Motherboard needed

Carl Slawinski · July 15th, 2003, 08:58 PM

Before buying any motherboard I would definitely check out the following site:

www.tomshardware.com

I consider it THE authorative source for current motherboard tests and reviews given in a non-biased manner.

I have used Shuttle, Tyan, and ASUS motherboards in the past. I have found the ASUS boards to be the best supported and most stable. You're mileage may vary.

Charles King · July 15th, 2003, 09:01 PM

Thanks Carl. I'll check it out.

David. I'm not into over-clocking but will check out the specs and compare them with the board I had intended to get.

Scott Osborne · July 15th, 2003, 09:19 PM

Tom's just had a big 24 motherboard comparison article. I refered to that when recommending you a board Charles.

As far as the old Abit vs. Asus thing goes.....There both excellent manufacturers and you probably wont be disappointed with either one of there offerings. I just typically recommend Abit products because I use them primarily and have very few problems with stability. I also have a great Asus board that I like as well. But when it comes to stability Abit has never let me down...Well except when the first Intel 820s came out..But that wasnt there fault, that was Intels...I also just recently had a great RMA experiance with Abit. My BE7 just stopped working I called Abit they sent me a RMA page to print out sent it in and in about 2-3 weeks I was looking at a brand new board. No problems no hastles

Charles King · July 15th, 2003, 09:29 PM

Thanks for the tip on the Tomshardware. It was infomative. I just read the 24 motherboard comparison article Scott and it seems they Asus slightly better than the Abit model that you recommeded. It's still a hard decisions. One thing that is different in the specs is that Abit has it all in terms of onboard features. The Asus board lacked the usually one spec over the Asus, in this case it was the raid feature. I wonder if one will really notice the performace difference in the real world. Has I understood these differences are usually minute.

BTW, how important is overclocking especially when concerning editing?

Nigel Moore · July 16th, 2003, 01:48 AM

I do not overclock. I would not overclock a board that I used for editing. I am boring and unadventurous...or cautious, depending on which way you look at it.

I ahve used Asus in the past, but when I had an RMA a couple of years ago, the dealer wouldn't honour it citing Asus as not being willing. I don't know how much of that was BS from the dealer. Suffice to say that I've never used that dealer or that mainboard manufacturer since.

I've been very happy with my Abit VP6. I just wish I could get hold of a WI-2P.

RAID was more important when HDDs were 5400rpm. Most, if not all, modern HDDs are 7200rpm, which should be enough for capture. IMO, unless you really really need it, RAID is an unecessary complication.

Others may, and probably will, disagree.

David Ziegelheim · July 16th, 2003, 07:10 AM

Virtually all of the new P4 P4F800 boards using the ICH5R southbridge support RAID 0 and 1 and support SATA drives. With the current ATA & SATA drives and their supporting controllers there shouldn't be a reason for SCSI in DV editing. In uncompressed editing, you will need hardware capable of sustaining the underlying data rate.

Charles King · July 16th, 2003, 08:17 AM

Thanks, but I was referring to the ability that you could setup your ATA drives into a raid configuration. I am not talking about the real SCSI drives. That would be too expensive.

Nigel, I just like the option of the onboard raid. If I really really need it, I know it's there. As for overclocking. I meantioned that it wasn't my thing but I wanted to know how it would effect the performance in an editing setup. That's all. Thanks for all your import guys.

Arnaldo Paixao · July 16th, 2003, 08:37 AM

Hi Charles.

My 2 cents in trying to help you on your decision:

Unless you have rather a big budget ( meaning a lot of money to spend), you will have to make some compromises and manage carefuly the resouces (money) you have, in order to get as much equipment as you can. So, here are some tips:

No overclocking - The possible gain you could get does not pay for the troubles you can get.

No double processor machines and plenty Gigs of Ram - Save the money for other equipment.

Before you decide wich motherboard to buy, choose the video editing card. Then go to their site and see what motherboards they have tested with their cards.

Get a dual display video card and two 19" monitors. Matrox G550 is cheap and will do the job.

Get a good video Monitor - Video seen in computer monitors is crap.

With today's disk drives, RAID is of lesser importance for video editing.

Buy a DVD recorder.

Get at least 3 disk drives - One for your operating system, another for your audio and video files and another for exports.

Get an UPS.

Get a trackball.

If you can, buy a video editing board with real time capabilities (i.e. Matrox RT-X100 Xtreme) - You will be less dependant on your pc performance.

Well, just a few thoughts...

Need any more help --> feel free to ask.

