As for the Sound Card...If you're only looking to play back audio, and you don't want anything nice, then why not use the onboard sound that comes with the motherboard?

Personally, I think you're really limiting yourself by buying from Dell...You should see this thread from the Vegas-Audio forum:

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=254976&Page=1

And I don't know why you'd have a 120MB boot drive...If you're doing video you don't want to capture to the boot drive, you don't want to render to or from the boot drive...So I would get a small boot drive and two other big drives, one to store your captured video, and one to render to. When I started rendering to a different HD, it really cut down on my render times.

I agree with that as well, for my home system I have a 30GB drive for the OS and programs and then 3-120GB drives for video and audio.

I'm not a big dell fan. I priced out a computer for someone and decided on Alienware (www.alienware.com). Use their 3d content creation basic model and modify that one. Very sweet. :)

I think a Dell will definitely work, but it may not be the optimal solution. If you plan to buy the computer and keep and when it's done buy a whole new computer, Dell is fine. However if you want to upgrade a lot or switch out components, which doesn't seem likely, you may run into issues. Dell has proprietary power supplies and their motherboards are not standard size.

As for onboard sound, I would choose to go with a sound card if I was doing video. For quality reasons and for CPU load issues.

I was going build a computer and then saw a great price on a refurbished Dell with Office Professional (which I needed) so I got it and added a bunch of stuff myself. It works fine, it's pretty quiet and seems to have good cooling. I like the 8 USB 2.0 ports. I don't like the the limit of 2 internal hard drives, so I use external firewire/usb2 boxes.

Let me tell you a bit about how Dell procures parts. Dell usually has a number of different suppliers of parts, and they procure whatever happens to be the cheapest at the moment. Now, cheap doesn't necessarily mean bad quality, but sometimes it can. How? Very simply, Dell is infamous for putting a Purchase Order down for X number of parts with a volume discount on them, then turning around and ordering far fewer but expecting the vendor to supply the parts at the volume discount price. Now, the supplier has two options: either refuse/sue, which will basically knock them out of the running, or accept begrudgingly. But don't think that they won't push back on Dell somehow by understanding that little game and giving them substandard parts. Maybe they won't fail now, but I wouldn't bank on them. I won't even get into the issue of outsourced support and the nightmare that has plagued many companies because the support people can't even speak proper english and are attempting to get you to trip over your own words with the brainless scripts they're given (e.g. are you sure you didn't drop that laptop? .... now you said you had bumped your laptop, right? etc. ad infinitum).

Honestly, in my consulting business I have learned that the most important thing that people want in an editing rig is stability. Your production revenue and meeting deadlines is a much higher priority than saving a few bucks on a computer. Support is easy to procure, and you can buy a support contract from a local consultant or even use professional services. If ultimate stability is important to you, that means using an Intel motherboard with an Intel CPU+heatsink and an Intel-approved power supply that exceeds your power needs for the device in a large and well ventilated case. Non-Intel motherboards can actually slightly overclock to present the illusion of superior performance. Again, ultimate performance is not worth sacrificing stability in my opinion.

DDR400 is a necessity, as is low-latency (what they call "2-2-2-6" timings or thereabouts if you can find it - the first number is the most important). It's important to have an integer multiple of the bus speed on the CPU or you will incur a performance penalty. Given the small cost difference, there's no reason to use DDR333 over DDR400. I highly recommend a name brand like Corsair, as opposed to a generic, again for stability purposes.

The Nvidia card is very good. Their drivers are typically much better in my experience than ATI's products, and they still support products that are quite old. After being burnt with driver support issues on a client's machine, I'll never go back to ATI if I can help it. If you're doing a lot of 3D graphics work, you might want to consider one of the newer Quadro models like the FX1000. This link has an overview of the cards that are available today. Again, stability is the primary concern here.

As for the Creative SB Audigy line, they're not the greatest in the world but they'll more than do the job as long as you avoid installing all those extras that you don't need. I can confirm that the IEEE1394 on the Audigy works well with DV equipment and the like, since my client uses his Canopus ADVC-100 through his Audigy Platinum EX's IEEE1394 port.

One last note that I want to mention is the hard drive. I would highly recommend the Western Digital Raptor 73GB 10000rpm drive as a system drive. It is absolutely smoking. You will have a noticeable increase in boot times and performance simply by switching to this drive. If you're in a DV flow you can get another larger hard drive to capture your footage, but as a system drive you can't beat the WD Raptor.

If you need any other help, let me know and I'll be glad to point you in the right direction.

