Need help finding the right CS5 Prem Pro PC. Please help

Gents:

Based on recent developments, I’ve finally decided to have a PC specifically built to for an upcoming upgrade from Premiere Pro CS3.2 to CS5. Since I can’t build it myself, would you please be willing to offer some recommendations for online solutions that are: safe, reliable, reputable, reasonably priced, fair and offer some kind of a guaranty or warranty?

I’m thinking that a custom configured system from one of the major manufacturer would be overly pricey part per part and offer limited choices. My budget is roughly $1,000-1,200.

For parts, (considering I don’t want to spend $1,500 or $2,000 for a top of the line or upper end machine) please list in detail what combination would you choose if you were in my shoes that would meet the following goals/criteria:

It doesn’t have to have the best and speediest components, just be reliable, stable, yield smooth playback quality and render well at a reasonable speed. I’m not a power user by any means so it will receive moderate use, the CPU won’t be maxed out.

What questions should I have asked or important considerations that I should keep in mind when making my choice?

Another objective is not only to buy a full-fledged & dedicated CS 5 machine for myself but another unit with lesser firepower that my wife can use and also function as acceptable back-up in case something goes wrong with the first.

I noticed “Dell 7 days of deals” started today. I’m not yet attracted to what they have but wanted to just list the core specs of a couple of their “deal” systems and leave them to you experts to critique and offer suggestions as to what I should do, not do, why and steer me along the right path.

1) Studio XPS 7100: AMD Phenom II X4 945/ATI Radeon HD5670 1 Gig VRAM/8 gigs memory.
2) Studio 8300: i5-2300 @ 2.8ghz/ATI Radeon HD5450 1 gig VRAM/6 gigs ram

Are ATI Radeon cards up to the demands of CS5 or are Nvidas card the way to go? How does one differentiate on card from the next within NVIDA?

I was wondering how a variation of or an upgrading of these key components would potentially fit my needs, expectations and budget. I had asked a similar question about 6 months ago however the parts market and choices has changed,

Thanks for any and all help offered. Please contribute and get this discussion started!

IMO, the minimum for capable, smooth performance with CS5, you should think in terms of Intel i7, 12 GB RAM, and an Adobe recommended nVidea graphics card for MPE. Also, Win 7 64 PRO would be best OS in order to enable 24 GB RAM at a later date.
To cut costs, the way I've done it is to get a good i7 system (Dell XPS will do) with minimal RAM, system drive only, and low end graphics card. Then add the 12 GB RAM, extra hard drives, RAID drives, nVidea card, BR burners, etc. yourself. You could even do it in stages as the funds became available, but you would end up eventually with a capable system that you could even continue to add to & reconfigure for greater performance at a later date.

by no means am i an expert but building a pc is very easy. I'm currently building a system that is going to be supper fast and so far I have invested $1500. What I got was for a case is the Antec DF-85 VERY big case lots of room cost is $159. I needed the room in the case for the liquid cooling system cost is $300-500 for my particular system. For the motherboard I went with the ASUS MAXIMUS IV EXTREME at the moment its the highest end motherboard with all the bells and whistles cost $364. Now for Graphics i went with the GeForce GTX 570 but after doing some reading i understand CS5 doesn't support the card for cuda but there is a hack to fix that. For the CPU i went with Intel's i7 Sandy Bridge 2600k 3.2Ghz this is the latest chip from Intel on liquid cooling this chip can be over clocked to 5.0Ghz. Because of the Motherboard i chose it didn't come with a Fire Wire port i had to get a PCI card. Now if your still not interested in taking on the task i recommend a company called Cyber Power Pc i bought my first custom computer from there 3 years ago and its still running strong.

Need help finding the right CS5 Prem Pro PC. Please help

Gents:

Based on recent developments, I’ve finally decided to have a PC specifically built to for an upcoming upgrade from Premiere Pro CS3.2 to CS5. Since I can’t build it myself, would you please be willing to offer some recommendations for online solutions that are: safe, reliable, reputable, reasonably priced, fair and offer some kind of a guaranty or warranty?

I’m thinking that a custom configured system from one of the major manufacturer would be overly pricey part per part and offer limited choices. My budget is roughly $1,000-1,200.

For parts, (considering I don’t want to spend $1,500 or $2,000 for a top of the line or upper end machine) please list in detail what combination would you choose if you were in my shoes that would meet the following goals/criteria:

It doesn’t have to have the best and speediest components, just be reliable, stable, yield smooth playback quality and render well at a reasonable speed. I’m not a power user by any means so it will receive moderate use, the CPU won’t be maxed out.

What questions should I have asked or important considerations that I should keep in mind when making my choice?

Another objective is not only to buy a full-fledged & dedicated CS 5 machine for myself but another unit with lesser firepower that my wife can use and also function as acceptable back-up in case something goes wrong with the first.

I noticed “Dell 7 days of deals” started today. I’m not yet attracted to what they have but wanted to just list the core specs of a couple of their “deal” systems and leave them to you experts to critique and offer suggestions as to what I should do, not do, why and steer me along the right path.

1) Studio XPS 7100: AMD Phenom II X4 945/ATI Radeon HD5670 1 Gig VRAM/8 gigs memory.
2) Studio 8300: i5-2300 @ 2.8ghz/ATI Radeon HD5450 1 gig VRAM/6 gigs ram

Are ATI Radeon cards up to the demands of CS5 or are Nvidas card the way to go? How does one differentiate on card from the next within NVIDA?

I was wondering how a variation of or an upgrading of these key components would potentially fit my needs, expectations and budget. I had asked a similar question about 6 months ago however the parts market and choices has changed,

Thanks for any and all help offered. Please contribute and get this discussion started!


Bruce:

Am I correct that your budget is for a CPU box only and includes the cost of Win7 but the upgrade from CS3 to CS5 will be separate? Am I also correct that you shoot with a single Canon XHA1 and have been using CS3/Encore to produce a local access tv show, working with one or two tracks of HDV? Will you be moving some of your current system's components (hard drives, dvd burner, etc) over into the new box?

If so, it means you can get by with more modest hardware than you would need if you were working with AVCHD footage and/or doing multi-cam editing.

However,you are correct that the two Dell systems you noted are far too modest for your needs. If they are like most Dell systems, they will have power supply units that are small. Also, system cooling efficiency in these boxes tends to drop off greatly as you add components to the box. Space in the box may be very limited, as well, You would find future incremental upgrading very difficult if not impossible.

While I have not been paying close attention to off-the-shelf major brands --- though I do realize that not everybody can or wants to assemble their own system --- I can suggest some general guidelines for what to look for in a system and what to avoid.

1. For a good overview of what you need for editing HDV (as opposed to, say, AVCHD) look at Harm Millard's posting here: Adobe Forums: System requirements for Premiere Pro CS5 (http://forums.adobe.com/thread/810750?tstart=0). This is a good explanation of relating hardware needs to editing projects under CS5.

2. I think you will want an I/7 processor for a couple of reasons. One is that you need hyperthreading to be able get many of the advantages of the upgrade to CS5. WIthout the hyperthreading, systems with Intel i/3 and i/5 chips and systems based on AMD processors will be muuuuccchhhhhhhhh slower and more less smooth when editing even HDV in CS5. Likewise, they will be slow when transcoding.

There is a long thread in this forum which discusses the merits of the new Sandybridge I7 systems and suggests that they might be the most economical systems to look for.

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/non-linear-editing-pc/489424-i7-980x-now-wait-sandybridge-6.html

Although this thread has a lot of discussion for self-assemblers and over-clockers, the eventual assessment seems to be a less expensive I7-2600K with 8 gb of DDR2 RAM can give you performance with CS5 apps on par with more expensive i7/9xx systems using more (and more expensive) DDR3 RAM.. I don't know about the availability of I7 2600k systems but be sure you are looking at ones with the "k" designation. For editing with CS5 you want a 2600k rather than a plain 2600 processor.

3. As I recall, you are editing broadcast programs (presumably on deadline) and (if I recall correctly from other posts) are moving to CS5 for better encoding from HD to DVD. To get the benefits of moving up to CS5, you want and need hardware/GPU accelerated "Mercury Playback Engine" which you only get with nVidia cards. (Specifically, CUDA cards with a least 1 gb of on-board RAM, preferably DDR5 RAM). CS5 will run with ATI-based graphics displays but you can't get the transcoding and playback benefits of hardware enabled MPE.. Some people have posted about being happy with software-only MPE and editing on minimally equipped laptops. I find those set-ups intolerably sluggish for editing HD and for transcoding. For specs on an upgrade video card (if your system does not come with one), look for an nVidia GTX 4xx or 5xx chipset and 1 gb of RAM, preferrably DDR5. The name or specs will say "Fermi" somewhere in the title. I think I recently read that NewEgg had MPE-usable GTX 5xx and 4xx cards for around $150.

