Upgrading PC to handle AVCHD editing

[pezman726]

I'm upgrading my PC to handle AVCHD editing. Here are my 3 options. Can you help me decide what will get me the best performance? Those options are also in the order of what will cost me least to greatest. I'm trying to get the best video editing/rendering bang for my buck!

1.) FX-8320/8350 + Radeon 4870 (my current GPU)
2.) FX-6300 + Radeon 7700
3.) FX-4130 + Radeon 7850

Thanks for any input!

 

[Kurifox]

Editing is more a intense CPU processing, so i would definilty get the 8350 now, keep the same card and in the future upgrade card, it is much easier to upgrade a card than a CPU.

 

[pezman726]

Thanks. Now that Actually would leave me with 2 other options.

1.) FX-8350
2.) FX-8320 + 8GB RAM

My current system has 2x2GB sticks that I plan on re-using. So would upping the RAM to 12GB be more beneficial than the jump from the 8320 to the 8350? As far as I can understand, the 8320 and the 8350 are the same chip, but with different clock speeds. I have a nice cooler that I am currently using to push my phenom II x3 720 up to 3.2ghz (and I just stopped there because I was lazy). I'm fairily certain I can push the 8320 from 3.5 up to 4.0 to match the fx-8350 (but I guess I would be able to push the 8350 even farther than that!).

So, which is the bigger gain for me.

FX-8350 with 4GB RAM
or
FX-8320 with 12GB RAM

If case number 2 would be better, would it be more beneficial to max out my 4 channels with a pair of 4GB sticks, or should I opt for a single 8GB stick with the potential to later throw another 8GB stick in there?

 

[Kurifox]

Thanks. Now that Actually would leave me with 2 other options.

1.) FX-8350
2.) FX-8320 + 8GB RAM

My current system has 2x2GB sticks that I plan on re-using. So would upping the RAM to 12GB be more beneficial than the jump from the 8320 to the 8350? As far as I can understand, the 8320 and the 8350 are the same chip, but with different clock speeds. I have a nice cooler that I am currently using to push my phenom II x3 720 up to 3.2ghz (and I just stopped there because I was lazy). I'm fairily certain I can push the 8320 from 3.5 up to 4.0 to match the fx-8350 (but I guess I would be able to push the 8350 even farther than that!).

So, which is the bigger gain for me.

FX-8350 with 4GB RAM
or
FX-8320 with 12GB RAM

If case number 2 would be better, would it be more beneficial to max out my 4 channels with a pair of 4GB sticks, or should I opt for a single 8GB stick with the potential to later throw another 8GB stick in there?

Definitly the extra ram wich is a big help in modeling and 3d aplication that take a long time, u can easly overclock the 8320 to 4.0 and you are set.
On a side note, i have a fx8350 and 16gb of ram, i do a lot of editing in vegas and after effects, and modeling in autodeskm my computer at work as a i7 and 8gb of ram, the diference in rendering times is quite significant, being much much faster at home.

 

[pezman726]

Awesome. Thanks so much for the help.

I'll be getting the 8320 with 8gb of ram! When my video card starts acting up, I'll look at replacing that.

thanks for the bit about Vegas editing! I'll be using Vegas 11, so it's nice to hear from someone with real experience with the hardware and software combo.

out of curiosity, what motherboard are you using?

 

[Kurifox]

Awesome. Thanks so much for the help.

I'll be getting the 8320 with 8gb of ram! When my video card starts acting up, I'll look at replacing that.

thanks for the bit about Vegas editing! I'll be using Vegas 11, so it's nice to hear from someone with real experience with the hardware and software combo.

out of curiosity, what motherboard are you using?

Might as well give you my full specs
Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0
GTX650 TI BOOST
2x8GB Kingston hyperXblue 1600
AMD FX-8350 4.0 (HYPER 212 COOLER)
KINGSTON SSD 120GB hyperX 3k
1tb storage

 

[pezman726]

Might as well give you my full specs
Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0
GTX650 TI BOOST
2x8GB Kingston hyperXblue 1600
AMD FX-8350 4.0 (HYPER 212 COOLER)
KINGSTON SSD 120GB hyperX 3k
1tb storage

awesome. Thanks again for the help!

