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-   -   Calling quad-core owners.... (https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/high-definition-video-editing-solutions/127841-calling-quad-core-owners.html)

Sean Walsh August 11th, 2008 12:50 PM

Calling quad-core owners....
 
I could really do with your help!
I'd welcome some input from those with experience of quad-core systems.

With my faithful old P4 PC about to give up the ghost, I'm about to update my system and, having read the postings here and having looked at the Vidoeguys DIY 6 system, I was thinking of going with the following set-up:

Mobo: ASUS P5K3 DELUXE WIFI-AP
Q9450
4GB DDR3 PC3-10666C6 1333MHz ReaperX (2x2GB) Dual Channel DDR3
3 x 500GB SATA 2 HARD DRIVE - In RAID 0 configuration
20x SATA DVDRW

ATI HD3870 or Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT

I'm running CS3, mainly Premiere and sometimes AfterEffects, and am shooting SD with a Z1 - but am about to make the leap to HDV, probably using Cineform.

I have a budget of around $1750 - is there anything in your experience I need to tweak or alter (apart from the budget) to get a system that will cover my needs?

Is three hard drives in Raid 0 a sensible option?

...and is there anything you'd add (Blu-Ray etc) to improve the capabilities of the system?

All thoughts/suggestions/ideas much appreciated.

Thanks, Sean

Josh Chesarek August 11th, 2008 01:05 PM

You might want to look into RAID 0+1. If you lose one drive with RAID 0 you loose them all. I have had that happen and its not much fun. If you have good back up habits and keep tapes it might not be an issue for you but its worth looking into.

If you have the cash for the Blu-ray and your filming in HD it might be a nice option but you can easily add it down the road hopefully when the BR disks come down and price and some things are finalized for the burnable disks.

Jim Cowan August 11th, 2008 01:06 PM

Do you really need RAID 0?
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Sean Walsh (Post 919271)
I could really do with your help!
I'd welcome some input from those with experience of quad-core systems.

<snip>
3 x 500GB SATA 2 HARD DRIVE - In RAID 0 configuration

I'm running CS3, mainly Premiere and sometimes AfterEffects, and am shooting SD with a Z1 - but am about to make the leap to HDV, probably using Cineform.

I have a budget of around $1750 - is there anything in your experience I need to tweak or alter (apart from the budget) to get a system that will cover my needs?

Is three hard drives in Raid 0 a sensible option?

Thanks, Sean

Hi Sean,
Do you even need RAID 0 (seems to be only performance oriented...)? I've got
a Q6600, 4GB DDR2, and my video disk is a WD 1Tb at 5400rpm. So far I think
the only time I have disk limits is when I'm running 3 VLCs at the same time
(3 camera shoot).

thanks
jim cowan

David Beisner August 11th, 2008 01:48 PM

RAID for performance is DEFINITELY nice. If you've got a hardware RAID card, then use RAID 5 because it's got the performance of striping and the redundancy of mirroring without the cost of double hard drives. Check out Wikipedia's RAID article for info on it.

That system overall looks good. You'll be very happy with it. I can definitely tell you that you won't be able to capture your HDV and have a preview window available or do scene detect without either cineform or a hardware encoder. It's a royal pain, actually.

Jad Meouchy August 11th, 2008 02:28 PM

Go with a DDR2 mobo and get 8GB instead of 4GB. You will notice the difference.

RAID5 definitely. Avoid raid0 unless you can afford to lose 1.5TB of footage in a single power outage. Also, get an additional smaller disk for your windows and scratch drive (120gb should be sufficient).

8800GTs are cheap, I got one yesterday for $110

Don't waste your money on cineform. You can edit hdv natively quite well on this hardware. My AMD dual core from 2yr ago can do real-time HDV color correction in Premiere. Since you're building a machine, you can get much better performance by selecting well-matched components.

Josh Chesarek August 11th, 2008 02:43 PM

Also with 4GB it is helpful to get windows 64bit and if you try to go for 8 you will need to otherwise your computer wont use it. With Windows 32bit you will just see 3.5gb

Graham Hickling August 11th, 2008 07:05 PM

I have a quadcore, and while I CAN easily edit without Cineform, I much prefer to edit with it. If you plan to do much in the way of post-processing, either multiple generation stuff or moving footage between apps, then having a high quality intermediate codec is very useful.

If you do use Cineform, I would support their recommendation to use an ATI rather than Nvidia card (see the Cineform forum for the reasons why).

Robert M Wright August 12th, 2008 10:32 AM

$1750 (USD) is certainly an adequate budget for hardware. That said, DDR3 is currently still very expensive (not cost effective for the relatively small gain in overall performance). If you have three drives total, putting them all in a single RAID 0 array is probably not best. Also, 750GB drives are generally a better value (cost per gig) than 500GB drives. Q9550s are out now, and not much higher in cost than Q9450s.

Sean Walsh August 12th, 2008 02:01 PM

This is why DVi is so brilliant! A world of knowledge shared....

Thanks guys for your informative replies.

