Nd advice! "Right" CPU/processor 4 the job

[Bruce Pelley]

Gents!

I'm seriously considering upgrading to CS4 and buying a new 64-bit computer with windows 7 as I shifted from SD to HDV in the last month plus. Being enabled to borrow an A1 on weekends for several weeks has made me a fan of it and HDV in general. The combination of CS3, 32-bit Vista Home Premium and a Intel Core Duo chip just wasn't cutting it so I need advice from those who have traveled this road before. There are certainly budget considerations in this decision so i'm hoping to find a viable solution that is reasonable.

Archiving from the master timeline to mini dv tape with the above was & still is sheer luck!

I want to find the right processor/CPU/motherboard for the job.

For example: What does AMD have that will cut it? Anything? Is Intel better than AMD?

Is there a website that lists the "pecking order" in processors & what a reasonable price is?

Just out of curiosity, will CS3 still launch on a 64 bit only OS?

How do I find out what processors other than Intel are up to the challenge to drive HDV on CS4 or even 3 for that matter?

Thanks for any insight,comments and reccomendations on this topic!

[Adam Gold]

Please tell me you mean CS5 and not CS4. Why "upgrade" to CS4? It provides no benefits over CS3 as it's not a 64-bit app.

CS3 runs fine on a 64-bit OS. CS5 runs even better. CS4 is a nightmare. I bought my copy but it remains sealed on my shelf. I skipped over it completely to go to CS5.

Many threads right here in this forum and in the Adobe forums about what PC to build. If you can't afford the modest cost to upgrade to CS5 right away, a beefy new computer will do wonders for CS3 as well. Any instability I had on my older PC with CS3 went away when I seriously upgraded my hardware and stopped using Cineform.

But if you're still set on going to CS4 I'll sell you my upgrade copy cheap. Still in the shrink-wrap.

[Bruce Pelley]

Adam,

It's interesting that you would state CS 4 is a "nightmare". How did you arrive at that conclusion? What things did you try with that version that formulated that opinion?

Please keep in mind that I'm not a power user with heavy experience and don't intend to do heavy duty processing. Instead, I plan to do some basic things which do not work with my present set-up for some reason such as a simple HDV export from the timeline to tape!

Yes, in a sense, monetarily from an upgrade standpoint, I should only pay for the "latest and greatest" if I'm going to upgrade. However on the other hand, from what I've read CS5 is a whole new ballgame in terms of the equipment resources it requires & the cost of that would probably be substantial.

I'd not only need a new computer, graphic card, CS 5 upgrade, hard drives but more!

In my case as it probably would be overkill for my needs and experience level.

Also, this money would be coming from my own pocket and there is no way I'm going to be able to use CS 5 and recoup any of those costs.

Given the above, what case would you make to justify a CS 5 system that functions and operated as it should?

[Adam Gold]

All good questions. As I noted, my copy of CS4 is still in the shrinkwrap; I never used it at all. But I bought it because it was supposed to handle memory better and therefore be more stable than CS3. As it rolled out, the horror stories started coming in from users both here and on the Adobe forums. While many people got fine results, it seemed a greater than normal proportion were having stability issues, frequent lockups and crashes, or functions that just didn't perform as they should. So I never installed CS4 because CS3 was working fine, especially after I moved to Vista 64 from XP 32 and upped my RAM to 20 Gigs.

So let me turn this around and ask you, what are you expecting will be the benefit of upgrading from CS3 to CS4? I can't find any reason to do so. If you're having trouble exporting to tape, there's no reason to think CS4 will do that any better than CS3, especially if you think the issue is hardware related.

Originally Posted by Bruce Pelley

I'd not only need a new computer, graphic card, CS 5 upgrade, hard drives but more!

You mentioned you'd be upgrading your hardware anyway -- wasn't that the point of your original post? -- so it seems like the logical thing is try CS3 on your new hardware first and see if it works better. The specs for a properly configured CS5 machine, detailed in many places elsewhere on these forums, needn't be a bank-buster. Whatever you'd need to improve your performance now, even without upgrading your software, should run CS5 just fine. It's not likely you'd buy a new system now that could handle CS4 but wouldn't be enough for CS5. The whole point of moving to a 64-bit system is to handle more RAM, no? So you'll need a new CPU, more RAM, an OS that can handle it and more Hard Drives anyway. So why not get the 64-bit app to go with it?

Recommended config now: Core i7-930, 12GB RAM, at least three hard drives, nVidia card (200 or 400 series) that supports the "hack" described in other posts. But that config would be recommended for CS3, 4 or 5. I think if you read back a few months on the posts in this forum you'll have a better understanding of what I'm talking about.

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-cr...4-why-cs5.html

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-cr...apable-pc.html

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-cr...hic-cards.html

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-cr...puter-cs5.html

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-cr...miere-pro.html

But seriously, I'm not kidding, if you really want CS4 I'll sell you my pristine unopened copy (is anyone out there still even selling CS4?). All you need is a CS3 serial number to install it.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Bruce Pelley

Adam,

It's interesting that you would state CS 4 is a "nightmare". How did you arrive at that conclusion? What things did you try with that version that formulated that opinion?

