990X or X5690 for video editing?

[bryanmartin]

Hi,
I have a home workstation for video editing. I use Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects for VERY effect-heavy work. My bottleneck seems to be my CPU.

SO... I've got $1,000 to throw at a new CPU. I want opinions on the
i7-990X vs. Xeon X5690

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of difference.

My computer as it stands:

Asus Sabertooth X58
i7-950
24GB 1600mhz RAM
Nvidia Quadro 4000 GPU
300GB Velociraptor HDD Raid 0
2x 1TB WD Caviar Black HDD

 

[Uther39]

The 990x would be the best price/performance upgrade for your needs.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

The value for the Intel® Xeon® X5690 is that it can work in a dual processor set up. Other than that there really isn’t a difference between the two processors http://ark.intel.com/Compare.aspx?ids=52585,52576, on performance. So go with the Intel® Core™ I7 990X Extreme Edition.

 

[Derbixrace]

core i7 970 is the best price/performance for you by far. only difference between it and the 990x is that 990x is 266mhz faster and has unlocked multiplier.

 

[Emperus]

core i7 970 is the best price/performance for you by far. only difference between it and the 990x is that 990x is 266mhz faster and has unlocked multiplier.

Totally agree to this comment.. +1.. Also, the saved cash can be spent on getting a couple of SSD's which will totally outperform the raptors (even singly).. Just don't use them as scratch disks..

 

[bryanmartin]

I will also believe you chose the wrong disks to run in Raid-0.

Thanks guys,
So, I know nothing about disk set-up. I taught myself just enough about computers to be able to build this one.

Could someone help me please?

As I stated above, I have two 300GB WD Velociraptor 10,000rpm HDDs in RAID 0 for my OS and all my programs, then I have a couple 1TB WD Caviar Black HDDs, non-RAID, for storage.
I'll look into getting some SSDs, what else do you recommend? What is a scratch disk?

Please, feel free to talk down to me, I'm just starting out.

 

[Derbixrace]

get a sandforce based SSD much better than any shitty HDD raid configs...

 

[ElMoIsEviL]

I will also believe you chose the wrong disks to run in Raid-0.

Thanks guys,
So, I know nothing about disk set-up. I taught myself just enough about computers to be able to build this one.

Could someone help me please?

As I stated above, I have two 300GB WD Velociraptor 10,000rpm HDDs in RAID 0 for my OS and all my programs, then I have a couple 1TB WD Caviar Black HDDs, non-RAID, for storage.
I'll look into getting some SSDs, what else do you recommend? What is a scratch disk?

Please, feel free to talk down to me, I'm just starting out.

You could obtain two SSDs (OCZ Vertex 2 or 3s) and RAID them in RAID0. Use those for the OS. Your WD Velociraptors could be used for editing (600GB for editing is great) and your WD Black Edition could be used for storing data.

The flip side is that you can tweak the Caviar Blacks in order to get them to behave similarly to REs. I don't remember where I saw this but there is an app you can use that tweaks certain settings allowing the drives to not go into sleep mode. It is the sleep mode that tends to trick the Intel onboard RAID into thinking that the RAID Array is corrupt (when it is not). It marks one of the drives as "dead" or having failed. This doesn't happen all of the time (more like something that is intermittent).

 

[bryanmartin]

Your WD Velociraptors could be used for editing (600GB for editing is great)

Do you mean that I should put my editing software and all my footage on the Velociraptors?

Would the OS be the only thing on the SSDs? In that case they would only need to be big enough to handle the OS, theoretically 30GB or whatever?

 

[bryanmartin]

Hook your scratch disks up to one of those

Awesome, thanks. So do I use the onboard RAID controller for the SSD and the separate controller for the scratch disks, or do I use the separate controller for all RAID drives?

 

[bryanmartin]

Best answer selected by bryanmartin.