Hey Everyone - Tomorrow night I will be buying a brand new computer to host Sony Vegas 7.0

Below is a pic of my shopping cart. Let me know what you think. The price is only 2,100 and not 2,333. Some parts went down in price :)

The reason i'm asking is because i've read alot about some systems not working properly with Sony Vegas 7.0 and some are waiting for Vegas to get stable etc...

Will I run into any problems with this set up or will I be fine? Hopefully I chose well in my selection but, as usual, I always have to consult the council.

Thanks crew!
you're the best!

You don't really need an X-Fi card. I've heard of incompatiblity with Vista; Creative is horrible at drivers. Also, for the CPU cooler, get the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme, Ultra 120 (non-extreme), or Scythe Ninja Plus B instead - they are all better coolers than the one you've choosen and are around the same price.

Why not get a Intel Core 2 Duo or Quad CPU? Intel has AMD beat so badly right now. There's going to be a huge price cut on July 22 too for the Core 2 Duo/Quads too.

If you are going to be doing any serious audio editing, you will want to choose your components to minimize noise (e.g., fanless video cards etc.)

Vegas is not as CPU intensive as other applications since it is pretty well-coded. What format are you editing in?

I was impressed with everything you had going until you hit the Athlon 64 X2!!

Say it aint so Terry... Go with Intel Core 2 Duo.. It is *definately* faster than that X2 unit.. and this is coming from a Core 2 Duo owner and a previous fan of AMD...

Otherwise everything looks really good... I think you may be overdoing it with the power supply. Do stick with the X-Fi and *don't* go with Vista unless you really feel like you must... XP Pro SP2 is still the way to go... There's a thread on here somewhere if you check that this subject came up and about 90% of the people who video edit in here were overwhelming in support of sticking with XP..

Terry...

I have to make a few more comments here.....

You are way overdoing the Case & Power Supply. $320 for the combo is a lot and the 700-Watt power supply is *way* overkill unless you plan to overclock and add dual video cards and about 10 hard drives.

Here are the changes I'd make...

#1) Intel P965 type Mobo Gigabyte DS3 for instance, should cost you $40 or so less. (-40)

#2) Go with the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600. I've seen it for $220. That's + 70 - (+70)

#3) Antec P180 or P182 case. That will save you $40 and this is frankly the best case in the business AND the quietest. - (-40)

#4) Go with a solid 450 - 500 watt Antec or Enermax powersupply. Probably cost you $70 or $80 so that should mean another $60 in savings - (-60)

#5) I presume you are going to RAID up the 3 - 320Gb WD drives. Steer clear of the SE models and go with their YS series of drives that were build with RAID in mind and are just better drives in general. This is about + $90 ($30/drive) - (+90)

#6) What the heck, go with 4Gb of RAM and buy the Corsair TWIN2X2048 6400C4. Very fast and reliable RAM and it costs about $120 for the pair or $240 total. You'd be at a + $100 here (+100)

#7) Ditch the secondary cooler and go with the stock Intel boxed cooler *OR* maybe an Arctic cooler for $20. Again, unless you plan to do heavy overclocking - the super cooler and the air conditioned case are worthless. Don't believe the hype... - (-35)

All in all, this may add slightly to your price, but frankly, I thikn the prices you are paying are on the high side here anyway. What's with the AMD processor not shipping for 7-21 days!?!? Crazy... check out newegg.com or mwave.com. Both places have very competative prices and will have everything in stock. As a matter of fact, mwave has the AMD 6000+ for $169.00 even. I still say go with the E6600 though! :)

Jon

go with a quad, its much faster, I have two running one amdx2 and one a intel quad 6600 both 4 gigs of ram, both 8600 gt main cards(running a 22"@1680x1050 and a 42"LCD @1920x1080) and a 6200gt pallette card running a 19inch @1440x900, the quad is much faster on renders of hd video.

Stephen Eastwood
http://www.StephenEastwood.com

1- The Antec case + PSU bundles are a better value than buying the items separately.

2- The rendertest.veg benchmark results on the SCS forums (the official forums) show the Intel quad leading the way.

3- I'd be inclined to go with the Q6600 (the Intel quad-core) instead of messing around with overclocking. Or get the Q6600 and overclock too.

You'll likely get the most performance out of getting a better CPU (compared to spending a lot on cooling for overclocking, or upping the RAM from 2 to 4GB, etc.). Most of the tasks that slow you down are bottlenecked by the CPU.