I had some experience with CS4. Simply put, CS4 is an extreme resource hog (and yet at the same time does not use more than about 3GB of RAM). Because of that, playback in CS4 is almost always choppy and stuttery unless you have an extremely fast system with an astronomically fast drive subsystem (such as a huge and astronomically expensive SSD). As a result, CS4 is actually a downgrade from CS3 in terms of performance.

In other words, you might need to actually purchase a system that costs more than $25,000.00 (well, maybe not quite that much, but realistically at least three to four times more than you're planning to spend) just to get CS4 to run anywhere near adequately. This is because of its extreme resource hogging, the app relies extremely heavily on virtual memory on the hard disk or SSD. And even the very fastest of hard disks are nowhere near fast enough to keep up with the demands of CS4.

[Steve Kalle]

CS4 > "Extreme Resource Hog" ...Really?

What were you guys doing with CS4 because I NEVER had all these problems and I was using a modest PC - Q6600 (stock 2.4GHz), 8GB ram, 4 drive Raid 10 and a few Raptors.

Actually, so far I have had more problems with Premiere Pro and AE CS5 than CS4 and I am using one of the fastest workstations money can buy: HP Z800, dual 6 core Xeons @2.66GHz, 24GB 1333MHz ram, Quadro FX3800, 6 - 2TB Seagate Constellation ES in Raid 5 via an Areca 1680ix raid controller, Intel X25 80GB SSD for OS & Apps, 4 - 1TB Seagate 7200.12 in Raid 10 via LSI 1068E SAS Raid controller, 2 - 150GB V-Raptors in Raid 0 for Media Cache & Page File.

This PC is way more than Premiere Pro needs but I use AE, Cinema 4D and NukeX 6 more of the time than PPro.

Bruce, a decent and fully-capable PC for CS5 can cost around $1000. Here is a list of parts that meet that cost:
CPU - i7 860 at Microcenter= $220 and includes heatsink
Motherboard - ASUS P7P55D-E LX =$110 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131634
Ram - 8GB, 2 x4GB= $162, Leaves 2 slots free for expansion htthttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Pro...82E16820161365
PSU - SeaSonic 500w = $60 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151080
HDD - Samsung F3 1TB = $60 each - fastest 1TB drive. If you can, order them now because I have never seen them for sale this low.
OS - Win 7 x64 = $100 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16832116754
Gfx Card - PNY 9800GT 1GB = $105, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814133304
With 2 Samsung drives, the subtotal is $977 and all you need is a case unless you can re-use your current case. I forgot that you also need a DVD drive so either use your current DVD drive or add another $20 for a new one - the motherboard I chose has PATA connection so you should be able to use your current DVD drive.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Steve Kalle

CS4 > "Extreme Resource Hog" ...Really?

What were you guys doing with CS4 because I NEVER had all these problems and I was using a modest PC - Q6600 (stock 2.4GHz), 8GB ram, 4 drive Raid 10 and a few Raptors.

With CS4, my editing job was never at all smooth with my current rig (I had only an HD 4850 when I used CS4). It consistently dropped more than half the frames during playback with any HD content whatsoever. That performance makes even simple cuts-only editing very frustrating unless I limit all video content to standard-definition (480i) content. And it demands a far bigger memory footprint than the maximum amount of physical memory it can use due to it being strictly a 32-bit program. (I looked at the pagefile while CS4 was running, only to discover that the page/swap file had mushroomed to several hundred GB in my system - which completely filled up the system drive which had that page file, and I didn't bother to relocate that Windows page file because all of the other programs I use frequently require the Windows page file to be on the exact same drive as the system drive to perform their best.) That program demanded significantly more hard drive space than I currently have in total. I figured that I needed at least 12TB of total virtual memory (meaning that all 12TB must be located on a single drive volume) just to properly run CS4 with HD content.

Therefore, I used the wrong term in my last post above. I meant to say that CS4's code is just plain sloppy.

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

If HDV is all you are going to be using in the coming months, stick to CS3 and just upgrade your computer. CS3 is a 32-bit app I think so maybe there was a 64-bit version. If this is your stumbling block, though, the only option is to upgrade. Adobe website gives recommended specs for CS5. That should be a good place to start.

[Bruce Pelley]

Gents:

Sorry for the lateness in rejoining this discussion.

For now I will be brief but there's more to come as I need to go pick up my wife in a few minutes.

I agree my computer may well be the major obstacle and that should be addressed first.

I've had so much trouble recently, I'm just about ready to spend a grand if that's ultimately the best solution. Was hoping to solve the problem for less id possible.

Functionality is most important, speed is second.

First, I still need to nail down someone who will built a system for me.

Very importantly, I'd like to learn all I can on this subject and would appreciate any web recomendations or any more system configurations if possible.

I gave up on HDV export to tape on an A1 with CS3.2

More to come.

Thanks

[Bruce Pelley]

Adam and Steve,

Great leads and links which I'm in the process of absorbing.

Thank you.