What is the best computer for PP2 & Aspect HD

[David Taylor]

Originally Posted by Denis Danatzko

David, do you work at Cineform?

Yes.

Originally Posted by Denis Danatzko

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.

Originally Posted by Denis Danatzko

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.

Originally Posted by Denis Danatzko

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.

[Steven Gotz]

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.

[Denis Danatzko]

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.

[Stacy Rothwell]

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!

[David Taylor]

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.

[Richard Leadbetter]

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.

[Ainslie Davies]

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.

[Richard Leadbetter]

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?

[Darryl Hill]

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.

[David Taylor]

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.

[Richard Leadbetter]

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.

[Darryl Hill]

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.

[David Newman]

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.

[Darryl Hill]

Thanks for your reply,

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

[David Newman]

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.)