I am thinking of upgrading my system and I was thinking of getting a HP Workstation w/dual Xeon and Quadro 1400 or is it better to wait for the new Intel CPU's due in July (Can't remember the name) with an Gforce 7900 SLi setup?

Wait for the new Intel procs, they are awesome. Or if you can't wait get an Opteron base HP x9300 (which is a solid high performer.)

OK David,

I am waiting. Now, exactly which ones are you going to recommend? If you don't know yet, I will bug you again later.

Conroe is/will be a HIGH performer for all our software (P2K,PHD,AHD etc.)

I think Conroe ships in mid-July, with the laptop Merom chips shipping in August. Merom is essentially the same as Conroe at generally lower clock speeds and a lower front-side bus (667MHz vs Conroe's 1066MHz).

I've had a 2.16GHz Merom engineering sample benchmarked using CineForm tools on a top-end Dell notebook and the performance is significantly higher than my Athlon X2 4400 desktop system. With the extra clock speed and FSB bandwidth Conroe has, its performance should be astonishing.

Additionally, it's rumoured that the Extreme Edition Conroe chip will be clocked at 3.33GHz with a 1333MHz FSB. CineForm performance should be stratospheric!! :)

We just received (yesterday) an engineering sample (PC) from an unnamed computer company with a 2.66GHz Conroe chip (single chip dual core) with 1066 MHz FSB.

The quick (but not conclusive) benchmarks we ran shows that it (Conroe machine) is about 30% faster with our CineForm Intermediate decoder than the Pentium D 955-Extreme Edition we've had for a while. That's why we think the Conroe platform and its successors will become the new reference standard for our software. I can't wait to see Extreme Edition versions of this family.

Extreme Edition versions of the 840/955/965 processors are excellent, but the older HT P4 architecture is moving over towards Conroe (lower clock speed and more CISC-like instructions) and beyond. And these new procs are in Intel's desktop lineup, meaning they'll have the normal aggressive price decline curve attached to them.

I didn't know we where are allowed to say anything. :)

I'll be happy to send you a Fedex number to use to forward any extra machines to me, like old 955EE equipped dinosaurs, just so you won't have to go through the hassle of disposing of them. ;)

I was told by a local vendor that the system described below would "scream" and serve all my needs for the HVX. Is this a good choice? Or did I "buy a bridge"?

All input welcome.
Thanks.


Cineform Aspect HD 4.11 Certified Editing System
Adobe Video Bundle w/ Flash 8.0 Professional (Premiere,
Encore, Audition, etc.)
Certified AMD Tyan Motherboard w/ On-board Audio &
PCI-Express
Dual AMD Opteron 2.2ghz 275 Processors
2GB DDR400 ECC Registered Memory (4x512mb)
200GB Boot Drive 7200RPM Seagate SATA-II w/
Removable Carrier
2000GB (2TB) SATA II Seagate Raid 5 or 0 Storage w/
RAID Card
Certified PNY Quadro FX1500 Dual Link DVI w/ HD
Component Output
Xtra PCI-X Firewire 400 / 2 Port Firewire 800 Card
Windows XP Professional 32bit w/ Service Pack 2
Creative Labs Speakers w/ Subwoofer
Logitech Optical Mouse
Worldtech Shortcut Keyboard for Adobe Premiere Pro
Contour Design Shuttle Pro V2 (upgraded from
ShuttleXpress)
1 Year - ON-SITE Tech Support
(Covers basic support and parts, power supply not included.
See website for warranty)
**Hard drives do have add'l warranty, usually 3-5 years

Pioneer 16X DVD-R/RW CD/DVD Drive w/ Dual Layer
DVD+DL

That is a very nice system. You will have 4 cores working for you. With that type of system you may want to consider Prospect HD Edit with an AJA LHe card (or at least upgrading to that in the future.)

Denis - yep, it's definitely a screamer. In fact, it's actually a bit overkill for Aspect HD - you really don't need four procs. You could cut back to a 955EE system (or upcoming Conroe) and save about enough to move up to PHD-Edit and get 10-bits. The 10-bit upgrade will show as incremental visual fidelity in your final result. The speed of the system underneath doesn't directly translate to higher visual quality. Just a thought....

