My new built for video editing, not sure for ram

[x_nick2001]

Here is my new build :

Motherboard:
ASUS P5B Deluxe ATX LGA775 Conroe P965 DDR2 2PCI-E16 PCI-E1 3PCI SATA2 DTS Sound 1394 Motherboard

CPU:
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 Dual Core Processor LGA775 Conroe 2.67GHZ 1066FSB 4MB Retail

Heatsink:
Thermalright SI-128 S478/754/939 120MM Aluminum Heatpipe Cooler Fan Not Included

Fan for heatsink:
NMB-MAT (Panaflo) 120MM Hydro Wave Bearing Fan 2100RPM 86.5CFM 35.50DBA W/SENSOR 120X120X38MM RoHS

RAM:
G.SKILL F2-6400CL4D-2GBHK PC2-6400 2GB 2X1GB DDR2-800 CL4-4-3-5 240PIN Dual Channel Memory Kit

Hard drives:
Western Digital Raptor 150GB SATA 10KRPM 16MB NCQ 5YR MFR Warranty Hard Drive
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB SATA2 3GB/S 7200RPM 16MB Cache NCQ Hard Drive

Video Card:
Sapphire Radeon X1900 XT 620MHZ PCI-E 256MB 256BIT 1.4GHZ GDDR3 Dual DVI-I HDTV Out Video Card

7-in-1 reader:
Mitsumi FA404M-BK 7-IN-1 Floppy Drive & Flash Reader CF/SM/SD/MMC/MS Black

Case(bought):
Ultra Aluminus Mid Tower ATX Case Black

Case fans(bought):
2 X Ultra 120mm Ball Bearing Fan Grn/Titanium 70CFM

Power Supply(bought):
Ultra 600w X-Finity Power Supply w/2 80mm
+3.3V +5V +12V +12V -12V -5V +5VSB
25A 30A 18A 20A 0.6A - 2.5A

The price of all this sould be around 2000 $CAD after April 22nd

I am not really concerned about gaming, I am mainly doing a LOT of Photoshop,Premiere,AfterEffect and 3DStudio MAX. I want my pc to be fast in rendering as you may understand. I am not so sure for RAM what to choose, I read good comments about G.Skill memory and as it is less expensive then ever I was going to try it. Do you have any suggestions. Also not so sure I'll be overclockin so thats why I am buying the E6700, waiting for future price cut to maybe get a Quad. I will continue running XP, as I see no point going to VISTA for now. Also am I gonna see a good difference with a 10K rpms, for apps and OS?

Thank you!

 

[wingsofzion]

i'd suggest 2GB of Corsair DDR2 800 Memory. New Egg has it priced down to $153 (it was $210 about 1 months ago). Pretty fast stable memory and Corsair is a great company. As for G Skill, i havent purchased any of thier products so i cant give a true estimate of thier worth. Corsair's a good company but you can also look at Crucial, OCZ, or Kingstion. You can try thier Ballistix series set 2GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2 800. It's a bit pricey @ $271. Both kits should be great for you.

 

[drummerdude]

i agree with the corsair ram mentioned above,, but theres nothing wrong with g.skill either. they are both good brands. since you wont be overclocking, no need to spend the money on the better ram. but i think you should swap the gpu for the x1950xt. its just a newer version of the one you chose and better card, and a little cheaper too. link
link

anandtech has some benchmarks using the raptor, the is some difference. link

 

[weilin]

for such professional work, i would actually recommend to you a workstation videocard. They are better optomized for what you wish to do than consumer gaming cards. As for ram, 2gb is almost a requirement (I work with Adobe Premiere A LOT) but it has no problems addressing more. If you get vista/xp 64 bit, 4 gigs may not necessarily be considered overkill. Corsiar is a good company to go with as they have very good compatibility with boards.

 

[x_nick2001]

Is there a huge difference between :

Corsair XMS2 TWIN2X2048-6400 2GB 2X1GB PC6400 DDR2-800 CL 5-5-5-12 240PIN DIMM Dual Channel Memory 173.20$CAD

Corsair XMS2 TWIN2X2048-6400C4 2GB 2X1GB PC6400 DDR2-800 CL 4-4-4-12 240PIN Dual Channel Memory Kit 218.96$CAD

Because I mean we are talkin 45$ diff is there really a difference?
Also will there be any compatibility issue with mys ASUS P5B Deluxe board?