Best regards
Arnaldo

Charles King · July 16th, 2003, 09:16 AM

Thanks Arnaldo for summing things up. On regards to getting an editing card. I will be going software(due to a budget) As I mentioned in my other post, Avid DV Xpress and bPremiere Pro when it comes out. Again, I am not into overclocking and not interested in doing so. I just wanted to know for curiosity sake, what the difference was.
BTW, I already have the G550 card and two 19" monitors.

Arnaldo Paixao · July 16th, 2003, 09:28 AM

You'r welcome.

If you ever get enough money, buy the Matrox RT-X100. You will get Adobe Premiere and Reel DVD (the program you will want to have if you ever go into DVD recording) for free and, like I said, real time encoding wich makes all the diference.

Best regards
Arnaldo

Yi Fong Yu · July 17th, 2003, 07:10 AM

http://www.bestbyte.net/Category.cfm?CategoryID=6&Keyword=#18

it's the blue or gold heat spreaders. ramsink is for video card and smaller memory. for regular sticks of RAM you can use a clip that attaches heat spreaders to RAMs. it does help. you can see on a RAM here:

http://www.techaddicts.net/corsair3200/Corsair1.html

<<<-- Originally posted by Charles King : Sorry for being dumb but what is a ram sink clip? -->>>

Yi Fong Yu · July 17th, 2003, 07:15 AM

r u kiddin me? dual proc machines were MADE for dv editing and heavy workloads of the like. in fact imho it's minimum requirement.

<<<-- Originally posted by Arnaldo Paixao : Hi Charles.
No double processor machines and plenty Gigs of Ram - Save the money for other equipment.
-->>>

as for abit vs asus, i'd go with abit. they're both taiwanese co but i believe abit is a better board. asus is th largest brand name mobo mfr on the planet but because of that it's too large to handle qc/customer service. ya know the large co syndrome.

David Ziegelheim · July 17th, 2003, 08:01 AM

I find that Asus gives responses (from Shanghai) within 48 hours and the responses have been accurate. Can't comment on Abit.

Note that if you are not overclocking (which usually implies increased voltages) you should have any problem with any of them. And your won't need head spreaders for memory that doesn't come with the chips.

That said, I think a quiet PC is important for video production. Boards targeted for the most performance have their emphasis on cooling (because of the over clocking and over volting) not sound. AOpen and Asus have boards that focus on sound. (AOpen even used to make boards with vacuum tubes in its audio circuits.)

Rob Belics · July 17th, 2003, 10:42 AM

I don't know but if you run dual processors, the software has to be written to take advantage of that. Do these editing programs do that? A program cannot run on dual procs if it's not designed to take advantage of it.

I've heard some people say Asus never replied and others say they get a resonse with 48 hours. I've never had to call them cause I've never had a bad board. If you want to overclock, Asus boards are very flexible.

All this stuff about memory clips and other heat reducing is fine if you are overclocking. But if you are running the board as designed, these tricks are a waste of money. Just because your memory can respond slightly faster won't make the processor faster.

This confusion over which board to buy is one of the reasons why it's good to stick with one or two favorites. The differences are virtually unnoticeable, as far as speed, and you tear your hair out over minute features you will never use. I stick with Asus because the people who test these things always highly rate them and their installation manuals are well written.

Don't have a cow about power supplies either. Sure, there are bad ones out there but chances are the one you buy will be fine. All my systems (4) run with supplies I got for less than $20. None crash or otherwise act screwy. (All are P4s at 1.7 Ghz and up). One failed two days after I bought it but the vendor replaced it and it's been running for 6 months.

I don't feel comfortable with generic brand stuff but I'll use it. The idea is reliability of components and does it work. If a vendor is selling a memory stick for your computer, it better match the timing for that type of memory or they'll have returns out the butt. It doesn't matter who makes it. When I designed medical computers we would sometimes go to Radio Shack if we needed something quick.

Rob Wilson · July 17th, 2003, 10:44 AM

I'm running Premiere 6.5 and in it's startup, it displays that it recognizes dual processors on my 875 chipset board running a 3.0 Intel Hyperthreading processor. I'm guessing that means it takes advantage of the capability?

July 15th, 2003, 09:01 PM	#47
Charles King Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: sweden Posts: 795	Thanks Carl. I'll check it out. David. I'm not into over-clocking but will check out the specs and compare them with the board I had intended to get. __________________ Charles 'What we perceive to be may not be what we believe to be.'