Also, even if the system you buy has integrated graphics (which you can disable), you want the system to have a PICE16 slot and a power supply big enough to allow you to run an nVida GTX 4xx or 5xx card. Integrated graphics use your system RAM rather than their own and can really gum up your use of CS5, so you defintiely want to shut it off and use a card. The power supply is important because PCIe graphics cards will need a couple hundreds watts of power from your PSU which may be more than some units can supply.

Incidentally, the so-called "hack" for enabling "non-certified" l nVidia cards is nothing more than adding the name of your card to a list. Anybody, who can find a file on the computer and write an e-mail, can do this.

4. Be sure that you are getting a 64-bit version of Windows 7, at least "Home Premium" or "Professional." CS5 does not run under the 32 bit versions (such as Win 7 Starter Edition" which major brand computers may ship with less expensive systems.)

Hope this helps. If you are interested in better information on Sandybridge-based editing systems, you might try a PM to Scott Chichelli, a forum member who is now building Sandybridge systems for video editors..

Oh, and regarding your question about differentiating between nVidia cards, here are my suggestions. For your needs with editing HDV, you probably want one of the least expensive cards with an nVidia GTX4xx or 5xx chipset and with at least 1 gig of RAM, preferably DDR5 ram. There is a long running thread about nVidia cards in this forum. I would scan through the last few pages to see what folks have to sya about the cards (and maybe find out if GTS cards would work). Using those recommendations, I would go to Newegg.com and go through the reviews/feedback on the particular chipset cards. Obviously, you avoid the ones with bad reviews and high numbers of reports of defects and failures.

By the way, another thing to be careful about in considering off-the shelf computer systems: many of the cases are pretty small on the inside. A lot of them (particularly the recent Dell cases I have seen) do not have enough room between the the back of the case (where you mount cards) the front drive cages for you to be able to fit a PCIe 16 video card. Both the ATI and nVidia based cards are long and too thick for those spaces..

Bruce,

I am one of the posters who made many posts in the thread that Jay linked to. You do not want to go with anything less than an Intel i7 CPU for CS5 nowadays. And if you do go i7, go with either an i7-950/960 processor with an X58 motherboard or an i7-2600(K) processor with a P67 motherboard (but keep in mind that in my testing the i7-950/960 needs to be heavily overclocked just to significantly surpass a stock-speed i7-2600(K) when both systems are equipped with identical two-7200rpm-disk RAID 0 arrays and identical disks on onboard Intel SATA RAID controllers with regards to overall performance). I did experiment with disabling HyperThreading on my previous i7-950 system and 12GB of RAM, and found that the overall performance in Bill's and Harm's PPBM5 benchmark test degraded from 311 seconds to 345 seconds (with the RAM running at DDR3-1066 speed) -- around 10%. So, if you go with an i5-2500 instead of an i7-2600, you'd end up with a system that's around 20% to 25% slower in terms of overall PPBM5 benchmark times, assuming that both systems are identically equipped and are tuned optimally; that's because the Sandy Bridge i5's have only 6MB of L3 cache versus 8MB in the Sandy Bridge i7's. However, the two i5-2500(K) systems on the PPBM5 list also had very slow MPE GPU-mode performance compared to the i7-2600K, suggesting that something else might have bottlenecked those two systems; for example, the lone (overclocked) i5-2500K on the list was crippled by the combination of 4GB of RAM and the use of version 5.0.0 -- the very first release -- of CS5, resulting in abnormally slow MPEG-2 DVD encoding times and MPE software-only performance.

Please note that I did not include the i7-970 in my recommendations: Despite having six cores and 12 threads and a new lower price, it still costs twice as much money for a level of stock-speed performance that's only slightly higher than what a stock-speed i7-2600 can achieve.

As for the GPU, Nvidia-based GPUs with 1GB or more RAM (especially DDR5 RAM) are recommended (as Jay stated), provided that you perform the software TXT file tweak described (you add the given GeForce or Quadro card to the cuda_supported_cards.txt file if the card in question isn't already on the list). ATi/AMD graphics cards cannot use MPE's GPU accelerated mode at all; they will run in software-only mode (as will Nvidia cards with less than 896MB of RAM or without CUDA support).

And because of your $1,000 to $1,200 budget, a hardware PCI-e RAID controller card is out of consideration at this time. But if you do want the capability of adding one in the near future, the older i7-9xx/X58 platform is better suited to this use although the i7-2xxx/P67 platform is more than acceptable provided that the motherboard that you choose has a secondary PCI-e x16-length slot that runs electrically in x8 mode. That is because even the very fastest of the currently available Nvidia GPUs do not take full advantage of x8 bandwidth, let alone x16.

And whatever system you configure for CS5, don't go to the big-name brands of pre-built PCs such as Dell or HP: These big-name companies typically have their systems housed in cases with extremely poor airflow and are seriously cramped on the inside, and make it very difficult if not impossible to configure a system with even the minimum recommended components for video editing (such as three or more hard drives). Instead, go to a company that specializes in video editing systems and custom-configure a system there.

Hope this helps.

My first quick follow-up is to ask a couple of questions.

Thanks to all of the extensive comments, suggestions and personal experience offered to date which was generous, helpful and greatly appreciated.

As I digest this and other material more questions may arise because I want to get it right the first time!

1) Keeping in mind I'm not a power user, can I get by on a secondary system with an:

XPS 9100 system with an i7 930 (2.8 ghz/ 8 Mb cache)

8-12 gigs of ram

Only 2 hard drives total will fit into the case not 3. I'd have to install/buy the second seperately.

525W power supply- Dell choice

ATI Radeon HD5670, 5770 or 5870

2) Is there a chart somewhere online where I can directly compare the equivalent models from Nvidia and ATI Radeon? Does one exist? What Nividia model be equivalent to the 5770 or 5870?

3) How vital is having that 3rd hard drive as opposed to being limited to two?

Would the above system run acceptably as it's only intended to be my secondary and back-up workstation?


More to come.

Thanks so much.

My first quick follow-up is to ask a couple of questions.

Thanks to all of the extensive comments, suggestions and personal experience offered to date which was generous, helpful and greatly appreciated.

As I digest this and other material more questions may arise because I want to get it right the first time!

1) Keeping in mind I'm not a power user, can I get by on a secondary system with an:

XPS 9100 system with an i7 930 (2.8 ghz/ 8 Mb cache)

8-12 gigs of ram

Only 2 hard drives total will fit into the case not 3. I'd have to install/buy the second seperately.

525W power supply- Dell choice

ATI Radeon HD5670, 5770 or 5870

2) Is there a chart somewhere online where I can directly compare the equivalent models from Nvidia and ATI Radeon? Does one exist? What Nividia model be equivalent to the 5770 or 5870?

3) How vital is having that 3rd hard drive as opposed to being limited to two?

Would the above system run acceptably as it's only intended to be my secondary and back-up workstation?


More to come.

Thanks so much.

In the case of CS5, even the fastest ATi card is nearly as slow as the slowest of the GeForce cards with less than 512MB of RAM. Hence, in software-only mode, the GPU is largely irrelevant; any difference in the performance between the two manufacturers of GPUs is strictly due to the drivers.

And Dell does not currently offer an Nvidia card even as an option for that system.

I believe that the XPS 9100 will take 3 SATA HD in the case (I have the previous version- XPS 435), plus an outboard eSATA drive, plus USB drives, plus you could use a WD USB3 external drive (almost as fast as the eSATA connection). A common HD config is to have a SATA system drive, a RAID 0 config (for all media), then can have an external eSATA/USB 3 drive for the project files, render exports, etc.
I would rec getting the tri RAM configuration with minimum of 12 GB- expandable to 24GB with Win7 64 Pro.
Adobe Mercury Playback Engine will utilize only select nVidea CUDA GPUs.
I would rec not spending any extra on the ATI card because if you ever endup wanting to use MPE in hardware mode, you will be junking the ATI card anyway.
BTW, I have been through several generations of Dell XPS boxes that I have configured for HD video editing, and have been quite satisfied with all of them.
The 525 w power supply is fine- just watch out re adding an nVidea CUDA graphics card. Be sure you check the power specs because some of them can draw as much as 200w, and others that will do the job just as well for MPE are down at 100-120w.

