Check my specs please? PC for cs4 and HD Footage at DVinfo.net

Brian Manning · June 23rd, 2011, 08:54 AM

Hi guys, after much thought I have spec'd a machine with an English website that will post to Ireland.
I use cs4 premiere and (after effects a little) and photoshop.
I dont have a HD camera yet but will sonn hopefully.
I chose a solid state drive for the OS and programmes and a tb for video footage.
Chose a GTX 590 for graphics card-though i have nVidia quadro fx 3500 currently but was told its 5 yrs old and should really get a new one.Anyways, any comments on the specs are appreciated. Its a lot of money to spend.

Brian.

PCS MAELSTROM T900 BLACK GAMING CASE

Intel® Core™i7-2600 Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics

ASUS® P8Z68-V PRO: USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, NVIDIA® SLI™, ATI®
CrossFireX™

16GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (4 X 4GB)

3GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 590 - 2 DVI,mHDMI - 3D Vision Ready

250GB INTEL® 510 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 500MB/sR | 315MB/sW)

1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
(7200rpm)

12x BLU-RAY ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£48)

INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT

CORSAIR 850W TX SERIES (TX850) 80+ ULTRA QUIET PSU (£99)

TITAN FENRIR EVO EXTREME HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£39)

Sound Blaster® Audigy™ SE (£19)

ONBOARD GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI-E CARD (£19)

6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD

3 Port IEEE 1394a Firewire PCI Card (£9)

Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£109)

NO OFFICE SOFTWARE
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE

3 Year Platinum Warranty (3 Year Collect & Return, 3 Year Parts, 3 Year labour)
(£135)

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND (£30)
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days

£1916.67
£2300.00
1
£1916.67
£383.33

£2300.00

Randall Leong · June 23rd, 2011, 09:05 AM

Brian,

Is there any reason whatsoever to stick with Premiere Pro CS4? That program is strictly 32-bit, and does not take much if any advantage whatsoever of newer equipment. The only reason to run it nowadays is if you're still stuck with 32-bit versions of Windows. I'd strongly recommend an upgrade to CS5 or CS5.5 at this point.

Second, if you're going to run CS5 or CS5.5, skip the GTX 590: The MPE GPU acceleration supports only one single GPU - but the GTX 590 is a dual-GPU card. As a result, that GTX 590 goes half-unused in Premiere Pro. And with only one GPU active, the GTX 590 will perform slower than a GTX 570 that costs less than half the price of the 590. Heck, even a GTX 550 Ti would perform nearly as fast as a GTX 590 in CS5.x for far less money.

Third, you have the bare minimum number of drives required by Adobe - in this case, the SSD for the OS and programs and a single HDD for everything else. I'd strongly recommend adding two or three additional hard drives to that system. The budget for the additional drives is freed by foregoing the astronomically expensive (and half-useless) dual-GPU card in favor of a relatively fast single-GPU card such as the GTX 570 or GTX 580.

Brian Manning · June 23rd, 2011, 09:14 AM

Thanks Randall for the solid advice.

I dont make movies all day or anything like you guys and have never had need for more than my current hard drive which is 750 tb and is used for OS and video footage. I have 2x 1tb hard drives that I back up files on aswell. What is the idea behind having so many internal drives?

I am trying to futureproof myself with this machine a bit.Presuming I get cs5.5. Also, any HD footage I have been given, I literally cant edit currently, even in draft quality mode.It is rediculous. Does after effects make use of the dual slot 590 card.Or future versions of premiere etc in the coming years that it would be handy to have the 590 onboard?

So, you reckon a GTX580 single pci slot card.Not a quadro?

Thanks again,
Brian.

Bart Walczak · June 23rd, 2011, 10:37 AM

So far After Effects does not make use of GPU in any way other than OpenGL preview, at least as far as I know, so really there's no point in spending cash on the card itself. Better save it for CS5.5 upgrade, because CS4 is very slow in comparison to CS5 and 5.5, especially in HD.

Randall Leong · June 23rd, 2011, 10:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brian Manning

So, you reckon a GTX580 single pci slot card.Not a quadro?

Not a Quadro unless you're going to make heavy use of After Effects and you need full 10-bit video processing support (GeForce cards are limited to 8-bit processing for the most part). Otherwise, even the top-of-the-line Quadro 6000 has lesser hardware GPU specs than the GTX 580 - 448 CUDA cores versus 512.

As for your particular Quadro FX 3500, it is too old for CS5.5: It does not have CUDA support at all (in fact, the FX 3500 uses a GPU that's basically the same as an old GeForce 7800 GS or 7900 series, which predate the advent of CUDA).

