Intensity Pro Supported Chipsets
 

Hi All,
Apologies if this is the wrong forum, but I wanted to find out what (Intel) chipsets people are successfully using with Intensity Pro. My last desktop was a Dell which Black Magic doesn't officially support due to too many configuration variations in their boxes. So I am forced to build my own quad core XP Pro system from scratch. So, what mobo/chipset are you using?

Works fine on my Dell 390 workstation....

Good to hear, Ray. Unfortunately I had no such luck. I had to restart my Dimension 8400 every time I wanted to use my Intensity Pro. Tech support told me they don't "officially" support Dell boxes. Anyone else? A Quad Core CPU/mobo combo that works with Intensity Pro (running XP Pro)?

I'm working with a nForce 630i mobo with a Q6700 and a nVidia 9600GT, but I still drop frames after 13-20 seconds.

Actually, now my nForce 630i with a Q6700 and 9600GT with 4GB of 5-5-5-18 PC2-6400 RAM breezes through MJPEG, given you have a dedicated SATA capture drive. Also be picky on what system file format to use on that dedicated drive, I'm currently on FAT32 so I'm limited to 4GB per file.

Not only that, make sure you have a good allocation size when formatting the dedicated drive. I'm now spending over 2-3 days resizing the allocation size from 512k to 4096k.

A bit off topic...

Jack - what is the advantage to increasing the allocation size?

the only interest to have small sectors is to spare the space drive for small files.
if a file is only one byte long, it will take at least the size of one sector. the same when the file is read. if it take only one byte for the file, the disk will read at least one sector.\
if you are pretty sure that the disk will hold only big video files, you want to make sure that when written or read, the disk will handle the maximum of data in one shot.
the maximum size is 128k per sector. this will make you video file sliced in pieces of 128k.
bigger pieces, less pieces, less disk access, better speed.

So, what you're saying is that I should set the allocation size on my media drives to the largest size available? I checked on my drives and I can have an allocation size up to 64 kilobytes, it is currently set at 4069 bytes (4 kilobytes).

With regard to large video files, can the allocation size be too large?

Compatibility issues will spring up if allocation sizes are too large (beyond 4096bytes). But if the drive is dedicated to video and nothing else, and your software supports the allocation size, go for it.