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Craig Coston February 27th, 2010 09:44 PM

I would ideally try to use two identical drives, running a minimum of 7200 RPM.

Newegg has Seagate 750 GB drives for $59.99 with free shipping. Two of those would be fine (as long as you don't run them as part of a RAID 5... they have issues with that). If you can afford a third drive, that makes performance even better.

Randall Leong March 1st, 2010 04:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Craig Coston (Post 1492270)
I would ideally try to use two identical drives, running a minimum of 7200 RPM.

Newegg has Seagate 750 GB drives for $59.99 with free shipping. Two of those would be fine (as long as you don't run them as part of a RAID 5... they have issues with that). If you can afford a third drive, that makes performance even better.

That version of the Seagate (the 750GB 7200.12) is fine by me. But I found that the generation of the drive being used is almost as equally important as the spindle speed of the drive. After all, some resellers sell 320GB and smaller SATA drives cheap - but most such drives tend to be of significantly older designs which deliver less than half the average sequential throughput as the newest hard drive designs. In this particular case, striping two such older drives would still result in slower sequential speeds than simply using a single drive of the newest design.

I've just checked Newegg again, and that 750GB drive actually went up in price to $79.99 each (still with free shipping). The 1TB version of this drive is the same drive as this one; however, the smaller-capacity 750TB drive actually leaves one side of one of its two platters unutilized (the 1TB version utilizes both sides of both platters). The 500GB version has the same basic physical performance as the two larger drives in the series (because this version is a single-platter design), but with only half the cache memory. (The smaller cache amount - 16MB versus 32MB in the larger 2-platter versions - is perfectly adequate for such a smaller-capacity drive.) Forget about the harder-to-find less-than-500GB versions of this drive; they leave part of their single platters unutilized. Such partially-unutilized drives do have quicker access times, but may have slower maximum sequential read and write speeds than the drives which fully utilize at least one side of at least one of the platters: Depending on the manufacturer, some such drives utilize only the inner portion of the platters and thus the result is a crippled maximum sequential performance like I described earlier in this sentence. Others may use only the outer portion, which increases minimum sequential performance at the expense of usable capacity.

In the interim, I experimented with a 1.5TB external hard drive kit connected to eSATA. With that drive I found that the type of controller powering the eSATA port(s) to be a noticeable factor; in fact, that drive connected to my older Q9450's single eSATA port to be actually faster in sequential read and write performance than that same drive connected to an eSATA port of my current i7-920 motherboard. Upon further investigation I found that the eSATA port on my Q9450 system was actually connected directly via a cable running from the backplate to one of the internal eSATA ports of that system's Intel DP35DP motherboard, which uses the Intel ICH9R "South bridge". Hence, the eSATA drive connected to that older system used AHCI (and could have also been RAIDed together with other add-in hard drives had I chosen to use that function). The disadvantage to this setup is that I lost one of the internal SATA ports to eSATA, limiting the maximum number of internal SATA drives supported from six to five. But on my i7 system, the eSATA ports are actually run off of a separate Marvell eSATA controller chip on the motherboard, which supports neither AHCI nor RAID at all. As a result, with just a single drive connected to the Marvell eSATA port, the maximum sequential write speed is only about half as much as what the older system could muster (primarily because the Marvell controller is permanently stuck in the IDE mode) while the sequential read speed is also slightly lower than the older system. Hence, my quest for a true performance RAID add-in system for video editing/rendering work.

UPDATE: I did receive a pair of the Seagate 1TB 7200.12 drives this morning (I had actually ordered the drives before I asked which drives to get because I was a little disappointed in the somewhat slow rendering performance without the extra disks). I just installed and formatted the two drives with Windows 7's software RAID feature (the Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate versions also support RAID 1 in addition to RAID 0, while the Home Premium is limited to RAID 0). My initial testing with this software RAID 0 auxiliary disk setup (copying files from my system's main hard drive to the RAID array and secure-erasing large files using the freeware Eraser program indicates that my system's main hard drive had been transferring as fast as it could only to be beaten so far by the RAID array.) I will re-test my rendering later to see if I achieve a marked change. My results with the external eSATA drive connected to my i7-920 system's eSATA ports indicated slightly slower rendering times than simply using my system's hard drive for everything.