"2) Is there a chart somewhere online where I can directly compare the equivalent models from Nvidia and ATI Radeon? Does one exist? What nVidia model be equivalent to the 5770 or 5870?"

Well, There are a lot of charts on sites like Tom's Hardware and gamer sites, but I do not think they will tell you much that is useful for CS5.

And, again, as everybody is saying, ATI chipsets simply do not support MPE playback and etc. in CS5 so there is no equivalency there.

Now, AFAIK, if the Dell has connectors to power an ATI "crossfire" card, those connectors will also hook to an nVidia "SLI" card so there is no need to worry about equivalency on this aspect. They all run in PCIe16x slots and that is what you want.

Probably the thing you want to focus on is the size of the cards, but I cannot recall any specific sites or charts with comparisons of sizes. Actually, it takes some effort to find physical dimensions of cards and you pretty much have to identify specific cards in order to locate that kind of information. NewEgg is a good place to start because it will help you indentify a number of cards in you price range. You have to use a search engine like google to try to find the actual dimensions for your candidate cards. As long as the nVidia chipset card has 1 gb of RAM and CUDA, and is no large than either of the ATI cards you mentioned, you should be fine.

By the way, have you searched on the Dell website to see if they have any nVidia cards? If, for example, Dell offers an EVGA GTX470 as an upgrade, you could price it on NewEgg and probably find it for a lot less money. You could go to the EVGA website and maybe find the dimensions and compare that with other, less expensive EVGA "Fermi" cards.

I just noticed that NewEgg does have some dimension specs for some cards. Here is an EVGA card based on the nVidia 450 chipset: :

Newegg.com - EVGA 01G-P3-1450-TR GeForce GTS 450 (Fermi) 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130572)

This card is $129 and will work very nicely for editing with HDV (which has much more modest needs than AVCHD). Don't know if it will fit in an XPS9100 case but it is worth checking out.

if you want to waste money buy a dell... if you want to save your self a great deal of money build your own..... I built my comp today and it is amazing and i spent around $1600-$1700 and i went with a lot of the most expensive stuff. I bet if dell was to offer the parts i put in they would charge $3000

https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=15778145

NOTE: get more RAM then what is on that page.... i reused some ram i already have

The only reason my comp cost so much was due to the liquid Cooling but in the configuration that is on that link the computer will run

Please bear with me as I continue trying to fine-tune this adventure & thanks for pitching in with valuable contributions as things progress.

Can’t but help wondering why Adobe certifies so few cards considering all the models that Nvidia makes by themselves which leads into the following questions:

1) Do all of their cards (except for a select few) require the hack, can a relative novice/non techie do it themselves or is there a software program that one can launch and let it roll? Do the 4xxx and 5xx series require the hack too?

2) Is it mandatory to have a GPU accelerated card to effectively use CS5 or can a non-certified or hacked card successfully run “software” only mode? What is the difference in rendering/ encoding speed between those 2 modes?

3) Even within any given card model, if you type it into Amazon.com for example to compare prices, dozens if not hundreds of choices pop-up. How do I know which variation to choose? What are the considerations here?

4) Which of these 3 CPU’s would you buy and why? What is the prime advantage?

a) i7-2600k-3.4 Ghz
b) i7-930 at 2.8 Ghz
c) i7-950 at 3.06 Ghz

Which of the above offers the best price to performance ratio?
Is there much of a material difference?


5) Where can I find the so-called “long Nvidia card” thread?

6) How much maximum should I pay for 12 gigs of DDR3 memory? Preferable brands or specs to keep in mind??

7) In regards to the power supply and PC case/housing what recommendations and suggestions would you make that are reasonably priced, reliable will have enough room for air circulation and could handle 3 internal hard drives, firewire card and a burner?

8) Is it essential or a luxury to have a video card that has dual cooling fans and is
overclocked? How much more performance is squeezed out by overclocking?
Not to be omitted is the motherboard. What did you buy and what factors are important?

Sorry for the question barrage however I’m still negotiating the learning curve. Thanks!!

I will try to answer as many questions as i can..... i will re post with the results of my new system (should be running this weekend) but from what i have read it should be amazing

1.) you have to do the hack and its very easy to do. here is a video on how to do it
YouTube - How to Unlock Adobe Premiere CS5 to use almost any NVIDIA graphics card with CUDA acceleration. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj4ERi5t_Eo)

2.) its not mandatory to have but i would HIGHLY advice getting one. right now i have a PC that doesn't run CUDA and its horrible especially when you add fades and different effects.

3.) i wouldn't buy parts amazon. id recommended newegg. some of the better brands are EVGA and Asus. try to get a card that's not "Super Clocked" its a waste of money you can over clock it your self in 5 minutes and achieve the something

4.) it seems the 2600k its going to be the best right now. from what I read above just to get the 950 to preform the same as the 2600k you have to over clock it like crazy..... if your willing to spend a little more money on a motherboard you can get one that has a "Auto overclock"

5.) cant answer

6.) you can get 12gb of ram from $130-300 or more

7.) as far as power supply i went with 1000w. in my particular situation i needed a case that was going to be big enough for a water cooling system (Id recommend one at-least for CPU) i went with the Antec DF-85 its a fairly inexpensive case and its nice

8) The cooler you can get any PC part the better. overclocking makes thing faster and smoother. But when you overclock you create more heat that's why i use water cooling.

9.) when looking at motherboards the first thing you need to look for is the chip set the i7 2600k is a 1155. the next thing is the options. i went with the ASUS maximums iv because i has the most options it has a click-able BIOS, you can control it from another PC via usb or if you have an Iphone you can also monitor it from there as well.


I would recommenced spending sometime on Newegg or a place like that and read reviews find out what people think about the product they received. Hope this helped let me know if you have any other questions be glad to help

Bruce,

I have replied on the other forum.

Tom,

FYI, a heavily overclocked i7-2600K @ 4.7 GHz is still slower than a moderately overclocked i7-920 @ 3.7 GHz. See PPBM5 Benchmark (http://ppbm5.com/index.html)

Also read Adobe Forums: Tapeless workflows and Sandy Bridge or... (http://forums.adobe.com/thread/779431?tstart=0)

Bruce,

I have replied on the other forum.

Tom,

FYI, a heavily overclocked i7-2600K @ 4.7 GHz is still slower than a moderately overclocked i7-920 @ 3.7 GHz. See PPBM5 Benchmark (http://ppbm5.com/index.html)

Also read Adobe Forums: Tapeless workflows and Sandy Bridge or... (http://forums.adobe.com/thread/779431?tstart=0)

That's only because of the nearly $2,000 disk subsystems (such as a hardware RAID card that costs well over $1,000 and 10 or more 1TB hard drives) that those top i7-920 or 950 systems are equipped with. On a more modest disk subsystem (a simple two-disk RAID 0 on an onboard Intel ICH or PCH RAID), neither the i7-920/950 nor the i7-2600K performs particularly well (or put it this way, both platforms perform significantly slower than they should) even when extremely heavily overclocked. Based on the systems that I submitted to the PPBM5 site, I have demonstrated the biggest failing of the integrated Intel ICH RAID: The ICH/PCH itself cannot handle the traffic demanded by the on-board controller, and there is way too much back-and-forth switching going on within the ICH/PCH itself. And that's not to mention that the ICH/PCH SATA controller has to handle both the OS drive and the working RAID array at the same time, which degrades performance further due in large part to the on-board controllers' misuse of the CPU.

Randall,

Thanks for emphasizing a point I have been making for a long time.

Your PC is only as fast as the weakest link. Just today I made this comparison:

Have you ever watched a Formula 1 race and wondered how they can achieve those miraculous lap times with mind staggering speeds?

The reason is actually pretty simple. All the properties, features and capabilities of a Formula 1 car are finely balanced and create a synergy that enables them to achieve those impressive speeds. They have the engine power to accelerate very quickly, they have the gearbox to shift gears very quickly and maintain maximum torque, they have the brakes that enable them to brake very quickly and at the last moment before cornering and they have the grip from their suspension, tires and down force to keep the car on the ideal track.