David & David,
I've ordered the system I describe above. May be overkill for now, but since you pretty much confirm what the vendor told me, I'm going with it. He also told me there's room to upgrade. As long as I can do that, I feel less anxiety about the purchase.

Thanks again.

Hey Denis, let us know how many HD streams you can sustain simultaneously with Aspect HD on that system after you get it tuned up. That'll be a fun benchmark. We have 275 systems at CineForm but we don't have any RAID 5 drive configurations. I suspect with a RAID 5 (or four-drive RAID 0) the drive subsystem should be able to sustain close to 12 streams (+/-) of 1080i. You may run out of CPU in the range of 10-12 streams. Let us know....

Will do my best. I don't have the system yet; expect to take delivery this week or next. (I have to get more furniture and rearrange my "studio", so it will be a while before I can accommodate, but will keep you in mind).

Your input has been encouraging...Thanks again.

David,
do you work at Cineform? The vendor I'm dealing with speaks VERY highly of Cineform products, and says he speaks to some folks there often. Actually, he persuaded me to steer away from an Intel HP system - and the popular NLE system used on an HP - in order to gain the benefits of Aspect HD and what he claims is the increased speed of AMD.

At present, my concern is working with my indie "mentor" - who uses Avid, and does not yet have Express Pro HD, but expects to upgrade in the near future. I need to be able to provide him with video. I suspect I can do that directly from my camera, but am unsure as to what would be best if giving him edited footage.

My vendor suggests I get a Citidisk for DTE, but haven't heard enough good about them yet to convince me to go that route, i.e. do they play well w/the HVX-200? Are you aware of any problems I'm likely to run into if I go w/Citidisk?

David, do you work at Cineform?
Yes.

The vendor I'm dealing with speaks VERY highly of Cineform products, and says he speaks to some folks there often.
That's very nice - we like to hear that.

At present, my concern is working with my indie "mentor" - who uses Avid, and does not yet have Express Pro HD, but expects to upgrade in the near future. I need to be able to provide him with video. I suspect I can do that directly from my camera, but am unsure as to what would be best if giving him edited footage.
Avids tend to be somewhat "centric" and "closed" in that they prefer to not support external formats. (They don't even support AVIs). That said, there are always ways to exchange footage if you plan in advance and define usage for the footage that you move to Avid. When you're ready, you can talk with our technical support team who can help you plan how best to do this.

Are you aware of any problems I'm likely to run into if I go w/Citidisk?
At CineForm we have no direct experience working with Citidisk, although perhaps some of our customers have. But I see no reason why there would be any problems.

For those who do not know, David Taylor is the CEO of Cineform, and David Newman is the CTO.

The astounding support they offer on this and other forums is one reason that the product works as well as it does. They are right here listening to those of us on the front lines.

that I didn't know that. Thanks for the info, and if apologies for my ignorance are in order, then I offer mine, though I suspect neither of the Davids lost sleep over my naievete.

It IS encouraging to know such luminaries take part here. It's one of the things that will keep me coming back.

Hi....

I probably can't afford the new Intel chip you guys are talking about but I need to upgrade my machine. All this is a hobby to me so the wife won't let me spend too much on it.

I've been real pleased with AMD so I'd like to stick to that....

For AspectHD would you recommend and Operton (Socket 940) or a 64 X2 with the new Socket AM2? Both have dual cores.

I'm also strongly considering a GeForce 7900GT video card.

I'd really appreciate any comments or recommendations. But gotta keep the price reasonable or I'll be sleeping on the couch!

Thanks!

Hi Stacy,

Although we have lots of familiarity with multi-chip dual-core Opterons with Prospect HD we have much less experience with the X2 family. Although the X2's are great procs we just haven't had any of those machines in house to offer specific recommendations.

On the other hand we've had a lot of experience with recent dual-core Intel procs. If you're on a budget, consider using the Pentium D 840. If you can move up to the Extreme Edition version you get hyperthreading and better memory performance. The 840 and 840-EE work very well. If you feel you can spend a little more you could move up to the 955-EE or 965-EE. We have experience with all these Intel procs.