 

[pezman726]

Here is my parts list that I plan on using for this build (including what I already have).

I have one final question that I'm hoping someone can answer. I will be adding another 8GB of memory to my system. I already have 2x2GB sticks of DDR3-1333. What would be the most beneficial for me. Should I add a single 8GB stick, or a pair of 4GB sticks? Also, since I am already using 1333, would I see any speed boost if I put either a single or pair of 1600 or greater sticks in the first 2 slots? Or should I just get a pair of 1600 or faster and just ditch the 4gb of 1333? I am not quite an expert on all of the different ways to configure RAM in my system!

Thanks a ton for any help!

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor ($149.99 @ Microcenter)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($49.99)
Memory: G.Skill 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1333 Memory (Purchased For $0.00)
Memory: Kingston Blu Red Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($52.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Kingwin 650W ATX / BTX Power Supply ($34.99 @ Microcenter)
Other: Rosewill RC-215 VIA PCI SATA 1.5G x2 / ATA 133 (IDE) x1 Controller Card ($13.99)
Other: Rosewill R5604-TBK 0.8mm Japanese Cold Rolled Steel Screw-less Dual 120mm Fans ATX Mid Tower Computer Case (Purchased)
Other: XFX HD-487A-ZHDC Radeon HD 4870 1GB XXX 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card (Purchased)
Total: $301.95
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-09-09 15:45 EDT-0400)

 

[Kurifox]

Here is my parts list that I plan on using for this build (including what I already have).

I have one final question that I'm hoping someone can answer. I will be adding another 8GB of memory to my system. I already have 2x2GB sticks of DDR3-1333. What would be the most beneficial for me. Should I add a single 8GB stick, or a pair of 4GB sticks? Also, since I am already using 1333, would I see any speed boost if I put either a single or pair of 1600 or greater sticks in the first 2 slots? Or should I just get a pair of 1600 or faster and just ditch the 4gb of 1333? I am not quite an expert on all of the different ways to configure RAM in my system!

Thanks a ton for any help!

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor ($149.99 @ Microcenter)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($49.99)
Memory: G.Skill 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1333 Memory (Purchased For $0.00)
Memory: Kingston Blu Red Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($52.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Kingwin 650W ATX / BTX Power Supply ($34.99 @ Microcenter)
Other: Rosewill RC-215 VIA PCI SATA 1.5G x2 / ATA 133 (IDE) x1 Controller Card ($13.99)
Other: Rosewill R5604-TBK 0.8mm Japanese Cold Rolled Steel Screw-less Dual 120mm Fans ATX Mid Tower Computer Case (Purchased)
Other: XFX HD-487A-ZHDC Radeon HD 4870 1GB XXX 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card (Purchased)
Total: $301.95
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-09-09 15:45 EDT-0400)

I believe you need to get all the same ram-speed, it should be fine to have 1333 an 1600, but im not sure, and since the speed increse is not really that great, you might as well save a few bucks and get all 1333, you should always get 2 sticks at a time, so they run in dual channel, if it does not make much price diference, get 2x4gb NOW and have 8gb already, in the future if you want to upgrade buy them agian and your set (altough you will never really need the 16gb since 8 is plenty). Also get the same manufacter of ram in all your slots
I have never heard of that PSU brand it is also cheap, so i would sugest removing that, buy a corsair, antec or xfx, a 500/550W should be fine, you dont want the thing that powers your entire system to be cheap. The rest seems fine

 

[pezman726]

