A couple of the reviews stated that is the ram they bought for the system. It appears to be the cheapest option for 4 or 8 gigs.

Supermicro huh? Will do. Any in particular you are thinking of?

Also, does it do me anygood to buy the extreme CPU's when I could get cheaper Xeons?

j razz

Why go with such a high end processor, when the Q6600 is now so 'cheap'.
Then get a Zalman 9700 CPU cooler will keep nice & cool

I bought my Supermicro system a few years back and I haven't kept up with where they're at recently. Their chassis are very good though and their mobos are built for a high data throughput. Probably overkill though if you're not working with uncompressed footage. Still they are reliable and the local integrator I bough from had a warranty that actually worked. With 30 minutes of my call the man had the problem fixed (RAM needed reseating).

At NAB last year I had some serious time with the IRIDAS and Scratch grading systems. Both were running on Supemicro systems. Four streams of uncomp (Prospect2K / DPX) is pretty impressive to see :) However as I said before, could be overkill for your needs and we are talking seriously expensive kit with SAS drives etc, although their chassis will take SATA now I think.

The Xeons chips are from Intels server lineup, the Extremes are from their gaming lineup. The differences seem a bit blurred lately however I'd do some research before parting with my money. I've found the OC forums a mine of info, well at least the .com.au one. There's people other than rabid gamers with flasks of LN2 there.

Bob.

If you want to save some money, substitute Xeon quad core CPUs. Take a look at this article:

http://techgage.com/article/building_an_affordable_skulltrail_system/

The QX9775 CPUs are fast, but they are outrageously priced.

Q6600 is so last week :O).

It seems the new Q6700 released this week is a better deal for not much more money.

...and not so fast on that motherboard.

Better read some more reviews before you decide if that one is suitable for you.

Thanks for the detail Bob.

I want to spend less than $4500 (way less if at all possible) and still wind up with 8 cores (or more) and 8 gigs of RAM to run Vista Ultimate 64 along with the Vegas 64 whenever it comes out.

As for the motherboard, what would you suggest that would allow for 8 cores or more Course?

j razz

I haven't had to time to do a conclusive search for a good 8-core mobo.

I looked at a few Skulltrail reviews and decided it was not OK for me.

Xbitlabs.com says:

As for the majority of typical desktop applications, Intel Skulltrail doesn’t look very attractive there at all, falling behind single-processor systems with a quad-core CPU and unbuffered memory.

Thanks for that information, but how will that (or will it) affect NLE's? All I want to run on the machine is Sony Creative Software and Adobe CS3 Web Premium. Thanks.

j razz

Yes, those issues affect Vegas, PP, and AE big time.

DW? Not so CPU intensive.

DW? You'll have to fill me in.

Benchmarks seem good (but not pertinent) according to the link jabloom left above, but I have nothing to compare it to (except the dual core 5000+ system I am working with now).

If there are other dual cpu boards out there that are worth considering, please let me know. Currently, after reading jabloom's article reference, I have a complete system from newegg.com just shy of 3,000USD utilizing the Xeon E5420 CPU's.

j razz

Sure the benchmarks for gaming don't look too flash, most games can't / don't use all the cores. However from memory other reviews that I've read show almost 100% perfect scaling from 4 cores to 8 cores for video rendering.

Bob.

I thought that currently Vegas could only utilize 4 processors. Am I wrong in thinking that?

Well there's a system integrator out there that's been offering their Octoflex system for some time with 8 cores and Vegas.

http://www.1beyond.com/products/hdoctoflex.asp

However, it really depends, some forms of encoding / rendering simply cannot be split over multiple cores. Also some of the benchmarkds such as Cinebench are based on 3D rendering and therefore are pretty meaningless for what we're doing.

The other factor of course, no point having all those cores screaming along if the disk system cannot keep up.

Bob.

10,000rpm Raptor hdd's. I thought about utilizing the 15,000rpm scsci hdd's but I don't know if 64 bit ultimate would play nice with the drivers for the card (and if I can even install to a scsci disc via a 3rd party card).
:)

j razz