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E8400 C2D or should I shell out a bit more for a C2Q cpu?

post #1 of 7
1/21/13 at 9:45pm
Thread Starter 
Hi all,
I have put together (from various retired computers) a little PC with a 775 socket motherboard. I currently have a pentium E2200 or a C2D E4500 laying around, but can get an E8400 cheaply off ebay. I'm wondering if this would serve my needs, or if I should get a C2Q for a little more. High end C2Qs are out of the question, as they simply cost too much compared to core i stuff. Which ever I do, it will be coupled with a cheapo GPU (HD 2400 Pro) until I can get something with HDMI out cheaply.

As for what I would like to do with it, I would mostly like to rip (some of) my 1000 or so DVDs and Blurays onto some HDDs (not thinking about this yet, RAID or whatever) with a nice front end. Streaming and some light emulation maybe as well.

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Alex
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post #2 of 7
1/22/13 at 6:28am
Quad core will be much faster at video encoding. Everything else the e8400 will be faster against a similar priced c2q, here's an example: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/56?vs=76
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post #3 of 7
1/22/13 at 6:39am
Honestly I don't see much point in putting more money into the 775 platform. I actually upgraded from an E5200 to a Q8400 for transoding files via Plex, and the Q8400 still struggled transcoding a single blu-ray on the fly (for comparison, the i5-3570k I upgraded to from there can transcode three blu-rays simultaneously without dropping a frame).

Blu-ray ripping and simple streaming without transcoding is not very CPU intensive at all though. The E4500 should be fine. I'm not as sure about emulation. I know that can be CPU intensive.

I'd say either stick with what you have or save up for a core i processor and 1155 mobo.
Edited by lockdown571 - 1/22/13 at 6:50am
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post #4 of 7
1/22/13 at 6:48am
Oh I totally agree with lockdown, if you can save for a few weeks and get a core i motherboard and cpu then definitely do that. In terms of live transcoding, you will want at least a core i5 2500 to get realtime HD transcoding of bluray
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/28
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post #5 of 7
1/22/13 at 6:53am
Save the money for the graphics card and E8400 and apply it to an i3 and motherboard. You'll get a new processor as well as HDMI capable of HD audio bitstreaming (and 3D).
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post #6 of 7
1/22/13 at 10:48am
Thread Starter 
Thanks guys,
for what it's worth, I have an i7-3770K that I use for work that when I retire it in a few years, I will convert it into an HD emulation/gaming/HTPC rig. So until then, unless I adopt something with a corei family in it, I'm not going to buy too much new stuff. Maybe I'll just stick to getting my SD DVDs on there for now (of which the bulk of the collection is composed of). Or I could use the i7 for ripping/transcoding the BRs and the rig in question for playback?

Cheers,
Alex
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post #7 of 7
1/22/13 at 12:38pm
Depending on what systems you're planning on emulating, it doesn't take much.
I have an old laptop @166mhz running Windows 98 that runs 8 and 16 bit systems full speed. I would just try what you have on hand if ca$h is an issue.

My current server is using a Core 2 Duo 6420 @ 2.13ghz with 4gb Ram. It houses 3 Avermedia Duet (Dual OTA ATSC) tuners.
I frequently record 4 shows at the same time while at the same time running comskip on currently recording programs using MediaPortal.

I also use it rip my dvd's and blurays. I only compress movie blurays and TV Show dvds.
It does take around 8hrs for bluray using Handbrake but i'm fine with letting it run during the day since my server is awake anyways.
I don't do any transcoding since I compress all of my episodic dvds, and tv recordings to mp4 which I can playback on my old Samsung Galaxy Tab using hardware acceleration.
It does struggle with mp4 some movies that were ripped from blurays but i'm still working on tweaking the server.
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