I believe you need to get all the same ram-speed, it should be fine to have 1333 an 1600, but im not sure, and since the speed increse is not really that great, you might as well save a few bucks and get all 1333, you should always get 2 sticks at a time, so they run in dual channel, if it does not make much price diference, get 2x4gb NOW and have 8gb already, in the future if you want to upgrade buy them agian and your set (altough you will never really need the 16gb since 8 is plenty). Also get the same manufacter of ram in all your slots
I have never heard of that PSU brand it is also cheap, so i would sugest removing that, buy a corsair, antec or xfx, a 500/550W should be fine, you dont want the thing that powers your entire system to be cheap. The rest seems fine

I'll take a look and see if I can find a pair that will match my current sticks then. It'll throw my total up to 12GB, and I doubt I'll ever need more than that! (time machine back to 1990, "A 6GB hard drive! You'll never need that much space!")

As for the power supply. Kingwin's OEM for this model is Super Flower. I have heard many good things about them (and many less bad things). I have seen them regarded as being in the middle to top tier of OEM Power Supply manufacturers. Not quite as good as the seasonic PSUs that Corsair/Antec/XFX use, but still decent units. The only problem with moving up to one of those other units comes back to the price. Sure I can go get a Corsair or seasonic PSU...But it'll cost me at a minimum probably $20-$30 more...which then eats away at my budget for RAM. Understanding that a PSU is very important to the overall build quality...and that a bad PSU can take out an entire system, I'll have to really think about it. Knowing that this particular OEM is at least decent is nice.

 

[Kurifox]

I believe you need to get all the same ram-speed, it should be fine to have 1333 an 1600, but im not sure, and since the speed increse is not really that great, you might as well save a few bucks and get all 1333, you should always get 2 sticks at a time, so they run in dual channel, if it does not make much price diference, get 2x4gb NOW and have 8gb already, in the future if you want to upgrade buy them agian and your set (altough you will never really need the 16gb since 8 is plenty). Also get the same manufacter of ram in all your slots
I have never heard of that PSU brand it is also cheap, so i would sugest removing that, buy a corsair, antec or xfx, a 500/550W should be fine, you dont want the thing that powers your entire system to be cheap. The rest seems fine

I'll take a look and see if I can find a pair that will match my current sticks then. It'll throw my total up to 12GB, and I doubt I'll ever need more than that! (time machine back to 1990, "A 6GB hard drive! You'll never need that much space!")

As for the power supply. Kingwin's OEM for this model is Super Flower. I have heard many good things about them (and many less bad things). I have seen them regarded as being in the middle to top tier of OEM Power Supply manufacturers. Not quite as good as the seasonic PSUs that Corsair/Antec/XFX use, but still decent units. The only problem with moving up to one of those other units comes back to the price. Sure I can go get a Corsair or seasonic PSU...But it'll cost me at a minimum probably $20-$30 more...which then eats away at my budget for RAM. Understanding that a PSU is very important to the overall build quality...and that a bad PSU can take out an entire system, I'll have to really think about it. Knowing that this particular OEM is at least decent is nice.

Well if it is indeed a decent PSU, it shouldnt hurt, i guess you dont have to spend the extra money if you dont really want to, but its still worth the tought.
Edit: most of the cases its just the hype of the CPU, knowing that a good brand is usually recomend they will get popular, not to say that non-popular brands are not good, many PSU are good and some bad, stragely cheap ones are usually avoidable, but sometimes a knew or unfamiliar company comes along that produces a good product.
A lot comes from bad reviews as well, as we all know sometimes the internet knows everything, and people will tend to believe most things they get from a semi-legit site, and sometimes they simple dish out something becouse it is unfamiliar.
For example i have a 800w Halfman, (overkill for my build, but the SLI option was always there in the future) and i've seen very bad reviews from this full-modular PSU , its pricey at around 70euros and the public generaly doesnt seem to like Halfman PSU's, i even asked my uncle (wich built the pc with me) about it, and he preety much said that people just tend to exagerate over ONE faulty psu, and the entire series get trashed, he builds a lot of rigs and uses the same PSU many times, unless someone asks for a specific one, so far there havnt been many issues.
In short PSU brands sometimes may not mean so much, becouse its a unfamiliar brand, the quality may be suprisingly good and outlast many of popular PSU's.