 

[weilin]

I dont think the cas matters for core 2 cpus as intel is still on FSB. you are talking about at most 5% difference. I personally don't think its worth 45 dollars especially since the core 2 is gonna be running the ram at pc2 4200. At that speed, the ram would default to cas 4 anyways.

 

[MYTHOZ]

for such professional work, i would actually recommend to you a workstation videocard

 

[x_nick2001]

weilin are you saying that this pointless to buy PC6400 for the moment?

MYTHOZ yeah maybe right but I that would mean no more gaming and that is poor, as I may gonna want to play somme games some times, anyway I think passing from a P4 2.8Ghz to that rig I will see astonishing differences in render time!!!

 

[dobby]

now i dont know much about CAD and professional work but i do know that suring it would realy on shaders? thus it may use Direct X (maybe wrong) so would a 8800GTX be the better idea. Unless it is brute strengh - how they may still be the better option.

If you are stuck on ATI then the 1950 would be the better choice then 1900 but i would go for the 8800 -becuase the systm will rely on graffics ALOT if you cant afford a 8800 you should consider a e6600 to save a few bucks, and go for the better gpu

 

[smudgee]

hello fellow max user, u mentioned render time....so why are u not getting a quad core cpu ? . Price drops on 22 april 22nd , make this affordable. 3d rendering time will be almost halved(check some benchmarks) ....dont be convinced by gamers who get almost no benefit from quad core , and harp on about high end gaming graphics cards . 3d gaming and 3d rendering/raytracing are two differnt animals.



smudgee

 

[x_nick2001]

Yeah but the thing is I dont really know where to draw a line between a good enough video card and the processor, I dont want to buy a very good processor and be limited by the graphic card...

Because the way I see it the e6700 will be 400$CAD on april 22nd and the Q6600 be around 725$CAD, but in August the Q6600 should drop to around 350$CAD. So looking at thisif I change at this time without even selling my E6700 I will pay the same price as if I would buy the Q6600 rigth now, but I guess I will be able to sell my E6700 at least 100$.

Because am not so sure if 325$CAD is worth for halved a render time that will already be pretty good, that is mainly why I was going with the E6700 first and see if I can live with the render time...

By the way if anybody doing about the same work as me, a lot of all Adobe softwares and 3D studio max also, if you could give me suggestion for a good enough video card. People are more talking about gaming PCs than video editing/3D rendering so it is hard to find valuable info for a new PC

 

[MYTHOZ]

If you're doing 3D rendering and lots of 2D applications from Adobe then really there is no perfect card for that and gaming. I do this kind of work as well and run 2 separate systems. The one for work uses nVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 for a video card and for the gaming computer I use 7900 GX2.

The nVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 may seem like a pricey card but is very good for this kind of work. Now there is a newer version too.
Although you can spend a lot more for a system made for 3Dmax and Maya type of applications.

The work system does not run any unnecessary applications either that may slow it down.

If you already do this kind of work then the cost is not bad since you should be making good money and if you own your own business (like I do) then this will be a good tax credit anyways.

 

[weilin]

Ram:
all those who buy pc2 6400 + really do it for future proofing and overclocking. If you plan on doing no such thing, pc2 5300 will serve you fine. pc5300 supports FSB 1333 which give you the option to get a cpu with that fsb later in the future (unless you are getting one now, which then i would recommend pc2 6400 just so you have head room). However, as it stands, pc2 4200 is all that is required for Core 2 Duos. 2GB is almost required, 4 if you have the cash.

video card:
Since you do want to play games. Getting a professional card like i recommended before may not be the best idea afterall. The card you picked now is fine but the 8800s would be better for both games and professional work. Idealy you would have 2 separate systems, one for games and one for work but money is always a factor...

CPU:
The idea of getting a quad core isn't bad at all. Unlike games, which barely scales at all, professional applications scale linearly which means doubling the cores would net you approximately double the rendering capability which means it will roughly half the rendering time. When the price cuts come, it may be worth looking into. However, the price slash is in Q3 so you may want to buy a cheap dual core now, and swap it out with a quad when the time comes.

P.S. Anything you are looking at now will roll right over your current P4. I wouldn't be surprised if you decrease rendering time by 3.

 

[smudgee]

quote "I am not really concerned about gaming"

not everyone is reading this bit.

I might be wrong, I think that as long as your gfx card is open gl 2.0 then theres nothing more to be had from a more expensive card. All your max rendering is powered by the cpu , you could have a nvdia 6800 or something.

