Quote Originally Posted by 'JasonB87',index.php?page=Thread&postID=167245#pos t167245
Faster than what? and what are you comparing the i7 series to?
I was stating we could make the machine I suggested faster for video encoding by adding faster hard drives in a RAID0 array, as video encoding is very hard drive and multi-thread dependent. As for Core i7, it blows away both Q6xxx and Q9xxx series CPUs, especially when given the video processing to match. Just check the performance increase by going from a 3x GTX 280 SLI setup with a QX9770 (extreme Q9xxx series) to a Core i7 965 (extreme Nehalem series).. it's very large. (there's a review by a major site around somewhere.. i think it was guru3d.com) And compiling/encoding is even more significant due to the on-board memory controller and associated bandwidth combined with the return of hyperthreading.

In short,
Core i7 = on-board memory controller & 8 separate process threads, 45nm manufacturing process with totally new architecture.
Core 2 Q9xxx = northbridge memory controller & 4 separate process threads, 45nm manufacturing process with nearly identical architecture as Core 2 6xxx series.
Core 2 Q6xxx = northbridge memory controller & 4 separate process threads, 65nm manufacturing process.

Core i7 is much different (better) than the very-similar Q9550/Q6600 chips.