So, maybe I should be look at DDR2 (instead of DDR3 - Jim, Robert) and maybe 8 gigs (Jad, Josh and Robert), a Q9550 (Robert) and 750 gig harddrives.(Robert)

I reckon I should also favour an ATI card (Graham) over an nVidia because of the issues with Cineform.

If I do go for 3 harddrives, what should I be aiming for in terms of a raid set-up - Raid 5 (David) or Raid 0+1 (Josh)?

I, for one, really do appreciate you sharing your experiences and expertise - and I'm sure many others contemplating a new edit system will also value your input too.

Ben Winter August 12th, 2008 03:27 PM

Don't forget to use WinXP Pro x64 version. I'm on a quad-core machine and it's very stable, Cineform doesn't mind it, and allows you to use the full capacity of your RAM as previously mentioned.

Oren Arieli August 13th, 2008 12:07 AM

Don't overlook a good case and power supply. I'm using a Mushkin 580W modular that is a piece of art (as well as super-quiet and highly efficient). My Antec P180 case is the best case I've owned so far (I've built about 6 computers already).
Aftermarket CPU cooling is quite helpful. The quads run hot. Stick with all-copper if budget allows.

Lars Siden August 13th, 2008 01:28 AM

I run two set of striped drives. 2x1TB + 2x750gb for incredible performance(lowest speed 130mb/sec, tops about 200mb/sec). This kind of speed is really lovely when moving large AVI and DVD files.

When using NTFS as filesystem a stripe set isn't so sensitive to errors since NTFS is a journal-keeping FS. The extra risk with a stripe set is that if one drive dies of HW failure, you loose it all. But if you buy a modern drive and put a good cooling fan on it, it will run 24/7 for at least 3 years.

Raid controller: Performance wise you only need a dedicated HW RAID card if you're going raid 5/6. If you stick with stripe and/or mirroring the builtin intel raid will give you great performance.

// Lazze

Don Blish August 13th, 2008 11:13 AM

RAID 5 does NOT have the performance of striping for video
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by David Beisner (Post 919292)
RAID for performance is DEFINITELY nice. If you've got a hardware RAID card, then use RAID 5 because it's got the performance of striping and the redundancy of mirroring without the cost of double hard drives. Check out Wikipedia's RAID article for info on it.

That system overall looks good. You'll be very happy with it. I can definitely tell you that you won't be able to capture your HDV and have a preview window available or do scene detect without either cineform or a hardware encoder. It's a royal pain, actually.

I used RAID5 for years in a in the commercial systems I was responsible for and loved it. However, normal data center usage has lots of random reads and fewer random writes, whereas video is heavily sequential. I started with a 4 disc RAID5 on my dual core (840EE) PremierePro2+Cineform HD. I found I could not reach 100% CPU utilization on long render-outs. I added a RAID0 pair for video only and immediately got to 100% - but on 6 discs overall. My next system will be RAID0+1 (RAID10 in Intel parlance) to get both performance and redundancy.

Pietro Impagliazzo August 13th, 2008 11:28 AM

Going from a Core 2 Duo E6600 to a Core 2 Quad Q6600 made all the difference here (I use it OC'ed to 3.0ghz).
My level of happiness will be nothing compared to yours when you upgrade.

And get the Q9550, the difference in price is not big.
Check Newegg and you'll se what I mean.

Jeff Anselmo August 17th, 2008 02:45 PM

Hi Sean,

Will be following this thread closely as I am also considering an upgrade from our old Dell. We just bought the Canon HV30, and I want to be able to capture and edit using Cineform, but I definitely want to make sure our PC can handle the HD(V), encoding, and outputting stress.

Here's an article reviewing an 8 core system (really out of our budget, but fun to read nonetheless :)

Computer Review Cerise Eight-Core Workstation

Best,

Khaled Chatila August 18th, 2008 01:37 PM

Quick question, if i get a DDR3 Mobo - does that mean i can ONLY use DDR3 RAM Chips?
or am i able to install DDR2 RAM and then maybe upgrade later or something?

atm, there exists quite a large price diff between the 2 types of RAM!

Thanks!

Robert M Wright August 19th, 2008 06:58 AM

If you get a board that only supports DDR3, then you cannot install DDR2 on that board. I believe there are a few boards that support both DDR2 and DDR3.

Bill Ravens August 19th, 2008 07:34 AM

Q6600 on an Intel DX48BT2 mobo, 4Gb DDR3 RAM on my system. OC'ed to 2.9Ghz, the system screams and runs cool and solid. May I suggest that I love Cineform's Neo HD, however, their complaints against Nvidia are not serious enough to warrrant not using them. I have both Quadro FX1500 and Quadro FX1700 cards in my systems. Many people think these cards are overpriced, however, if you ever plan to run any 3D apps, these are the only cards that will work without a flaw. AVID, Boris, most 3D CAD apps, and a slew of other mainline 3D apps all require these cards. I'm sold.