Obviously cad cards - firegl etc , help a lot in the preview scene in max , but not for rendering, allowing for faster better preview , AA in preview etc.

I have a dual core p820 , and its nowhere near enuff power to render animations quickly , or sit around trying to get a photorealistic render in vray ,it totally sucks. Roll on quad core +c2d architecture. This is my work , so double or quadruple render time is literally double money i can make in a week.

just my angle dude , please take the time to consider the possibilities.
smudgee

 

[smudgee]

@mythoz ..sorry man , that shouldnt have been in reply to you.

@the OP , are you running 2 monitors ? Whats best amount of video ram for two monitors ?......at least 512 ?????

Here again u might find discord with the "gaming stance" , which I arrogantly assume generally used 1 monitor .



smudgee

 

[x_nick2001]

So smudgee if I understand you good I should not be putting too much money on the video cards, thats what I tought but I dont want to buy a -200$CAD video cards and regret it because it bottleneck the rest of my rig!

Actually am running 2 monitor :
CRT : SAMSUNG SyncMaster 957MB
LCD : Viewsonic VP930b 1300:1 contrast may I say thats the best LCD I have seen so far

if you say I can the $$$ on the videocard then that would be even easier to buy a good quad around august and see the differences then, maybe by adding another 2Gb RAM, I am pretty sure I wont be gaming more that what I am right now, which is a little bit of TWGolf about 3 times a month as I am really into getting better with Adobe suite and really getting more serious with Autocad house designing and 3D Studio MAX rendering. It is not my job at all as I am a network specialist, but I would like to maybe make it a sideline for DVD/video editing. And as you say instead of 10hours for compressing video if it takes 1hr that does make more money and less waste of time!

 

[alcattle]

The 79xx or x19xx series will do all you want, make sure they have the output you need, depending on the rez you need, how much memory you need.
I would go ahead and get the 6700, and then go for a Quad in Q4, you will be able to sell the 6700 for the then lower price minus $25 and smile when the Quad starts kill your rendering times.
RAM get some good PC6400 and stop worrying about it for some time to come.

 

[hieuhef]

2gb doesn't seem very sufficient for your video editing needs [not to mention 3d studiomax], as i'm running 4gb right now, thinking about going 8gb later in the year.

good memory: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820220227

also, i have an e6600 oc'd to 3ghz, which is not only faster than stock, but faster than the e6700 and the ee which runs at 2.93. i'm running only 1.4v through the cpu and my load temps top off at 43c load, so i still have overhead for more oc'ing.

and your hdd space is lacking for video editing. get another barracuda and run it in raid 0, so you get that 1tb of space for archiving. keeping your work flow on the raptor is a good idea, being as it's blazing fast.

so, those are my suggestions. i went with a gaming gpu because i don't touch 3d animation, it's all video and photo editing for me, which places a lot of emphasis on your cpu, ram, and hdd. also, going quad-core will increase render times noticeably, which you might want to do.

i'm waiting until the prices go down significantly before i swap out my e6600 for a quad-core chip. hope this helps!

 

[smudgee]

Hi x nick2001 ,its really a question of use , and only you know what you do on your pc.

I know that i could take my gfx card out , and my 3d rendering would be no slower(using onboard gfx ). My preview window would struggle yes , but you get my point.


I only have a geforce6800gx 256mb dual dvi. When upgrade to a quad core soon...i'll probally get at most a nvida7900 7950 ...what im more interested in is having enuff memory for 2 monitors, as i noticed mine is slightly slower on 2 than 1.

Most of my work is in adobe after effects , n photoshop, with some 3d thrown in , id do more 3d , but its so damn slow. When i upgrade , it'll be a whole machine, so ill be able to render , and also carry on working on another pc.

I find with after effects/premiere etc, its better to have a few hard drives , 1 for windows , 1 to render to, 1 to read from with source files etc, 1 for page file. Adobe recomends this too.

I cant give you definite answer , til I have my quad, but only sway the myth that the latest gfx card will help you in max,maya whatever.

It might get more complicated if you get into HD video , i dont touch that yet.

The other complictaion i guess, and hvnt solved is getting vista so one could use 4gb of ram, but thats another question

X-nick , dont be embarest to not have the latest card.....i hope you find what card is best suited to your creative need.

smudgee

 

[x_nick2001]

You gotta it right smudgee, if I can get what I plan to do for project next winter I will surely be editing HD video, which I know need a lot of power, but still don't know how much!!

