Workstation vs PC - I Need Advice.

Geoff_Wood wrote on 4/3/2012, 5:25 PM

A Workstation is a PC ! At least in the level we deal in.

If you are buying a new PC (or upgbrading) , there is no poiont in getting a lower-power version for work on video.

I woud go for the best specced i7 that fits your budget. Core2 is pointless, unless $$$ a huge factor.

geoff

Steve Mann wrote on 4/3/2012, 10:10 PM

Actually, though they run the same software, a workstation is different from a gaming PC. Gaming PC's are usually built by people whose only goal is CPU and GPU speed. They are usually overclocked a bit during the build. Components are not usually the highest quality and usually just good enough to meet specs. Workstations, on the other hand, are built for reliability by companies who plan to be around next year, and beyond. Builders like, HP and Dell for example. Their workstations are sold into businesses that can't afford any downtime and the computer is usually built on the conservative end of performance. Workstations are built for 24/7 operation. I have used HP workstations in the past and they were built like battleships and were almost never shut down.

But expect to pay 2X or 3X for a workstation over a similarly equipped gaming PC.

Geoff_Wood wrote on 4/3/2012, 10:23 PM

What about ordinary hi-spec PCs. I object to mine being termed 'gaming' ;-)

geoff

Spectralis wrote on 4/4/2012, 8:35 AM

I've built my own PC's over the years and think that this is the best way to get the right components. The distinctions between 'gaming' and 'workstation' are really marketing devices. Although low end PC's will have cheaper components sometimes they are used in high end PC's as well which is why I build my own.

My advice is to wait at least six months until the new Ivy Bridge processors are properly released. They are expected to be 20% more powerful than Sandy Bridge. 16GB RAM is not too expensive now days. A good graphics card might be worth considering but I'm not sure if GPU really does improve render times - at least not on my system. A good and powerful PSU is very important imo. Rather than buy a SSD boot drive I'm interested in these new PCIe SSD cache cards that give any hard drive a boost. I back up regularly and don't bother with RAID. I buy lots of HDD's and back-up to them using a USB hub. Having enough hard drive space is really import especially when working in HD.

http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/ssc.aspx

Steve Mann wrote on 4/4/2012, 8:59 AM

If you buy a gaming computer, it's likely to be overclocked right out the door. Overclocking is OK if you are willing to accept the risks, but don't overclock until you have substantial confidence in your hardware and software at stock settings.

Also, components selected for a gaming computer - mostly the graphics cards - are selected for game performance, not editing. Not that a fast game computer isn't likely a good editing computer, but that you may be better served with more CUDA cores over a faster GPU.

farss wrote on 4/4/2012, 9:15 AM

Difficult choice there.
The Xeon CPUs are enterprise / workstation kit and support ECC RAM.
The Quadro 600 is from nVidia's pro line but is very low end.
This offering is going to be solid and reliable but unless rather expensive not overly fast. I'm only guessing here because "Xeon Processor"s have quite a price / performance curve and dual CPU systems with 12 cores are not uncommon but I suspect they're way out of your price range.

The i7 2600 offering is probably going to be a better choice for what you're doing. I doubt very much it's overclocked, the 2600 CPU is not designed for oc'ing, that's what the 2600K is for.

Bob.

rmack350 wrote on 4/4/2012, 12:12 PM

Bob, I know you've had pretty favorable views of ECC memory in the past. Do you or anyone else here have positive experiences with VP11 and ECC RAM?

For those who aren't up on the alphabet soup, ECC RAM is error correcting or buffered. Used on most workstation class computers. It's a little slower and a bit more expensive.

Rob

rmack350 wrote on 4/4/2012, 12:34 PM

I was just looking over Intels Materials on the Xeon line and found a page that summarizes CPUs based on Sandy Bridge:

http://ark.intel.com/products/codename/29900/Sandy-Bridge

Lots of CPUs on there and some you wouldn't consider but it's a good place to make comparisons.

Rob

Spectralis wrote on 4/4/2012, 2:46 PM

I've never seen anyone recommend Xeon CPU's for video processing. Nor have I ever seen any evidence that buffered is any better than non buffered RAM or visa versa for video editing. Just get the right RAM that is a s fast as possible for your mobo.

It's not worth getting caught up in technical debates about components that are used for servers and not suited to video editing on a single PC. Especially as there is no evidence to show that they're suitable for video editing and the level of technical knowledge of the OP (and most of us) is at the level of guesswork concerning building a 'workstation' using these components for editing. Parallel rendering using a render farm is beyond the budget of most of us and won't work with VP11 anyway.

The Quadro cards use special drivers that make them much more efficient for editing/rendering than gaming cards. But again it's pointless thinking about getting one unless you can afford it. If the OP is debating whether to get an off the shelf gaming PC then I doubt very much that a Quadro is an option.