Peter Telian March 1st, 2010 06:06 PM

*mis-posted*

Randall Leong March 2nd, 2010 02:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randall Leong (Post 1493089)
I will re-test my rendering later to see if I achieve a marked change.

Initially, I did not notice much of a difference between the RAID and the single drive - until I read the Videoguys' guide. They actually recommended putting the source media files and the rendered files on separate drives. This means that if the media files are on the system drive, the RAID 0 array should be used for your output. Conversely, if your source media files are on the RAID 0 array, the rendered output should be set to a different hard drive such as the system drive.

By the way, I have just updated my eSATA external hard drive tests on file copy transfers. It turned out that the Marvell eSATA controller on my system's motherboard actually supported RAID (in the form of the chipset manufacturer's software RAID) in addition to IDE mode. (With only two ports, the Marvell controller supports only RAID 0 or RAID 1.) This meant that the controller had been handicapped by the default Microsoft IDE driver, which limited write performance to about half of what the external hard drive kit was capable of in the first place. So, I went to the motherboard manufacturer's Web site, and downloaded and installed the correct Marvell driver. AHCI is automatically enabled when the driver is installed. The result is a doubling of the write throughput. Still, the external hard drive performed no better than my system (C:) drive in the read and write tests. And the Marvell eSATA controller's performance is good news to those who plan to do a RAID 0 setup using two SATA internal hard drives mounted inside eSATA external enclosures.

Randall Leong March 11th, 2010 04:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Craig Coston (Post 1491832)
Have you ran a speed test on your drives? You should be getting much higher than 25% utilization during encoding I would believe.

Even with the RAID 0 array as my source drive and a separate disk as my render-to drive, I've averaged around 30-something percent utilization, with a max of around 40 percent. This is likely because the current 64-bit version of Vegas does not make full use of the system's 64-bit capabilities.

I experimented again with rendering MXF files into AVC in Vegas. I used four different processor and memory speed settings: stock speed on both CPU and memory, stock-speed CPU with memory overclocked to 1600, CPU overclocked to 3.2 GHz with memory running at 1600 and CPU overclocked to 3.5 GHz with memory running at 1400. The result is that the overclock to 3.5 GHz is fastest, rendering a 16-second MXF file to AVC in about 72 seconds. The overclock to 3.2 GHz took 78 seconds to do the same work, while the stock-speed CPU with overclocked memory and stock-speed memory took 89 seconds and 92 seconds, respectively. What's more is that overclocking the memory alone produced a very minimal improvement in rendering performance compared to overclocking the processor.

In this respect, you are correct that overclocking the i7 processor can (and does) produce significantly improved rendering performance.

Randall Leong March 27th, 2010 09:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Craig Coston (Post 1483513)
If you decide to drop money on an aftermarket cooler, my strong suggestion is the Noctua NH-D14. It's absolutely amazing. Make sure to use their provided thermal paste, as it is better than Arctic Silver's offerings when paired with this particular cooler (my own tested experience). Just make sure you have enough room in your case for this one. I have everything in a 4U height rackmount and had to dremel the top of my case to get it to fit right.

Thanks for the recommendation, Craig. Looks like I might need an aftermarket cooler because at stock speeds (2.66GHz for the processor, 533MHz/DDR3-1066 for the memory) my CPU's core temperature is already at Intel's maximum recommended thermal spec of 72.9°C core (67.9°C in the middle of the heat spreader) under a full load with the stock Intel boxed CPU cooler. (I ran Prime95 and RealTemp to obtain these temps.)

In other words, the stock Intel cooler barely kept up at stock speeds (if I trust the thermal spec). Of course, I could run stably at 3.66GHz with the core and QPI voltages cranked up to 1.25V, but the temps began to exceed 80°C, which might shorten the useful life of the CPU.