As long as everything is finely tuned and in balance with all the other components you have the capability to win races. Of course external circumstances, like rain and temperatures have enormous impact on race results, using slicks or intermediates or wet tires have a huge impact, as do the adjustments to front wing that are required to keep everything properly balanced. And of course, if your grip is gone or one of your gears is malfunctioning or your tires are gone or your brakes are overheating, you can no longer win.

A computer is not really different. To get optimal performance, all the components need to be properly balanced. The computer is only as fast as the slowest component. And the computer is also faced with external circumstances, like rain and temperatures of the track, that you have to live with, but that have a major impact on performance. That is the codec of the material you want to edit. Then also take into consideration that the different circuits in Formula 1 require different setups for the cars, Barcelona, Spa, Monte Carlo, Monza, all require different tuning and setup of the car. Similar to the editing workflows of an editor. Long form or short form, multicam or not, few or many tracks, DL to AE, all these aspects have an impact on performance.

There is a - marketing driven - tendency to invest in the fastest or newest CPU on the market, without looking at the balance. The rest of the system setup is often overlooked and my argument is that you need to look at the overall picture in the situation and with the codecs the editor need to handle.

There is no simple answer. Again take Formula 1 racing and the tuning they need to do before a race on a specific track with specific weather conditions.

Your remark is utterly valid, but people often forget that with faster CPU's, hardware assisted MPE, lots of memory, the new bottleneck is disk I/O, as demonstrated in the results page.

Thanks. There is no free ride, after all.

And speaking of BFTB (Bang-For-The-Buck), there are several astronomically expensive systems that truly underperform severely for such a high price. For example, the third-slowest system in the PPBM5 list has an estimated BFTB rating of a measly 0.1 (compared to the 14.1 score of your system) because some of the components in that system (especially the memory) are very expensive at their current street prices. The absolute slowest system (total time wise) on that same list has a BFTB score that's only slightly better, at around 0.2. (It is noted that both of those expensive slowpokes have old, nearly obsolete CPU's that still sell for a much higher price than what they are actually worth; for example, each of the Xeon E5405's in that system with the absolute poorest BFTB score still costs as much money as an i7-950.)

With that said, my current i7-2600K system delivers a significantly better BFTB rating than I could ever extract from my previous i7-950 system unless I spend another $1,500 USD (total) on a discrete RAID controller plus additional SATA or SAS disks for the 950. And with the economy as bad as it currently is and with my unemployment continuing for the foreseeable future, that's not an expense that I would be undertaking any time soon.

"1) Do all of their cards (except for a select few) require the hack, can a relative novice/non techie do it themselves or is there a software program that one can launch and let it roll? Do the 4xxx and 5xx series require the hack too?"

Okay, 1(a) --- Can a novice do the hack?
Some can. Some cannot.
Can you open a text file?
Can you type your name?
Can you save a file?

Let me try to make this as explicit as I can.

On Windows, you open a text file called ""cuda_supported_cards.txt." (You do know how to find a file on a hard drive, right?) Use Notepad or WordPad. (You can use a wordprocessing program to do this but you have to know how to do a "save as" an ASCII text file. If you do not know how to do that, just use WordPad or NotePad. You can find them under Programs - Accessories.) When you open the text file, you will see a list of Adobe's certified cards. It really is just a text list. It is only a text list. If you have a card that is not already listed, you just type in the name. Let us say you bought a GTX 4xx or 5xx card (and remember, you must hava CUDA enabled card with at least 1 gb of RAM. Remember the minimum specs we recited above?). Let's say, you bought a GTX450 card. You just type "GeForce GTX 450." Save the file. You are done. That's it.

I realize that this seems unbelievably difficult to some people. It will be terribly frightening for others.
If this seems difficult or frightening, if you need a special software program to type your name, you should buy a GTX card with a chipset on Adobe's certified list like the GTX 470.

"Do all the GTX 4 & 5 cards require the hack? "
No. The GTX 470 is on the list already.

"5) Where can I find the so-called “long Nvidia card” thread?"
Right here in the Adobe Creative Suite forum on DVinfo. There are now a couple of them:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-creative-suite/482804-best-graphics-card-cs5-5.html


http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-creative-suite/477968-how-make-premiere-cs5-work-gtx-295-possibly-all-200-gpus-17.html

The last one is the thread which disclosed the list modification hack to us a year ago and it continued to have posts until a month ago.


"8) Is it essential or a luxury to have a video card that has dual cooling fans and is
overclocked?"

It is neither essential nor a luxury. Anyway, you do not need to worry about such things. You are are looking for a machine to edit one or two tracks of HDV from your new Canon XHA1, right? For that, a modest card like a GTX 450 will be fine. As will the Dell system. Did you read Harm's posting on relating hardware to editing needs? If you have not, read it and it should reassure you.

If you want to overclock, then you absolutely should not buy the Dell XPS900 you were looking at.. Dell systems are simply not set-up for overclocking and do not have the case cooling you would need if you want to get into overclocking. Overcocking will void the warranty. You do not need overclocking for what you want to do.

"How much more performance is squeezed out by overclocking?"

Potentially, a lot unless you buy a Dell system. If you want some idea of the kinds of results that overclocking and systems arrangements can make,, start with the PPBM 5 website to see test results of various configurations. PPBM stands for Premiere Pro Bench Mark.

One final comment on my 2600K, Harm:

My heavily overclocked 4.7GHz result is now on the list. Although it loses out to your moderately-overclocked 920 and even to ADK's overclocked 2600K by a slim margin, I'm pretty happy with the results even if I am content with settling for a runner-up position just because I did not want to spend much more than I paid for the entire vehicle to squeeze every last bit of performance from the vehicle. What's more, I achieved such a result with less-expensive graphics and disk components than the ADK system did with their system's components; for example, at current street prices the graphics and disk components that were actually used in the PPBM5 tests on my system cost less than $400 USD while those that were used in the ADK system still cost more than $1,000 USD. Had I stuck with the i7-950, I would have had to spend much, much more for the extras just to even come close to, let alone surpass, what I achieved with the i7-2600K. And that's not to mention that the overclocked 950 would have had to guzzle more fuel (power consumption, and thus the cost of electricity) than the heavily-overclocked 2600K to achieve such a result; for example, if the heavily-overclocked 2600K averages 30 MPG (or 12.8 km/l for those of you who are using metric measures), the moderately-overclocked 950 would have averaged only about 22 MPG (9.4 km/l) if I were to squeeze every last bit of performance from the latter platform.

And now, back to the OP's choice of a system:

I agree with Jay, in this case. That Dell XPS 900 (which the OP misstated as the XPS 9100) is less than optimal for CS5. Not only does Dell not offer anything but previous-generation ATi (AMD) graphics cards with that system, but Dell has "gimped" its X58 motherboards to prevent any intentional overclocking or voltage tweaking at all whatsoever.

Randall,

Your dark horse appears to have a lot of Arabian blood. It really is fast and your BFTB score is now 10.8.

Congrats.

On another note: Sander just submitted his results, once with the video card at PCIe-16x and once at PCIe-8x and the differences were huge: 5 versus 10 seconds on the rendering time. Around rank # 39 (216 s) and # 53 (237 s).

Randall --

The misstatement actually was mine. Bruce was indeed referring to the Dell XPS 9100.


Bruce:

If you want to get a Dell XPS 9100, this is what I would suggest for your consideration, assuming you've got other accessories to move over from your old system (e.g., Blue :Ray burner, additional hard disks, etc.)

CPU = get the stock I7/930 processor. An I7/950 would be nicer but, AFAIK, Dell does not give you that choice for this model computer.

RAM = the base model comes with 6 gigs. For transcoding (as for DVDs), 12 gigs. is better and seems to be a kind of sweet spot for work with CS5. (24 gigs is better still, but given the budget you've set and the kinds of editing you plan on doing, 12 gigs will be fine.) Dell wants $220 to upgrade from 6 gigs to 12 gigs. You could throw the stock 6 gigs of RAM away and buy a 12 gig set of Corsair XMS3 from NewEgg for $160 if you can insert RAM yourself.

Video card: get the stock card and replace it with a card using nVIdia CUDA chipsets that you buy elsewhere. An EVGA card with a 450GTX chipset (assuming if it will fit in the Dell case) would be $129 at NewEgg.

