You're generally right, but the thing is I do have very good bargains (especially for the 12-core Xeon of the second latest generation)... Unfortunately it's not present in the chart you linked to (E5-2696v2 for $2000).

PS Let me put it this way: what will Vegas like more for previewing speed (MUCH more important to me than rendering speed): 8 cores @ 3.0 GHz in the latest & greatest 2011-3 X99 mobo, or 12 cores at 2.5 GHz in the previous generation system?

PSS Oh, and there is plenty of Future-proofness with newest mobos - There will be (in the case of LGA2011 and Xeon - already are) plenty of CPU upgrade possibilities. While with my current LGA1155 I am in a one-way-street already, the i7-4600K being the second fastest processor that it supports - plus I cannot even add another graphics card without the mobo's PCIe speed falling down to x8...

Read this threads:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=915077

and this

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=910003

Thanks OldSmoke, so it seems there is a consensus on the X99 with the i7 5960 being preferable over the lower frequency, even though more core, Xenons...Of course I understand getting 2 of those 16-core monsters would change the picture, but a decent 5960 system is already expensive enough for me to think twice.... Also strange is the very low fps got by one of the posters with the 5960 and the GTX580 card - could it be the card/system "generation mismatch"?

Piotr

Piotr

I am also on the fence with this. 5960X is an expensive system by itself and coming from a well working 3930K 6-core I am not sure if the extra money is worth it. I also haven't found anyone confirming that a 12 or 16 core Xeon at a lower clock is faster; I personally doubt it. I don't even mind spending the money on a great dual Xeon system if that get's me what I want. What I want is simple, native XAVC-S 4K 30fps files preview at Best/Full at 1080, 2160 and eventually 4K (when ever that will be).
The current 50Mbps/29.97fps files from my AX100 play "fine" on there own but a simple crossfade and the fps drops down. Also a simple cut will bring the fps down for a second or so until it builds up again; that is running all files from a RAID-0 with SSDs. I just upgraded the camera to 100Mbps 4K but I need to wait for the U3 class SDXC card to arrive. I hope the 100Mbps files have sufficient less compression to play better.

Looks like we're on the same boat, my Friend - except that your dilemma is even more difficult as your current CPU is much faster than mine; otherwise our goals are the same...

On the other hand, my decision gets more complicated than it could sound because I still have no idea which GPU card I should aim for. The reason being that for some reasons (long story), I'd like to use one of those early QHDTVs (like the 50" Samsung or alike) as my preview monitor. Unfortunately, they all only use HDMI (no DisplayPort), so to watch at full 4k@60 Hz with a direct HDMI link, the card should be capable of HDMI 2.0 connection - this is currently available on nVidia cards for sure (they stress it in the specs), but I'm unable to find a reliable information about the AMD (particularly the R9 which I'd like to have). All they mention about output resolution is Display Port 1.2 being of course 4k@60 Hz, but are vague about HDMI.... Yes it is said to provide 4k as well (with "deep color", whatever that means) - but it as well might turn to be the HDMI 1.4a standard which can only display 4k @ 30 (24) Hz and a reduced color resolution (so even though the colors might be "deep" - I guess it's a levels thing - but only 4:2:0 in resolution). Of course the last bit is OK for XAVC S which is 4:2:0 anyway, but the refresh frequency worries me - do you happen to know whether the R9''s HDMI is 2.0 or only 1.4- compatible?

Thanks,

Piotr

PS. I said 4:2:0 of color resolution would not be a problem, but who knows - perhaps I would like to switch to 10 bit 422 XAVC soon? Anyway - the graphics card with HDMI 2.0 compatibility seems like a must for me - all because I'm going to use a QHDTV instead of a PC 4k monitor ( in which case Display Port would solve the problem).

Piotr

No I don't know if the R9 has HDMI 2.0, not sure how to find that out. I do know however, the a ASUS Radeon R9 is different from a Asus R9; I guess same applies for other brands.

Also, don't mix up refresh rate with frame rate, they are different. Early and even current 4K TVs may have a refresh rate of 60Hz and higher but the 4K frame rate is mostly only 30(29.97) or 25p for PAL; 60(59.94) or 50p 4K TVs are expensive.

Edit: Read this!

What makes you say I'm missing up refresh rate with fps? Far from that :)

You're a very nice and knowledgeable person, but please try to be jsut a little less patronizing...

Thank you,

Piotr

Piotr
Hz referes to refresh rate and not frames per second, two very different things.

