Coming to a new year, and its time to revive my Old PC. All components are working fine, except it getting slow and frustrating when running photo&video processing software. Current configuration are: AMD AthlonX2 5200+ ASUS M3A78 Motherboard 4 GB of DDR2 RAM (2GB DDR2 800 + 2GB DDR2 667) ATI Radeon 3800+ 3 HDD (2x 500GB,1x 1.5TB) Acbel E2 power 510W Running Win7 32Bits Which are the weak points? Thinking of getting new CPU. Shall i go for i5 3470 (quad core) or FX 8320 (octo core)? Which is more powerful interm of photo/video processing? Budget can be around 1.5k. TQ.
You need to know if your software can support multi threading. i5 will be faster than FX clock per clock. If you have a tight budget, then consider the price as well. AMD is not bad, but they are not as efficient.
I wouldn't worry too much about the CPU cores. Newer photo editing or processing software can leverage the GPU's processing capabilities. I'm partial to Intel because they are more efficient, but they do cost more. Not only their CPUs but also their motherboards. On the other hand, since you are on a tight budget, going AMD may allow you to spring for more RAM (very important) or even a small SSD to boot from.
Not everyone uses the latest software, and Nikon CaptureNX is pretty notorious for being very outdated. It still doesn't support multithreading, 64bit, so forget GPU support.
i really need to read more on your CPU comparison Guide. Nowaday, Intel CPU also as get very high TDP and they also get very hot. ok. maybe quad core will be sufficient for daily usage and hight speed per core is more important. I had been using AMD for many many years, maybe is time for a change.
AMD are actually much hotter and less efficient than Intel. Haswell is definitely much cooler, this is one of the reason why Haswell based laptops have much longer battery life.
AFAIK, CaptureNX2 supports multicore processors although I'm not sure about GPU support. That said, why stick with CaptureNX?
Yeah, Chai is right. Haswell CPUs are definitely more efficient. If I'm not mistaken, Haswell CPUs have a 10W lower TDP than Ivy Bridge CPUs.
Ok, seems like the newer version supports multithreading. But I seem to remember that the usage is never 100% on multicore, especially with ViewNX. Sometimes I prefer the color using Capture NX.
AMD processor are quite low in power rating nowaday also. The motherboard for Intel Processor are so expensive. I'm Canon User. The DDP from Canon is not as user friendly as Lightroom.