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 comes .with the computer. Home Premium will not recognize more than 16 gigs of RAM. This is fine as long as you never want to increase the RAM up to 24 gigs (good for multi-cam editing and transcoding among other things). A rule of thumb for DDR3 systems is to pick a RAM amount that is even divisible by the number of slots, which is 6. That means you want 6, 12 (i.e., six 2 gig RAM modules) or 24 gigs of RAM (i.e., six 4 gig modules). You can't get 18 gigs because, as far as I know, nobody sells 3 gig modules.

Dell computers come with McAfee security software. My personal observation is that you should replace this software because it seems vulnerable to malware. (I say this I've had to fix a couple of friends' Dell computers in the last couple of weeks because McAfee seems to happily allow bogus security hoaxware and malware to take over the computers.) A lot of editors generally disconnect their computers from the internet except for upgrades and will shut off the security software while editing.

On another note: Sander just submitted his results, once with the video card at PCIe-16x and once at PCIe-8x and the differences were huge: 5 versus 10 seconds on the rendering time. Around rank # 39 (216 s) and # 53 (237 s).

Actually, both of the results were with the video card at PCIe-16x. It's just that the 216 s result was with the CPU overclocked significantly to 4.5 GHz and the 237 s result was with the CPU at its stock 3.4 GHz speed. And the stock speed result that Sander submitted was slower overall than even the 220 s stock-speed result of mine. This is because the slower Sander's system simply has a slower disk I/O subsystem than mine (250 GB hard drives with only 8MB or 16MB of cache memory whose physical platter designs are three to four years old are distinctly slower than 1TB hard drives with 32MB of cache memory whose designs are less than a year and a half old). In other words, the use of slower-performing hard disks in an otherwise fast computer system for video editing is like putting the wrong set of tires on a Formula 1 race car for otherwise ideal track conditions (or more appropriately, that F1 race car were equipped with a set of tires that had been mismatched to the course). And also because of the slower-performing disks themselves, Sander's system was slower overall at 4.5 GHz than my system was at 3.9 GHz (195 seconds). These examples perfectly demonstrate how the disk I/O is the new bottleneck in these otherwise very fast computer systems.

On the other hand, an earlier system with the same CPU, motherboard and memory also submitted by Sander did have the video card running at PCIe-8x. Although its 238 s total result was only 1 s slower overall than the stock-speed PCIe-16x result, its rendering result was indeed over twice as long (23 s versus 10 s). And Sander's systems are equipped with a GTX 560 Ti, which is a good BFTB video card that's a couple of steps below the top of the line (nearly equal to the older GTX 470).

On another note, using the two systems with the absolute poorest BFTB scores (the two I mentioned in a previous post in this thread) is very much like driving either a big, very old truck that can't haul much of anything or a very old bus that's near the very end of its useful life.

I've now read through the entire thread & took notes of all of the salient points, recommendations and highlights. Am thankful to all of your informative, thoughtful and very educational responses.

Yes, my primary use for CS5 will to process HDV footage from an A1 + A1s on 2 tracks. Effects processing is likely to include audio enhancement/correction as well as brightness/contrast adjustment and leveling out the picture as I can never seem to get it perfect. How much of a load would that place on the system if done simultaneously?

I plan to learn how to use the multi-cam feature as soon as possible.

Does CS5 have any motion solutions like FCP does when the tripod is bumped or shaken for example by accident?

How does one overclock a CPU? What are the pro and cons of such an decision? Can the motherboard handle it? Is it a technical procedure?

Please, would any of you care to list you current CS 5 configuration?

I'm thinking that a higher end system even if it's a HP has advantages:

a) One can upgrade the ram, power supply and graphics card to suit needs.
b) The system has been tested, has a warranty and comes with tech support.
c) You're not paying someone 3 figures to build it.

I guess my weakest link now is what should I use for a motherboard?

Would anyone make a few suggestions please that would be compatible with say the GTX 450/460/470 range & a i7-2600k processor?

I also will need to buy a firewire card.

Again, thanks so much for all of your time invested in this thread

I’ve read somewhere in the past that it’s best to have 3 internal hard drives for CS5 for optimized performance.

Wondering how these drives are assigned & set-up within the program once installed.

My goal is to have 2 computers eventually, one exclusively for video editing (not connected to the internet) and the other for every day normal use that my wife can access.

So, if there’s a case which can only fit 2 drives internally which are configured as RAID 0, could I use a fast 7200 rpm external drive (Firewire 400/800) as the 3rd to meet the programs needs?

I’d also really appreciate if someone would give me a mini-tutorial on motherboards, and CPU’s.

Thanks again !

If you need to use external drive, make sure it's at least eSata or USB 3 compatible. Firewire is definitely too slow for any serious editing IMHO.

If you want to have 2 computers using the same external disk, I would strongly advise for some kind of NAS (Network Archive Storage) device that you can connect via 1-Gig Ethernet, which will also give you better speed than Firewire, and more security as well.

Bruce:



1. My system right now: I7/950, ASUS P6tD v2 mobo, 12 gb Corsair 1366 DDR3 RAM, gSpeed external Raid 10 run off a rocket raid card, Internal Intel Raid 0, PNY GTX260 graphics card, SATA II internal drive for OS, 7200 rpm SATA drive for audio and miscellaneous media files, 300 gb SATA drive being used for page file and miscellaneous storage (also for dual bot when I need to go back to WinXP for something), an e-Sata and external Firewire drive for archives and inactive project storage, Seagate 2tb 7200 rpm USB drive for automatic back-ups, Matrox MXO2 mini, Pioneer DVD burner, Pioneer Blue-Ray burner, and a PC Power & Cooling 750w power supply. Case is currently an Antec P180 with four 120mm fans. (The Antec case is due to be handed down for other uses and replaced with a Cooler Master HAF932 in the next week or so. This all runs under Win7 Pro/64.

2. Info on disk configurations for CS5. See this from Harm Milaard:
Adobe Forums: Generic Guideline for Disk Setup (http://forums.adobe.com/thread/662972)

3. On info for assembling system (mobos etc.), you have to choose between an I7/9xx system with "X58" mobo and an I7/2600k with Sandybridge mobos. For info on configuring your own I7/9xx system:from DVinfo sponsor Videoguys (who do not sell systems):

Videoguys Blog - Videoguys' DIY7.7: Intel Core i7 with Vista 64 AND Now Windows 7 (http://www.videoguys.com/Guide/C/DIY+Systems/Videoguys+DIY77+Intel+Core+i7+with+Vista+64+AND+Now+Windows+7/0xe07f65920351fbf3ed8f9892355dfda0.aspx)

For info on a Sandybridge I7/2600k, check out Randall Leong's system which is described in this and other threads. If you have specific questions, used DVinfo's private message function.


4. "How does one overclock a CPU? What are the pro and cons of such an decision? Can the motherboard handle it? Is it a technical procedure?"

Start with this thread: Adobe Forums: Overclocking the i7, a beginners guide (http://forums.adobe.com/thread/529916)

5. "Effects processing is likely to include audio enhancement/correction as well as brightness/contrast adjustment and leveling out the picture as I can never seem to get it perfect. How much of a load would that place on the system if done simultaneously?"

Not much.

Audio effects/processing/etc. in CS5 imposes no perceptible loads. Brightness-contrast is MPE hardware-enabled if you get an nVidia graphics card with CUDA GPUs (as repeatedly recommended). With hardware MPE, adjustments would be instantaneous without requiring rendering.

Does "leveling out." refer to setting levels in Effects-Adjust-Levels? If so, that is MPE enabled, too..

6. For after-the-fact image stabilization, PPro CS5 does not come with its own shake remover. There is one in After-Efffects If you upgrade to a CS5 package rather than just upgrading PPro. I've used Mercalli in the past with CS3 and the company recently e-mailed about a new plug-in for CS5.


7. Further Observations on what to get for your proposed use:.

(a). Do not get a case in which you can only put two drives. Do not make a two drive system into a Raid 0 which is also used as your boot/system drive.

(b) For doing 2 camera HDV multi-cam editing under CS5, you could do okay with; (a) a 7200 RPM system/boot drive; (b) a separate 7200 rpm (or faster) 1 or 2 tb drive for media (for multi-cam editing it would be significantly smoother if you can have a second and third drive to combine into a Raid 0).

If you want an additional drive and do not have room in the case, I suggest getting an eSata (external) 7200 rpm drive. I would suggest doing your editing from the RAID 0 with transcoding to and DVD burns from the extermal e-Sata drive. You could get by without the external drive but it will make life easier.