And actually, both the GTX 580 and GTX 590 take up two or three (depending on the model) expansion slots in a case due to their double- (or triple-) slot GPU coolers. It's just that the GTX 590 actually consists of two GPU chips on the same card whereas the GTX 580 consists of only one GPU chip on the card.

June 23rd, 2011, 08:54 AM	#1
Brian Manning Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Dublin Ireland Posts: 57	Check my specs please? PC for cs4 and HD Footage Hi guys, after much thought I have spec'd a machine with an English website that will post to Ireland. I use cs4 premiere and (after effects a little) and photoshop. I dont have a HD camera yet but will sonn hopefully. I chose a solid state drive for the OS and programmes and a tb for video footage. Chose a GTX 590 for graphics card-though i have nVidia quadro fx 3500 currently but was told its 5 yrs old and should really get a new one.Anyways, any comments on the specs are appreciated. Its a lot of money to spend. Brian. PCS MAELSTROM T900 BLACK GAMING CASE Intel® Core™i7-2600 Quad Core (3.40GHz, 8MB Cache) + HD Graphics ASUS® P8Z68-V PRO: USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB/s, NVIDIA® SLI™, ATI® CrossFireX™ 16GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (4 X 4GB) 3GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 590 - 2 DVI,mHDMI - 3D Vision Ready 250GB INTEL® 510 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 500MB/sR \| 315MB/sW) 1TB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD1002FAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm) 12x BLU-RAY ROM DRIVE, 16x DVD ±R/±RW (£48) INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT CORSAIR 850W TX SERIES (TX850) 80+ ULTRA QUIET PSU (£99) TITAN FENRIR EVO EXTREME HEATPIPE CPU COOLER (£39) Sound Blaster® Audigy™ SE (£19) ONBOARD GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps PCI-E CARD (£19) 6 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD 3 Port IEEE 1394a Firewire PCI Card (£9) Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£109) NO OFFICE SOFTWARE NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE 3 Year Platinum Warranty (3 Year Collect & Return, 3 Year Parts, 3 Year labour) (£135) REPUBLIC OF IRELAND (£30) Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days £1916.67 £2300.00 1 £1916.67 £383.33 £2300.00

June 23rd, 2011, 09:05 AM	#2
Randall Leong Major Player Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Melrose Park, Illinois, USA Posts: 936	Re: Check my specs please? PC for cs4 and HD Footage Brian, Is there any reason whatsoever to stick with Premiere Pro CS4? That program is strictly 32-bit, and does not take much if any advantage whatsoever of newer equipment. The only reason to run it nowadays is if you're still stuck with 32-bit versions of Windows. I'd strongly recommend an upgrade to CS5 or CS5.5 at this point. Second, if you're going to run CS5 or CS5.5, skip the GTX 590: The MPE GPU acceleration supports only one single GPU - but the GTX 590 is a dual-GPU card. As a result, that GTX 590 goes half-unused in Premiere Pro. And with only one GPU active, the GTX 590 will perform slower than a GTX 570 that costs less than half the price of the 590. Heck, even a GTX 550 Ti would perform nearly as fast as a GTX 590 in CS5.x for far less money. Third, you have the bare minimum number of drives required by Adobe - in this case, the SSD for the OS and programs and a single HDD for everything else. I'd strongly recommend adding two or three additional hard drives to that system. The budget for the additional drives is freed by foregoing the astronomically expensive (and half-useless) dual-GPU card in favor of a relatively fast single-GPU card such as the GTX 570 or GTX 580.

June 23rd, 2011, 09:14 AM	#3
Brian Manning Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Dublin Ireland Posts: 57	Re: Check my specs please? PC for cs4 and HD Footage Thanks Randall for the solid advice. I dont make movies all day or anything like you guys and have never had need for more than my current hard drive which is 750 tb and is used for OS and video footage. I have 2x 1tb hard drives that I back up files on aswell. What is the idea behind having so many internal drives? I am trying to futureproof myself with this machine a bit.Presuming I get cs5.5. Also, any HD footage I have been given, I literally cant edit currently, even in draft quality mode.It is rediculous. Does after effects make use of the dual slot 590 card.Or future versions of premiere etc in the coming years that it would be handy to have the 590 onboard? So, you reckon a GTX580 single pci slot card.Not a quadro? Thanks again, Brian.

June 23rd, 2011, 10:37 AM	#4
Bart Walczak Major Player Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Warsaw/Poland Posts: 716	Re: Check my specs please? PC for cs4 and HD Footage So far After Effects does not make use of GPU in any way other than OpenGL preview, at least as far as I know, so really there's no point in spending cash on the card itself. Better save it for CS5.5 upgrade, because CS4 is very slow in comparison to CS5 and 5.5, especially in HD. __________________ Creative Impatience - The Solace of Simple Solutions. A few useful plugins for Adobe users, and my remarks on the tools and the craft in general.