Buying new computer. Which processor to get for VV3?

Tanjy wrote on 6/5/2002, 1:28 PM

A while back someone posted that he bought a dual Pentium (was that what he said?) and was not impressed with the performance of VV3.

The company where I work is upgrading computers (IBM brand only) and I have to put together a request list with specs for what I need for my new workstation.

Which chipset, configuration, etc. will give me maximum VV3 performance (i.e., realtime renders)? Also, any sugestions for a good DVD-RW? Any other related advice appreciated.

Comments

Summersond wrote on 6/5/2002, 4:02 PM

I just got a 2.4 GHZ Pentium 4 Dell with 512MB ddr ram. Works like a champ! Renders scream. If you look at some of the newer DVD Authoring software (which you will want to do, such as DVD Complete, it says that to do real time captures, it needs 2.0 GHZ or faster. I wouldn't look at anything less than a 2.0 GHZ unit now. I also purchased the Pioneer DVD-104 (A04 packaged)DVD-RW writer/rewriter and have had good luck with it. The software is junk and that's why I bought the DVD Complete.

Summersond wrote on 6/5/2002, 4:13 PM

Sorry, that should be DVR-A04, NOT DVD-A04.

dave

Tanjy wrote on 6/5/2002, 10:44 PM

Thanks for the advice.

swarrine wrote on 6/5/2002, 10:56 PM

Buy the fastest single chip you can afford. VV3 does not take advantage of duals very well at this time (unless you plan to frequently render and edit at the same time).

defucius wrote on 6/6/2002, 9:48 AM

if money is no issue, go for the fastest Pentium 4 at 2.53 GHz and Rmbus memory. You will gain from the faster system bus and better throughput of the Rmbus memory. AMD currently has no answer to the fastest pentium 4.

Even if money is a consideration, pentiums still worth consideration because it runs cooler (less noise from the cooling fans), and you have the option of Rmbus memory, which will always help in video rendering.

Also, you might consider going to a SCSI harddrive, or at least look for a raid controller for your IDE drives. SCSI will outperform the IDE drives by a large margin. For raid controller, go for the ones with onboard memory so that the performance boost is larger. Raid controllers typically offers Raid 0 for some performance enhancement, although it is barely noticeable without the onboard memory.

Summersond wrote on 6/6/2002, 12:17 PM

I don't think scsi or raid would be necessary in a NLE environment for digital. I would agree if it was analog NLE. 7200 RPM hard drives can now easily keep up with digital data flow. Plus they are WAY cheaper.

BillyBoy wrote on 6/6/2002, 9:13 PM

In my opinion SCSI drives and RAID also is overkill especially if all you're going to use the system for is video editing. Today's newer Ultra IDE drives are nearly as fast if not faster then many SCSI drives, you don't need an expensive controller card and the price/storage capacity ratio gives you far more bang for the buck. Why buy a 10-20GB SCSI drive when you can get a 100GB IDE drive for roughly the same money?

HPV wrote on 6/6/2002, 10:12 PM

IDE is more than solid with DV. But it does eat up CPU cycles to pull it off vs. scsi. Vegas will render (file transfer sections/no edits) from my 7200rpm HD to HD at 15 Mbs and use 30% of my 1.3ghz cpu. File transfers via windows between drives pulls down 25Mbs with 50% cpu useage.

Craig H.

watson wrote on 6/6/2002, 11:47 PM

I've got SCSI 2 drives(with controller)and IDE drives without controller card both 5400 and 7200's
Never had a problem in Compressed DV at any stage.
CPU's and RAM are far more important.
Get a Motherboard with lot's of PCI slots and skip MB models with onboard Lans,sound and controllers. IMHO

W

Chienworks wrote on 6/7/2002, 10:55 AM

Summerson, pardon me for being curious, but ... "analog NLE" ? What's that? I understood "non-linear" to mean digital.

riredale wrote on 6/7/2002, 12:05 PM

If I may jump in here for a moment:

I understand Linear Editing to be where one lays down one track after another on the output tape in a linear fashion from the beginning of the tape to the end, which is apparently the way it had to be done in the old days. Non-Linear Editing to me implies the ability to effortlessly jump around the entire project, cutting and pasting at will. Based on this definition, NLE has nothing to do with digital processing per se, except that it's hard to imagine an analog device doing a very good job with NLE.

The beauty of DV is that one gets excellent quality at a reasonable bit rate. A capture from an analog source, by contrast, could conceivably require an extremely high data transfer rate, which historically required the use of SCSI and Raid.

Summersond wrote on 6/7/2002, 12:34 PM

Chien, I used to own (actually still do) an Editbay analog video capture card and software that I got into NLE editting with. I agree with Riredale's description in that you do about the same thing in editting only with analog capture input. I will also say that the quality of DV editting is by far superior to any analog editting I did, even with S-Video input from an SVHS or Hi-8 tape.

defucius wrote on 6/7/2002, 1:46 PM

I would agree with all of you that current IDE drive does not have any problems handling NLE video. I only have IDE drives too, for my home video editing. As a matter of fact, the price/"storage size" ratio is far more important than the price/performance ratio for most home users. But put this into context, the original question was "the company is upgrading". Clearly the work would be for the company. This is where a faster system makes sense.

A proper Raid configuration will save you time when loading up long video clips, copying files, running multiple processes at the same time. Realisticly, these are savings of maybe 10-20 minutes at best of a whole 3-4 hour process. It does not make sense in a home video session, but it DOES in a video business. The cost of the Raid/SCSI system is significant for a hobby, and the money is better advised to be spent elsewher, but it is a trivial amount for a video business.

riredale wrote on 6/8/2002, 1:32 AM

Speaking of cheap drives, I noticed over at www.techbargains.com tonight that you can buy an 80GB for $80 (Staples), and a 120GB drive for $109 (Fry's). What an amazing industry.