GH4 SEEKING ADVICE: 4770k or 4930k better for GH4 4K footage?

C

Copperplate

Active member
Hello all,

I'm thinking of getting a GH4 this weekend, but I'm going to need a new PC to go with it, as my current PC is 10 years old :)

1: The question is, would I be better off going the Haswell or the Ivy Bridge-E route? Will having 6 cores be a huge advantage for playback?

2: What about Sata 3 (6 Gbps) support? Will 7200 RPM mechanical hard drives benefit from the Sata 3 spec (WD Black)? To be honest, this is one area that has me vacillating between the two platforms, and I would really appreciate if someone could share some insights on this.

Haswell has up to 8 Sata 3 ports natively, Ivy Bridge-E only has 2 natively, the rest are third party add-ons. I'm worried that the reliability or speed of those third party Marvell/ASMedia ports might be inferior to the Intel ones, and therefore I might be selling myself short to go the Ivy Bridge-E route (probably ASUS x79 Deluxe mobo). If needed, I'd like to be able to populate all my Sata 3 ports with individual drives without worrying that I'm getting inferior performance or reliability.

3: Are individual 7200 RPM mechanical hard drives enough for editing 100 Mbps 4K footage, or would they have to be in a RAID configuration?

4: Lastly, will I benefit greatly by having 40 PCI-E lanes on Ivy Bridge-E, with support for up to TWO PCI-E x16 3.0 gpus vs. only ONE x16 on Haswell?

Thanks so much in advance for sharing any advice or personal experiences on these matters! :)

~Adam
 
TheDingo said:
...If you can wait a few weeks there is a new 4 GHz Haswell i7 4790k CPU being released on June 25th for $340, which should rock for video work.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that info! I did not know the new cpus were coming out this soon! I thought they would only be paper-launched in June and not come out until September, alongside Haswell-E.

On another note, I notice you own the Lumix 12-35 and 35-100 zooms. May I ask how you find these lenses for follow focus work? I've heard repeatable focusing is difficult. I'd really love to know your opinion on this! Thanks.
 
Copperplate said:
Hello all,

I'm thinking of getting a GH4 this weekend, but I'm going to need a new PC to go with it, as my current PC is 10 years old :)

1: The question is, would I be better off going the Haswell or the Ivy Bridge-E route? Will having 6 cores be a huge advantage for playback?

2: What about Sata 3 (6 Gbps) support? Will 7200 RPM mechanical hard drives benefit from the Sata 3 spec (WD Black)? To be honest, this is one area that has me vacillating between the two platforms, and I would really appreciate if someone could share some insights on this.

Haswell has up to 8 Sata 3 ports natively, Ivy Bridge-E only has 2 natively, the rest are third party add-ons. I'm worried that the reliability or speed of those third party Marvell/ASMedia ports might be inferior to the Intel ones, and therefore I might be selling myself short to go the Ivy Bridge-E route (probably ASUS x79 Deluxe mobo). If needed, I'd like to be able to populate all my Sata 3 ports with individual drives without worrying that I'm getting inferior performance or reliability.

3: Are individual 7200 RPM mechanical hard drives enough for editing 100 Mbps 4K footage, or would they have to be in a RAID configuration?

4: Lastly, will I benefit greatly by having 40 PCI-E lanes on Ivy Bridge-E, with support for up to TWO PCI-E x16 3.0 gpus vs. only ONE x16 on Haswell?

Thanks so much in advance for sharing any advice or personal experiences on these matters! :)

~Adam
Click to expand...

1: Tough question. I guess it depends on your finances. If you can afford a system like an IB-E every 2-3 years, then go for it. Otherwise, I suggest Haswell. The better heat management and lower initial cost translates to lower TCO.

2. No. You need an SSD to make full use of it.

3. That depends. I have 2x 1TB drives in this system, and playing around with 4K test footage is slow but doable. I guess it depends on your patience.

4. That depends on what peripherals you're adding.

Copperplate said:
Thanks for that info! I did not know the new cpus were coming out this soon! I thought they would only be paper-launched in June and not come out until September, alongside Haswell-E.

On another note, I notice you own the Lumix 12-35 and 35-100 zooms. May I ask how you find these lenses for follow focus work? I've heard repeatable focusing is difficult. I'd really love to know your opinion on this! Thanks.
Click to expand...

I myself have those two lenses, and I only AF with them. Don't have a follow focus. For what's its worth since they're focus-by-wire there's a slight lag that I cannot imagine one working with in manual focus in a real-time situation, like video!
 
Okay, thanks very much for your response. May I ask what lenses you do use for manual focusing for the GH cameras? SLR Magic...etc?? Thanks again.
 
yslee said:
3. That depends. I have 2x 1TB drives in this system, and playing around with 4K test footage is slow but doable. I guess it depends on your patience.
Click to expand...
Do you refer to the compressed 4K from the GH4 or RED footage? What CPU is in your system? Thanks for your help! :)
 
Compressed 4K from the GH4. CPU is a Nehalem i7 920.

I don't manual focus now - too much hassle. I used to have Nikon lenses.
 
Copperplate said:
I notice you own the Lumix 12-35 and 35-100 zooms. May I ask how you find these lenses for follow focus work?
Click to expand...

Lumix manual focus is usable for small shifts, where you don't mind shooting a few takes to get it right. ( hard to get repeatable results )


For repeatable follow-focus you have to use manual lenses like...

Canon FD lenses ( lots of great used glass around, but these only work on mirror-less cameras like the Olympus or Panasonic m4/3 cameras )

Nikon AI-S lenses ( these can be adapted to almost any camera )

Samyang / Rokkinon lenses ( fast, affordable manual focus lenses )

Samyang / Rokkinon Cine lenses ( fast, affordable manual focus lenses with built-in cine-gears )

Sigma Nikon AI-S Mount ( lots a good used manual focus lenses around )

Sigma Nikon Mount ( their ART lenses are state-of-the-art but require a Nikon G adapter to adjust their aperture )

Tamron Nikon AI-S Mount ( lots a good used manual focus lenses around )

Tamron Nikon Mount ( good lenses that require a Nikon G adapter to adjust aperture )

Tokina Nikon AI-S Mount ( lots a good used manual focus lenses around )

Tokina Nikon Mount ( good lenses that require a Nikon G adapter to adjust aperture )

Zeiss ZF Nikon Mount ( Zeiss quality manual focus lenses with very smooth focusing )
 
Thank you so much for that very detailed list of lenses! Hopefully the secret EF to m4/3 "adaptor" Andrew Reid was testing will come out soon, then I could get the Sigma 50mm f1.4 ART lens with a Canon mount. I wouldn't like not having accurate aperture control on the Nikon G to m4/3 adaptors, unless you know of an adaptor that has really precise aperture control. Thanks again!
 
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