Stacy,

I've run an Intel 840-based system and found that it's absolutely fine for Aspect HD. I now run an Athlon X2 4400-based system and find that it is a little bit better than the 840.

However, I have the laptop 'Merom' version of the Conroe chip in my Dell notebook and even with a 'slow' 2.0GHz clock speed and 667MHz front-side bus, it's blitzing my desktop system in terms of CineForm benchmarks. Conroe is the same CPU but with a faster FSB and generally higher clockspeeds across the range. Conroe (or Core 2 Duo as it will be called at retail) really is the way forward, and has outperformed AM2 in pretty much every benchmark I've seen.

While the 2.66GHz Conroe will be a pricy $500+ CPU, the 2.4GHz and 2.13GHz chips should be much the same price as an Athlon and still offer astonishing performance for Aspect HD.

With regards your graphics card purchase, the 7900GT is the best mid-range card money can buy right now, so an excellent choice.

If you're looking for value of money all I can say is the Pentium D 805. It's the entry level 2.66ghz dual core. You may already know that it can be pushed over 4ghz on air! This beats the X2 4800 and Pentum EE! Of course you should get a 965 or 975 chipset to upgrade to Core 2 Duo in a year or so, but at US$130 or cheaper for the 805 pushed to 4ghz, you can't do any better! I am testing this configuration and considering a few for my company (overclocked to 4ghz of course) As I save $500 a chip per PC for the same performance! It's my winner.

That CPU is certainly a winner for many applications, but you'd be limiting yourself FSB-wise to 533MHz if memory serves, which definitely hampers CineForm performance (as it does with dual Xeons). So it would all depend on whether the mega clock speed more than compensates.

I'm also guessing that you'd need an appropriate motherboard to get that performance?

David, are you saying that the new Conroe proc coupled with a Geforce 7900 (sli) is the best way to go for using Aspect HD? is that better than dual xeons with geforce quadros?

Thanks for your answer.

Hi Darryl,

We completed some performance tests on various Intel processors last week. David Newman published the results on his blog: http://cineform.blogspot.com/. What he published are the decoder numbers but we also ran encoder numbers. We haven't had the Conroe machine all that long, so its testing has been more limited, but it seems to be a great performer. I don't believe as we speak anybody is shipping Conroe in production yet, but I think that will change in the next few weeks.

I'll also offer that the older architecture Pentium D 955-EE or 965-EE are awesome performers too. Because of our extensive threading we get a lot of performance out of these CPUs. In fact the 955/965 (EE) are fully capable of Prospect HD, which requires more horsepower than Aspect HD. Dell makes a 965 machine - I think in their Desktop Workstation (Precision?) line.

So it's a bit of your choice. You might get a better price on the 955/965 (EE), and you won't be disappointed at all, but Conroe is the future architecture.

David.

Dell's current 955/965EE machine is the XPS 700, and it's certainly a mighty beast. I think it has the necessary PCI-Express architecture to run the AJA card too.

I'm fairly sure the XPS 600 is pretty much the same machine, and if that's the case, you could pick up a bargain on the Dell Outlet. I've seen a 2GB, 3.73GHz EE, dual 7900GTX, 2x250GB RAID0 XPS 600 on the Outlet for around £1,100 - although they are rare.

Thanks for the replies,

I think I am going to wait for the Conroe, what are your tests showing re: 7900 vs Quadros? Which works best with Aspect?

ps: I just ordered Aspect HD from your website, I downloaded the trial and it worked perfectly with my hvx.

Darryl,

Aspect HD doesn't use GPU accleration (it doesn't need it), so select you graphics card based on other application needs. Any modern graphics card works with Aspect.

Thanks for your reply,

I am using Premiere Pro 2.0, do you know which graphics card works best with premiere?

No idea for accleration, as I have no need to the stock modes, but for the best output card go with an AJA Xena LHe (HDSDI and component 10-bit HD/SD.)