Let me add that I've recently been working on a borrowed workstation with an Avid Mojo that outputs to a real HD-SDI monitor. The difference in color and resolution between the HD-SDI monitor and the computer LCD is no less than astonishing. If you are serious about color timing, HD-SDI monitoring is a necessity, IMHO. Otherwise, you're best off leaving cc to a professional colorist.

Marcus Marchesseault August 21st, 2008 03:47 AM

I think I read recently that Cineform has resolved issues with newer nVidia cards. The older 7000 cards were apparently okay.

Nobody has mentioned that raid 5 may have a HUGE performance penalty if the controller doesn't have a fast brain on board. The raid 5 card must calculate parity and balance the data amongst a random number of drives so it has a big job to perform. If you don't get a fa$t raid card with lots of onboard RAM you can get unbelievably poor speed. I have a friend that installed 5 10,000rpm scsi drives on a raid 5 card with 128Meg/ram and he was getting less than 10Meg/sec write speeds.

I've said this many times before so I'll keep it short this time. Raid does not accelerate random read/write speed in any manner. It only increases transfer speed and that is already approaching 20x the data flow of HDV/DV across the entire sata drive surface. The only way to get better random r/w performance is to get drives with faster revolution and head speeds like those in 15,000rpm scsi drives. Current hard drives have almost the exact same random performance as drives of the same rotational speed from ten years ago.

Nicholas de Kock August 21st, 2008 07:10 PM

Don't buy the latest Quad Core right now, Intel is bringing out a new chip later this year with 8 cores. I would suggest you buy a Q6600 which is good value for money, by the time the 8 cores are here you can upgrade again with the money you saved.

Bill Ravens August 21st, 2008 07:12 PM

yeah, right!
And in 6 months, there'll be something else to wait for.

Dan Herrmann August 23rd, 2008 08:40 PM

No issues with Nvidia and Cineform
 
Cineform is more than a intermediate to help with the processing power it is a codec that retains quality generation over generation. HDV quality very quickly.
With the processing power of today the cineform codec for shear ease of editing is not the reason to buy it.
CineForm HDV Quality Analysis

Philip Younger August 28th, 2008 05:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oren Arieli (Post 919920)
Don't overlook a good case and power supply. I'm using a Mushkin 580W modular that is a piece of art (as well as super-quiet and highly efficient). My Antec P180 case is the best case I've owned so far (I've built about 6 computers already).
Aftermarket CPU cooling is quite helpful. The quads run hot. Stick with all-copper if budget allows.

I would REALLY echo that.
I just built my Quad core setup Intel X9770 on an Intel DX48BT2 mobo 8mb DDR3 and LG Blu-ray RW.

I have RAID0 for Drive C which only contains dual-boot operating system (Vista 64bit Ultimate & XP Pro 64bit) and programs, and RAID1 on drive D which contains all files / data etc. I have an easy install disk image of drive C:

I was getting a lot of blue screens, unexpected shut downs / re-starts when someone suggested I try a new power supply unit. I managed to borrow one and was running it for three days without any problems (a record!) so I got the best 850w I could afford (Forgot the name of it now) In fact I wish I'd gone for the 1000w now, just to be a little future proof.

Also just as important do not forget cooling a quad core system will get hot and you need lots of cooling fans and, don't forget, plenty of space around the case for ventilation so do be watchful over placement of the PC unit

Adi Head August 28th, 2008 07:46 AM

I'm shopping for a similar system as the one in question here on this thread. I'll be using Vegas and After Effects CS3. I don't have the budget now to get a true open GL video card which After Effects can take full advantage of. I'm trying to decide between:

Nvidia 8800GT and ATI Radeon HD2600XT

Does any one have any experience with these cards?

Also, I was thinking of getting the mobo mentioned here - the Intel BOXDX48BT2, but then read something about it only recognizing 2 sticks of DDR memory - which means if I get now 2x1GB of memory, I'll have to toss them when I decide to upgrade to 4GB.
So.. now I'm leaning towards the Asus P5Q3 Deluxe board with the new intel P45 chip.

Philip Younger September 4th, 2008 09:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adi Head (Post 926090)
Also, I was thinking of getting the mobo mentioned here - the Intel BOXDX48BT2, but then read something about it only recognizing 2 sticks of DDR memory - which means if I get now 2x1GB of memory, I'll have to toss them when I decide to upgrade to 4GB.
So.. now I'm leaning towards the Asus P5Q3 Deluxe board with the new intel P45 chip.

Well, I don't know who's telling you that but I have a total of 8gb 4x 2gb sticks and all are performing well - There are issues with Vista not recognising more than 4gb in certain circumstances and it has been mentioned on many computer related message boards that installing Vista with 2gb in then adding the other stick will then work OK.
I have to say that when I got my mobo I was told by the seller to make some changes in the BIOS settings to overide the default memory settings, whether this is just a tweak, a means of combating the aforementioned Vista install problem or perhaps even the problem you mention, I don't know. I would be happy to give you my memory details and settings if you want to go with that mobo

Adi Head September 4th, 2008 09:32 AM

Quote:

...if you want to go with that mobo.
too late :-)

i already got the asus. system running nice so far. i'd probably be happy with either. thanks


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