 

[pezman726]

Thanks again Kurifox for all of your help! It is greatly appreciated. Here is my final build. Hopefully everything will stay around the same price for the next few weeks (the only thing I'm worried about a price shift really on is the RAM. The other stuff is in the Microcenter ad for the whole month! The RAM couldn't find a pair that matched with the same speed for a decent price. so I picked a G.Skill ddr3-1600 that will hopefully downclock itself to 1333. Picked that one because the other cheaper modules either didn't have a heatspreader (i like that) or had different timings/voltage. This one is the same 9-9-9-24 @ 1.5v

Ends up coming out to be about $20 above my budget...if only I didn't have to get that PCI -> IDE card!

Thanks again!

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor ($149.99 @ Microcenter)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($49.99)
Memory: G.Skill 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1333 Memory (Purchased For $0.00)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($57.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Kingwin 650W ATX / BTX Power Supply ($34.99 @ Microcenter)
Other: Rosewill RC-215 VIA PCI SATA 1.5G x2 / ATA 133 (IDE) x1 Controller Card ($13.99)
Other: Rosewill R5604-TBK 0.8mm Japanese Cold Rolled Steel Screw-less Dual 120mm Fans ATX Mid Tower Computer Case (Purchased)
Other: XFX HD-487A-ZHDC Radeon HD 4870 1GB XXX 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card (Purchased)
Total: $306.95
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-09-10 12:58 EDT-0400)

 

[pezman726]

Ok. I took a look at a lot of things and have decided a few things.

1. I would like to be able to take advantage of GPU processing, which my current GPU cannot handle. It will make my video playback/edting/rendering smoother I think than just the CPU alone.
2. Once I purchase these upgrade parts, I will probably put nothing into it for at least 5 years (which is where I am at right now with my current build).
2a. Because of that, I need to upgrade my GPU now, while I have the funds set aside. I should, however be able to get memory later...$40 for memory is easier to sell to my better half than $150 for a GPU!
3. The GPU I need to get has to be better than what I currently have. No point in moving parallel if I just get the benefit of OpenCL!
4. The only GPU that will fit in my budget and net me a move up in the GPU scale is the Radeon HD 7850. PowerColor Radeon HD 7850 2GB Video Card

So with that in mind, I need to drop my CPU down to the fx-6300. I still get a 6 core chip (which is at last check, at least 2x more cores than my current 3 core setup) with the vishera architecture. That chip is also a 95w chip. Between that change, and moving to a new GPU my power requirements have now dropped a bit. Far enough, in fact that every PSU calculator I can find, says that this PSU ( Corsair Builder 430W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply ) should be fine! So I'll be getting an 80+ bronze corsair PSU.

I have also changed my motherboard to the Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard, which has IDE ports. So I don't have to get a PCI-IDE card (which again, less power usage). From what I have read, I should be able to OC the 6300 to anywhere between 4.0-4.5ghz on this board. My target is 4.2ghz (because I don't want to stress the PSU...and because it's the answer to life, the universe, and everything).

So, here is my new build! Mind is made up! Final answer!


PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($119.99 @ Microcenter)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($14.99)
Memory: G.Skill 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3-1333 Memory (Purchased For $0.00)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon HD 7850 2GB Video Card ($129.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 430W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($19.99 @ Newegg)
Other: Rosewill R5604-TBK 0.8mm Japanese Cold Rolled Steel Screw-less Dual 120mm Fans ATX Mid Tower Computer Case (Purchased)
Other: XFX HD-487A-ZHDC Radeon HD 4870 1GB XXX 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card (Purchased)
Total: $284.96
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-09-12 14:47 EDT-0400)


Total cost, adding tax and subtracting rebates comes out to $296.55! I'm $3.45 under budget! YAY!