The most important thing is to get the fastest CPU affordable and build your own PC. If someone can't build their own PC (it's not that difficult) then messing about with Xeons and Quadros is pointless and a waste of money.

Steve Mann wrote on 4/4/2012, 2:54 PM

In the Rendertest database, the Xeon systems are in the fastest rendering group.

Guy S. wrote on 4/4/2012, 3:04 PM

My last two systems at work have been HP workstations and both have been utterly reliable, much better than the Dell workstation I used previously. My current system is a 6-core Xeon and we replaced its low-end Quadro card with the nVidia 460 gaming card.

These systems are very well made, tech support and warranty service are substantially better than their consumer class systems, they have zero bloatware, and require little or no optimization because it's already been done by HP engineers. The cost is relatively low when comparing apples to apples (workstation class MB, ECC memory, quality power supply, great case).

If cost is a factor - as it was with my home editing system - you can assemble a very nice system for under $2k. www.videoguys.com has a recommended DIY configuration that they've tested with Matrox hardware and AVID, Adobe, and Vegas software. They list complete specs and generally have Good/Better/Best component options.

Many folks here use builds that are very close to the videoguys recommended system and report a great editing experience, so that's my starting point when building my own system. It's also a good idea to look for recommended configurations on the Matrox website. In my experience systems that can handle proprietary hardware have worked very well with Vegas.

Finally, I would search this forum for "render test". One of our members has compiled test results for Vegas users with various hardware configurations; many of the DIY "gaming" systems that folks have put together are faster than my HP workstation and it's always helpful to see what hardware these folks are using.

Spectralis wrote on 4/4/2012, 3:15 PM

"In the Rendertest database, the Xeon systems are in the fastest rendering group."

Are you referring to this information?

http://www.mmdv.com/sonyvegas/rendertest/about.php

I've downloaded the 2010 render test results and a non-overclocked i7 980 Extreme renders the test in 35s using VP11 on Win7 x64 which is the fastest time according to the results.

farss wrote on 4/4/2012, 3:50 PM

"I've never seen anyone recommend Xeon CPU's for video processing."

SCS recommended them, all the high end Macs use them, all the render farms are full of them.

Bob.

farss wrote on 4/4/2012, 4:01 PM

"Do you or anyone else here have positive experiences with VP11 and ECC RAM?"

My dual Xeon Supermicro system only went as far as V8.

ECC RAM is totally transparent to an application. The difference is a single bit error is corrected by the RAM itself. Without even error detection (parity) nothing knows a bit has changed state in RAM. If the affected memory location is storing data the impact might be minor. If it was storing code the impact could be disasterous.
Also ECC RAM is buffered and you need that if you want to use large amounts of RAM to cope with the signal degradation from the longer distances the signal has to travel on the mobo and from the buss loading when there's lots of sticks of RAM on the buss.

Bob.

Spectralis wrote on 4/4/2012, 4:04 PM

Are you referring to parallel processing because that makes sense especially with rendering farms but we're talking about Vegas on a single PC not a MAC or a computer cluster? If people are using parallel processing for video editing on a single PC then I'm not aware of it but I'm happy to stand corrected. In fact if that is possible and it works with Vegas and is faster than Ivy Bridge then my next build will be a Xeon.

Spectralis wrote on 4/4/2012, 5:27 PM

I stand corrected. I found this review which seems pretty interesting but the outlay for a dual Xeon PC vs a Sandy Bridge gaming PC is incredibly high.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xeon-e5-2687w-benchmark-review,3149.html

But they state:

"Of course, context is critical. Check out all of the processors we tested on page seven of Intel Core i7-3930K And Core i7-3820: Sandy Bridge-E, Cheaper. If you’re using a desktop card like Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 580, even a Phenom II X6 1100T can get this job finished in half the time of two pricey Xeon E5s. I’m no fan of locking out the competition, but when there’s money on the line, professionals working in CS5 simply owe it themselves to use a CUDA-enabled card."

The Core i7 3960X Extreme costs £779 while the Xeon E5-2687W is almost double that at £1,400 each. My next PC build won't be a Xeon. I could never justify the the huge price of two Xeons in relation to the extra performance they offer over an i7.

farss wrote on 4/5/2012, 3:47 AM

"I could never justify the the huge price of two Xeons in relation to the extra performance they offer over an i7. "

That's a quite reasonable assesment. My dual Xeon Supermicro system cost around $7K and I didn't go for the uber fast SAS drives in RAID 5. At the time I had the potential work to return a dividend on my investment working with 10 bit 4:2:2 Digital Betacam footage. Another plus with that expenditure was I got a hardware SLA that had a man on my doorstep in under 30 minutes and the one problem fixed in minutes.

That income stream is long gone and I too would never contemplate such a purchase without the income to justify it.

