$1,400 later for just the tower/PC....

Norm Sanders

Norm Sanders

Script Wrangler
Well, after seeing my older AMD64 3500+ setup take 30+ hours to render a 15 minute short (HD footage/project to a SD DVD), via 2-pass for an MPEG2 .... well, I felt it may be time to upgrade.

My previous video card was an ATX .... mmm, 128MB something. Also had 2GB of DDR memory ... running around 266mhz, I think.


Went to Fy's Electronics yesterday, after speaking with Jerry Turner (Fixitinpost), and ended up getting a nearly identical setup as he did .... thought I'd just share it here for the kicks of it. It's no dream set up, but it should RIP through footage & renders better than the old system.

  • ASUS P5K-E Motherboard / Wifi edition, with P35 Express Chipset (1066 FSB)
  • Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.4Ghz
  • 4 GB of DDR2 Memory at 1066 speed (but because XP is only 32 bit platform, it's only recognizing 3GB currently)
  • GeFORCE 8800 GS - 384MB (while less memory than the 512MB 9600GT, it has more memory interface to provide for faster/cleaner bandwidth, and less chance for bottlenecking)
  • 500GB 7200 RPM SATA Drive
  • Antec tower with 650W Powersupply

I'll replace my 19inch LCD with a HD 24" Widescreen. If I get more serious about editing my own sound, I'll probably eventually get a sound card, but the onboard sound has always suited fine up to this point.

Again, nothing fancy, but it should tear through editing much better than before.

I put it together myself, and have just installed my main software today ... just kicking myself now as I was in a hurry, and see I could probably have saved $200-300 by piecing it together through Egghead, etc.
 
Well, I just made myself feel a WEE bit better, at least. I went to Dell's website, and checked into what a similar system by them would be. Their's would have cost $200+ more with slower memory, video card with less bandwidth, and a lower end motherboard.

Oh, and it comes infested with Vista, with no option for XP.

I feel better. :)
 
That is almost the exact same setup I was planning to buy in the next couple weeks. I am booting off a raptor and was getting a few more HDDs but going with a 8600GT.

All from newegg with a case for about $1200.
 
Well, thanks for putting me back into a funk with that price tag, William. lol.

I'd love to boot off a Raptor and have my OS on it, or even a SCSI server drive, as those badboys are up at 15,000 RPM. Maybe someday.

Anyway, you may want to research the GT vs. the GS. From what I've come to understand, the GT has 512MB, but the GS has more bits, or something like that, allowing a broader bandwidth than the GT.

While extensive, high end gaming my benefit from the larger MB and/or two video cards, it 'appears' that HD editing may better benefit from the broader bandwidth, or less chance of bottleneck.
 
Sweet Norm. I am ready to order all my components as well. Very similar. So far under a grand. But no hard drive on order yet. I have been visiting new egg for the past week reading reviews and picking items. I think you made some wise choices. There is a 64 bit xp OS available, also vista has become more compatable. So mine includes 8 gigs of ram @ 1066.
 
I'd look into the new Intel Core 2 Duo e8300. It's an incredible processor, too bad its almost sold out everywhere. If you can hold off, I'd wait (its part of the new Penryn release of Intel processors).

Not saying Norm's setup is bad in any way. Spec-wise its solid for video editing.

-Kegan
 
Kegan, is that part of the Extreme series? Man those chips are SPENDY, but I'm sure you get what you pay for. For me, it's not so much about bench marks, but how much the average human will actually notice with the naked eye, response/wait times, etc.

Kdawg, how much is the XP64? I've not seen it around. Also, don't all of your softwares HAVE to be 64 to work, or is the OS backwards compatible, and then simply any 64 software benefits from the OS? I guess I won't worry too much until Vegas comes out with the 64 and is proven for a bit ... I could always upgrade then, as well as get some additional RAM (actually would have to replace the 4 1GB cards with 4 2GB cards ... ouch!).

pmark, did you notice much difference with the 3 GHz overclocking? I'm nervous about overheating, and or unstability ... otherwise I remember on my OLD Pentium 1 system overclocking that to the max, lol. Just haven't been in that same geek/tech mode since.

As it is, this new tower's not nearly as quiet as my old Antec Sonata ... since I also do my audio/VO recording right here in the same office, sound is a concern, so overclocking & then beefing up the fan to compensate could be an issue.
 
There is some Backwards compatability. Depending on the program. My son's computer I built for him last year (a liquid cooled beast) is running Vista 64 and he actually has not had compatability problems with anything. Even the card from my new GPS wont read in XP but will get read by vista. Course no video editing on his computer, so that will be a test.
I am getting all my Ram up front period. I have always said I'll get ram later but then I forget what I got, or can't match it because they say not to mix and match brands. I have read many reviews about vista recognizing 8 gigs no prob and XP64 still only recognizing 4. Many things may depend on the tech level of the builder as well.
My brother inlaw works for microsoft so I got the OS real cheap. If I run into problems, I'll switch back to XP. And put the Vista on my daughter's computer. The vista I have shipped with both 64 and 32.

May not get the benefit of 64bit on some programs yet, but for future, I don't want to have to rebuild anything for some time. We'll see what happens.
 
Norm, did you re-render that project with your new computer? The 15 minute project that took 30 hours to render? How fast can you render it now?

Mikel

HVX200 + Vegas 8 + Raylight + Sachtler DV4
 
That son of a gun only took 1 hour 21 minutes to render, but that was just to AVI with no color correction (I always want to have a RAW non-CC'd file handy for future use if needed).

