Hardware Upgrade Advice Please

Stonefield wrote on 6/11/2005, 9:48 PM
Hey All....

Just lookin for some advice here.

Where I'm coming from...
PIII 933 , 512 megs of (SD?)Ram, Geforce 4 440 mx dual head card
(Yes I know, upgrade is long overdue)

Here's my query...

I've already got the 1 gig of 3200 ram and the MSI 865Pe Neo2-P Motherboard. My tech guru who built all of my computers says that I really shouldn't bother with the 3.2 ghtz CPU and just go with the 3.0 one. He says the 70 or so bucks difference would be better spent on a good video card upgrade.

Also, he's done some tests, and saw that there was like a 2% difference from 1 gig to 2 gigs of RAM on his system. So an additional two sticks of 512 ram wouldn't really be useful. The ram can be bought in the future anyways....

Other than Vegas, I'll be getting more into Photoshop, After Effects, Bryce and maybe 3D Studio Max. And yes, I'm a bit of a gamer. And no, I'm won't be doing HDV.

Guess I'm asking is it worth the extra 70 bucks for the 3.2 ghtz as opposed to the 3.0 ... considering where I started from.

Stan ( Stonefield )

Comments

farss wrote on 6/11/2005, 10:09 PM
30. to 3.2 isn't a big step up so I'd take his advice. What about disks though. I spent up BIG to get a Highpoint RAID controller, seems to scream along nicely, only buyer remorse is I probably should have gone for the 3.6 Ghz Xeons but that added $1K and SCSI RAID and that added a HUGE amount.
From memory though your work is pretty FX intensive so probably faster drives aren't going to help much but then again nore will going from 3.0 to 3.2 Ghz, dual core CPUs would be another matter with V6.
Bob.
GlennChan wrote on 6/11/2005, 11:01 PM
The 3.2 is about 6% faster than the 3.0ghz. Anything <10% isn't going to be noticeable, so it's not a big deal. However, I would lean towards the fastest CPU you can get. Video rendering is like 90% dependent on the CPU.
The 3.4"E" Prescott might be your best bet. The newer stuff (6xx series) is sometimes slower. Intel also has multiple lines of desktop processors (all the CPUs on socket 478 which don't follow the numbering scheme, celeron/3xx, 5xx, 5xxJ, 6xx, Extreme Edition, 8xx), which makes things confusing.
I'd look for a socket 478 (not socket LGA775) 3.4"E" Prescott. The slightly slower Prescotts are also good, and are better ghz per $. When comapring across the same processor line (which is hard because there are so many), ghz is an excellent way of approximating performance (just divide 'em).


Hard drive speed doesn't seem to ever matter (I've kind of tried this). Storage/capacity does because video takes a lot of room.

Dual core:
Intel's "Pentium D" dual core processor won't even work in your motherboard (and may not work with your PSU or RAM or video card). As well, Pentium Ds may not really be all that much faster... benchmarks show it is outperformed by a single processor at MPEG2 encoding with the Main Concept encoder. As well, Pentium Ds may cost more over the long run because they consume so much electricity
AMD is a different story, but considering you have a motherboard already you should go with Intel.

You will definitely be happy with a 3.0ghz+ Pentium, because your old system will be able 3X slower in comparison.

RAM: Check recommended specs for programs.
Vegas currently might be a bit buggy using large (~1GB+) amounts of RAM. You can increase RAM previews, which is what you'd need RAM for. RAM preview is mildly useful. It does work passively, so everything Vegas renders on the fly temporarily gets 'cached' in RAM (try looping something- eventually the frame rate goes up and up).
For other programs, check recommended specs.
If you work with large (30MB+) files in Photoshop, more RAM might be better so all your undos are stored in RAM. RAM is like 60X faster than your hard drive... running out means your computer will be noticeably slower. Typically 1GB of RAM is more than enough.
In rendering, RAM configuration makes a few % difference (this may be why 1GB is 1% faster). Get pairs of the exact same memory (same manufacturer, model, capacity). 4 dual-sided/banked sticks is ideal configuration for your motherboard+chipset (865) [i.e. 4X512MB]. I don't think it's really worth the money/effort to go for that configuration though... just stick to 1 or 2 pairs of the same RAM.

A video card upgrade won't do anything for Vegas really.
If you want openGL acceleration for After Effects, get a Nvidia Quadro or ATI Fire card. Bryce and 3dsmax may also benefit from openGL for previews??? Check their recommended specs for what they recommend.
Games: Video card makes a huge difference. The Nvidia Quadro/ATI Fire stuff perform worse than gaming video cards, and are much more expensive too. Those workstation cards are designed for openGL performance and aren't good at directX (games).
After Effects uses directX acceleration for some things I believe.
Stonefield wrote on 6/12/2005, 1:59 AM
This is good news so far. I DO have that gig of ram in two identical 512 sticks so I'm down with that. It's Kingston ram too, which I understand is really good.

I actually rely quite a bit on my ram previews to see what my FX are doing. But then again, that was with my current system. The new system might be running those FX in real time anyways......sweet.

Anyone else have any experience with the 1 or 2 gig of ram difference if any? I guess for video work, it all comes down to raw horsepower.
busterkeaton wrote on 6/12/2005, 2:24 AM
Will you have Vegas open at the same time you have Photoshop or other programs open. That, in addition to RAM renders is where RAM comes in handy. My impression that Vegas 6 is a little more memory hungry than 5 was. Does anyone feel this way?
Stonefield wrote on 6/12/2005, 2:38 AM
There might be the occasional time I have Photoshop open with Vegas but only occasionally. And I'm using Vegas 5. Won't be upgrading to 6.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/12/2005, 5:54 AM
the 1gb of ram should be ok. With V4 I could have several programs (vegas, photoshop, firefox, winamp, and some other stuff) on 512mb of ran & have veryy little (if any) playback problems.

V6 is a different story however. not sure if 5 is the same way but I get slight stuttering even when I open an FX windows. I've got an AMD 64 3000 so the only thing left is my ram.

those ATI & Nvidia workstation cards are realy good for 3d apps that use them, but you could EASILY get away with a gamer card for any 3d previews. I do & the gamer cards are getting as good as the workstation cards now (PCI-E, etc). For a recomendation on those I'd recomend buying the best you can afford but avoid anything with "MX", "SE", or "LE" in the name. A good video card will help more then a fast CPU in the newer 3d games out (mid-04 & after)

As for your CPU, if you NEED a new MB because yours won't support p4's that fast, i'd recomend getting an AMD 939pin MB (such as the Asus A8V Deluxe) & an AMD 64. Those mb's are duel core compatible & offer great performace. I've never seen/experienced a huge difference in render times between comparible intel/amd CPU's so I went for the cheaper CPU (AMD) & it performs great.