4- If you RAID the drives, check the quality of the RAID controller you are using. Data corruption or low performance would be things to watch out for.

There are some other good comments in this thread.

Thanks for the constructive comments.

1) I am sticking 2x because I simply don't have 600 bucks to spend on a quad core processor. I understand that obviously quad core is going to be better than duo core. I read everyone saying quad core, Why?

I also wanted to go with amd because of the ease of overclock capability. Intel hasn't been known for their over clocking ability. The front side bus and the multiplier have traditionally been locked and require physical modifications of the processor to overclock and is not a risk I was willing to take with a brand new processor. I'm not sure about this current generation of processors simply because i've not done much with them.

2) why does my computer need to be quiet?


-Thanks!

1- I dont think you understand overclocking? If the CPU multiplier is locked, then you can get by with increasing the FSB speed. I think AMD does this too now on everything but their top-of-the-line processors. No physical modification is necessary (unless you want to unlock the CPU multiplier, which is nice but not necessary).

If you raise the FSB speed, the memory speed will go up with it. If your RAM is not fast enough, you need to use the memory divider. Or get RAM that will run at a higher speed.

The other thing to watch out for is to keep the PCI bus running at 33mhz. There was a while where AMD-based systems could not do that (I do not believe this is a problem now).

1b- An overclocked AMD system may be just as fast as an Intel-based system, except you spent time testing your computer for instability and the overclocking-related parts may have set you back.

2- You don't really need a super quiet computer. Some people like it so you can record VO with the computer interface in front of you. An alternative is to run a long cable to keep the mic away from your computer.

3- Why quad core? Exercises in spending other people's money is pretty fun. If it doesn't make sense to spend that much money then don't spend it. A Core2 Duo system will work for editing.

3b- It definitely doesn't make sense to spend about ~$250 extra on the case, PSU, and CPU cooling just so you can OC (case + PSU is $99 or less; retail CPUs come with a cooler). If your time is really that valuable, you'd be better off getting the quad-core.

Why quad core?

Prizes will continue to drop on quad cores and eventhough you won't notice a difference during editing compared to dualcore you will when you start rendering. If your nle supports it the speed gain you get from a quad core is definetely worth considering.
For the price I paid for my single core 3,2gig, 1gb memory and a ati x850xt videocard about 2 years ago you can get a 2,4gig quadcore, 2gigs memory and a 8800gtx card at this moment. Perhaps a bit overkill on the videocard part but a lot of value for your money.

2) why does my computer need to be quiet?
If you are doing the sound mixing, you need to be in a quiet environment so you can work with quiet sounds, otherwise there will be a noise floor below which you can not mix. This will limit your dynamic range. To use an analogy, think of it like not being able to edit pictures that have any shadow detail because of glare on your monitor.

This requirement applies to me as I do film work, but it might not to you.

Well looking at your rig setup..Here are concerns:

The Klipsh speakers, creative soundcard, XFX 8600GT, DVD burner and your tower.

You need to invest in a quality soundcard to really hear using Vegas. Preferably one that can do asio support. Not to mention quality studio monitors. Your videocard is a gamers card and is pretty much overkill for video editing since Vegas doesn't use the video ram for rendering. I personally like quadro series. I would look into getting a better dvd burner like Plextor or Sony, since this will be you final output right? And the tower...I found mid-sized to be too small especially if you are considering adding more drives later on. A full tower is more spacious and is more effective in cooling. You should also add arctic silver as a compound to go in between you cpu and HS.
I'm not going into the debate of Intel vs AMD. because it like opening up a can of worms. IE MAC vs PC. That debate pointless. I personally built and use a AMD dual core and found it works fine with Sony Vegas, ACID, Soundforge, and Protools. All with the latest drivers.

Thanks for the constructive comments.

1) I am sticking 2x because I simply don't have 600 bucks to spend on a quad core processor. I understand that obviously quad core is going to be better than duo core. I read everyone saying quad core, Why?

I also wanted to go with amd because of the ease of overclock capability. Intel hasn't been known for their over clocking ability. The front side bus and the multiplier have traditionally been locked and require physical modifications of the processor to overclock and is not a risk I was willing to take with a brand new processor. I'm not sure about this current generation of processors simply because i've not done much with them.

2) why does my computer need to be quiet?



