8 Core Dual Xeon v 12 Core Dual Xeon - Premier Pro

These are my numbers after the CPU upgrade to the X5675s

there are my numbers before ..

OK

But by tomorrow expect a Private Message (PM) from me with something new, about something old, that might be helpful.  Very busy day today

Jim,

Now that's one of the most sane suggestions that I've seen in this discussion thus far. An upgrade to CPUs that have the same # of cores and threads, but at significantly higher all-core Turbo clock speeds, for such a minuscule cost is a practical no-brainer. Worry about the disks and GPU later on, when costs become more reasonable. Sure, such a CPU upgrade would not have brought its overall performance level to that of a current single-CPU 6c/12t rig – but in this case, if Samtastico was to build a completely new rig around an i7-8700K, he would have spent a lot more money than what would have been justified by the performance increase because he would have needed to purchase not only the CPU, but also a new motherboard and DDR4 system RAM which currently is insanely expensive.

If Samtastico went with dual X5672s, he would not have gained sufficient overall performance with 4k video editing to justify even that minimal cost. In fact, he would have been downgrading from his current 12c/24t system to an 8c/16t system.

Not really. You can't really do much with that system because the PCIe slots are severely limited in their bandwidth. If you use the PCIe x4 slot (the one located between the first and second full-length PCIe 2.0 x16 slots on your motherboard) for a PCIe SSD adapter, your SSDs will become even slower than SATA II because the PCIe slots are restricted to PCIe 1.0 bandwidth (one PCIe 1.0 lane is limited in theoretical throughput to only 2.5 Gbps, or about 250 MB/second). And attempting to use the secondary x16 slot will steal PCIe 2.0 lanes from the chipset's IOH (Northbridge), since the LGA 1366 CPUs such as yours do not have an integrated PCIe controller at all. Plus, most PCIe to SATA SSD adapters are only PCIe x1 cards, which won't work well in your system: The cards will fit and work, but the throughput will be significantly slower than your current SATA II connection (the only PCIe slot that might deliver anywhere close to the true maximum throughput of a modern SATA III SSD would be the x4 slot that's closest to the CPU and memory slots). And third-party SATA controllers are more trouble than they're worth: You must install the separate drivers for the card, and pray for the best.

Now that you're already running Windows 10 on that system, do note that you already have 12 total CPU cores (with 24 processing threads) in your current PC (albeit at low Turbo-boosted clocks of only 2.53 GHz). In Premiere Pro two quad-core X5672s at a Turbo'd speed of 3.46 GHz would have only improved the responsiveness of the interface but would not have improved the rendering or exportiing performance much. Two hexa-core X5675s would have improved overall performance over your current L5640s due to the 5675's all-core Turbo'd clock of 3.33 GHz. (Note that I listed actual all-core Turbo speeds in these CPUs while you listed only the base CPU speeds.)

The questions now become "Is this increased level of performance really worth the higher cost?" and "Would I be wasting my money on the two cheaper options that might not make much if any improvement whatsoever over my two current CPUs in rendering performance?"

And even after the upgrades, you'd still be let down by slow disk I/O performance even with an SSD (which, by the way, is specced to deliver read/write speeds of 540/500 MB/second but will actually produce results of only about 275/256 MB/second due to the limitations of SATA II). And stick with the current GeForce GTX 750 Ti for that vintage workstation, as any newer GPUs would have cost you far more money than what their real-world performance increase (as installed and configured in your vintage workstation) justifies.

By the way, I am guesstimating that your system as currently configured would produce a CPU-only ("software-only") MPEG-2 DVD export score in the PPBM suite that's roughly equal to that of my newer (currently in storage) i7-7700 (non-K) quad-core PC: around 460-ish seconds. That's about at the bottom end of all of the dual-CPU PC configurations in that PPBM8 site as listed by CPU - and that vintage workstation is more trouble than it's worth as you get a behemoth with 12 total CPU cores and 24 total processing threads that performs no better than a newer system with only four total CPU cores and only eight total processing threads. To use full-sized US-market family sedans as an analogy, it's like you would be entering a 1991 Chevy Caprice (base model) with its underpowered 5.0-liter 170-horsepower V8 engine in a race against a 2017 Chevy Impala LT (the mid-level trim version) and its base 2.5-liter 196-horsepower 4-cylinder engine.

At this point your upgrade path is absolutely nothing. Especially since newer GPUs won't work properly on it since they require a UEFI system while that system of yours is AFAIK legacy BIOS based. Plus, any CPU upgrades for that socket, while seemingly "inexpensive", still cost you more money than what their performance benefit delivers.

And did I forget to mention that using a PC that's that old for anything Internet is now a severe security risk? You see, the reason why you paid this little because that PC is now on the verge of total obsolescence. Windows 7, the most recent version of Windows that's supported in that PC, will turn EOS (End Of Support) in only 23 months (less than two years). And when an OS goes EOS, the major antivirus companies will cease supporting that OS as well. As a result, your old PC will become increasingly vulnerable to malware and outside hackers, and those exploits will not be patched at all after the EOS date.

There is  a big difference in price. The i7-8700 costs around £300. This is about the same as my whole HP Z600 build with two xeon x5675s   .

According to a recent benchmark test adobe premiere pro only really utilises around 8 Cores - 12 cores before the benefits of extra cores really drops off.

Thank you for your help