Need advice, urgent!!! Tomorrow I'll be fried!!!

[chrome]

I am helping a small crew get a Dual Xeon system. I do 3D modelling and rigging, but they asked me to configure their system so that it would best for VIDEO EDITING with Premiere Pro (so they said). MONEY IS NOT AN OBSTACLE (so they said).

Now if it were for 3D animation and particles I would know what to tell them, but video editing is outta my range.

So my question is:

Which is the best PC configuration for using Adobe Premiere Pro and presumably other video editing software they may use in the future?

I dont need to much detail but I, at least, need to know what graphic card is the best for video editing (the market in our country doesn't have a wide range of ATI cards so its got to be an NVIDIA, dual screen at least of course), RAM, HD capacity etc..

I need an answer by tomorrow guys... please post your opinions as soon as possible!

 

[RichPLS]

Do the need stereo scopic goggles with card? any other specialties?
They probably had in mind the Quadros or FireGL series of pro cards.

But if they dont use the features, the they might be elegible to consider the 7800GTX or the X1800XT.
Both of these cards support opengl and run much faster than the current line of pro cards that are over a year old in tech, and clocked slow.

 

[margag_]

http://www.3dlabs.com/products/product.asp?prod=293

check this pro card from 3dlabs. It is a robust workstation card for video editing and 3d modeling.

fAST rendering.

 

[chrome]

Thank guys
Today they informed me that I have three more days (wheeoooh man)...so I'm not under pressure at the moment

margag_:

Thanks man, I've seen this monster card before but its not available here (I need at least a month to get it).

RichPLS:

No they dont need anything like that! I was thinking the same. I assumed video editing requires a gaming card more then a "geometry card"... so ya I think I I'll go for a high-end game card. And, I also thought getting an SLI configuration consisting of two high-end gaming cards, what do you think?

-chrome

 

[Plekto]

The obvious solution is to get a water-cooled card - preferably two in SLI mode. This would keep noise down(so you can hear the video - lol) and also allow silly overclocking speeds. Water-cooled also means drastically longer lifespan, just like in automobiles. There's a reason virtually no cars use air-cooling anymore.

The latest review on this site mentions such a card - and the results are impresive. Cool operation, low noise, and SLI speeds out of one card(with 512MB memory as well).

**note**
A coupe of motherboards allow jumperless SLI modes with NVIDIA chipsets. Running two of these water-cooled "black pearl" cards in SLI mode would result in ungodly high speeds with little heat, noise, and 1GB video memory as a bonus.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/09/seven_of_nvidia/page32.html
Note the SLI interconnect on the card. Two of these with two coolers - You would likely get 70-80 fps in the following test:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/09/seven_of_nvidia/page38.html

The downside is obviously the need to be 2 ft from the monitor(EM/RFI from the pump) and needing *two* of them(read - seperate dedicated power supply just for the pumps)

The plus, though, is that all of that equipment could be put in a small minitower or metal box next to the main cpu and then shielded with a lot of thin-gauge tin or simmilar material. ie - doable, though a bit inelegant barring a dremel and a bit of planning. You'd only see a foot or so of water cooling tubes between the two cases. Power and internal heat from the main computer case would be very little. All the "box" needs to do is house an old-school(can be turned on without being connected to anything) 12V power supply(or a good CPU power supply) My idea is to offload the water cooling into a dedicated "brick" a foot or two away from the computers. Water-cooling is great because as long as the tubes aren't dozens of feet long, and are level, you can always do this sort of external trick.

That would be my "money is no object" solution - offer them the fastest SLI setup possible. For a couple of thousand dollars, I bet they get pretty close to workstation speeds.

If they need more than that, then they really should be looking at mini-computers/dedicated workstations. If they absolutely require something special like 1080p output at 60-100fps, well, again, workstation time.($20K-100K+ - eek)