UPDATE: I got myself a Noctua NH-U12P SE2, which is compatible with LGA1366, LGA1156, LGA775 and AM2/AM3 motherboards. (Although initially, I bought the wrong Noctua cooler - an NH-C12P, which as packaged did not come with the correct mounting hardware for Socket LGA1366 or LGA1156 although the mounting kit for those two sockets could be purchased separately. And though that cooler delivered about 10°C worth of improvement over the stock Intel cooler, it didn't perform well enough to justify its relatively high price - and that model was recently discontinued, replaced by the NH-C12P SE14 which now has a larger 140mm fan and comes ready to mount on LGA1366 or LGA1156 in addition to LGA775 and AM2/AM3.) The NH-U12P is an impressive cooler - in fact, it is the "old" top performer prior to the introduction of the NH-D14. Whereas the stock Intel cooler allowed the CPU temperature under full (100%) load to reach Intel's recommended maximum thermal spec at the CPU's stock speed of 2.66GHz, the NH-U12P kept the CPU temp about 10 degrees C lower than this maximum even with an overclock to 3.66GHz and the Vcore and Uncore voltage set to the higher 1.25V (I needed these voltage settings in order for my system to be Prime95-stable at 3.66GHz). This cooler, on average, kept temps about 20°C cooler (at 100% load) than the stock Intel cooler at every tested processor clock speed.

Next up: An overclock to 3.8GHz or 4.0GHz. But I personally would not use these settings on a regular basis because the ratio of performance boost to power consumption begins to decrease greatly (or put it this way, the increase in total system power consumption would be much greater than is justified by the performance increase) above about 3.7GHz with this i7-920 processor.

Randall Leong March 31st, 2010 08:59 PM

Final update on my OCing the 920:

Due to the warming Spring temperatures, I decided to settle on 3.6GHz (200x18 rather than the 183x20 I had been using since getting this Noctua cooler) with the memory running at the full DDR3-1600 speed. However, I do feel that my CPU could do 3.8GHz if the ambient room temps weren't so high.

Randall Leong April 18th, 2010 10:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randall Leong (Post 1491970)
Unfortunately, the Intel ICH10R's built-in RAID feature requires that all hard drives connected to the SATA ports be RAIDed together - it's all RAID or no RAID.

I was wrong on the above quote. I simply took what I found on the predecessor ICH9R and transposed it upon the ICH10R. The ICH9R would not let me have a non-RAID boot drive when set to RAID mode; I had to use AHCI or IDE mode. But the ICH10R does allow me to have a non-RAID boot drive and a RAID 0 or RAID 1 array for storage or work use. However, if Windows had been installed on a hard drive with the controller set to IDE or AHCI mode, the registry must be tweaked (hacked) in order to switch to the RAID mode; otherwise, the system will reboot into a "repair" mode.

With that bit of tweaking out of the way, I ran PPBM4 on my system at both 3.6GHz (3.78GHz with Turbo Boost) and at stock 2.66GHz (note that the memory was running at a slightly lower speed at 3.6GHz than at 2.66GHz). Although the two results that I submitted will not appear on the list for at least a few days, I can safely say that the OC'd system did beat out all but two of the dual-Xeon systems (as well as the two overclocked i7-920 systems with fewer than four hard drives in a RAID array). And at stock speed, the only stock-speed i7-920 systems that beat mine have at least three hard drives RAIDed together (I tested mine with only two hard drives in a RAID 0 array plus a non-RAID system drive). Plus, my system has "only" 6GB of RAM rather than the 12+ GB of RAM that most of the systems in my performance class have.

I'm sure that I can get better scores with more hard drives RAIDed together - but my motherboard's controller is already at the max (with one BD recorder and two DVD recorders - a single recorder does not do a stellar job of writing to every media that's currently available). And adding more hard drives in RAID would have required me to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on the additional drives plus a hardware RAID card. As such, I am pretty happy with my current results - and that squeezing the last bit of performance would cost me much more money than is justified by the performance improvement.

And beginning July 1 of this year, Asus motherboards will no longer be the same. This is because Asus will be completely spinning off its component manufacturing division as a wholly separate company called Pegatron. Asus will retain a 25 percent stake in the new company; however, Pegatron will significantly reduce the use of the Asus brand name on the motherboards it manufactures (instead, it will now be using the ASRock brand name on even premium-priced high-end motherboards) - while Asus will be outsourcing most of its own branded motherboard production to an FIC subsidiary in China. Until then, Pegatron will remain a subsidiary of Asus.


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