July 15th, 2003, 09:19 PM	#48
Scott Osborne Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Rochester NY Posts: 116	Tom's just had a big 24 motherboard comparison article. I refered to that when recommending you a board Charles. As far as the old Abit vs. Asus thing goes.....There both excellent manufacturers and you probably wont be disappointed with either one of there offerings. I just typically recommend Abit products because I use them primarily and have very few problems with stability. I also have a great Asus board that I like as well. But when it comes to stability Abit has never let me down...Well except when the first Intel 820s came out..But that wasnt there fault, that was Intels...I also just recently had a great RMA experiance with Abit. My BE7 just stopped working I called Abit they sent me a RMA page to print out sent it in and in about 2-3 weeks I was looking at a brand new board. No problems no hastles __________________ Scott Osborne Infinite Video Productions

July 15th, 2003, 09:29 PM	#49
Charles King Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: sweden Posts: 795	Thanks for the tip on the Tomshardware. It was infomative. I just read the 24 motherboard comparison article Scott and it seems they Asus slightly better than the Abit model that you recommeded. It's still a hard decisions. One thing that is different in the specs is that Abit has it all in terms of onboard features. The Asus board lacked the usually one spec over the Asus, in this case it was the raid feature. I wonder if one will really notice the performace difference in the real world. Has I understood these differences are usually minute. BTW, how important is overclocking especially when concerning editing? __________________ Charles 'What we perceive to be may not be what we believe to be.'

July 16th, 2003, 08:17 AM	#52
Charles King Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: sweden Posts: 795	Thanks, but I was referring to the ability that you could setup your ATA drives into a raid configuration. I am not talking about the real SCSI drives. That would be too expensive. Nigel, I just like the option of the onboard raid. If I really really need it, I know it's there. As for overclocking. I meantioned that it wasn't my thing but I wanted to know how it would effect the performance in an editing setup. That's all. Thanks for all your import guys. __________________ Charles 'What we perceive to be may not be what we believe to be.'

July 16th, 2003, 09:16 AM	#54
Charles King Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: sweden Posts: 795	Thanks Arnaldo for summing things up. On regards to getting an editing card. I will be going software(due to a budget) As I mentioned in my other post, Avid DV Xpress and bPremiere Pro when it comes out. Again, I am not into overclocking and not interested in doing so. I just wanted to know for curiosity sake, what the difference was. BTW, I already have the G550 card and two 19" monitors. __________________ Charles 'What we perceive to be may not be what we believe to be.'

July 15th, 2003, 08:58 PM	#46
Carl Slawinski Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Mount Prospect, IL Posts: 67	Before buying any motherboard I would definitely check out the following site: www.tomshardware.com I consider it THE authorative source for current motherboard tests and reviews given in a non-biased manner. I have used Shuttle, Tyan, and ASUS motherboards in the past. I have found the ASUS boards to be the best supported and most stable. You're mileage may vary.

July 16th, 2003, 01:48 AM	#50
Nigel Moore Major Player Join Date: May 2003 Location: Switzerland Posts: 358	I do not overclock. I would not overclock a board that I used for editing. I am boring and unadventurous...or cautious, depending on which way you look at it. I ahve used Asus in the past, but when I had an RMA a couple of years ago, the dealer wouldn't honour it citing Asus as not being willing. I don't know how much of that was BS from the dealer. Suffice to say that I've never used that dealer or that mainboard manufacturer since. I've been very happy with my Abit VP6. I just wish I could get hold of a WI-2P. RAID was more important when HDDs were 5400rpm. Most, if not all, modern HDDs are 7200rpm, which should be enough for capture. IMO, unless you really really need it, RAID is an unecessary complication. Others may, and probably will, disagree.

July 16th, 2003, 07:10 AM	#51
David Ziegelheim Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Warren, NJ Posts: 398	Virtually all of the new P4 P4F800 boards using the ICH5R southbridge support RAID 0 and 1 and support SATA drives. With the current ATA & SATA drives and their supporting controllers there shouldn't be a reason for SCSI in DV editing. In uncompressed editing, you will need hardware capable of sustaining the underlying data rate.