(c) I do not know of any Firewire800 drives I could recommend for use with a Win7 system. USB drives would likely have throughoput rates that could impede or bog down multi-cam editing if you have your project files on it. You are better off with a eSata drive. Most new computers and current mobos have eSata connectors.

When I was running under Win XP, I was able to use external firewire drives for editing both DV and HDV files. I have found this to be frequently troublesome under Win 7. There seems to be something on my system that, under Win 7 Pro 64 that causes throughput to drop off a lot when working with HDV files on the external firewire drive.. I suspect that this is a Win 7 thing because I can boot back to Win XP and run CS4 --- I have the old WinXP disk in the case and can dual boot if I want to --- and I don't get these drop-offs there.) Go with eSATA for an external drive for use in editing.

(d) You will not need to buy a firewire card if you assemble your own system. (Unless you want a firewire 800 connection.) Almost any suitable motherboard will have firewire connections built into it enabling you to have firewirte ports on the front or top of the case. as well as at the back.

On info for assembling system (mobos etc.), you have to choose between an I7/9xx system with "X58" mobo and an I7/2600k with Sandybridge mobos.

That is very much the case nowadays. However, if one should choose an i7-2600K, go with a "P67" mobo, not an "H67" or "H61" mobo, if that user wants to overclock. The "H67" and "H61" mobos do not allow overclocking of the CPU at all. Or wait for the "Z68" chipset-based mobos that are due to come out in May or June of this year.

Hi

A small, unscientific comparison between my old and my new computers:


Just built a PC with:

ASUS P8P67 Delux Motherboard
Intel Core i7 2600k
8GB 1600 Corsair RAM
Zotac Geforce GTX 470
OZC 60GB SATA-2 SSD boot disk
2x640GB SATA-3 HD (perhaps RAID1 in the future, have not decided yet)
Win7 64
CS 5.0.3


Compared to my 3 year old system:

HP Pavilion Elite 9180
AMD Phenom 9500, 2.2GHz
3GB RAM
Geforce 8800GT
500GB SATA-2 Boot disk
500GB SATA-2 Edit disk
Win7 64
CS 5.0.3


Timing test:


- Four small video clips, HDV 25p, 2min 20sec total length.

Render times to a new HDV file on disk:

- No filters applied:

Old system: 2m07s
New system: 34s

- Applied one filter (ProcAmp) adjusting brightness, contrast and saturation:

Old system: 7m20s
New system: 40s

- Applied two more filters, adjusted some RGB components and RGB Gammas, plus added sharpness:

Old system: 54 minutes!
New system: 44 seconds!


The render times on the new system is magic. It also allows me to add more than 10 filters (just tried it for fun) that supports GPU/CUDA and play directly from the timeline without any delay or prerender. I'm absolutely astonished by this new computer system. Be aware that not all filters in CS5 supports GPU processing but the ones I've tested with does.

My conclusion: Get a Nvidia card if you can, once you have one you'll never look back.

Regards,

/Bo

Bo,

Thanks for emphasizing a point I and others have been making for quite some time.

The AMD CPUs lack SSE 4.x support in their instruction set. Intel CPUs, even the Core 2 Duos, support SSE 4.1 while the i7 introduces SSE 4.2. What's worse, the first-generation Phenoms are weaker and less efficient (performance-wise) than even current Phenoms. And because the current quad-core Phenoms generally perform at about the same level as a low-end Core 2 Quad in CS5, the first-gen Phenoms are glacially sluggish in CS5 - well over 100 times slower than a fast system.

There's some good info in this article too....

Videoguys Blog - Videoguys' System Recommendations for Video Editing (http://www.videoguys.com/Guide/E/Videoguys+System+Recommendations+for+Video+Editing/0x4aebb06ba071d2b6a2cd784ce243a6c6.aspx)

Gents:

Here’s the latest on this odyssey. Sorry for the lapse in coverage. Was in wait & hold mode.

As a first stepping stone which is subject to changes, I purchased a

HP Pavilion Elite HPE-510t PC which is scheduled to arrive on Thursday.

Here are the relevant specs:

• OS Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 quad-core processor with Turbo-Boost [up to 3.8GHz, 8MB cache]/ Intel 2nd Gen Core = Sandy bridge?
• 6GB DDR3-1333MHz SDRAM [3 DIMMs]
• 1TB RAID 0 (2 x 500GB SATA HDDs)
• 1.5GB DDR3 NVIDIA GeForce GT 440 [DVI, HDMI, VGA]
• LightScribe 16X max. DVD+/-R/RW SuperMulti drive
• Blu-ray player & Lightscribe SuperMulti DVD burner (dual drives - Blu-Ray & DVD burner)

Total slots:1 PCIe (x16 graphics), 3 PCIe (x1), 2 MiniCard

Also important to note is that I will have Premiere Pro CS5.5 in the next couple of weeks which certifies more cards.

· The motherboard is unknown to me: Pegatron
· HP/Compaq name: Cleveland-GL8
· Intel H67 chipsetTDP: 95W
· Socket type: LGA 1155
· Motherboard supports the following processor upgrades:
o Core i3-2xxx series
o Core i5-2xxx series
o Core i7-26xx series
· Four 240-pin DDR3 DIMM sockets
· Supports PC3 10600 (1333 MHz) DDR3 DIMMs
· Non-ECC memory only, unbuffered
· Maximum HP/Compaq approved memory is 16 GB
· Supports PCI Express x16 graphics cards
· DVI-I output port
· HDMI output port

Yes, I definitely need a couple of firewire ports.


So here are my questions:

1) The power supply is only 300 watts so it needs upgrading. If I run CS5 or 5.5 only in “software only” mode and not accelerated, will my power hold out and not get too hot??

2) Could I somehow get the Raid 0 configuration changed so I have 2 independent internal hd’s? I do not know if that’s it for hard drive space.

3) Does the motherboard support tri or quad channel ram? Is “channeled” ram advantageous over plain old unbuffered ram? Can this system perhaps also handle 1600 and opposed to 1333 ram?

4) What’s the best bang for the buck when I upgrade to 12 gigs of ram or more?

5) What considerations do I need to think about going forward?

6) Will the 1.5 gig GTX 440 be acceptable for a starting card?


It least it arrives tested, warrantied, upgradeable and somewhat open to making it a closer fit.

Thanks for all of the input offered to date.

Very educational and thought provoking.

What would you do going forward if you were standing in my shoes?

"1) The power supply is only 300 watts so it needs upgrading. If I run CS5 or 5.5 only in “software only” mode and not accelerated, will my power hold out and not get too hot??"

No and you've mixed up concepts here.

With a GTX 440 card installed by HP, it will run. Hardware MPE is not overclocking. You simply use the more efficient processing power of the GTX's multiple GPUs rather than than loading up the system CPU. Probably, running software MPE will produce more worisome heat because it loads your CPU. Anyway, you absolutely want hardware MPE.

Also, the small power supply does not cause the computer to overheat. It is more like plugging too many things into a wall outlet. The overload trips the breaker or fuse. Your system shuts down. As long as you do not add more components that connect to the power supply, it should run.

2) Could I somehow get the Raid 0 configuration changed so I have 2 independent internal hd’s? I do not know if that’s it for hard drive space.

Boxes that ship with only a 300 watt power supply often do not have room for more hard drives. If there is room, the small, 300 watt power supply probably is not enough to add more internal hard drives. I'd guess the manual probably says nothing and that you will have to call or contact HP support to find out. Also, find out from HP if their Pergatron motherboard uses standard or proprietary power connections. (Dell is infamous for doing special connectors that can complicate the task of upgrading or replacing a power supply.)

You may be able to reformat the drives into two separate drives but you might not want to. For one thing, HP may have done this raid with 5400 rpm disks. For another, your HP's system restore disks might not work if you get a system crash and need to re-install. Also, make sure you have (or have made) a Win 7 installation disk before you start. You want an actual Win 7 install disk, not a system restore disk. Call or contact HP support and get explicit instructions before you mess with the set-up they have given you.

At this point, I suspect that your best bet is leave the hard drive configuration alone and see if you can add some large capacity 7200 rpm external drives which have their own power supplies. Firewire and e-SATA, would be the best choices (maybe one of each). If your HP has a USB 3.0 port, then a USB 3 drive could work as well. Best to get two large capacity drives, one for edit files and one for renders and DVD files. With you using a single XHA1 shooting HDV, this will probably be sufficient for editing under CS5.

