Ouch - Need a New PC

JackHughs wrote on 5/18/2004, 10:49 AM
Son of a gun! In order to upgrade to Vegas 5, I need to build a new PC. My old favorite P3 / Win98SE machine has finally been rendered well and truly obsolete.

I've been seaching past posts on hardware and have one question regarding video cards. I want to have dual monitor capability in my new machine. Is there any real value in purchasing a Matrox Parhelia card or will I get satisfactory performance from an older (less expensive) Matrox dual-head card?

Thanks

Jan

Comments

BrianStanding wrote on 5/18/2004, 11:14 AM
I'm happy with my old ATI Radeon VE for dual monitors. My impression is that the Parhelia is overkill for Vegas/DVDA, and is best for programs like After Effects or 3d animation programs that lack an external monitor preview feature.

I see some of the ATI Radeon 9200SE cards selling for less than $50 these days.
bStro wrote on 5/18/2004, 11:19 AM
Are you keeping your Win98 machine? If so, you can run this program:

The "main" system has to be Windows XP or 2000, but the "secondary" one (ie, the one you're moving content to) can be Windows 98.

http://www.maxivista.com/

Rob
Jay Gladwell wrote on 5/19/2004, 4:32 AM
Is there any real value in purchasing a Matrox Parhelia card...

Based on what I was told by a Sony/Sonic Foundry person last year, the answer is no. He said that they had looked into the Parhlia card and saw no advantage in making Vegas compatible with it. Now, this being a year later, and now with Vegas 5, that may have changed.

I'm running Vegas 5 with dual monitors without the Parhelia and it works beautifully!

J--
logiquem wrote on 5/19/2004, 6:10 AM
Don't waste your money and get more RAM, more HD space or faster CPU. You will be happy with a G550, or even a G450 if you find it. Matrox dual head cards/drivers are hard to beat IMHO.
Hunter wrote on 5/19/2004, 6:19 AM
Just find a nice dual head card 64 mb or better AGP slot (no PCI) - ATI 9000 Pro here works fine. Oh and no stripped down versions of big card.

You don't game (who uses a render machine for gaming) You're not a CAD engineer. So how do I assume all of this .... I.E. Windows 98se the poorest OS ever. :-)

Hunter
edit - and on the build side, get lot of system memory 1gig+
JackHughs wrote on 5/19/2004, 9:11 AM
Thanks everyone for confirming my suspicions regarding the Parhelia card.
Reading the past posts on the subject, I got the distinct impression that it was overkill for VV.

With respect to the rest of the new machine, my inclination is to copy (to some extent) the Gigabyte 8KNXP machine described by John Cline on 5-10-04. As I don't have the luxury of maintaining a fully dedicated DV machine, a few modifications would be required.

Unless someone alerts me to some pitfall, I plan to install an 80 gig HD as master on one channel of the primary IDE controller. The HD would be partitioned 20 gigs for the OS and 60 gigs for apps. A DVD burner would be installed as master on the second channel of the primary IDE controller.

I would use either the second IDE controller or the SATA controller for individual 250 gig capture and render drives.

This seems like a resonable set-up for a hobbyist. Any comments?

Jan
Stonefield wrote on 5/20/2004, 10:57 PM
Just putting in my vote for a couple year old NVidia Geforce 4 440 MX. It's dual head and has worked flawlessly on my WinXP machine. I'm running a bit behind the times....933 PIII CPU...512 RAM...2 Maxtor 80 gig drives. Execpt for a bad IBM 60 gig drive crappin out on me last week (IBM's fault) this has served me very well for the last few years.

Side note....just inherited a Sony 19" Mutiscan400PS trinitron monitor from work. Wow...highly recommend the trinitrons. Dual 19" monitors and Vegas really can't beat.
remi wrote on 5/21/2004, 12:05 AM
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remi wrote on 5/21/2004, 12:07 AM
I need your help. I have search for pc spec but not found anything. I am proposing to buy matrox Millieniun is it compatible with vegas. What type of spec should i be looking to upgrade my pc
cworld29 wrote on 5/21/2004, 12:34 AM
I assume by one channel of the primary IDE controler you mean master on IDE one. Then your hard drive as master on IDE two. This is good practice.

I don't know if having the extendd partition is necessary. I always install one primary partition my reasoning being, if I'm going to format anything I might as well so a fresh install of windows while I'm, at it.

The main thing you want to avoid is having your hard drive set on the same IDE cable as any of your media drives. This reduces the interface speed to that of your slower ATAPI devices.

I have my DVD burner and DVD player set up as slave and master on IDE one. On IDE 2 I have the OS drive and the capture drive jumpered for cable select.

My mobo can handle SATA but I have not found any reason to try it out yet.
I don't see what kind of performance boost you would get out of having one hard drive on an Ultra ATA interface and another on serial. Your not going to transfer any faster than what your slower interface will allow anyway. At worse the extra overhead managing a third IDE channel may even slow it down just a bit.

For video I simply use an ATI radeon 9700 I believe with 128MB of ddr and a Canopus ACEDVio for capture. I highly recomend this capture card if you are going to be capturing from any anolog sources, component or S Video.

I have had absolutely zero problems with this set up.