Best NLE system for premiere pro2 at DVinfo.net

Pat Engh · February 3rd, 2006, 02:26 PM

Can anyone recommend a good turnkey system for PremierePro 2 for under 8 g's???
I'd like dual Processors.
Anyone heard good news about Alienware

Spike Spiegel · February 4th, 2006, 03:08 PM

if you have the knowhow, you can build a killer rig on your own rather than depending on prebuilt hiked up priced PC's... However, if you don't have the know-how, anything from Alienware, VoodooPC etc will do quite nicely, however, you should know that you can get similar performance for way cheaper if you do it on your own.

Glenn Chan · February 4th, 2006, 05:11 PM

Alienware is just premium-priced... you can get the same components (albiet not as good looking) for a lot less from another vendor. Or you could go with a turnkey vendor who specializes in building editing systems (i.e. promax... and a bunch of others).

If you know what you want but don't want to build it yourself, there are many companies that will custom-build a machine for you. Local computer stores and online vendors like monarchcomputer.com can do this. Doing it yourself isn't really much cheaper than this route (maybe $80).

You could also buy a prebuilt computer from Dell, HP, etc. Dell's pricing is tricky, as the base systems are really cheap and they make their money off overpriced upgrades. But you can get deals on a Dell and/or find an aggressive sales rep to get a good deal on one. Anyways, this is an option similar to monarchcomputer.com except the pricing structure is different. A possible advantage is that these computers may be on the compatibility lists of whatever you want to use. And Dell (and also eMachines) can also sometimes be cheaper than a do-it-yourself machine, because you can get good deals on the base system and throw in your own upgrades.
The downside to this route is that some parts are proprietary, and that support may not be that great.

Premiere Pro may be tricky if you want to throw a Matrox RTX100 or dual core AMD CPUs into your machine. I don't use Premiere (I like Vegas better by far) but from what I hear, some people have problem with AMD dual cores and Premiere. I may be wrong there.

2- resellerratings.com will give you an idea of the support you'd get from various companies.
The major OEMs (dell, etc.) are all about under 5.
Alienware is about 8.
Monarch is 9+.
The turnkey vendors have very low sample sizes... but presumably they will give you pretty good service + support.

Miguel Lombana · February 5th, 2006, 10:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pat Engh

Can anyone recommend a good turnkey system for PremierePro 2 for under 8 g's???
I'd like dual Processors.
Anyone heard good news about Alienware

I just moved to a new Dell Precision 380, didn't go dual processor, went dual core and also got the newest baddest chip on the planet (well last week of coarse) with the Pentium D-955ee. This one clocks at 1066mhz FSB and each core runs 3.4ghz, 2 gigs of RAM and just over 400 gigs of total drive space make the hottest machine that I've ever owned.

Now to answer your question, will it run PPro 2.0, absolutely and incredibly fast, this box was purchased according to the specs for editing HDV right off the Adobe site. Had I opted to edit raw HD files, I would have upgraded to the higher end workstations and likely a dual Xeon based system maybe even the new dual core Xeon's which are not cheap at over 1200 bucks a pop!

Bottom line, PPro 2.0 when editing DV is nothing more than 1.5 with a new spash screen and new options, my 2.8HT chip ran it just fine. If you're going to edit HDV you need a step up, if you're going to edit raw HD then you really need the biggest baddest box you can get.

I also agree with other posts where they state that you can put the box together much cheaper, however, I shopped for months for the new Dell, I got on their mailing list and waited for the 40% off email to come in and when it did my Visa card gladly came out. This box new is well over 3400 bucks, I got it for about 2100 with shipping. That's the key to Dell, shop and wait OR you can also get incredible deals on Dell Outlet. I outfitted every machine in my house which were previously all home builts with new Dells running 3.0ghz HT chips with atleast 160gig drives and 1gig of ram for about 350 bucks each which was cheaper than I could build them for.

