Building Computer for CS5 ?
 

I am using 2 Sony Cams...1 NXCAM 5 .m2ts 1 Sony Z5u .m2t
Love the cameras ...but in Vergas they are slow and i can never watch the Preview window so i guess a lot unless i compress it and then edit it.

Been Studying the new CS5 Premiere Pro and i Love it. I have used Preimiere elements in the past and it sold me on the new CS5.

But what has really sold me is the Mercury Playback Engine in CS5 and the speed of editing and rendering.

The videos i saw on you tube were amazing and used a Quadro FX 4800 GPU card.
So i want to build a Computer around the card that works so well.

My Question is...Since the CPU doesnt seem to be that much of an issue. What kind of processor and RAM would i need?

I was thinking Either and i7 930 or higher or a new AMD 6 core 1090

12 to 24 gb of RAM 1333

I am open to all and any suggestions about building the best system for a decent price 2K to 4K

And one more thing...i see the FX4800 cards on ebay for really good prices but they are pulled from Dell spec machines...will i be able to use one of these?

Thanks ahead of time!

Mark

While this is a great forum with a lot of good information, I would suggest that you look here for more definitive answers:

Adobe Forums: Forum: Hardware Forum

Got this Email with specs...thoughts?
 

* 2.8ghz 4 core (8 logical cores) i7 core CPU
* 12gigs RAM
* 1gig VRAM with a CUDA compliant card (FX3800)
* Blue Ray (DVD, CD) burner
* DVD (CD) Burner
* 10 USB Ports (2-USB3, 4-front, 4-back) more ports can be added to the back if you need more.
* 2 1394 ports (Firewire) 1 in front and 1 in back
* 1000 watt PSU, trust me the surplus of power means nothing has a chance to be short-changed in the voltages
* 1.2 Terabyte Raid 0 HDDs (2 600gb drives) They were the best performance and storage I knew of without breaking the budget. However, please note that if you need more storage you can add more HDDs there would be plenty of room for more HDDs but the system and project portion should be handled by the two drives I picked out.

I agree on everything except Hard Drives. Go for RAID 0+1 setup as your scratch disk - two drives working in Raid 0 and then duplicated by another set of Raid 0 drives. You do not want them to crush leaving you without whole project. Hard drives are very cheap nowadays - you can add them as much as the case can fit. I'd suggest whole hard drive config as follows:

single 500MB (or more) for sys and aps (or 2x 500MB - one for sys, 2nd for aps)
1TB Raid 0+1 (or more) for scratch
1st external 1TB for short term backup (daily copies of all current projects)
2nd external 1TB for long term backup (once project is completed you can keep all final videos there, ie. DVD images)

You can shave off a couple hundred $$$, by not getting the overpiced FX 3800, which is EOL anyway, but get the much more economical and more powerful GTX-470. That gives you the means to add a couple more disks within the same budget or even less.

Will it work with CS5 Mercury engine?
 

Will this card work with the new Mercury engine?

I agree if it does.

Dont know what EOL means?

Thanks,

Mark

EOL = End of Life.

The 470 works with the hack and is supposed to be supported with the next DOT release.

i'll do that!
 

Thanks!

Will this be good in the future too?

I want something to take me out a year or two.

Definitely. PR does not even tap into all the capabilities the card has. At the moment PR does not use all the cores to maximum efficiency, so much progress can still be made.