Would SSE4 make a huge difference?

[E Blade]

I need a fast processor for video/dvd editing and encoding. So I've decided on buying a quad. But the Q6600 doesn't have SSE4 and the Q9300 and up will. Will I notice the difference of no SSE4 on the Q6600? Or should I try and wait for the next quads from Intel?

 

[colinstu]

If you can wait for the new quads, wait for the new quads!

If you want to dump a lot of money on a workstation board, a xeon, and some fbdimms, there are already quad's with SSE4, but consumer socket 775 quads with SSE4 are soon to come.

 

[Josh_B]

It really depends on what you're doing. If you are using apps which have SSE 4/4.1 optimizations, it might be worth waiting. Otherwise, the performance in SSE3 and down should be quite similar AFAIK. As you probably already know, video editing can greatly benefit from these new instructions, although they may not be implemented in your application(s) of choice.

There are some other posters who may know in more detail if there were any throughput enhancements to SSE3 and below on the Penryn line.

 

[firas]

this and this could be informative

 

[chrisf6969]

Good clock for clock comparison, ie: e6850 vs e8400, both 9x333=3Ghz

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/13/wolfdale_shrinks_transistors/page14.html

not sure if the differences are due to the L2 cache or SSE4 or both.

But it is faster in quite a few encoding apps.

 

[E Blade]

Thanks!

 

[Scali2]

Yes, it makes a huge difference for video encoding, ofcourse only for SSE4-optimized software, but if you don't get the CPU with SSE4 now, you can't take advantage of future software that is optimized for SSE4.
See this for a taste of what's to come: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3137&p=5