3) Does the motherboard support tri or quad channel ram? Is “channeled” ram advantageous over plain old unbuffered ram? Can this system perhaps also handle 1600 and opposed to 1333 ram?

If it comes with DDR3 RAM -- DDR 3 means it is triple channel --- then that is what it supports. Older-style RAM modules won't work. As for whether it supports DDR3/1600, you'll have to find from HP or maybe there is a Pergatron website that will tell you.

4) What’s the best bang for the buck when I upgrade to 12 gigs of ram or more?

Don't know what you mean. Are you asking about cheap RAM?


5) What considerations do I need to think about going forward?

See above. The XHA1 can be touchy about firewire ports. Some of those on major manufacturer's machines have been junk. If youu can't get the new computer to let you capture from your XHA1, do a search here on "firewire legacy" and try the recommended device driver settings. If that does not work, be prepared to buy a Firewire card.

Otherwise, the question is too broad to know how to answer now that you have purchased a system.


6) Will the 1.5 gig GTX 440 be acceptable for a starting card?

Yes.

DDR3 doesn't mean it's triple channel.

1366 socket X58 based motherboards support triple channel, 1155 socket H/P67 motherboards support dual channel memory. Three memory modules on that PC is less than optimal configuration but that's something both HP and Dell do regularly and I can't really figure out why.
Either 2X4GB sticks or 4X4GB sticks would be my choice.
Using only two memory slots makes motherboard life easier.

Honestly though I believe that off the shelf low budget HPs Dells and the likes are too limiting for video editing. If possible find a good shop that will build a Video oriented PC for you.

I just saw you have already bought that PC so nevermind.

"DDR3 doesn't mean it's triple channel."

I think what you mean is that putting DDR3 memory modules into a motherboard will not give triple channel memory functions unless that motherboard actually supports triple channel memory. DDR3 actually is "triple channel memory" but the modules will function as DDR2 when used in, say, many of the current crop of Sandybridge mobos that only support DDR2.

As for why HP and Dell persist in using three memory module sets, I am as puzzled by this Spiros is. Maybe it is just to support some marketing hype?

"DDR3 doesn't mean it's triple channel."

I think what you mean is that putting DDR3 memory modules into a motherboard will not give triple channel memory functions unless that motherboard actually supports triple channel memory. DDR3 actually is "triple channel memory" but the modules will function as DDR2 when used in, say, many of the current crop of Sandybridge mobos that only support DDR2.

As for why HP and Dell persist in using three memory module sets, I am as puzzled by this Spiros is. Maybe it is just to support some marketing hype?

Actually, you are using the wrong acronym here. DDR2 is actually an older memory technology that's been first introduced with the Socket LGA 775 platform (the infamous Pentium 4 5xx series CPUs), and was last used on Intel platforms with the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad. DDR2 will not even physically or electrically fit current Intel i-series platforms because DDR2 and DDR3 memory are both physically and electrically incompatible with one another. And because DDR2 memory is no longer widely used in new systems, the price per GB of DDR2 memory is now much higher than DDR3 memory. DDR2 memory also requires a significantly higher voltage to operate than DDR3 memory does: DDR2 needs 1.8V to 2.1V while DDR3 operates typically at 1.5V to 1.65V. The use of DDR2 memory will permanently burn out the IMCs of Sandy Bridge and other Intel IMCs because their typical operating voltage is much higher than the maximum that's allowed by Intel in these CPUs.

So, channels are a feature of the motherboards but not the RAM modules themselves?

That makes sense of how we get triple channel memory with I7-9xxx/LGA1366/X58 mobos using DDR3 RAM modules but only dual channel when the same RAM modules are used with mobos for AMD Socket AM3 processors and Intel I3, i5 and i7-8xx processors.

I stand corrected.

So, channels are a feature of the motherboards but not the RAM modules themselves?

Or in the case of the Intel i-series CPUs and the AMD CPUs, channels are a feature of the on-CPU-die memory controllers themselves. The type of memory supported (DDR2, DDR3) is dictated by the memory controller. The AMD AM3 CPUs support either type of RAM, depending on the motherboard that the CPU is used on. By contrast, the on-die memory controllers on Intel CPUs is DDR3 only.

As for why HP and Dell persist in using three memory module sets, I am as puzzled by this Spiros is. Maybe it is just to support some marketing hype?

My take on this is that both companies, bought large quantities of triple channel memory when 1366 socket came out but the move to the cheaper and more popular 1156 and 1155 sockets left them with large supplies of tripple channel memory they couldn't sell otherwise.

Well, a good amount has been covered in this thread already, but Ill throw my 2 cents in the ring... Here's my attempt at spending your budget of 1,000-1,200 without monitor, keyboard, and mouse of course...

i7 950 Bloomfield (3.06 quad)
ASUS Rampage III (I'm an asus fan, MSI works well too imo)
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair XMS
300GB WD Velociraptor
2TB WD Green
PNY Quadro FX580

Thats 1100 dollars right there, giving you some slack. If you need budget room, kill the WD 300GB - Im just a huge fan of having fast scratch space.

Why screw up your memory and disk setup? On a 950 you need three sticks of memory, not two and why cripple the system with a green disk?

Well, a good amount has been covered in this thread already, but Ill throw my 2 cents in the ring... Here's my attempt at spending your budget of 1,000-1,200 without monitor, keyboard, and mouse of course...

i7 950 Bloomfield (3.06 quad)
ASUS Rampage III (I'm an asus fan, MSI works well too imo)
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair XMS
300GB WD Velociraptor
2TB WD Green
PNY Quadro FX580

Thats 1100 dollars right there, giving you some slack. If you need budget room, kill the WD 300GB - Im just a huge fan of having fast scratch space.

Not a good configuration to begin with. In fact, CS5 works best with more than 12GB of RAM - and there is a significant improvement in performance, especially in SD MPEG-2 DVD encodes, with 14GB of RAM compared to 12GB of RAM. 8GB just does not cut it on an LGA 1366 platform, especially if the IMC is constrained to dual-channel operation by the number of installed modules. And LGA 1366 platforms just do not perform as well in dual-channel mode as LGA 1155 or 1156 platforms (meaning that full triple-channel mode is required for optimum performance in CS5.x with LGA 1366 platforms) And as I demonstrated a while ago, in the PPBM5 benchmarks an LGA 1366 system with only 6GB of RAM in triple-channel actually performed equal to or faster than the same system with 8GB of RAM in dual-channel-only mode.

And the WD Green drive is slow, even for a "green" drive: Its maximum sequential transfer speed is slower than nearly all of the current-generation desktop hard drives. Its 110 MB/s maximum pales in comparison to the 130+ MB/s achieved by most of the other current hard drives. And that's not to mention that the "green" drives constantly spin themselves down when idle, and take far too long to spin back up to speed. (And the spin-down does occur occasionally even if you're running CPU- and disk-intensive apps.) More importantly, the "green" drives spin at less than 6,000 RPM, with random access speed predictably slower than 7,200 RPM hard drives (as a group).

Third, the FX 580 is a very poor choice for CS5.x: Hardware-wise, it is the equivalent of only a GeForce 9500 GT (which Bill Gehrke has demonstrated is much, much slower than even an ATi GPU, let alone newer Nvidia GPUs, especially in MPEG-2 DVD and H.264 Blu-ray encodes: On a stock-speed i7-980X hexa-core, PPBM5 took more than 150 seconds in MPEG-2 and more than 190 seconds in H.264 with the 9500 GT or FX 580 but 33 seconds or less in MPEG-2 and 82 seconds or less in H.264 with even an ATi card, let alone a newer, faster GeForce). Worse, the FX 580 is only offered with 512MB of RAM, which is nowhere near enough to even enable MPE GPU mode (the MPE GPU mode requires a minimum of 765MB of free, unused graphics RAM just to even work at all). Put the two together, and the FX 580 / 9500 GT is a performance mule in a herd of thoroughbreds, capable of bringing down the overall performance of a heavily overclocked dual hexa-core Xeon X56xx system with 48GB of RAM to the level of only a stock-speed single i7-9xx system with only 6GB of RAM.