Alienware is a nice competitor to Dell, they take pride in their case designs, with the super high performance aircraft paint and flashy options. DVMagazine did a review on some of the Alienware workstations a month or so ago and advised the new Dual core AMD chips were hotter than a firecracker and they recommended them. A lot more reshearch on my part advised me to stay away from AMD becuase of issues with some of my 3rd party I/O cards but none the less they were really hot on AMD. The same config of my Dell from AMD however was about 400 more list and the best discount I got from Alien was 5% with no outlet options on their site, so my money went to Dell.

One last thing I like about Dell is that I reformat all my boxes the minute I get them to get rid of all the crap they add to Windows. I like a clean install with no fluff, I go as far as removing many of the services that hog resources and get the box to hum. Dell ships all their boxes with an install CD wtih a Windows load that is clean and ready to rock. They also include ONE cd with all the drivers that you need to get a box back up and online fast. No driver hunting online to find reference drivers or trying to match up the drivers to the card you think you have. This is worth the extra money.

There are my 2 cents on 2 grand, take your time and do a lot of research, what worked for me may not work for you at all and with all the resources online now for this type of stuff, you can make a good educated call with only a little time. Drop by -

Anandtech.com/ : Tomshardware.com : Dell.com : Alienware.com : Cnet.com : PcMag.com : Tigerdirect.com and a host more...

Good luck,
MIGUEL

Pat Engh · February 7th, 2006, 10:00 AM

[QUOTE=Miguel Lombana]I just moved to a new Dell Precision 380, didn't go dual processor, went dual core and also got the newest baddest chip on the planet (well last week of coarse) with the Pentium D-955ee. This one clocks at 1066mhz FSB and each core runs 3.4ghz, 2 gigs of RAM and just over 400 gigs of total drive space make the hottest machine that I've ever owned.

Thanks for the Advice... I have been working with the Dell Precision 650 for a year and a half, using dual xeon processors 3.2... I can tell you I got a lemon, we've had to reformatt our Computer about 12 times, and blue screens occur very often, I don't use the Matrox card... Anyways it's been back and forth with Dell, and Adobe.... Dell says Call Adobe, Adobe says its issues with dell and noth ever gets accomplished... we can get the system up and running, but a month later it goes down... Now the boss wants a new system, I’ve been talking on the phone with Boxx Computers and the are willing to build me a configured system for a fairly good price. Anyone heard anything about them?

Jason Hamby · February 8th, 2006, 11:21 AM

Boxx is much more suited to the professional market, and I happen to like their case design for an office environment. I'd pick Alienware for gaming.

If you're uber-professional, then go with a HP xwXXXX over Dell.

I'd argue choose your capture card first, then research what box to install it in. Matrox, Avid, Canpous, Decklink, etc...

Pat Engh · February 8th, 2006, 12:46 PM

If you read my other thread you'll see I went with Boxx, no capture card, just stright firewire, I don't want any issues like I used to have with capture cards, especially all the crap I here about PP and the Matrox.

Johnathan Griffin · February 13th, 2006, 01:01 PM

I've had zero problems running Premiere Pro 1 on my AMD X2 4400 rig. It just flies. My temps are about 1-2 degrees cooler than they were on my old P4 3.0ghz, for both idle and load temps. And it still beats the snot out of my P4. Looking forward to running PP2 on my machine. This is of couse, without a capture card :)

miguel, are you saying the AMD X2's run hot, or they're a "hot" CPU to get to work with? :) I'd love to see a review pitting the Pentium D 955EE against the AMD FX-60. That'd be one helluva fight.

Miguel Lombana · February 13th, 2006, 03:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnathan Griffin

I've had zero problems running Premiere Pro 1 on my AMD X2 4400 rig. It just flies. My temps are about 1-2 degrees cooler than they were on my old P4 3.0ghz, for both idle and load temps. And it still beats the snot out of my P4. Looking forward to running PP2 on my machine. This is of couse, without a capture card :)

miguel, are you saying the AMD X2's run hot, or they're a "hot" CPU to get to work with? :) I'd love to see a review pitting the Pentium D 955EE against the AMD FX-60. That'd be one helluva fight.

