OT: New Computer

JeremyS wrote on 9/14/2004, 2:30 PM

I'm looking to see how much of a difference you guys think I'll see with my new PC, in Vegas, and in general.

My Old PC:
15" LCD Proview
AMD Athlon 2300+ ( 2Ghz )
1GB PC3200
240GB ( 1x40GB, 1x200GB )
Logitech MX310
Creative Inspire 5.1 Speakers
ATI Radeon 9600XT

I just ordered the parts today.

17" LCD Samsung Syncmaster
2.2Ghz AMD 64bit ( AMD 64 3200+ )
1GB PC3200 ( Moving over from old PC )
240GB 7200RPM ( 1x40GB, 1x200GB ) ( Moving over from old PC )
Logitech MX510
Logitech Z640 5.1 Speakers
ATI Radeon 9600XT ( Moving over from old PC ).

Advice on anything else I should get is welcomed.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 9/14/2004, 2:40 PM

To be honest, you probably won't see much performance difference at all. You won't be running any 64 bit code in either Windows or Vegas, so only going from 2GHz to 2.2GHz is a very tiny change. You'll like having the bigger monitor though.

Flack wrote on 9/14/2004, 4:05 PM

I agree with Chienworks there will be no noticable difference.

Flack.

JeremyS wrote on 9/14/2004, 8:28 PM

You guys don't think my rendering times will be any quicker?

skibumm101 wrote on 9/14/2004, 8:38 PM

nope, you have almost the same setup.

Stonefield wrote on 9/14/2004, 10:11 PM

On a slightly related topic...

I'm gearing up to up my gear. I'm faced with a choice of two cpu's. Both 800 megahertz fsb and both One meg cache. One is a 3.0 and the other is a 3.2 for 5o bucks more.

Would it be worth it to spend that extra fifty bucks on .2 gightz ?

goshep wrote on 9/14/2004, 10:29 PM

Save the $50 and overclock to 3.2
You should be able to run stock cooling with no probs at that level of OC.

However I offer no guarantee, so don't mail me your crispy-fried CPU if something DOES go wrong! :)

Wolfgang S. wrote on 9/14/2004, 11:37 PM

64 bit code is not supported up to now by windows XP, there is a beta version for windows that can do that. But - at the moement I assume that it would not bring a lot in performance, since Vegas seems to be not designed to utilize that.

Another possibility would have been hypertreating, using a P4. But even that is not supported by Vegas itself yet, but is supported by the mainconcept encoder. So, P4 and HT could bring here something, but the postings by different people at different forums were not clear enough indicating a better performance for mepg-rendering really.

The major driver for improving rendering to DV-avi and mepgs seems to be still the GHz of the processor. So, overclocking reduces rendering time a little bit (but you bear the risk related to overclocking).

So, if you are lucky and Sony supports 64 bit systems in future, you have a benefit. But there seems to be no indication up to now, that Sony will do so.

Chienworks wrote on 9/15/2004, 4:33 AM

Slightly OT from the original OT, but i could mail you a crispy-fried CPU taken from a machine that was not overclocked! I really need to post some pictures of this one for amazement and laughs. It seems that on a very hot weekend recently the temperature in our mail server's case got high enough that the tabs on the CPU socket that hold the heat sink on got soft enough to break. After the heat sink (and it's attached fan) fell off, the processor of course overheated. By the time the machine finally shut itself down several of the power transistors on the motherboard had become unsoldered. My engineers tell me that the temperature must have been at least 760°F/404°C to melt the solder, and these transistors were 3"/7.5cm from the processor core. I can't even being to imagine what temperature the processor itself was. The underside of the chip shows obvious charring and a section of the ceramic substrate looks like it must have been boiling.

I'll snap some pics of it today and post them.

RichMacDonald wrote on 9/15/2004, 7:39 AM

Slightly OT from the OT from the original OT, but I have something interesting to add about overclocking. Back in Jan I setup my new computer with a 2.6GHz Intel and all the bells and whistles (dual hyperthreading et al.). Had a lot of Blue screens and eventually my RAID0 setup crashed during an overnight 3 project batch render. Finally checked out my 1 GB RAM with Memtest and sure enough it was failing consistently. The RAM was bleeding edge specs as well. This was without any overclocking, and the RAM was operating *below* its rated spec. On a suspicion, I changed the BIOS settings to overclock to 3.0GHz, as well as enabling the board overclocking settings. Imagine what happened: The RAM passed Memtest and the computer has been operating perfectly ever since. Go figure. As for temperature, the computer is in the hot upstairs room and in the summer months I've removed the case panel and am using an external fan during long renders.

Wolfgang S. wrote on 9/15/2004, 9:58 AM

I recommend to use an aircondition, when you overclock your processor... who says that a van is enough?
:-))

FuTz wrote on 9/15/2004, 1:13 PM

... depends ; if you tie your computer on the van's roof and ride at 100mph there should be a difference.
Take care about the bumps though...

Chienworks wrote on 9/15/2004, 2:11 PM

For your viewing pleasure: http://www.chienworks.com/media/meltdown/

OdieInAz wrote on 9/16/2004, 7:10 AM

Take a look at some comparisons you can find on tomshardware.com or anandtech.com. Here's one such link for MPEG2 encoding useing MainConcept.

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040106/athlon64_3400-19.html

Just estimating, but looks like going from XP-2300+ to 64-3200+ could cut your render times by 1/3, if the benchmarks hold true.

JeremyS wrote on 9/16/2004, 10:39 AM

Nice, 64bit processors are also supposed to be better for gaming, so that's good.