> AMD dual core 4600 with render test time of 41 seconds. No overclocking. Old test of P4 3.4 with hyperthreading was 1:41.

OMG, that is inspiring. I’m planning to build a new PC around the AMD X2. (coming from a P4 3.0Ghz) What motherboard did you use and how do you like it?

~jr

JohnnyRoy:
Motherboard is Gigabyte GA-8KN Ultra-9 with F5 Dual Bios .Two SATA 150 drives and two SATA 300 drives with a couple of SCSI drives thrown in. "C" drive is 30 gig Maxtor standard whatever. XP pro 32. Tried the XP-64x but drivers are somewhat of an issue so went back to 32 bit. The gamers say the trick setup for the money is a dual core 4400 overclocked to 4800 speed. Anyway, that's not my thing. The processor comes with a huge fan at 6000 rpm. As far as comparing to the Intel dual cores I don't know.

JJK

I just bought a dual core intel cpu with 4 gigs of ram from Dell last week, I can't wait for it to get here.

Spot (DSE) had some threads on this about 6-10 weeks ago. Do a search on his user name. Some amazing render times were reported.

Dual 3G Xeons on a Asus PC-DL motherboard with 2G RAM (533MHz ram). Hyperthreading enabled. Vegas 6.0c with all defaults. Preview window open.

Rendertest completed in 46s.

Thanks for the info on the mobo. I’m thinking of building one around the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium but I’m always looking at options before I buy.

~jr

Forgive my hi-jacking, whats the deal with this SLI stuff otehr than its darn expensive for one card let alone two of them. Does any help with speeding up encoding outputs or is it just for rendering on screen?

Everything I have seen for PCI-E is way too expensive currently.

I just bought a dual core intel cpu with 4 gigs of ram from Dell last week, I can't wait for it to get here.

Eagles Video Maker
good luck on getting it to work with Blackmagic's Decklink card... if that's what you want to end up using... dat buggah no wurk! (at least not with my dell)

Pmasters:
I believe it is just for rendering on screen. The SLI uses two video cards but only "one output" and the video cards (7800's) require gigunda power supplies and fans.

JJK

> Forgive my hi-jacking, whats the deal with this SLI stuff otehr than its darn expensive for one card let alone two of them.

Oh, SLI has nothing to do with my selection. ;-) I’m trying to build the quietest PC that I possibly can and that particular model uses a Heatpipe instead of a fan on the North Bridge. I’m trying to eliminate as many fans as possible because my current PC sounds like a Jet plane! That motherboard also got exceptional reviews for stability.

You could easily get away with an ASUS A8N-E which is $55 cheaper and get the same performance.

~jr

JR-

They are admitedly a little over the top at times, but if you are after a quiet pc, then the folks over at SPCR forum are great for advice. You can learn a lot from browsing around, and check out the reviews.

While not silent, both my pc's are very quiet to the point that they don't annoy me, largely due to advice from their forum.

"Oh, SLI has nothing to do with my selection. ;-) I’m trying to build the quietest PC that I possibly can and that particular model uses a Heatpipe instead of a fan on the North Bridge. I’m trying to eliminate as many fans as possible because my current PC sounds like a Jet plane! That motherboard also got exceptional reviews for stability."

John, I just installed the same board, and I agree with you. BTW, what memory are you using, and what size PSU?

SLI is a nice option, but useless with Vegas. I might eventually try it, but I'm outgrowing gaming, and the less installed, the better, anyway.

Using an X2 4400+ and seeing SUBSTANTIAL gains in rendering time.

Many years ago I checked out the Borg-Warner cabinet coolers utilizing the reversed thermocouple technique (cools) that was used on the Appollo spacecraft. They wanted about $349.00 for one and not sure if it had a fan mounted on it or not. This would be really quiet. I believe the ratings were in BTU's.

JJK

> if you are after a quiet pc, then the folks over at SPCR forum are great for advice

Thanks for the pointer to that site. It’s in my bookmarks now. I’m planning on using the Antec Sonata II case hoping it is as quiet as they say it is. I understand 10K RPM drives are a bit louder but I really want to use one for the system drive. Anything to help the bloatware called XP. (Damn I wish I could run Vegas on Linux!)

> John, I just installed the same board, and I agree with you. BTW, what memory are you using, and what size PSU?

I’m still specing out the system (haven’t bought the parts yet). For memory I’ve selected CORSAIR XMS 2GB (Twinx2048-3200c2) and was planning to use an AMD X2 4600+ or 4800+ (haven’t decided yet) with a Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10K RPM SATA150 for the system drive and then a RAID 0 for the capture drives.

I’m also planning on using a ZALMAN CNPS7700-ALCU 120mm 2 Ball Cooling Fan. Anyone using one of these? Or are you using the stock fan?

> SLI is a nice option, but useless with Vegas. I might eventually try it, but I'm outgrowing gaming, and the less installed, the better, anyway.

Hmmm... Getting too old for gaming? ;-) I still love the smell of fresh frags in the morning. Unreal Tournament or Quake III, you are never too old to frag or be fragged.

