A big cup of "zip it" or the definative final P67 vs X58 answer thread

Question

none of this will matter in 6 months however until then... this should be a sticky
2600K, Motherboard, 16gig ram $711
990x, motherboard, 12 gig ram $1408  24Gig ram $1552
why the 990x? its the only processor that can match or beat the 2600k either stock for stock or 4.7 vs 4.0GHz over clocks
this is fact not fiction you can not go by PPBM user submitted, due to far too many varibles both in user set up and hardware differences.
however when we use PPBM with identical systems other than swapping the 990 to the 2600 it shows the same as our in house tests.
(and not a negative comment with concern to the wonderful makers of PPBM Bill and Harm so please dont tkae it that way.. for an end user submitted test its fabulous!)
Adobe CS5.5:
4 WD 1Tb Sata 64 Meg Cache 600 Drives in 2 Raid 0 arrays
Video material - AVCHD 1080P 24 Frame Each Cut to 30 minutes of material
Export Codec - H264 HDTV 1080P 24 Preset Default
4 Effects per Layer - Fast Color Corrector, Brightness & Contrast, Video Limiter, Sharpen
Each Layer Scaled to 50% for 4 frame PinP view.
I7 990X 4.0 GHz
24GB Blackline 1600 CL 9  <--- this puts the test with 24gig to bed
580GTX <---- has better video as well hmmm.
3 Layer - 32:06
4 Layer - 34:45
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I7 2600K 4.7 GHz   <----winner with only 16 gig ram how is this possible? and if a 990 cant beat it how can a 920?
16GB Blackline 1600 CL 9
570GTX
3 Layer - 30:46
4 Layer - 33:36
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
you need a big raid array for AVCHD!
Complete nonsense.. same applies for needing a dual Xeon..
same test with a big 8 drive raid array
I7 2600K 4.7 GHz
16GB Blackline 1600 CL 9
570GTX
8 WD 1Tb Sata 64 Meg Cache 600 Drives in Raid 5 array with RS2BL080 controller
3 Layer - 29:33
4 Layer - 33:26  WOW that finished so much faster..  NOT.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
but you can't add a Capture/preview card to P67!
really? where did you hear this absurd fallacy? do you believe everything you read on the internet?
we have shipped a huge amount of systems with Decklink, in them, a few Aja and a few matrox <-- driver issue not P67 issue.. same issue occurs on X58
We are not talking about using all the slots only adding a 1X card
16x is off the processor and isolated (assuming you only have a vid card) however there are generally 2 16x when adding something into the 2nd 16x is when that get reduced to 2x 8 electrical
(Will have a definitive answer as to if adding a raid card into the other 16x will reduce video or drive ability in a day or so) tired of hearing about that as well..
There is an additional 8 PCIe X1 off the south bridge if you will or PCH. An average board  looks like this.
1) firewire
2) GB Ethernet
3) eSata
4) PCIe to PCI bridge
5) PCIe to USB3
6,7,8) actual 1x slots
Each 1x is capable of 5GB/s
The DMI is 20GB/s
That means 4 of the 1X can be active at full bandwidth at once, (where it seems people arrived at the 20 lanes) or all 8 at 1/2 bandwidth.
Let me also remind you that I know of nothing that saturates the PCIe bus 100% not even raid cards (assuming an 8x or 4x slot) and certainly not a capture card.
In various benchmark tests of PCI vs PCIe there were little to no difference in ability. (raid cards, capture cards, pro audio interfaces)
All that to say again nothing uses the full bandwidth.
Looking at all 8 PCIe 1x slots/connections I don’t see 4 being used simultaneously under any circumstance. Even adding a pro audio interface into the mix.
So again adding a capture/preview card to the sandy bridge platform works 100% right and with 100% performance ability. (not counting the driver issues with matrox)
But you can't add a raid card to P67!
really?
i am here to tell you yes you can and without using N200 chipset motherboard.
we (well Slacker Eric, in his defense he has been swamped) finally tested this. i only asked since Jan/Feb.
Adding an Intel RSBL080 8 drive raid controller see above test. not only did performance NOT decrease it increased, albeit a whopping 10 seconds.
yes the video card was reduced to a paltry 8x and according to the bios only running @ 2.5 GB/s where the raid card showed a full 5GB/s
yet there was no drop in cuda perfomance at all and all effects we use on our tests are cuda effects.
Now in all fairless of disclosure the drive benchmarks dropped from our previous tests on X58 which is odd, we are guessing the video card as its ramping up would take bandwidth from the controller even though its supposed to be running 8x.
previous X58
Intel SAS RS2PI080 8 Port controller with 512 DDR2 Ram
8x WD 1TB SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, 7200 RPM
8 Drive Raid 5 - 703.8MB/s read 670MB/s Write
with Sandy Bridge  550MB/s read  522 MB/s write
so here we do see a decent drop in performance.
1) this is still plenty of speed for even RED footage.
2) if you need more speed than that you should be on dual 3.33GHz Xeons anyway
3) the only point to having a large raid on a sandy or X58 in the first place is for redundacy. and even that does not replace back up..
So i can not see nor justify any reason to continue buying an X58 platform unless you just like to spend $841 more for nothing!
and remember these are the "budget" Sandy Bridge
i can't wait  until they release the big dogs.
Scott
ADK

Answer 1

Colin,
I don't consider your system "old" (i7-930, X58, 24GB RAM, GTX 480, Samsung F3 1TB RAID), and it certainly sounds like a system that you could add to if you want to eeech out a bit more performance without any concerns of throwing money away. Heck, it sounds a lot like my current build, which is only 3 months old!
If I had to guess, your best bang-for-the-buck improvement for your system would be to add a 2x1TB RAID 0 that you can use for previews, media cache, and exports; see Harm's Generic Guideline for Disk Setup thread for configuration details. If you try that and still want more ooomph, then go for the i7-970 too.
Regarding the request for PPBM5 results, I find those very helpful to use as a metric to determine if a system has any weak spots. Then after you remedy those weak areas the end result is exactly what you do say that you want -- "real world results"!
Cheers,
Jim