Good advice about multiple harddrives, too bad I will be loosing my 200Gb IDE hardrives...

Would you say I'd be better with

Option #1
-Western Digital Raptor 150GB SATA 10KRPM 16MB NCQ 5YR MFR Warranty Hard Drive - $268.32CAD
-Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB SATA2 3GB/S 7200RPM 16MB Cache NCQ Hard Drive - $155.99CAD
Total = $424.31CAD

Option #2
-Western Digital Raptor 150GB SATA 10KRPM 16MB NCQ 5YR MFR Warranty Hard Drive - $268.32CAD
-Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA2 3GB/S 7200RPM 16MB Cache NCQ Hard Drive - $93.99CAD
-Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA2 3GB/S 7200RPM 16MB Cache NCQ Hard Drive - $93.99CAD
Total = $456.30$

Option #3
-Western Digital Raptor 150GB SATA 10KRPM 16MB NCQ 5YR MFR Warranty Hard Drive - $268.32CAD
-Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160GB Hard Drive SATA2 7200RPM 11MS 8MB Cache 5YR MFR Warranty - $72.10CAD
-Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160GB Hard Drive SATA2 7200RPM 11MS 8MB Cache 5YR MFR Warranty - $72.10CAD
-Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160GB Hard Drive SATA2 7200RPM 11MS 8MB Cache 5YR MFR Warranty - $72.10CAD
Total = $484.62$

So would I see improvment with Option #3 in Adobe softwares, as I do mainly this? I will still have 2 SATA free on my MOBO, for a very big hardrives if I happened to be missing space, as you always do!

 

[x_nick2001]

hieuhef :

would go for 4Gb but I don't think XP, unless I go maybe with XP 64bit, which I never really read about, maybe I should do some research. What OS are you using for 4Gb?

Because I could get
2 X Corsair Value Select PC2-5300 2X1GB DDR2-667 240PIN Dual Channel Memory Kit
for a total of 4Gb for about the same price as 2Gb of PC6400... that I mention on top...

 

[smudgee]

If it was me x nick , i would go option something like option 2 , but also add a small drive for the page file(windows page file).....if your using XP...i dont now about vista............

Im only looking at the size and number of drives, not the brand......

Im gonna get a raptor for the OS too, some people dont like em for the cost, so im just gonna try it and see. If its real good, I maybe get more than 1.

Most photoshop freaks do this , a drive that does nothing else but paging.
Ive current;y a 20 gig partition on a 320 gig drive for that , the other space i use for storing old stuff, so its rarely accessed.

Could u buy some external bays , and pop yor IDE drives in , then hook em up to USB , as storage drives ?

I really need more storage , id probally get a motherboard with esata next time...external sata.


Video work is just crazy for space, ive about 800 gig , and starting to strugglle now.
Multiple drives is nice, i can defrag one and continue workjing with another , or virus scan it and carry on working no prob.That n multi core , i can get some good video work done.

good on ya mate
smudgee

 

[hieuhef]

i believe xp can do 4gb, with 64 opening up to 16 [if you can swallow the pill of a 4gb stick which cost well over a thousand], so you should be safe on that front. keep in mind, as 64 bit matures, so will the programming to utilize it, which means better performance compared to 32 bit.

adobe quite utilizes both multi-core setups as well as 64 bit architecture for its creative suite, so it's something you would want to look into.

i have vista ultimate 64, by the way.

again, hope that helps.

 

[smudgee]

hey hieuhef , hows video editing with 4gb ..??....(compared to 2gig if u ever have)....
do use premiere ?

glad to hear your raptor is a joy.

smudgee

 

[hieuhef]

alas, 4gb is a requirement to do any work on vista, as the os itself uses a whole gb with steam running in the background 8O

as a project increases in size, the extra head room with the memory becomes a godsend as i monitor footage through vlc and work on the project in.. should i say it? sony vegas! and i edit hdv footage as well, so the .m2t files are quite large in size to say the least, but not yet real hd.

and, i backed off of a raptor drive last minute before i ordered all my parts. many would say that was a mistake, considering a large portion of system bottleneck indeed comes from the hdd, and i agree. however, i went with 2 500gb in raid 0 and waiting for the hitachi deskstar 1tb to hit retail. no real reasoning behind it, but the system is insanely fast over what i was using prior.

[edit]

i use premiere pro 2.0 at school and am planning on getting myself a copy asap, friendlier user interface compared to vegas.. but both are great titles.