally strange.
When and if I talk with him tomorrow, as he promised, the first order of business is going to be apologizing to him. Later Friday night, I did what I ought to have done first. Read. And read a lot more than I like to...and I'm a reader, or at least thought I was. Adobe makes it very clear, not in their Marketing Hyperbole, but their engineers' do write in their info pages about adjusting After Effects for usage and what/when/how the Multisampling works, or when it doesn't and How OpenGL works and how it doesn't.
If you'll pardon the analogy, at first read it reminds me of my garage days. It reads like buying a fuel additive, adding it,
and then the customer says:
"I thought this stuff was supposed to make my car go faster?"
To which the Marketing man replies: "Oh, well it does sir, but really, it works better if you have a more powerful engine!"
And while I was chagrined at first breath with this thought, I did something else that made the overall truth in that statement, more palatable.
After Friday nights reading and adjusting session, I was squeezing more out of the Quadro FX 3800 and was feeling some better overall. I went ahead and reinstalled my two month old ATI HD5830 Card and found I could pretty much keep up or even out do the Quadro...which considering the huge price difference, my palate began to loose it's appetite.
Before I go on the how much trouble I ran into regarding my SSD installation, I'll cut to the chase and say, remember the fuel additive analogy? well turns out, he was right. As soon as I got my SSD configured, up and running with a clean WIn7 install with OS and Adobe Only on the SSD, the Quadro FX card ate the Ati's lunch, spit it out and kicked it over the side of the ship.....in the OpenGL dept in After Effects.
Intel X-25M SSD: Solid State Drive. Comes with a Sticker, that reads: "My SSD Rocks"
Also comes with a 1/2 size CD that has installation instructions in it in 68 different languages . It tells you to HOW-To install it, Then start computer and tell the BIOS to recognize New hard drive, if it doesn't auto magically recognize it. As far as I can tell, my bios doesn't have that feature. Installing it was not an issue. But, it DOES NOT come with drivers, and The computer didn't even recognize it was there until I found the firmware to upload at the Intel site. Then after doing that, and rebooting over and over seems, it did recognize it.
Here is actually where things take a turn for the worse somewhat. What I wanted was to do a clean install on the New SSD of my Win 7 OS and then re-install Adobe too. No issues with Adobe this time, but try as I might, I could not get a recovery disc to get my system image and place it on the SSD, it saw the SSD after needing to once again "mark it as ready", but it in no way would use it. Finally...and you perhaps know the feeling, I went and bought a new Win7 Full verison disc. My Win 7 I had been running was an Online Purchase and was the full version of Home prem.
Anyway, went got the Win 7 at BB and came home and began a clean install...no joy...each time I wanted to do that, just like the recovery, the computer couldn't figure out what I wanted to do and was shutting down or going into the recovery console for me to use the old Main/C drive for clean install or recovery of my sys image.
The Install that worked: After perusing forums over and over trying to figureout what to do, how to do-it, etc, I just got a hair about putting in the New Win7 disc while on my Desktop of the old Main/C...voila, it began the install....AND, and it recognized my New SSD and was apparently happy to use it too..YAY...So all the normal screens came up and it asked about a thing or two early on, then Win7 went to work and told me it'd be awhile and would need to start/reboot perhaps several times during the process. I wanted to stick around and was glad I did. When it did the reboot and restarted, it actually took me right back to where I had been hours earlier with not recognizing or being able to use the SSD and wanting to begin a New Clean Install on my old main/C drive. I aborted the New (inst) install and when asked it I wanted to abort, said yes. it went to reboot the system again and as it did so, I quickly popped open the CD player and popped out the Win 7 disc as it rebooted and tried to slam closed...I barely made it!! When it did restart....it went right back to the Correct New Install on the SSD like nothing had ever occurred!
Win 7 actually completed the Install from there, though now each time it boots, it thinks it has a dual boot system and I get to choose which Win 7 I want...I may decide I want to keep it that way...just in case!
Finally little good news, eh?
Windows 7 experience: Q6600, 8GB RAM, WD 7200 680GB HDD, ATI HD5830
went from 5.6 to 7.1 with the addition of the SSD see screen shot below
Same system with Nvidia Quadro FX 3800 Graphics card: See below Screen Shot
If you look closely at the two screen shots, you see the ati card actually outdid the Nvidia card by 0.7 on the Windows Experience index. BOth of these are with the SSD ...
I may still be proven foolish for going about my upgrade in this manner, but really, I wanted to see what the big prob was with my old CPU. I think it turns out the old CPU is now the major hold up of After Effects working like the Fuel additive analogy...But, I learned that the HDD was a major hold up too. The SSD sped things up in every way I can think of. My Web Pages load quickly, My adobe stuff loads quickly, and So far, I am pleased.
My intention is to go ahead and put the MOBO/CPU/RAM in for the i7-930.....I believe I can justify the upgrade now that I know what I know as far where I was, where I have been and where I'd like to go.
I hope my thread here actually ends up helping someone wondering about their system they presently run and perhaps gives some insight as to what bottle-necks their system may have and what prospects for improvement versus dollars spent will render.
It's been a H of a weekend...I look forward to playing with my new toy that Helen over at Adorama worked so hard to help me with~
Cheers,
tom wise
0
Comments
I took a look at your website, and must say...very nice work!
Hope I never have to go through what you did with your computer!
I made the switch to Mac last year and while not perfect, seems to have eliminated these type of issues.
Keep up the good work.
Sam
Quite the Compliment coming from you, Sam. I thank you for it too!