I'm interested in building a solution for uncompressed HD (1080p @ 24fps) playback. I don't need anything but just playback on the desktop (and possibly output via DVI or component).

I've got an aging P4 system with 2-drive SATA RAID zero and trying to figure if I can shoe horn something onboard.

Processor isn't such a big deal for uncompressed. (At 960x540 8bit 4:2:2 my centrino 1.6Ghz clocks itself down to 600 Mhz and still only uses half the processor) So I'd say your find their.

What you need is a fast drive setup. Normally it is recommended that 5 Sata high end drives are required for for 720p60 and 1080 30p/60i. Anyway that asside I think it can be done with 4 new drives so long as you don't intend to fill the drives fully. So I'm thinking you'll be safe with 4 drives in the class of a 250GB+ 7200RPM drive that are fairly new.

BUT.......
not if its though the PCI bus! With overhead and controller waste even 1080p24 is a strectch for the pci bus. (pci = 133MB/s, 1080p24 = 124MB/s with good packing).

Their is a way around this I think (I haven't tested it thoughly, and only with Pata, not SATA). Use windows software raid. Most cheap raid cards are software controllers anyway and most NLE and HD-SDI board companies recommend it unless you have a high end hardware raid controller with the ram slot and stuff. (All onboard raid are soft raid)

So here is my solution if you don't have 4 sata ports onboard that connect directly to your chipset. Have some drives connect directly on board to the chipset controller and run some to a pci controller. Use windows drive management to setup a 4 or more drive raid 0 setup.

Keep in mind that some Pata version of new drives that are available as sata are actually faster than their sata counterparts (by <1%) and normally not much slower. So if you don't have sata, you can certainly use new Pata drives as well for this.

So here is my solution if you don't have 4 sata ports onboard that connect directly to your chipset. Have some drives connect directly on board to the chipset controller and run some to a pci controller. Use windows drive management to setup a 4 or more drive raid 0 setup.


Thanks for the info. That's very helpful. I've got 2 250 GB off chipset and nothing on the PCI bus right now, so that might work.

I hope it does work. I'd be very interested to hear about it when you try and get it up and running.

The PCI bus is a real pain the in throughput area. You might be able to do it all on a half decent raid controller on the PCI bus first, but I'd think it would be pushing it. Still think best changes are PCI with the chipset.

Good luck!