To do a true test, I'll have to render another MPEG2 with two pass on the cc end ... Vegas has usually been pretty good at estimating the amount of time needed/remaining, so I'll fire it up here shortly & let you guys know in a few hours.
 
Norm, nope it's not part of the Extreme series. It's actually a brand new 45nm series of processors that Intel is releasing this year and the e8300 I mentioned is not quad or Extreme. It just is incredibly fast. I believe around the same price as the processor you bought too.

-Kegan
 
Well, the results are in, with regards to expected render times. Previously, on my old system, I had a render take over 30 hours to take a 720P project (15 minutes), and render it to a widescreen SD MPEG2 with 2-pass process in Best mode.

With just over an hour into it, using the same settings, I've got nearly 17 hours left, so 18 hours total. Not as blazingly fast as I'd hoped, but still over a 40% increase in saved render time, so I'm happier than I was before for sure.

The COOL thing is with this Quad CPU, seeing those four processors working, sharing the load. With the computer recognizing at least 3 of the 4 GB of memory, it's only using 1.1 - 1.2 GB average, so still over 1/2 to go, and the CPU usage is averaging between 25 - 38% ... the bulk of the activity seems to be on one processor, which looks like it spikes as high as 98%, then drops way down, and the other three working pretty low into the teens or low 20's.

Anyway, all that to say that I can now feel REALLY safe running other applications in the BG, and not have to be completely shut out from doing any work while the system is rendering. Another huge plus.

Oh, and for anyone who may be wondering why 15 minutes is taking so long to render:
  • 720P HVX footage with Raylight
  • Original Project settings are 720P, 23.976 frame rate, 32 bit CC
  • Original project has 6+ video tracks, 8+ audio tracks.
  • Original project has several color corrections (all native plugin) with sepia, color curves, levels, and glow on the Master Bus, as well as additional levels adjustment and/or gaussian blur on individual clips.
  • To avoid any CC on the black bars (end project is 2:35.1), original is imported into new project, also at same settings as above except into Standard Definition, Widescreen, with the nested project pan/crop to match new aspect ratio.
  • Additional CC added to key areas, involving SLIGHT desaturation, Levels, and Color curves (only in reducing red) ... this isn't enough to be notcieable in the black bars.
For anyone with insight (i.e. David Jimmerson aka "Jim"), I'm not sure if having the CC on the master bus of this additional project has any negative effects in look or render time as opposed to simply adding those to the end of the chain in the original project. Thoughts?
 
Re: Overclocking

Yes, there was a noticeable difference. The CPU temperature climbed by 20 degrees when hard rendering (to 70, verses 50 unoverclocked). But rendering was also faster. This was a 33% increase in clock speed, and rendering speed increased by that amount.

The system was stable up to 33%. Beyond that I started getting crashes a few hours into a hard render.

I'm still running the stock fan (very quiet!), but have an aftermarket fan (big, but also quiet) ready to go in.
 
Boy, if there's one thing right now I wish I had done differently, that would be a quieter case. I can hear the HD grinding away inside from time to time when it's aggressively grabbing bits of data ... I'm wondering if there's some kind of PC safe buffer/padding I can put on the inside without covering any major vents? Then again, with the whole front of this practically being a vent, not sure how much it would quiet it down. I'd say this set up is 2x as loud as my last, but also has nearly twice the power supply (650W vs. the previous 380W).

That said, there is NO way I'm interested in pulling everything out to put into a new tower. Hours of labor.

pmark, did you over clock via the bios at bootup, or using the software that came with the motherboard? This motherboard came with a software utility that will apparently allow me to overclock from within XP.
 
(i.e. David Jimmerson aka "Jim"),
Click to expand...

Hehe, Must change David's name now.


Norm, nope it's not part of the Extreme series. It's actually a brand new 45nm series of processors that Intel is releasing this year and the e8300 I mentioned is not quad or Extreme. It just is incredibly fast. I believe around the same price as the processor you bought too.

-Kegan
Click to expand...

I have read about the E8400 Its getting great reviews, less than 300bucks and people are clocking it at like 4Ghz or faster. Wow, so would that be a better way to go than a quad core? It seems to stay real cool as well. Actually I don't mean to beat up your thread Norm, but I would like to know seeing as your render speed increased so much. I want to push it a bit faster if this processor is faster......
 
8400! I'm not sure why I was saying 8300. Yeah a lot of people are clocking it at over 4ghz and it's handling it very well.

-Kegan
 
Gah!!! I just want to shoot myself right now. The PC was running like a champ until I tried installing a HP printer driver I downloaded yesterday for my all-in-one printer. Freakin' thing froze in the middle of the set up, and now can't very well get past the initial boot screen. If it does, I can't open certain programs (specifically IE, anti-virus, PC health, etc.), but the majority of the time it's sticking at the initial boot screen that shows what kind of motherboard it is.

So, I know the issue is in the BIOS/motherboard, just not sure if it's virus related (that would be FAST), or tech. Also not sure if I can fix it or if I should be making the drive ALL the way back to Fry's to exchange it for a new one. If I've got to do that, I'll be getting a better case too, since I'll be stripping it down that low.

As far as the 8400, is it dual at least? Even if it's blazingly fast, if it's really only one core, instead of two or four, I think there's something to be said about the workhorse power of more than one core working together, sharing loads, etc. I've seen it happen already in this set up (the one day it stinkin' worked). I'd probably rather have my system take a little bit longer in a render, but know there's still plenty of power for me to do other tasks, than to have it be faster, yet nearly 100% of it is being used for the render at hand.

My two cents....
 
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