The new intel 955 series is a HOT chip but yes in both regards, heat and speed. I found some reviews on tomshardware.com before I picked out my new system. The key for me was that the 900 series over the 800 series dual-core intel chips were HT capable something that lacked in the 800 series. This chip is the flagship at intel in the series and runs very nicely.

miguel

Elie Zakaria · February 13th, 2006, 10:05 PM

Matrox just annouced the AXIO LE full SD and HD editing solution for $4,495.00, simply an amazing solution...

http://www.matrox.com/video/press/releases/axiole.cfm

I have the full AXIO, but this thing is close to it's big brother in terms of features less the 10 bit uncompressed and it not depends on the GPU of your graphics card for 3D effects, so the more powerful you video card the more 3D effects you can do!

It's works best actually with an NVidia 7800 or even better with an ATI X1800.

Regards,
Elie

Neil Fisher · February 16th, 2006, 11:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jason Hamby

If you're uber-professional, then go with a HP xwXXXX over Dell.

i'd have to agree. i've got an hp xw8200 running dual 3.2GHz Xeons with a Nvidia Quadro 3450 and a Blackmagic Decklink HD Plus card with three 146GB 15k drives, and a 73GB 15k for the OS.

running premiere 1.5 and cineform, very stable. Have not yet reformated it either. And the HP support is outstanding , the uber huge and quite 120mm case fan died one day and HP and a new one there the next day.

Robert M Wright · February 22nd, 2006, 04:48 PM

I'm not in the computer building business anymore, but if anyone is interested, I might consider custom building a system. Turn key systems from the major manufacturers are pricy, and not usually the best in terms of hardware components (they do tend to try to lock you into a proprietary hardware design that makes upgrades difficult/expensive also). There isn't any profit in custom building mainstream PCs anymore (the work won't get you minimum wage even anymore!), so I wouldn't consider doing a low end one. I'm not really looking to do that sort of work again, but I do realize there's a need for it among video professionals who don't know computer hardware, yet need high-performance computers and want to go the PC route (rather than Apple).

February 3rd, 2006, 02:26 PM	#1
Pat Engh Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: West Palm Beach Posts: 75	Best NLE system for premiere pro2 Can anyone recommend a good turnkey system for PremierePro 2 for under 8 g's??? I'd like dual Processors. Anyone heard good news about Alienware

February 4th, 2006, 03:08 PM	#2
Spike Spiegel Major Player Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Los Angeles, CA Posts: 429	if you have the knowhow, you can build a killer rig on your own rather than depending on prebuilt hiked up priced PC's... However, if you don't have the know-how, anything from Alienware, VoodooPC etc will do quite nicely, however, you should know that you can get similar performance for way cheaper if you do it on your own.

February 4th, 2006, 05:11 PM	#3
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	Alienware is just premium-priced... you can get the same components (albiet not as good looking) for a lot less from another vendor. Or you could go with a turnkey vendor who specializes in building editing systems (i.e. promax... and a bunch of others). If you know what you want but don't want to build it yourself, there are many companies that will custom-build a machine for you. Local computer stores and online vendors like monarchcomputer.com can do this. Doing it yourself isn't really much cheaper than this route (maybe $80). You could also buy a prebuilt computer from Dell, HP, etc. Dell's pricing is tricky, as the base systems are really cheap and they make their money off overpriced upgrades. But you can get deals on a Dell and/or find an aggressive sales rep to get a good deal on one. Anyways, this is an option similar to monarchcomputer.com except the pricing structure is different. A possible advantage is that these computers may be on the compatibility lists of whatever you want to use. And Dell (and also eMachines) can also sometimes be cheaper than a do-it-yourself machine, because you can get good deals on the base system and throw in your own upgrades. The downside to this route is that some parts are proprietary, and that support may not be that great. Premiere Pro may be tricky if you want to throw a Matrox RTX100 or dual core AMD CPUs into your machine. I don't use Premiere (I like Vegas better by far) but from what I hear, some people have problem with AMD dual cores and Premiere. I may be wrong there. 2- resellerratings.com will give you an idea of the support you'd get from various companies. The major OEMs (dell, etc.) are all about under 5. Alienware is about 8. Monarch is 9+. The turnkey vendors have very low sample sizes... but presumably they will give you pretty good service + support.