My wife & I have had 2 Dell laptops, and although the middle eastern accent is almost omnipresent in the service department, we've never experienced the word tripping you describe. This is one of those things that will only last a short amount of time, IMO, because Dell would lose a ton of repeat business that way.

I have little personal experience with their recent desktops, and I personally shy away from proprietary stuff. But are you saying the suppliers ship known substandard parts? I can't buy that. I'm sure the part specs are specified. Chip type & speed, memory config, jacks, etc. So they would tool up for a card that is NOT as specified on the contract? Dell legal would be on them like crappy sound on Bose. And knowingly shipping DEFECTIVE parts would be worse. They'd get a rep so that NO builder would OEM from them again.

Most bad electronics fail early, so if they pass QA at Dell, they should be fine; the claim that they'll have a short life doesn't pass the sniff test, IMO.

I belive you hear middle eastern accents is because the support is actuatly over there (cheaper). I saw that on the news a month or so ago i belive (don't quote me). What gets me is when I call a place like Sony or Panasonic support and they want me to send the device back, NOT answer my questions. :)

If the "bulk" computer makers (dell, HP, gateway, etc) only sold good quality equipment then I wouldn't of replaced my parents(gateway) and sisters(HP) computers after 2 years of them buying them. They just say "gimme 300 <product here> at this price." Naturatly, some are duds (can't check them all).

At work they have a dell, but when they asked me to upgrade some stuff for them there wasn't much left to upgrade. Now all their computers are custom made because of Dell's proprietary stuff (2 HD limit, etc). Plus they spent several thousand on that Dell a couple years ago and I built a simular computer for much cheaper, more upgradability, and more stable (i haven't had a system crash in 3 years unless i've done something REALLY bad. ;)

Oh, I have an ATI card (have had 2 infact) and haven't had any driver issues (except that one release that didn't work with anything but I just reinstalled the previous month's update). Just thought i'd say that.

Ok…clear this up for me just so I am sure I understand…

I was aware of the idea of rendering to a different drive to speed up rendering, but I was thinking it was just a different drive than your video is stored on (nothing to back that up, just the impression I had gotten…). So your saying it has to be a different drive from your OS as well?

Thank you all for your help and ideas!
I think we may go change some things..at least rethink some things!

Thanks again!

Various resources state different things about rendering and hard drives. Pick up Spot's book if you want a lot of tips on speeding up rendering times. I'm sure rendering to a drive different than the one that contains your captured video will speed up your renders, but I have read various posts that say it is good to have two drives other than your boot drive. One will suffice, but two is better.

As far as stability, you don't need an Intel motherboard and processor to insure your system will be stable. I built two systems a little over a year ago, both with ASUS A7N8X motherboards and they have always remained stable. One machine remains on at all times (hasn't been turned off for over six months), and has had no issues at all. If you look around there is probably a local business that would build such a system for you, as well as offer support for it.

All of my parts came from this site--www.ebccomputers.com .

What I'm saying is that you shouldn't limit yourself. If you're not into building your own system, or if you don't want to worry about it, then find someone locally who can. No one can guarantee that nothing will go wrong, but if it's been built locally, at least if something goes wrong, they're just down the road, and you don't have to ship your computer to them.

Confirm that IEEE 1394 on the Audigy is OHCI compliant as this is necessary for proper capture, PTT and external preview in Vegas. Also, as others have mentioned, why not start with the onboard sound and see if it is adequate for your needs?

FWIW, I've had Vegas running on a Dell precision 450 dual for about a year and it has been absolutely rock solid. I've run multiple instances of Vegas, rendering while editing; rendering while scanning and working in a photo app; editing while burning disks and printing simultaneously; capturing DV to firewire HD; all with no problems, not even a hiccup or slowdown - no complaints whatsoever with the Dell. HTH

JL

I've had experience with 'local' guys, and have even had to testify in court on someone's behalf over the ridiculous problems they had getting help from their local pc shop. And personally, the first machines I ever had came from local shops and it was utter H*LL getting them serviced. Computers will malfunction - that's a given. The big question is - WHO WILL FIX IT?

At work I have all Dell. I do heavy video editing on my Dell Precision 1.8 p4 at work and have never had a problem in 2 years. At home I bought a Dimension from Dell, P4 2.4 and that was a little over a year ago and I've had NO problems with it at all. If I do ever have a problem, I can rest comfortable knowing that it will most likely be fixed in 24 hours cause if it can't be fixed over the phone, they send someone to wherever you are the next day - at whatever time you want. It's so easy. I had a Dell laptop that I had to call about 5 times on(4 years ago). They came and fixed it EVERY time, no hassle, no time lost. It's amazing the service you get from Dell.

