What do I need to add? An Adobe Maximus Configuration?

[John Mullens]

Needing to beef up without buying a Z820........Here is my current system.........
• An HP Z800 workstation with two Intel Hex-Core Xeon X5679 (12 cores at 3.2 GHz each with Hyperthreading to 24 cores) with two High-Performance HP Heatsinks
• An 1100 Watt High Output Power Supply with Built-in Self Test
• Full 48GB new HP Branded PC3-10600 DDR3 ECC RAM (12 x 4GB DIMMs)
• A new 500GB 7,200 RPM SATA Drive
• one new 1TB 7,200 RPM SATA Drives
• An HP nVidia Quadro 4000 Graphics Adapter with 2GB memory
• An HP DVD±RW Dual-Layer Drive and a DVD ROM Drive
I will be running Adobe CC on this system, Sony Vegas 12, and Divinci Resolve
I am not a tech guy or computer wiz. I am a graphic designer/photographer wanting to get into more of the video editing side of the game. I have been a freelance designer/photographer for over 12 years and this is one of the best systems I have ever owned. However with ever-changing technology, I want to make sure I am upgrading for the immediate future. I have been looking at the Adobe Maximus Configuration and adding a NVIDIA Tesla C2075 to my system. This seems to be a simple addition, most cost effective and increased power. After doing more research I keep reading articles about Newer graphic cards such as. Quadro K2000 and GeForce GTX-680 with alot more cuda cores, which should (as I was told) eliminates the need for the Maximus Configuration. I am in desparate need for some advice on making the video editing edition as painless as possible any help on configuration is greatly appreciated. I forgot to mention money is an object........LOL!

[Ruben Kremer]

Going through the specs of you current system, I'd say there's not too much to upgrade right now. The base of your system is still top-of-the-line. The only thing I can think of as an upgrade would be a speedy RAID configuration and (as you mentioned) one of the newer GeForce video cards (though strictly speaking, you're not limited to nVidia cards anymore with Adobe CC, ATI's will work just as well).

As to which kind of RAID config. I'd say a solid RAID-5 will do, the best solution in terms of speed/parity. There are others here who know more about RAID configurations than I do, so better let them handle that ;-)

Just out of sheer curiosity - what kind of footage will you be editing if you think your current system might not be sufficient? ;-)

[John Mullens]

I was looking to buy the Black Magic Camera and pair it with my Nikon D800. I am wanting my workflow to be as close to real time as possible. What are the benefits of the newer GPUs vs. adding the telsa for the maximus configuration. Will more cuda cores from a single newer GPU give me greater performance for effects and grading?

[Harm Millaard]

Your system looks nice with regard to CPU's, although a generation old, and memory. The weak point is your disk setup to which I'll come back later, but first about the video card.

Quadro is nVidia's cash cow, that have two distinct advantages over any GTX card:

1. They have 10 bit output, which is only relevant if you use expensive 10 bit monitors, and
2. They empty your wallet thoroughly.

OTOH, they have a distinct disadvantage: They are way overpriced and under-performing.

The Quadro 4000 you currently have is about as fast as a GTX 450 and is several generations old.

If you want to continue with the Quadro line of video cards, then the following could be considered:

1. Quadro K5000 @ $ 1800
2. Tesla K20 @ $ 3400

for a whopping $ 5200 in the Maximus configuration. I have yet to see any Maximums configuration, even with the much more expensive K6000 card, achieve a performance that comes close to a GTX 670 @ $ 350.

Since you asked, I think that unless you NEED 10 bit output, you save quite a lot of money by opting for a GTX card, get better performance and you can use the savings to improve your disk set-up.

See the attached table for an overview of good choices. Note that with the generation old CPU's and the disk set-up, there is no sensible reason to look at the 'warrior' column. It is usually frowned upon to leave a link to another forum, but in this case I would like to make an exception because of the following answers. See http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1238382?tstart=0

You could improve your systems performance, especially when using a BM camera, by getting a dedicated raid controller with at least 8 ports like an Areca ARC-1882-iX-8 and creating a raid3 (better suited for video editing than a raid5) array of as many enterprise (24/7) disks as you can afford. As a rule of thumb, if a single disk has a transfer rate of T and you have N disks in a raid3, you can look forward to a sustained transfer rate of:

0.85 x (N - 1) x T

[John Mullens]