July 16th, 2003, 08:37 AM	#53
Arnaldo Paixao Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Vimeiro - Portugal Posts: 255	Hi Charles. My 2 cents in trying to help you on your decision: Unless you have rather a big budget ( meaning a lot of money to spend), you will have to make some compromises and manage carefuly the resouces (money) you have, in order to get as much equipment as you can. So, here are some tips: No overclocking - The possible gain you could get does not pay for the troubles you can get. No double processor machines and plenty Gigs of Ram - Save the money for other equipment. Before you decide wich motherboard to buy, choose the video editing card. Then go to their site and see what motherboards they have tested with their cards. Get a dual display video card and two 19" monitors. Matrox G550 is cheap and will do the job. Get a good video Monitor - Video seen in computer monitors is crap. With today's disk drives, RAID is of lesser importance for video editing. Buy a DVD recorder. Get at least 3 disk drives - One for your operating system, another for your audio and video files and another for exports. Get an UPS. Get a trackball. If you can, buy a video editing board with real time capabilities (i.e. Matrox RT-X100 Xtreme) - You will be less dependant on your pc performance. Well, just a few thoughts... Need any more help --> feel free to ask. Best regards Arnaldo

July 16th, 2003, 09:28 AM	#55
Arnaldo Paixao Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Vimeiro - Portugal Posts: 255	You'r welcome. If you ever get enough money, buy the Matrox RT-X100. You will get Adobe Premiere and Reel DVD (the program you will want to have if you ever go into DVD recording) for free and, like I said, real time encoding wich makes all the diference. Best regards Arnaldo

July 17th, 2003, 07:10 AM	#56
Yi Fong Yu Trustee Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Vulcan Posts: 1,564	http://www.bestbyte.net/Category.cfm?CategoryID=6&Keyword=#18 it's the blue or gold heat spreaders. ramsink is for video card and smaller memory. for regular sticks of RAM you can use a clip that attaches heat spreaders to RAMs. it does help. you can see on a RAM here: http://www.techaddicts.net/corsair3200/Corsair1.html <<<-- Originally posted by Charles King : Sorry for being dumb but what is a ram sink clip? -->>> __________________ bow wow wow

July 17th, 2003, 07:15 AM	#57
Yi Fong Yu Trustee Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Vulcan Posts: 1,564	r u kiddin me? dual proc machines were MADE for dv editing and heavy workloads of the like. in fact imho it's minimum requirement. <<<-- Originally posted by Arnaldo Paixao : Hi Charles. No double processor machines and plenty Gigs of Ram - Save the money for other equipment. -->>> as for abit vs asus, i'd go with abit. they're both taiwanese co but i believe abit is a better board. asus is th largest brand name mobo mfr on the planet but because of that it's too large to handle qc/customer service. ya know the large co syndrome. __________________ bow wow wow

July 17th, 2003, 08:01 AM	#58
David Ziegelheim Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Warren, NJ Posts: 398	I find that Asus gives responses (from Shanghai) within 48 hours and the responses have been accurate. Can't comment on Abit. Note that if you are not overclocking (which usually implies increased voltages) you should have any problem with any of them. And your won't need head spreaders for memory that doesn't come with the chips. That said, I think a quiet PC is important for video production. Boards targeted for the most performance have their emphasis on cooling (because of the over clocking and over volting) not sound. AOpen and Asus have boards that focus on sound. (AOpen even used to make boards with vacuum tubes in its audio circuits.)

July 17th, 2003, 10:42 AM	#59
Rob Belics Major Player Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: St. Louis, MO Posts: 581	I don't know but if you run dual processors, the software has to be written to take advantage of that. Do these editing programs do that? A program cannot run on dual procs if it's not designed to take advantage of it. I've heard some people say Asus never replied and others say they get a resonse with 48 hours. I've never had to call them cause I've never had a bad board. If you want to overclock, Asus boards are very flexible. All this stuff about memory clips and other heat reducing is fine if you are overclocking. But if you are running the board as designed, these tricks are a waste of money. Just because your memory can respond slightly faster won't make the processor faster. This confusion over which board to buy is one of the reasons why it's good to stick with one or two favorites. The differences are virtually unnoticeable, as far as speed, and you tear your hair out over minute features you will never use. I stick with Asus because the people who test these things always highly rate them and their installation manuals are well written. Don't have a cow about power supplies either. Sure, there are bad ones out there but chances are the one you buy will be fine. All my systems (4) run with supplies I got for less than $20. None crash or otherwise act screwy. (All are P4s at 1.7 Ghz and up). One failed two days after I bought it but the vendor replaced it and it's been running for 6 months. I don't feel comfortable with generic brand stuff but I'll use it. The idea is reliability of components and does it work. If a vendor is selling a memory stick for your computer, it better match the timing for that type of memory or they'll have returns out the butt. It doesn't matter who makes it. When I designed medical computers we would sometimes go to Radio Shack if we needed something quick.

July 17th, 2003, 10:44 AM	#60
Rob Wilson Major Player Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Flagstaff, AZ Posts: 473	I'm running Premiere 6.5 and in it's startup, it displays that it recognizes dual processors on my 875 chipset board running a 3.0 Intel Hyperthreading processor. I'm guessing that means it takes advantage of the capability?