Upgraded my PC again.

We both build machines on the side. Basically the upgrades costs us labor, used our parts in the builds and some or all of the money charged for labor is used for the upgrades.

My q6600 to i7 870 was a free upgrade, the i7 870 to i7 2600k cost me $150.

I don't charge much to build and deliver/setup a pc, about $100-150, depending on the cost of the parts.
I enjoy assembling pc's but I don't think I'd enjoy it much if I did it everyday.

Btw, I am still on my original install from August of 2009 through all of those upgrades.

Zepher said:

Nope, don't see any increase in performance yet, machine still feels the same,

For general desktop stuff you wouldn't. My old Q9550, laptop and sig rig feel the same when browsing and watching movies etc.

But I do play games,

Which is one place where you really start to notice the difference

Do some transcoding here and there for my iPad, this is where the CPU comes in handy,

Ditto.

I was converting and burning some .avi files to burn to DVD yesterday. And I went on a trip down memory lane.

Same app (ConvertxtoDVD), same type of 175MB .avi file, say 6 files per encode/burn: - on average:

Pentium D @ 2.8ghz ~70 FPS. 1 hour
Q9550 @ 3.8ghz ~250-300 FPS. 30 mins
i7 920 @ 4.0Ghz ~500 FPS 20 mins
3770K @ 4.7ghz ~750 FPS 10 mins (with a 2-pass encode)

(I never paid attention to the 2500K @ 4.8ghz)


Basically, what started as an hour long encode is now 10mins, burn included. When looked at like that, it's a hell of an improvement

Games aren't as drastic between some chips, but there's still always an improvement. Min FPS are always better.

Overall, it's always worth it



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Nice work Manny :)