Thanks for the help. This is a great article. This is the reason I was looking at adding the 6GB Telsa to my existing system. It is an older card and I figured my system could benefit from it in the Maximus configuration vs new cards with newer technology. Thats why I'm not a tech guy LOL. Benchmarks are great, but I like real world examples. I know NVIDIA is in the business of making money and Quadro means$$$$$. If the GTX 670 will give me better performance for less $$$. Then it's a no brainer. This is what I want my system to do. Check out video below. With my current configuration a GTX 670 and a raid setup with ssd drives is this possible.
NVIDIA GPUs boost the Performance of Adobe CS6 | NVIDIA and Adobe Solutions | Adobe TV


Will the GTX 680 work even better. If so does it take advantage of The Mercury Playback engine? I was watching a video on adobes

[John Mullens]

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

Your system looks nice with regard to CPU's, although a generation old, and memory. The weak point is your disk setup to which I'll come back later, but first about the video card.

Quadro is nVidia's cash cow, that have two distinct advantages over any GTX card:

1. They have 10 bit output, which is only relevant if you use expensive 10 bit monitors, and
2. They empty your wallet thoroughly.

OTOH, they have a distinct disadvantage: They are way overpriced and under-performing.

The Quadro 4000 you currently have is about as fast as a GTX 450 and is several generations old.

If you want to continue with the Quadro line of video cards, then the following could be considered:

1. Quadro K5000 @ $ 1800
2. Tesla K20 @ $ 3400

for a whopping $ 5200 in the Maximus configuration. I have yet to see any Maximums configuration, even with the much more expensive K6000 card, achieve a performance that comes close to a GTX 670 @ $ 350.

Since you asked, I think that unless you NEED 10 bit output, you save quite a lot of money by opting for a GTX card, get better performance and you can use the savings to improve your disk set-up.

See the attached table for an overview of good choices. Note that with the generation old CPU's and the disk set-up, there is no sensible reason to look at the 'warrior' column. It is usually frowned upon to leave a link to another forum, but in this case I would like to make an exception because of the following answers. See Adobe Community: What is the best video card for my system?

You could improve your systems performance, especially when using a BM camera, by getting a dedicated raid controller with at least 8 ports like an Areca ARC-1882-iX-8 and creating a raid3 (better suited for video editing than a raid5) array of as many enterprise (24/7) disks as you can afford. As a rule of thumb, if a single disk has a transfer rate of T and you have N disks in a raid3, you can look forward to a sustained transfer rate of:

0.85 x (N - 1) x T

How is a raid 3 better suited for video? After researching several forums and vendors, I'm hearing that raid3 is becoming obsolete. Just wanting to make sure Im putting my mony in the right place. What about external raid storage such as G-speed or Promise Pegasus? Will that give me increased performance?

[Harm Millaard]

John,

There are various raid levels. One of them is raid4, which is only supported by Atto. Nodoby else uses that raid level anymore. IIRC they were forced into that level by a big international company that REALLY wanted raid4 and they succumbed and are the only supplier left to give that option.

With raid3, for a very long time Areca was the only supplier to support that raid level, but LSI has now joined their ranks. They would not do that without a reason. Why?

Raid3 uses DEDICATED parity where raid5 uses DISTRIBUTED parity. This has two major performance impacts, which you can see when you look at typical applications using these raid levels. High volume and small size transactions with high IO rates typically benefit from raid5 levels, and that is why they are popular with web shops, news sites and the like where high IO rates and small file sizes are the main course. For video editing the number of IO's is much smaller and the file sizes are much larger, and that is where raid3 has the advantage.

The second performance impacting issue is rebuild times. If one disk in an array fails, the array can be rebuilt using the parity info, however the time required for rebuilding depends very much on whether the array uses distributed (raid5) or dedicated (raid3) parity. For a raid3 array the rebuild time can be much lower than with a distributed parity array.

External raid arrays are only sensible if they have a SFF-8087 connection, but G-Raid and similar solutions only use eSATA or lesser connections. A single SFF-8087 connection has a bandwidth of 48 Gb/s, a single eSATA has a maximum bandwidth of 6 Gb/s, only a fraction of a SFF-8087 connection. That limits an external array to almost useless, unless you invest in SFF-8087 connections, and then internal solutions are way less expensive, but require a roomier case.

The extra thing you need to take into consideration is the amount of cache memory on a dedicated raid controller. 512 MB is absolute bare minimum, 1 GB is reasonably OK, but the best is to have the choice, like Areca offers on their 12+ port models, with up to 4 GB cache.

