How's this for an Editing PC Spec?

[Matthew Stokes]

Dell's new XPS 420 has been touted as a good editing PC, and looks pretty slick. I've "up'ed" the spec a little, and have come up with this...which works out as £825 ex VAT (using a variety of discount codes and free delivery offers!).

I am currently using Ulead Media Studio, but im soon to be using Adobe Premier 1.5, and then upgrading to CS3 I think. I have an extra DVD burner to install, and 2 x 22" Screens. All footage is filmed in Mini DV, with a view of upgrading to HD soon. So, is this a good, suitable PC, ok to use with HD in the near future, or am I barking up totally the wrong tree?!

Your thoughts please!

PROCESSOR Intel® Viiv™ Technology Intel® Core 2 Quad-Core Q6600 Processor (2.40GHz, 8MB, 1066MHz) edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium - English edit
HARDWARE SUPPORT Base Warranty - 1 Year XPS Premium Hardware Support (incl. Gaming and On-Site Support) edit
MONITOR No 20" Wide Monitor edit
MEMORY 4096MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [4x1024] edit
HARD DRIVE 1TB Dual Hard Drive Raid 0 Stripe (2x500GB - 7200rpm) edit
GRAPHICS CARD SINGLE 768MB nVidia® GeForce® 8800 GTX graphics card edit
TV TUNER & MULTIMEDIA ACCELERATORS Dell™ Xcelerator™ including Integrated Avio card and Hybrid (Analog/Digital) TV tuner card edit
OPTICAL DRIVE 16x DVD +/- RW Drive edi

[Carl Middleton]

Originally Posted by Matthew Stokes

Dell's new XPS 420 has been touted as a good editing PC, and looks pretty slick. I've "up'ed" the spec a little, and have come up with this...which works out as £825 ex VAT (using a variety of discount codes and free delivery offers!).

I am currently using Ulead Media Studio, but im soon to be using Adobe Premier 1.5, and then upgrading to CS3 I think. I have an extra DVD burner to install, and 2 x 22" Screens. All footage is filmed in Mini DV, with a view of upgrading to HD soon. So, is this a good, suitable PC, ok to use with HD in the near future, or am I barking up totally the wrong tree?!

Your thoughts please!

PROCESSOR Intel® Viiv™ Technology Intel® Core 2 Quad-Core Q6600 Processor (2.40GHz, 8MB, 1066MHz) edit
OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium - English edit

Vista is a very scary OS from what I hear, you may be better off planning on XP

HARDWARE SUPPORT Base Warranty - 1 Year XPS Premium Hardware Support (incl. Gaming and On-Site Support) edit
MONITOR No 20" Wide Monitor edit
MEMORY 4096MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [4x1024] edit
HARD DRIVE 1TB Dual Hard Drive Raid 0 Stripe (2x500GB - 7200rpm) edit

I would personally recommend something like this, plus a high-RPM system drive. As well, don't forget that Raid 0 has *no* redundancy, if either of the drives go, you lose everything.

GRAPHICS CARD SINGLE 768MB nVidia® GeForce® 8800 GTX graphics card edit

I edit using the Geforce 8800 GTS, I hate it. Immensely. Video overlay is a pain in the neck to get enabled, and does not work properly. nVidia gamer cards are *not* ideal to edit on.

TV TUNER & MULTIMEDIA ACCELERATORS Dell™ Xcelerator™ including Integrated Avio card and Hybrid (Analog/Digital) TV tuner card edit

I would look at the AJA or Blackmagic cards, preferably the AJA. I've heard that recommended as the #1 card for HD on Premiere.

OPTICAL DRIVE 16x DVD +/- RW Drive edi

As a last note, I would also recommend looking at Cineform (www.cineform.com) once you move on to HD. Realtime HD editing on a visually lossless codec. Wonderful stuff, and greatly improves your workflow.

[Matthew Stokes]

Thanks for the feedback. So, is the processor and memory ok?

Is 7200rpm not a fast drive then?

What graphics card would you recommend i go for?

Is the Dell™ Xcelerator not any good?

Any other comment/feedback about the XPS 420 from anyone? Any help woud be appreciated!

How about any recomendations for a good editing PC (not Mac) for me, somewhere under £1000 ? Thanks!

[Mike McCarthy]

The accelerator probably won't effect editing at all.

Buy an ATI or a NVIDIA 7 series card for best overlay results. 8800GTX will be a waste of money unless you do things besides editing with it.

7200rpm is sufficent for most all purposes.

[Matthew Stokes]

Any specific recommendations for Graphics Card then? Do I have to go particularly high budget?

[Adam Gold]

Adobe recommends the nVidia Quadro FX 3500 in their recommended HDV system.

http://www.adobe.com/adobeopenhd/cer...ertSummary.pdf

Here's what Adobe recommends for CS3:

Dell Precision™ 490 Workstation
Dual Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 5160 3.00GHz, 4MB L2,1333
4GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM FBD ECC RAM (4 DIMMS)
160GB SATA system drive
500g 7200RPM SATA Media Storage drive
PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX 3500 256MB graphic adapter
Integrated Sound Blaster® X-Fi XtremeMusic (D), AND 1394a Controller Card
CD-ROM Drive: TSSTcorp TS-H192C
DVD Combo Drive: CDRWDVD TSSTcorp TS-H492C
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional SP2
Adobe® Creative Suite® 3 Production Premium

Also note if you install Premiere Pro 1.5, you should download and install the free HDV 1.5.1 update which includes a licensed Cineform codec. It's the only way you can do HDV with 1.5 without buying other products.

I know this is probably more than you're prepared to do just yet, but I'm just sayin'...

[Mike McCarthy]

The Quadro series cards are un-necessary for most NLE tasks.

A lower end GPU is all that is required for editing, but there are certain features you might want to specifically look for. Consider Dual-link DVI, HDMI out, HDCP support, YUV and RGB overlay, etc.

[Roger Lee]

I just installed this graphics card and I really like it.

Very smooth video on my p.c.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce_7600.html