My credit card is ready, somebody just tell me wha

CLive McLaughlin wrote on 7/12/2016, 10:36 AM
Wasting far too much of my time here trying to research potential upgrades for my system.

I've been here before, and researched when moving from awful to descent, and from descent to good.

Now I just want high-end (within reason!).

I'm fed up with reading and reading and reading threads and hearing contradictory statements.

I currently have

XeonE3-1246 v3 3.50 GHz
32GB DDR3 RAM
Geforce GTX570
Vegas Pro13, on Windows 10 64bit.

I attempted an upgrade to an Radeon R9 390, but the results were poor in render, and timeline playback showed little improvement.

I've read that MainConcept only supports a select few GPU's which are all about 5 years old now, and newer Nvidia do not have the same fast render with CUDA.

With same timeline section, my R9 390 rendered to MainConcept in 1m35 on CPU only, whilst with the GTX 570 installed it clocked 1m20. On MainConcept, with both OpenCL or CUDA, the R9 390 showed no noteworthy speed increase, where the GTX 570 blazed its way through at 42secs.
On Sony/AVC we saw the GTX 570 outperform the R9 390, but only by 5 secs, and GPU turned on did not see the GTX570 run away with it in the same way it did with a MainConcept render.

On playback and render, CPU usage is generally at 95% and higher, whilst GPU on both cards I tried were never above 35%.

Can my 570 render speeds with Main Concept be beaten?

My CPU maxes out when previewing in 'Good' and drops to 3fps. 'Preview' quality does the job I guess, but it would be nice to watch realtime at higher quality.

As for CPU upgrade, the best my Motherboard can upgrade to is an i7 4790K. If that's not a huge improvement, I would consider upgrading motherbaord and re-installing OS.

But yea, I just want a fairly definitive answer, if anyone is brave enough!

Tell me what CPU and GPU to buy!

Go!

Comments

john_dennis wrote on 7/12/2016, 11:55 AM
I'm due for an upgrade in the fall. So far, this is on my list. Just a thought experiment until I give my credit card number. If it seems too conservative, I don't plan to overclock.

Intel Core i7-6850K 3.6 GHz Six-Core LGA 2011-v3 Processor

ASUS X99-A II Motherboard

CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 32GB (4 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2400 (PC4 19200) C14 Memory Kit - Black Model CMK32GX4M4A2400C14

CORSAIR Hydro Series H60 (CW-9060007-WW) High Performance Water / Liquid CPU Cooler

SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 480 DirectX 12 100406L 8GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0

I view this as a good "middling" system. I'm letting it simmer through the summer because of the remote possibility that Magix will add better support for NVidia video cards with the release of Vegas Pro 14.

I'm sure others won't be too timid to put their preferences out there.
xberk wrote on 7/12/2016, 12:57 PM
This looks like the sweet spot for price/performance six core for video editing CPU .. i7-6800K

I currently have a six core and I think it has made a difference in timeline and rendering performance.

Paul B .. PCI Express Video Card: EVGA VCX 10G-P5-3885-KL GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 ULTRA ,,  Intel Core i9-11900K Desktop Processor ,,  MSI Z590-A PRO Desktop Motherboard LGA-1200 ,, 64GB (2X32GB) XPG GAMMIX D45 DDR4 3200MHz 288-Pin SDRAM PC4-25600 Memory .. Seasonic Power Supply SSR-1000FX Focus Plus 1000W ,, Arctic Liquid Freezer II – 360MM .. Fractal Design case ,, Samsung Solid State Drive MZ-V8P1T0B/AM 980 PRO 1TB PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 ,, Wundiws 10 .. Vegas Pro 19 Edit

john_dennis wrote on 7/12/2016, 1:37 PM
I agree with xberk about the 6800k being the sweet spot unless you plan to add I/O that would require 40 PCIE lanes instead of 28 (most people won't). Since my upgrade cycle is four years, I'll hedge my bets for the extra $170.00. Other than that, a couple 100 MHz won't make a lot of difference.
CLive McLaughlin wrote on 7/12/2016, 2:00 PM
Yea, from what I can tell, the extra cores has a big impact with Vegas.
Unfortunately, the 6800k or 6850k or anything else with 6/8 cores will require a new motherboard and likely a clean install of Windows.

Do you reckon an upgrade to a 4790k would do much coming from the Xeon E3-1246 v3?
john_dennis wrote on 7/12/2016, 2:40 PM
Not worth it. You're going to have to change motherboard, memory, etc. to get any significant upgrade. Clock speeds have more or less peaked. You're going to have to add more than 4 cores. The only way to do that is some variant of Socket 2011.

Search ark.intel.com and do comparisons of different processors.
CLive McLaughlin wrote on 7/12/2016, 3:01 PM
Would the 6th gen i7s require DDR4 ram? Mine is DDR3.
john_dennis wrote on 7/12/2016, 3:17 PM
Generally, for high performance workstations, DDR4 is required these days.

Check your motherboard mfr. site to see what your CPU upgrade possibilities are for a CPU swap. I've done mid-cycle CPU swaps in the past but not for a decade or more. Usually, motherboards have a short life these days.
CLive McLaughlin wrote on 7/12/2016, 3:35 PM
Yea 4790k is best I can upgrade to on current motherboard with 1150 socket.
Not sure I can deal with windows re-install right now. Thinking I may build a second workstation soon anyway as my wife may start editing more.
Maybe after the summer I'll build something from scratch.
zdogg wrote on 7/12/2016, 9:49 PM
Hp workstations, I built my own computers for years, with pretty good results, but I think a well designed Workstation is hard to beat, and yes, you want a dual socket MB if you want full throttle, don't count on GPUs to provide the heavy lift. You can even go used and do well: 12 cores here, 96 gig ecc ram....sweet.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Z800-Workstation-2x-3-46GHz-Hex-Core-X5690-96GB-2x-1TB-HDD-Win7-Pro-CD-/381673977235?hash=item58dd8ab593:g:Uq0AAOSwuhhXWtEP

More Gusto:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Z800-Workstation-2x-3-46GHz-Hex-Core-X5690-96GB-2x-1TB-HDD-Win7-Pro-CD-/381673977235?hash=item58dd8ab593:g:Uq0AAOSwuhhXWtEP

In between 12 Core:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Z840-Workstation-2x-E5-2620v3-2-4GHz-6C-32GB-512GB-SSD-K4200-Gfx-1125W-/281803600521?hash=item419ccdb289:g:7BYAAOSw9r1V8eNS