Had you run the PPBM5 benchmark on that system, you'll find that its overall performance score would have fallen almost to the very bottom of the PPBM5 results list (with an overall total time of well over 1,000 seconds, compared to less than 200 seconds with a properly tuned fast system) with a configuration like that. As a result, that build would have been a complete waste of money, with a very low BFTB score because most if not all of the components cost way too much money for such bottom-of-the-line performance.

Randall,

You have an incredible understanding of what it takes to make CS5 fly.

So for between $1,000 and $1500, what MOBO, processor, disk and memory configuration do you recommend?

Dick,

Currently, I have two sets of recommendations for the core components in the $1,000 to $1,500 range:

1) LGA 1366/X58 Build
i7-960 CPU
X58 motherboard from Asus, Gigabyte, eVGA or MSI in the $225 to $300 range
12GB (3x4GB) DDR3-1333 or faster-rated RAM
Samsung F4 320GB HD322GJ hard drive
4 x Samsung F3 1TB HD103SJ hard drives
GeForce GTX 560 Ti or GTX 570

or:

2) LGA 1155/P67 or Z68 Build
i7-2600K
P67 or Z68 motherboard in the $150 to $250 price range
At least 8GB (2x4GB) of DDR3-1333 RAM, preferably 16GB (4x4GB)
Samsung F4 320GB HD322GJ hard drive
4 x Samsung F3 1TB HD103SJ hard drives
GeForce GTX 560 Ti or GTX 570

In either build, go with at least an 800W (or higher-wattage) quality PSU manufactured by Enhance, Seasonic, Impervio (or maybe one of a few other actual manufacturers such as CWT or Delta, whose lines tend to be less consistent between models). These PSUs are sold under various brand names such as Cooler Master, Corsair, Antec, XFX, etc. (The Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold series PSUs that Harm has been recommending are manufactured by Enhance - and the 800W model from that line is priced significantly lower than most other 800~850W PSUs that perform slightly better.) You also need to factor in the cost of a case (a large-size case is strongly recommended here), an optical disc burner and a high-performance CPU air cooler. (And these parts are just to complete the system tower itself; the monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers are peripherals whose choice is largely personal preference.)

Update from the original poster!

Along the course of time I added a firewire card ( just recently) additional ram and a large drive dedicated exclusively for video.

My next and hopefully last upgrade is a suitable power supply.

I have someone who has offered to put one in although it will void my warranty. Is that a reasonable risk?

I want to take full advantage of CUDA however not on my current/factory 350 watt supply is wholly inadequate.

Please offer some recommendations to help me end this adventure.

What should I be looking for?

Thank you.

Bruce,

HP is notorious for the deviant dimensions of their PSU, that are slightly different than standard PSU's. This makes installing any PSU that you can get on every street corner a very challenging effort and may not work at all. I just hope that the person who offered you to do it, is aware of this weirdness with HP machines.

Thanks for that input.

Do you think they did that perhaps intentionally?

Here's a response that I got from another well known video forum which confirms what you wrote!

Pre-built PCs sometimes use PSUs with non-standard dimensions or screw positions for mounting in the case. Measure the physical dimensions of the PSU. Use Newegg or some other website that provides physical dimensions and look at some of the better quality ATX PSUs having an appropriate wattage. Better quality means Thermaltake, Antec, PC Power and Cooling, Silverstone, Seasonic, Corsair, or OCZ, not the cheapest brands. Compare the measurements you took against those for the PSUs you find and see if any are a good match for size. That will tell you if you are likely to find a replacement. Sometimes the aftermarket PSU manufacture's product page will have diagrams that show the position and dimensions of everything. The PSU fan and cables may need be in the same place as the original, if the case is crowded.

Need help finding the right CS5 Prem Pro PC. Please help

Gents:

Based on recent developments, I’ve finally decided to have a PC specifically built to for an upcoming upgrade from Premiere Pro CS3.2 to CS5. Since I can’t build it myself, would you please be willing to offer some recommendations for online solutions that are: safe, reliable, reputable, reasonably priced, fair and offer some kind of a guaranty or warranty?

I’m thinking that a custom configured system from one of the major manufacturer would be overly pricey part per part and offer limited choices. My budget is roughly $1,000-1,200.

For parts, (considering I don’t want to spend $1,500 or $2,000 for a top of the line or upper end machine) please list in detail what combination would you choose if you were in my shoes that would meet the following goals/criteria:

It doesn’t have to have the best and speediest components, just be reliable, stable, yield smooth playback quality and render well at a reasonable speed. I’m not a power user by any means so it will receive moderate use, the CPU won’t be maxed out.





I can't offer you advice in your budget range but if you want to spend a little more I would highly recommend having ADK (ADK Video Editing offers, NLE, Video Editing Computer, Video editing computers, Video Editing Workstations, Video Editing PC, Custom Built Computers, Turnkey video computer, Digital Video Editing software, VT5, Toaster, Tricaster, Lightwave, Matrox R (http://www.adkvideoediting.com/)) put together your system. I had them put together a CS5.5 system for me this last month and it's spectacular, fairly priced, and comes with great support coverage. I would do it again in a heart beat.

Folks am I missing something here? With an added HDD, Firewire card and Blu-ray writer, this could be a good system no?

Intel Core i7-2600K 3.4GHz Quad Core Processor
Corsair 8GB 1600MHz CL9 DDR3 Vengeance Memory Two Module Kit
Asus P8Z68-V Socket 1155 Motherboard
Noctua NH-U12P SE2 Dual Fan Quiet CPU Cooler
120GB OCZ Vertex 3 2.5" Solid State Drive
2TB Western Digital Caviar Green Hard Drive
CCL Choice NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1536MB Graphics Card
LG CH10LS20.AUAU10B 10X Blu-Ray Reader / DVD ReWriter - OEM
Fractal Design Define R3 Computers Case - Black Pearl
700W OCZ ModXStream Pro Modular Power Supply

Folks am I missing something here? With an added HDD, Firewire card and Blu-ray writer, this could be a good system no?

Intel Core i7-2600K 3.4GHz Quad Core Processor
Corsair 8GB 1600MHz CL9 DDR3 Vengeance Memory Two Module Kit
Asus P8Z68-V Socket 1155 Motherboard
Noctua NH-U12P SE2 Dual Fan Quiet CPU Cooler
120GB OCZ Vertex 3 2.5" Solid State Drive
2TB Western Digital Caviar Green Hard Drive
CCL Choice NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1536MB Graphics Card
LG CH10LS20.AUAU10B 10X Blu-Ray Reader / DVD ReWriter - OEM
Fractal Design Define R3 Computers Case - Black Pearl
700W OCZ ModXStream Pro Modular Power Supply

Peter,

There are a few major drawbacks to that system:

1) There are not enough total drives on that system. Adobe requires a minimum of two drives (one for the OS, one for projects and media). But Premiere Pro performs better with three or more drives (some of them in RAID 0, which I call "AID 0" due to the lack of redundancy).

2) The 2TB WD Green drive that you selected is too slow for use as a media/projects or a pagefile drive. (It is perfectly fine as a backup drive, however.) You will need a couple of true 7200 RPM hard drives. And despite the claim of "variable speed" by WD for its Green drives, all of the Green drives actually spin at a fixed, slow speed (in this case, 5400 RPM).

3) The OCZ ModXStream cannot really provide the full 700W without going way out of the ATX +12V spec in DC output quality. That could kill your system's components very early. It can really only provide 580W while keeping the output within spec. This is because OCZ cheats on this PSU by rating it at its claimed wattage at an internal PSU operating temperature of only 40°C - but most PSUs actually operate normally at internal temperatures closer to 50°C. And higher temperatures are tougher on PSU output quality than are lower temperatures. Go for a known good 80+ Gold certified PSU such as a Corsair AX750.

4) Be advised that Sandforce-based SSDs such as that OCZ Vertex 3 may suffer from the random BSOD issue just running Windows at all. Worse, their performance deteriorates more than most with use - and the only way to fix that would be a complete secure erase and a complete reinstall of the OS and programs. This deterioration of performance may start occurring in as little as a few weeks or even a few days.

In addition to the above, I'd recommend doubling the total amount of RAM from 8GB to 16GB. And the most cost-effective way to do this would be to buy four matched 4GB modules or two 8GB dual-channel kits of the exact same model number and revision. Filling only two of the four DIMM slots might increase gaming performance but actually hinders video editing performance by increasing the overall latency within the memory controller. Prosumer video editing programs like Premiere Pro runs best with all of the DIMM slots filled with double-ranked modules.