I know I'm like the only guy in here that supports Dell...I'd just rather spend my time making music then working on computers. I'm not good enough at it!

"The big question is - WHO WILL FIX IT?"

That question is exactly why I learn everything I can about computers and how they work. I once use to buy Compaq and HP computers, they were good for a year and then if I wanted to upgrade I had to buy a whole new system. If I needed service I had to spend $75 just to get it looked at. So I then took one of my old crappy Compaqs and ripped it apart, looking at how everything fit together, right about that time they started to broadcast TechTV in my area (great network!). With those things and just working with computers I gained enough knowledge to build my own system. After now building about 15 systems for myself family and friends I can now build, troubleshoot, and fix pretty much anything that goes wrong with a computer.
It is a good knowledge to have, one that will definately save you lots and lots of money. Now when I want to upgrade all I have to do is buy a new MoBo and Processor, pop it in and I'm all set, I don't have to buy a whole computer with monitor and keyboard and mouse and all the other stuff I don't need.

Jsnkc gas very good points. I guess I just don't have time for that yet! I wish though...

Thanks for the heads up on the OHCI compiancy...

really there are 2 reason for getting the sound card rather than using the onboard sound....processor load partly, but mostly becuse of the way dell prices stuff it ends up not much more expensive to get the card than to not get it and add there (dells) fire wire card. (i know we could just get one and add it ourselves...thats what i would do....there are lots of things i would do differently if it was mine...but there are a lot of other factors that are not technical that have to be considered in limited budge/limited stafft camp environments)

the huge boot hard drive is a similar issue...dell does not sell a SATA hard drive that is samller than 120 GB (at least not for this particular configuration...), so you kind of get forced into it. But if the performance increse of rendering to a different drive than video is stored on is negated if the drive is the os drive than it may not be worth it...given the 2 drive limit. Perhaps i should think more about RAID

...now im just thinking out loud to a fourum...thats not a great thing....

Thanks again for all your input and help

Ben

I don't think the performance increase is negated....It's just reccommended to have seperate drives for your video and your OS/apps. Rendering from your OS drive to a separate drive should increase your speed.

>...now im just thinking out loud to a fourum...thats not a great thing....

It is actually. Got me to respond :-)

>But if the performance increse of rendering to a different drive than video is stored on is negated if the drive is the os drive than it may not be worth it...given the 2 drive limit. Perhaps i should think more about RAID

I think its time one of us ran some tests on this issue. I know some (John Meyer, for one) have noted that rendering goes much faster when the source and target are on two different HDs. In principle, this is obvious, of course, but I would like to see some data comparing a RAID0 2HD system vs the same system as 2 independent HDs.

Reason I'm interested: I built a new computer over the new year. Initially I planned to keep my Maxtor 40GB 5400rpm drive for the OS, then use a 160GB SATA for the data. However, my near-top-of-the-line system's performance stunk. It took forever to boot up, load apps, etc. Not much better than my old PII 350Mhz. Obviously my Maxtor was the bottleneck. Then I saw a good deal in the newspaper for the identical 160GB SATA, so I bought it and switched to RAID 0 for the OS and data. The system now blazes! I've captured while doing 3 other fairly intensive things. I don't think I can even cause a dropout if I tried :-) I've run two Vegas's in background rendering while working in a 3rd app without pause. In short, I *love* my 320GB RAID0 SATA. (Side benefit: You also free up your IDE for CD and DVD without master-slave limitations.)

But I have not compared rendering with the RAID0 vs rendering to another HD. Its easy for me to test, since I still have my Maxtor on firewire, but that is not a fair test since its a slower HD. (And so annoyingly noisy that I only run it for backups.)

That test is on my list of things to do, and I'll get on it. But if anyone has a better system in which to make the comparison, perhaps you'd think about adding your own results.

It matters if the render is complex or straight-through (without fx) from avi->mpg. We should do the latter to make the best comparison in terms of HD limitations.

I've got a strong gut feeling that I'll be able to tell John Meyer he is wrong:-) But no data to back it up, just an impression.

I need to note that I'm as much interested in overall performance as I am for rendering performance. (Actually more so, since my rendering is now "fast enough".) If your system is going to run Vegas all day long, you don't care about overall performance since you only pay the penalty one time on startup. So if the 2 independent HDs result in better rendering speeds, that is the way you should go.

P.S. I can also confirm the Audigy/firewire port works. I've used it for capture and for external HD. And I went with a separate sound card since I was worried about quality/CPU-hit with the onboard audio. But I honestly don't know if this was a necessary choice. In truth, the front-panel of the Audigy looked too cool to pass up :-)