Also the type of footage you're working with matters here too. The highly compressed video codecs need a lot of CPU power to decode. The less compressed codecs involve moving a lot of data quickly with less CPU cycles involved. If you're recording the latter you've probably spent a lot of money on the camera and recorders so the cost of your PC is easier to justify.

Bob.

rmack350 wrote on 4/5/2012, 9:30 AM

When I was looking at the CPUs on that list I linked to it was pretty obvious that the E3 Xeons were nearly identical to their i7 counterparts and were at nearly the same suggested price as well. The only difference I saw was that the E3 Xeons could support ECC DIMMs. The E3 can't be used in multi-processor configurations.

Most likely if the OP was looking at a system based on a Xeon at a price close to the i7, it was an E3.

Given a choice between the two systems I'd be looking at the other features in the package. And there's something to be said for getting your support from the business division of some companies rather than the consumer division, even if you're paying for a service contract. On our few small servers we can get new parts couriered to the office in the morning an hour before the tech arrives.

Rob

Spectralis wrote on 4/5/2012, 6:58 PM

I think it depends on whether you're editing at home or running a business. And also on how much work the business generates. I still think a home user is better off building an i7 based system in terms of the cost/power ratio. Simply because consumer components are more affordable and easily obtained and because it's likely that others have built systems using these components so there is more information and advice out there should something go wrong.

But for a company, I suppose any extra edge over the local competition may be worth the big outlay of a Xeon system even if the cost/power ratio isn't significantly greater than an i7 system. As you say, a business system has the advantage of great support which is necessary if there's a lot of hardware to maintain and schedules to be met.

If the OP's projects are time critical and require huge amounts of number crunching then get the fastest and the best. If the OP is like me and isn't bothered if the rendering takes a little longer then I can't see the point of buying a hugely expensive system. The cost/power ratio is a consideration.

rmack350 wrote on 4/5/2012, 9:35 PM

I still think a home user is better off building an i7 based system in terms of the cost/power ratio.

Sure. No real argument against that. Vegas, FCPx, and PPro too, are essentially consumer products. They're priced low to sell lots of licenses to lots of people. Consumer PCs are perfectly fine.

On the other hand, I'm looking at a pretty simple Asus P8B WS motherboard on Newegg for $219.00, and it looks like they're offering a package with Xeon E3 3.3GHz CPU, 8GB ECC RAM, a terrabyte HDD, mediocre PSU, Chassis, DVD burner, all for $754.00. Not exactly what I'd buy but the point is that you can get Xeon based workstations on a budget. I don't think this is better than a consumer build but it seems to be about the same.

The point is that the market has changed. Don't assume that a Xeon-based workstation is going to be tons and tons of money.

Rob

NicolSD wrote on 4/5/2012, 10:29 PM

Whether or not a GPU will make a difference when rendering depends on the VEG file itself. If you make use of GPU accelerated effects and transitions, you will see a huge difference. Otherwise, it will not help at all.

With an I7-3930K running at 4.3 GHz and a GTX 580, I tried both the 2010 render test and the SCS press release project.The 2010 render test took 17 seconds to compile with and without the GPU. However, the real difference could be seen with the SCS press release project - the one created by Sony to show off the capabilities of Vegas 11 vs Vegas 10. Without the GPU, the 1 min and 5 seconds project took 1 minute and 50 seconds to render without the GPU. When I used the GTX 580, Vegas just tore through the job and took only 38 seconds to render the same file.

Meanwhile, a 6 minutes and 20 seconds (typical project for me - where I am not particularly looking for GPU accelerated transitions) took me 10 minutes and 46 seconds with the GPU, whereas it took 12 minutes and 4 seconds without the GPU.

But more importantly than just faster rendering, a great GPU like the GTX 580 will shine during playback. Who doesn't want playback that is as close as possible as the final rendered version? That's what I basically got from the Radeon HD7970 that turned out to be a real pain in the butt. But the GTX 580 is not far behind in playback speed. And THAT is a very cool thing to me.

Since Vegas 10 came out, I have seen how the same computer rendering and playingback projects with a Radeon 5770, a GTX 570, a GTX 580 and a Radeon 7970. And they make a huge difference in the performance of Vegas Pro. Just going from a Radeon 5770 to a GTX 570 cut the rendering time in half. The rendering speed gain between a 570 and a 580 is a lot less subtle.

But the playback difference between the two GPUs is very noticeable. The GTX 570 had difficulty playingback a video showing a person in front of a green screen with an animated background, an animated logo, a bunch of static images and some transitions. The 580 only slows down with the non-GPU accelerated transitions... everything else plays perfectly smoothly. The Radeon 7970 never dipped below 27fps playing the same project.

As a final note: the rendering was done at 1920 X 1080, 30 fps; the playback was done at best and full.