Well, Adobe Photoshop CS4 arrived in the mail today, (hooray for student discounts!) and upon installation, I noticed how horribly slowly it was running, especially while editing large photos. I have noticed this for playback of videos I am editing also, though this may be because I make stop motion stuff, so I have about 10 eight megapixle photo's streaming per second.

Unfortunately, the best cpu my motherboard supports would be an e7600. No quads, and no FSB above 1066. For photo editing, video editing, and video encoding, which are the main cpu intensive things I do, a quad core would probably be the best choice for an upgrade, but then I would also have to get a new motherboard, and then I would be past my budget, which by the way is around 150 dollars.

I would probably be willing to spend about 180 if the budget included a quad core cpu, but that route I would have to go AMD, as the cheapest intel quad is about 160 by its self. How would, say, a phenom 9500 compare to an e7600 for the tasks I listed? If there is much of a performance boost, would it be worth the price jump, and the task of doing a fresh vista installation, and reinstalling 100 gigs of software?

Thanks for any advice and suggestions,

TC

a 180 dollar budget is cutting it awfully close. Youd have to buy a new mobo, and cpu. Upwards of 250 for what you want to do, about 130 for an amd quad and prob about 90 or so on a mobo, not including shipping.

What motherboard do you own that doesnt support a quad even with a bios update.

My current motherboard has a intel 945g chipset, which as far as I know, won't support quads even with a bios update.

Maybe a combo like this?
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...174&CatId=3586

It looks like a decent motherboard. And, instead of completely reinstalling windows and my apps, would it be possible to just to a windows repair, and then install all the drivers?

EDIT

scratch that. I can get a phenom 9600 from newegg for 89$. Anyone know of a good 80 dollar or less motherboard to go with it?
Maybe this gigabyte board
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...116&CatId=2320

I just built my new desktop from that tigerdirect offer a few months ago. The bundles they make are actually great parts and buying them together saves you a good deal of cash. If you see a good offer on tigerdirect I would say go for it because when they have great deals they usually dont last long!

I would recommend a Phenom II first of all, but for what you have in mind, the Phenom could work, Note the TLB bug in the xx00 series, the xx50 series has that fixed, but will probably be more expensive.

ASUS M3A78-EM AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail $80

ASUS M3A76-CM AM2+/AM2 AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail $65

Both should work, but I think you should post your hardware so we can make sure.

In case you were wondering, my case will fit a full sized atx board. If I were to get a board with integrated graphics like those I would probably want nvidia graphics, so I could set up hybrid sli with my geforce 8500gt. Unfortunately I don't think the phenom II's would be within my price range except for the phenom II X2, but a quad would serve me much better. Are these CPUs/motherboards very picky about ram, because my ram is kind of mixed n' matched? I hace 2 gigs of patriot, and 2 crucial. I'm looking into the TLB bug now. I've heard of it, but not what it actually does.

I would recommend avoiding all of the Phenoms. Their performance is not worth the price.

Get this CPU and this motherboard to go with it.

Much faster than your current setup, and you would have one more core to work with. Not as good as its four-core counterpart, but it is the best your budget will get you IMO. You should notice an immediate improvement in rendering times.

That motherboard won't work. I have four 1 gigabyte sticks of ram, and that only has two slots.

In that case, this motherboard will do fine.

Is it still possible to enable the fourth core on the triple core Phenoms, or has that been fixed?

I won't be buying yet, as I'm leaving in a few days, but I'm definitely getting these parts.

You need a motherboard that supports ACC, so I would recommend the ASUS M3A76-CM hellokitty[hk] linked to in post #6.

The unlocking is somewhat risky though, since you may end up with BSODs\garbage data after unlocking if the CPU core that has been disabled is actually defective. Also, the CPU will run hotter after the unlock, so you will need proper cooling to keep it from overheating.

I'm not planning on buying an aftermarket cooler, so I think I'll just stick with the other Gigabyte board. Thanks for the help you guys!

You're welcome Technochicken. Let us know how it goes.

Im sure that the tlb erratum was fixed after the phenom 9600. The 9500 and 9600 where the only nerfed ones!
Ive never ever had any issues at all, and i have my tlb enabled.

I would go for the quad and forget the unlocking stuff..

I don't think so, as I mentioned above:

I'm not planning on unlocking the fourth core. The people over here seem to agree about the phenom II 710 being better than the 9600

I've got everything, and it's all working beautifully. I had to do a fresh windows installation, because I just got an instant BSOD, but that wasn't a bid deal. This CPU opens photoshop cs4 in about 1/4 the time of my old one, and it renders things much faster also. Thanks again for the help!