February 7th, 2006, 10:00 AM	#5
Pat Engh Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: West Palm Beach Posts: 75	[QUOTE=Miguel Lombana]I just moved to a new Dell Precision 380, didn't go dual processor, went dual core and also got the newest baddest chip on the planet (well last week of coarse) with the Pentium D-955ee. This one clocks at 1066mhz FSB and each core runs 3.4ghz, 2 gigs of RAM and just over 400 gigs of total drive space make the hottest machine that I've ever owned. Thanks for the Advice... I have been working with the Dell Precision 650 for a year and a half, using dual xeon processors 3.2... I can tell you I got a lemon, we've had to reformatt our Computer about 12 times, and blue screens occur very often, I don't use the Matrox card... Anyways it's been back and forth with Dell, and Adobe.... Dell says Call Adobe, Adobe says its issues with dell and noth ever gets accomplished... we can get the system up and running, but a month later it goes down... Now the boss wants a new system, I’ve been talking on the phone with Boxx Computers and the are willing to build me a configured system for a fairly good price. Anyone heard anything about them?

February 8th, 2006, 11:21 AM	#6
Jason Hamby Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: San Diego, CA Posts: 26	Boxx is much more suited to the professional market, and I happen to like their case design for an office environment. I'd pick Alienware for gaming. If you're uber-professional, then go with a HP xwXXXX over Dell. I'd argue choose your capture card first, then research what box to install it in. Matrox, Avid, Canpous, Decklink, etc...

February 8th, 2006, 12:46 PM	#7
Pat Engh Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: West Palm Beach Posts: 75	If you read my other thread you'll see I went with Boxx, no capture card, just stright firewire, I don't want any issues like I used to have with capture cards, especially all the crap I here about PP and the Matrox.

February 13th, 2006, 01:01 PM	#8
Johnathan Griffin New Boot Join Date: Dec 2005 Posts: 11	I've had zero problems running Premiere Pro 1 on my AMD X2 4400 rig. It just flies. My temps are about 1-2 degrees cooler than they were on my old P4 3.0ghz, for both idle and load temps. And it still beats the snot out of my P4. Looking forward to running PP2 on my machine. This is of couse, without a capture card :) miguel, are you saying the AMD X2's run hot, or they're a "hot" CPU to get to work with? :) I'd love to see a review pitting the Pentium D 955EE against the AMD FX-60. That'd be one helluva fight.

February 13th, 2006, 10:05 PM	#10
Elie Zakaria Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 38	Matrox just annouced the AXIO LE full SD and HD editing solution for $4,495.00, simply an amazing solution... http://www.matrox.com/video/press/releases/axiole.cfm I have the full AXIO, but this thing is close to it's big brother in terms of features less the 10 bit uncompressed and it not depends on the GPU of your graphics card for 3D effects, so the more powerful you video card the more 3D effects you can do! It's works best actually with an NVidia 7800 or even better with an ATI X1800. Regards, Elie

February 22nd, 2006, 04:48 PM	#12
Robert M Wright Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Minnesota (USA) Posts: 2,171	I'm not in the computer building business anymore, but if anyone is interested, I might consider custom building a system. Turn key systems from the major manufacturers are pricy, and not usually the best in terms of hardware components (they do tend to try to lock you into a proprietary hardware design that makes upgrades difficult/expensive also). There isn't any profit in custom building mainstream PCs anymore (the work won't get you minimum wage even anymore!), so I wouldn't consider doing a low end one. I'm not really looking to do that sort of work again, but I do realize there's a need for it among video professionals who don't know computer hardware, yet need high-performance computers and want to go the PC route (rather than Apple).