I use a huge array, three 7 disk raid3 arrays, striped to raid30 plus 3 global hot-spares, which gives me, according to HD Tune a R/W performance of 3.5 / 4.0 GB/s transfer rate. (right, Giga BYTES/s). The 4 GB cache on the raid controller is largely the cause for these rather absurd transfer rates, but hey, I like it... BTW, all internal.

[John Mullens]

Thanks Harm, I have been so focused on GPU's and Processor speed than I haven't thought about disk configuration. I guess every component has its position in creating the best system. Is it difficult to install this raid3 system or is this something I need to hire a professional to do? I am not familiar with raid terminology but have learned alot form your information and a little independent research. Do you have a recommended list of controllers and drives. I'm not producing Hollywood blockbusters so I don't need the most expensive setup. I will be editing shorts and small docs, and music video and would love to work in real time. I will also be color correcting a lot of footage. Right now using Nikon D800 footage. Will also be using the BM camera. I don't mind spending but I love saving.

[Harm Millaard]

John,

Defining a raid array is pretty straightforward. You enter the controller BIOS at boot time, tell it which of the disks in your system should be a member of the array you want to define and what raid level you want. using LBA 64 You also want to enable read ahead caching and NCQ support, but those are all pretty obvious choices.

Then in Windows, Disk Manager you format the volume, which starts out as unallocated and format it as a GPT volume. That's all. If you have never done it, it may look a bit daunting, but really, it is quite doable and you don't need a pro to do it for you.

What a lot of people often forget, is that you get the best performance from any system, whether it is a very simple one, or a very expensive dual Xeon system, when all components, CPU, memory, video and disks are in balance. I often use this story to help people understand this:

Did you know that Logistics and Video Editing are very similar?

Logistics: The detailed coordination of a large and complex operation.

Well, video editing is the same.
It requires the detailed coordination of:
⦁ Importing source material
⦁ Editing the source material, applying transitions and effects
⦁ Exporting the final results

Pretty simple, up to now isn't it? So what is this all about?

Hang on for a moment and I'll try to explain.

First we have to make a detour to a very popular nightclub, which attracts lots of people every day. What is the main profit generating part of a successful nightclub? Correct, it is the bar. It is the Common Profit Unit, the CPU. The greater the efficiency, the less beer is lost on draughts, the more accurate the fill rate of a glass is, the capacity of the cellar installation, the speed with which one can fill orders, they all directly influence the bottom line. And it helps quite a bit if the bar, CPU has a Sustainable Service Entry (SSE) close by in order to restock the bar.

Of course, it makes a huge difference how the dance floor, the music, the lighting and audio-visual effects are used, because that determines how people percieve this nightclub. If the dance floor is too small it will be detrimental to business, if it is too big, people will feel abandoned, if the music does not sound good it will hamper business, because people will leave earlier, instead of ordering another drink. This is the General Public Unit, or GPU.

The floorplan is of course critical for the operation of this nightclub. If people have to walk great distances to get to the bar (CPU) for orders from the dance floor (GPU), if the physical space limits the numbers of visitors, that all has a negative effect on the bottom line. It always boils down to More Entries, More Orders and Reduced Yawns, in short MEMORY.

But first you have to get the customers in and keep them inside as long as possible. All these customers waiting to get into the nightclub are your Dear And Trusted Accounts, your DATA. They form a long waiting line in front of the door, where a doorman arranges Sequentially Allowed Turnstyle Access (SATA). Obviously, the more doors you have for access, the shorter the waiting lines and the faster your customers, DATA can reach the bar, CPU to order a drink and then mingle among the other guests. MEMORY.

However, people come to the nightclub in order to have a relaxing and enjoyable evening, so from time to time they want to use Dedicated In-house Seating Comfort, DISC to get their breadth after a long dance, enjoy their drinks in comfort and wait for the next piece of nice music to dance again. With obesitas rampant, the seats, DISC, need to be large and roomy, not small portable seats that offer no comfort at all. Now, that nightclub offers a Complete Area for Serious Enjoyment, CASE, and the bigger the area, the more room there is for different seating places, DISCS.

If the clientele often comprises VIP's and celebrities that require special attention and service, it migh be a good idea to have a Reserved Area with Immaculate Decorum, RAID, to cater for these special guests.
Now, the thing to keep in mind for a nightclub to be successful and profitable, they have to keep things in balance, keep things in perspective and carefully consider what logistical requirements there are, depending on the location and clientèle.