It seems like you haven't even noticed my post - good for you :)

OK, so you should know that - if a signal can only be as low as with HDMI 1.4 (i.e. 24 Hz or 30 Hz refresh rate, as there is simply not enough bandwidth for a higher refresh rate), AND you fill happens to be the same (24 of 30 fps, respectively) - whether what you get on the screen is watchable to your eyes depends on the display type. LED monitors usually don't flicker even at such a low refresh rates, but try to watch plasma at say 24 Hz - the eyestrain will be unbearable!

So, how it is possible to watch 24 fps (or 30 fps in the NTSC, or 25p in the PAL areas)? Well - simply by refreshing the screen at an integer multiple of the frame rate. So for example in PAL area where I live, (HD)TVs - usually refresh at 25, 50, 100, 150, 200 ... and up to 1000 Hz sometimes (in NTSC area it would be 30, 60, 120 and so on Hz). This way - even on flicker -prone plasmas - you're getting a rock-steady picture even at a low fps (like 200 Hz refresh rate screen displaying a 25 fps progressive video).

The problem with HDMI lower the 2,0 is that such multiplies of the fps rates are not available, an you must watch a 25 fps movie with the 25 Hz refresh rate; a 50p movie you cannot display at all.

This all changes with display Port 1.2 and/or HDMI 2.0.

Do you understand now? Fine!

Piotr

[I]" This all changes with display Port 1.2 and/or HDMI 2.0."[/I]

True but where to get a HDTV that actually will accept a HDMI 2.0 signal at 50 fps?

From another forum yes, one can get a pretty cheap UHDTV that claims to have HDMI 2.0 but only up to 30fps at 4:2:2, at 60fps you have to drop down to 4:2:0 and according to those who've bought these TVs the drop to 4:2:0 is very noticeable and that's just from the unwashed masses, not the pixel peepers.

Now that I can borrow a F5 with an AXS R5 recorder and 1TB of media what to do with all this data, how to process it and how to preview it in a way that we can actually see the difference? I've seen it being done at the F5/55 product launch here in Sydney but it wasn't using Vegas and it was on a top shelf HP "Z" series PC with everything maxed out and then some. Fed into very large and very expensive OLED displays it was mind blowing to look at. All in all that's a lot of very expensive kit and a very old school workflow of editing proxies and then conforming and grading on dedicated systems.

Fast forward to today and yeah, the F5 can be had for not much more than I paid for my EX1 but there hasn't been a matching price drop for the post production kit required to justify all this 4K RAW or even XAVC goodness.

Bob.

Bob,

You are right, but if you care to look up the information I posted about my needs and plans, I'm not going to deal with anything above XAVC-S, which is 25 fps and 4:2:0, anyway. So using a GeForce 7-series and up (all of which provide HDMI 2.0 along Display Port), I could feed any QHDTV via HDMI 2.0 while keeping the refresh rate at 50 Hz (which is enough refresh rate to avoid flicker - on a LED panel, anyway). So far so good - but the SCS own benchmarks show AMD is much more effective at timeline acceleration with FXes.... BUTAMD do not offer HDMI 2.0 - hence my problem (yes they do offer Display Port 1.2 just like GeForce do, so there would be no problem on a 4K PC monitor all of which support it, but for some reason I'd prefer a QHDTV over a monitor.)..

I hope I've been clear enough this time :)

Piotr

PS. Of course, if I say that "I'm not going to deal with anything above XAVC-S, which is 25 fps and 4:2:0, anyway", I only mean the time being - i.e. on my current system with just the graphics replaced. My GTX 580 is quite effective in timeline acceleration, but has no 4k output whatsoever...

Just get an iMac with Retina 5K display. Then run Bootcamp, Parallels or VMware Fusion.
You should be okay for about 4 to 5 years.

I’m running a 2012 iMac editing Full HD 4:2:2 50MB and up. With some 4k footages without any hiccups.

We are producing Broadcast International TV series. So far competed 71 episodes going on the fourth season.

I'm not tracking all the intrinsic details in this thread but seems like reaching the end goal is much harder than it should be here. I checked my card, bought a 4K monitor, and was up in running in a day or so.

Is this for a business with demanding specifics?

If it helps, I have a dual 12 core Xeon 2.26MHz system giving me 24 cores. It does nothing for timeline/preview window playback performance which in my case is extremely slow, even with simple HD video.

I've been disappointed in my system. Not sure where the bottleneck is.

"[I]Not sure where the bottleneck is.[/I]"

"[I]12 core Xeon 2.26MHz[/I]"

Your core clocks could be much higher.