~jr

In other words . . .

You're only as old as your freshest kill.

If you want really quiet and really cold, phase change is the way to go. A Vapochill will keep that dual core at 0 deg. C.

Phase change will make the CPU really cold, but you still need a fan to get heat exchange going. So I think it would be louder...?

In any case, there's lots of great information at silentpcreview.com and its forums on that kind of thing.

2- JohnnyRoy: I tested the effect of memory timings on Vegas and it doesn't seem to make any difference.
see http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18841
Lower memory timings is really the only reason to get expensive RAM like Corsair TwinX.

3- I haven't been keeping up with the latest heatsinks, but a while back the Thermalright XP-120 was the top dog. I used it for a machine and it makes a tremendous difference over inferior heatsinks (like 20degrees Celcius on CPU temperature).
If you search SPCR you'll probably figure out which is top dog now (I don't think it's the XP-120 anymore).

I tested the effect of memory timings on Vegas and it doesn't seem to make any difference. Lower memory timings is really the only reason to get expensive RAM like Corsair TwinX.

That statement needs to be qualified a bit. If the memory subsystem on the motherboard wasn't designed to fully benefit from 2-2-2-2 timing (and that's an unusual timing), then of course there will be no difference regardless of what you run.

Any performance difference will also depend on CPU cache use, serial memory data access vs. random memory data access, etc.

> I tested the effect of memory timings on Vegas and it doesn't seem to make any difference.

Glenn, I appreciate the link and advice. I wonder if this would hold true with HDV which is significantly more data (5x that of DV). I’m building this new system for HDV editing with my Sony Z1 so I didn’t want memory to be the limiting factor. Most memory tests show the best improvements with multi-media rendering. But it’s interesting that it doesn’t affect Vegas much in your tests.

> I haven't been keeping up with the latest heatsinks, but a while back the Thermalright XP-120 was the top dog.

I will definitely monitor SPCR to see what’s the best to use. Thanks for the info.

~jr

In between, we have 10k WD drives at work and it's VERY noisy, I'd rather have nice 7200k silent seagates than noisy disks even if they are faster.

coursedesign: I think all motherboards are setup to benefit for lower memory latencies/timings. Many hardware review sites (xbitlabs, anandtech) review different memory and you'll see performance improvements of a few percent on most (or all?) chipsets/platforms. Some platforms may see more improvement from memory timings than others.

Sometimes there's quirks like the old athlon XP processors, where increasing one of the memory timings made an insignificant increase in benchmark performance. (Also, dual channel didn't really do anything for those systems.)

Btw, the lowest RAM timing for Intel platforms is about 2-2-2-5 (not 2-2-2-2).

2- Another way of simplifying purchasing decisions is this:
Assume the best case scenario- i.e. better RAM increases relevant performance 4% (versus the slowest RAM, like crucial which has higher timings to increase stability/headroom). 4% is probably extremely generous, when my tests show no measurable increase.
Normal RAM can hit good timings, so the performance difference may be 2%. Samsung RAM may be particularly good for price/performance (not sure about this).
Figure out the price premium for corsair twinX versus samsung or whatever. Divide the price by the performance increase.

You may find that your money is better spent getting a faster processor. Divide clock speeds for the processor to approximate performance increase (and maybe multiply the increase by 0.9, which is probably closer to the real world speed increase).

3- I think video rendering is mostly sequential memory access (since we're dealing with large files here), so memory latency does not come into play at all.

MPEG2 encoding may have more random memory access, so memory latency should make a bigger difference. There might be benchmarks for MPEG2 encoding in regards to memory latency.

4- If you're willing to put in elbow grease, you can buy normal RAM and lower the timings on it. Asus motherboards have a feature which will quickly lower the timings for you. It's memory acceleration or something like that. Otherwise just manually lower the memory timings.
It may be fastest to lower the timings until your system is unstable or will not boot. Then go reset the BIOS (via the jumper; read the manual) and back off.
After that, plop in memtest86 and check for stability.

Glenn,

I guess I haven't kept up with the mobos since I bought Corsair XMS sticks for my uncompressed workstation more than a year ago. At the time I got a very good price that wasn't much worse than "economy" sticks from less reputable suppliers, and my Supermicro mobo definitely could use the timing, but few others at the time per the usual sources. Corsair sticks are also good for being reliable!

Today's sticks signal their timing ability through SPD, this tells the CPU what they can do. I figured there would be a way to override this, but feel absolutely no desire to be a guinea pig for the potential memory problems. That's for gamers, all they have to lose is their life... Work is much more serious! :O)


I also got the 10K WD Raptor drives then and have been really happy with them. Totally reliable and totally fast. Only flip side is the increased heat generation (compared to 7200rpm drives, not a reliability issue thanks to the duct cooling in my Supermicro case), and a bit more noise, although I get more noise from other parts of the system currently. I'm gonna see if I can squeeze a Ninja into this case to cool down the CPU a bit more quietly, and a different case fan is also a top priority (or a 7809 voltage regulator perhaps).