If the club is located in a small county in a rural area, the demands are far different than for a club at the corner of 48th St. and 5th Avenue in NY. Different crowds of people, different numbers of VIP's and celebrities, different square foot prices for the size of the club, different requirements for the bar, different drinking habits, beer versus cocktails, different wine tastes and different prices for drinks, different audio-visual requirements, different kind of music and different seating arrangements.

There is not a single recipe to make the nightclub successful and profitable, but with some careful analysis and common sense, it is not very hard to come up with the correct business plan for this club.

So where is the similarity with video editing? All over the place...

With some imagination - and we are all creative people around here - you can easily recognize the similarities between the logistics of a nightclub and a NLE system for editing.

[Robert Young]

Harm
I appreciate your analogy :)

I am having a weird problem that I'm hoping you may have some insight into.
I'm upgrading my Quadro fx 3800 to a GTX 660, a task I expected to be a no-brainer.
The system is win7 64, Intel i7, SSD system drive, RAID 0 media drive, 24 GB RAM, Adobe CC.
I remove the Quadro and install the GTX 660, plug in the extra power and boot up.
Towards the end of the BIOS boot I get an error message from the Intel Matrix Storage Manager that one of the hard drives is locked with a password, I need to reboot and enter the password.
On reboot, F2 does not open BIOS Setup, there is no password field displayed, and near the end of the BIOS boot up the same error message appears again.
Remove the GTX 660, reinstall the fx 3800 and all is well.
Looking through BIOS set-up/security settings, there are no passwords, nothing is locked.
Searching the web, I can find no reference to this problem and am dead in the water.
Thanks for any ideas...

[Robert Young]

Just spent an hour on chat with the nVidea techs.
They went thru my system pretty carefully and finally concluded that maybe the GTX 660 is defective.
They had never seen this type of chipset conflict with the 660.
Anyway, as they have advised, I'm sending it back.
The question is what to replace it with.
My system has only a 475W power supply, so I will probably have to move down the GeForce product line rather than higher up.
I'm wondering if the GTX 650 will provide significantly better performance than my Quadro fx 3800- enough to be worth the switch??

[Harm Millaard]

Bob,

I had just read your post and wanted to reply along these lines:

The fact that the BIOS starts up, means that the video card is not properly recognized during POST. This can be caused by improper seating of the video card, bad power supply connection or just a defective card. I had this once with a GTX 480, where I used a power supply cable from an Enermax modular PSU on a CoolerMaster PSU and that was the cause of my problem.

when I read your next post. Seems like nVidia has the same idea.

With regard to the performance of a video card, like in this case the Quadro FX 3800 or the GTX 660, the most distinguishing determinant of performance is the memory bandwidth. The Quadro FX 3800 has a bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s, the GTX 660 has a bandwidth of 144.2 GB/s, almost three times more than the Quadro. If you take a look at Latest News and scroll down a bit, you will see a chart comparing video card performance. The GT 640 would be comparable to the Quadro FX 3800 in terms of performance and the GTX 660 is much faster.

Your PSU is the rather weak point with only 475W nominal. It depends on the efficiency of your specific PSU whether that is just sufficient or barely marginal. It does mean that the PSU is usually running almost flat out and require more cooling by having the fan run at higher speed. Eventually you will need a new PSU with more power. I suggest you also read Disks & PSU to see how I went about choosing a PSU for my system.

[Robert Young]

Thanks for your help.
I can see now that my PSU is probably the limiting factor- even at the GTX 660 level.
The next step down- GTX 650- draws less power, but the bandwidth is only 80 GB/s versus 50 GB/s with my current FX 3800.
Probably not realistic to look for real improvement in GPU until I can replace the PSU.
This is a Dell XPS Studio tower- not sure how easy it would be to switch out the power section.

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

Bob,

I had just read your post and wanted to reply along these lines:

....
Your PSU is the rather weak point with only 475W nominal. It depends on the efficiency of your specific PSU whether that is just sufficient or barely marginal. It does mean that the PSU is usually running almost flat out and require more cooling by having the fan run at higher speed. Eventually you will need a new PSU with more power. I suggest you also read Disks & PSU to see how I went about choosing a PSU for my system.

Exactly why in the build I just had assembled I went with a Seasonic 1250W PSU. It's overkill but I like the idea of it being able to supply anything the system might demand without going much above idling.

[John Mullens]

Harm
AMD FirePro W7000?
AMD FirePro
Is this the card I should get?
I just ordered a dedicated raid controller and drives will be attempting to set up a raid 3 configuration. I want to be ready to edit in real time soon.