Intel Core 2 Duo processors do a good job of overclocking. Check out www.anandtech.com or www.tomshardware.com and dive in and check. Frankly, I don't recommend doing it but if you are, STILL stick with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. :)

I disagree that the SoundBlaster X-Fi is a bad card for Vegas. It's actually a very good card and does have ASIO support with a very low latency. They are solid.

Jon

Unfortunately it doesn't have 1/4 balance jacks or XLR's to be able to hook up to studio monitors, unless you plan to purchase the additional I/O box to go with the platinum edition. And that uses 3.5mm (1/8”) minijack to 6.35mm (1/4”) plug adapter to get it to work. Soundblasters are created mostly for the gamer crowd and not for serious audio or video production.

ok well I guess I will heed your advice on going with Intel. I've seen some recent benchmarks that clear up the opinions you guys are expressing. I really just traditionally do not care for Intel based systems. It seems like every Intel system I've ever worked on ends up having a lot of issues. Maybe it is because most are "name brand" computers that people ask me to fix. It is late and I just kind of threw some stuff together with this latest setup. It is only about $30 cheaper then my ball'n air conditioned system. It has more ram, but a cheaper smaller FANLESS video card; I still added a new cpu fan for the simple fact that I just don't like factory coolers. The power supply I picked this time is designed for a high end system, yet is still quiet. I am debating on rethinking the motherboard for one that is capable of accepting 1066mhz ram instead of 800mhz ram to better match the frontside bus on the processor. plus this mobo only has 4 sata headers.. which is a problem. All in all it turns out to be about the same price, but I had to make some sacrifices in the "ball'n" factor. I don't just want something that is going to get me by, I want a computer that is fully functional and ready to handle any task I throw at it. Sorry the picture is so small. I will probably revamp this. I'd like to stay with either an Asus or Abit mobo. They are old brands and very reliable. I also want to stick with an XFX or Sparkle video card. OCZ, Kingston, Crucial, or Corsair ram, and an OCZ psu.

Terry,

Okay... bear with me...


#1) Intel is producing *massive* price drops next week. I would not purchase this system now. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3038

#2) The place you are buying from is way too expensive on many items. The E6600 boxed can easily be had right now for as little as $219.

#3) $150 for a 7600GT is very high, despite the passive heatsink issue. Though a video card doesn't typically have a large effect on Vegas performance, I would still recommend going with an 8' series card for DirectX 10 compatability down the line.

#4) Consider buying the Antec P182 case. A place I buy 90% of my stuff from and really like is www.mwave.com Better prices than what I see here overall, great service and they have just about everything we've mentioned.

Jon

Terry,

I ran through a similiarly configured system via the supplier I regularly use and the price is much less.

#1) The Plextor SATA burners are overkill. I use the NEC drives that I attached via IDE which is works perfectly. The interface is a non-issue with DVD-R type drives and frankly, the IDE standard is looked to via the OS, etc.

#2) Went with a cheaper and larger Hitachi drive that performs as well as the Seagate 7200.10's. 320Gb/ea as opposed to 250Gb.

#3) Upgraded to a 8600GT video card at a cheaper price. Yes, it has a fan, but they are relatively quite and the CPU fan will be louder anyhow.

#4) Went with more proven Corsair C4 memory. This memory used to cost $280 less than a year ago. Now it's half that amount and this, at the time, was some of the best memory around.

#5) Went with a modular high efficiency 500-watt PS. Don't be fooled by the big number of 600 wats. 500 is *more* than plenty of what you'll ever need and likely double what your system will use even at full capacity. You are fine here, SPECIALLY with a efficient CPU like the E6600

#6) Upgarded you to Antec quite P182 monster case.

#7) Gave you a better motherboard in my opinion

#8) Don't buy the CPU now! Intel is releasing new CPU's at far better price points next week and the motherboard I spec'd fully supports these new 1333Mhz CPU's. Good news not only will the chips be faster, they'll be cheaper. So expect to pay about or a little less for the new chips.

Looks like with shipping you can stay at or maybe under $2000.00. Insane...

Jon

Hey Jon thanks alot. I have a friend who is extreamly good with computers who put that together. However, we have never built a computer designed specifically for video editing. So this is the reason behind our set up submission to DVInfo.net.

This week I will use your constructive comments to build a final computer and submit for your review.

Jon you've been a great help.

-Terry.

No problem Terry...

Another good reason to go with the 8600GT or GTS...
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3047

Jon