PC questions with cineform
 

I can see my 4 year old PC is on its last legs. Been reading through the posts here about processors and memory, etc, but still have some questions about trying to configure a new PC toward editing with Cineform Aspect/Prospect.

Does cineform use all 4 cores of the quad core processors or would it be be fine to go with the duo core's, ie. e8400. And any advantage to 64 bit O.S?

Leaning toward 4g memory (2 x 2g) of 800mhz or 1066mhz ddr2. I keep reading how Cineform "loves" fast memory. Then I keep reading how the fastest the memory can process is one half the front side bus frequency which is actually 4 times the frequency of the "quad pumped" processor. I'm hoping to overclock the e8400 to 3.6 (400 mhz with 9 multiplier). Any point of getting memory faster than 800 mhz?

Graphics card: from what i've read, the nvidia 540 will work for 2 heads with some struggle, but the parhelia works with 3 heads with less struggle? true? any other options? wasn't in love with my parhelia card agp 4x.

anything coming out anytime soon with pci-express 2.0 that one should be aware of, or can i get by for now without a motherboard with 2.0 version.

thanks in advance

john

PCIe 2.0 is irrelevant, and will be for a few more years. If you have it, great. You will never see a difference.

The method you plan to preview your timeline dramatically effects Graphics card choice. The 8800GT is the fastest card for the money, but none of the Geforce8 cards support Cineform's fullscreen timeline preview function. Never tried Matrox GPUs personally, but haven't heard great things. That leaves you with ATI. Haven't heard many specific Cineform related complaints baout the 2000 and 3000 line, so that might be a place to start looking.

John, just an observation from having two workstations side by side, running exactly the same CS3 software setup. Both have exactly the same quads (Q6600) and RAM memory amount, with exactly the same RAID type setups (dual 500GB Seagates as RAID 0, using onboard RAID).

But the bottom line is this: the Gigabyte runs circles around the Intel! Why? A couple of important reasons that I can see:

- One is a Gigabyte mb, with x38 support and uses DDR3 memory (only).
Other is an Intel ws mb with slower DDR2
- Gigabyte has XP x64 OS and Intel has XP 32bit OS

The XP x64 Gigabyte mb with fast memory totally blows away the Intel on anything Adobe. It also accesses more memory, so if you have 8 MB, at least AE will use it.

Bottom line? What you buy makes a HUGE difference!

Stephan

Huh.
well, thanks for the input.

supposedly adobe (at least premiere cs3) isn't optimized for 64bit O.S., so...would have to assume the differences you get are due to the M.B. and memory. no?

seems to be quite a premium you pay for upgrading to ddr3 memory and an x38 M.B. How fast is your memory? and do you O.C. to 1600 fsb?

Guess maybe going ddr3 might be worth it. looking at the upcoming x48 board - asus p5e3 premium.

big difference quad core vs duo? huge price difference between e8400 and QX9650

john

john

Notice I said the bigger RAM helps "AE", not necessarily PP.

I'm sure a premium Asus mb would be a good choice also, as they are the chief competitors for Gigabyte. We have numerous Asus mb's, but this new Gigabyte is sure nice...

If I were buying a board today, I'd sure pay the premium for something that uses DDR3 and the new CPUs. The extra cost is worth every cent. I'm sure that newer and better are already out, but this Gigabyte has done very well.

As to the CPU's, if you edit or use AE or Flash, there is no question as to which is better: the quad. Without even OC'ing, these are up to the fastest a dualcore can possibly do and if you can overclock, why in the world would you even want a dualcore for editing? It's like the choice between a dumptruck and a Corvette. Both will get you there, but since the idea with "rendering" is usually to get there as fast as possible (yet safely), why would you want to chose a dumptruck? Quads are cheap!

Our memory was this:
CORSAIR 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN3X2048-1333C9

We used the following video board due to probs with CF and nVidia:
EVGA 256-P2-N615-TX GeForce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported

Here's the mb info:
GIGABYTE GA-X38T-DQ6 LGA 775 Intel X38 ATX Intel Motherboard

A few background comments about processors and memory as they relate to performance with CineForm compression....

The fastest performance using CineForm compression on four cores is to use a 2x Core 2 Duo (aka Xeon) as in the 51XX processor family. The reason for this is that when Intel put 4 cores on one die they didn't increase the aggregate memory bandwidth onto and off the silicon compared to the two processor Core 2 Duo implementation. So in a 4-core system you get twice the memory bandwidth using two Xeon 51XX chips than a single quadcore chip. This is only relevant for applications that like memory bandwidth like CineForm compression.

On the other hand, for Prospect HD, we perform pretty well on a single chip Core 2 Duo E6750, so going to a Q6700 is even better - it's just not as fast as a dual 51XX machine. Also, sometimes Intel's "Extreme" processors have higher memory bandwidth than the non-extreme version.

If I were building a budget system today I'd go with an E6750 or E6850 ($100 more) single-chip Core 2 Duo.

One up on the rung and I'd go with Q6700 or maybe QX680.

Further up I'd go with dual Xeon 5160 (four cores) or for those with money to burn a dual quad.

However...the CineForm portion of your work doesn't gain you much beyond four cores for HD work at 4:2:2. But for AE or other render-heavy apps you may want to go further up the chain.

BTW, HP was nice enough to give us a dual quad 2.93GHz machine. That's really nice! But we use it for our 4K work these days - it's mostly overkill for HD. But it's a screamer.