Dual Xeon 5520 vs i7 920

[Harm Millaard]

At the current time Adobe has no plans to port MPE to ATI cards, only nVidia CUDA and the rumored entry level card is the GTX-285.

[Pete Bauer]

Not that I'm not impressed with the Mercury stuff, but I thought it interesting that they had 16 cores and 24GB of RAM, too.

[Craig Coston]

Is there any rough estimate as to when CS5 will be available? I just purchased CS4 last month.

[Steve Kalle]

Craig, have you used the Matrox Mini with Premiere yet? I have a Mini that was used all of two days because of the Mini's lag when switching from Source to Program and vice versa. The Matrox software also ruined a one month old Vista x64 install even though I uninstalled the software after only a few days. Another problem I encountered was the Matrox presets. If the Mini was not plugged in, AE would crash upon starting the app and Premiere would crash upon opening a project with a Matrox preset. This last issue led me to try opening pproj files on other computers without the matrox software and they all crashed. So, opening a pproj file down the road without the correct matrox software installed could cause issues. If you read Matrox's support forum, you will see many other possible problems. I am led to believe that Matrox is geared for Macs and only has PC support as an afterthought.

And the Mini doesn't support 24p.

If your goal is to monitor your video, Premiere has a built in playback setting which mimics what the Mini and others basically do - but with NO lag. Also, recent nvidia cards have adjustments for just about everything the Mini does except Blue only (which is easily solved). Nvidia cards even can display bars.

Now, for a PC with lots of ram: you can get the i7 Xeon version - W3520 for $310 (newegg) and 24GB of DDR3-1333 ECC Registered ram for $813 and you can still overclock the Xeon. Most likely due to demand, the desktop non-ECC 4GB ram sticks are still over $200 each ($1200 total)
Newegg.com - Intel Xeon W3520 Bloomfield 2.66GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Server Processor - Processors - Servers
Newegg.com - Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Registered DDR3 1333 Server Memory Model KVR1333D3D4R9SK2/8G - Server Memory

However, I don't have much of a recommendation to speed up AE because its a poorly optimized program. I love AE and use it more than Premiere but most effects are horribly slow even on my PC with i7 920 & 12GB ram. Actually, I just remembered that Mac Pro users with dual quads have to enable only 6 of 8 cores in AE due to some problem.

[Craig Coston]

I am about ready to upgrade now. I have to wait until the 6th for a check to clear and then I'm good to go. I have a few questions though.

I am going to go with the i7 920 overclocked system. I was wondering the following:

1. P6T base model, or is there any performance gain/desirable features that makes the upgraded P6T models worth the extra money?

2. Corsair XMS3 1600 DDR3 or Corsair Dominator? Does the Dominator line give much performance/stability difference?

3. GTX 285 or 295? Will Premiere CS4 be able to utilize all of the 295? I was wondering if the 295 shows up as an SLI card or a single card, based on it's architecture.

4. SSD or stick with WD Raptor 74gb?

[Craig Coston]

Originally Posted by Steve Kalle

Craig, have you used the Matrox Mini with Premiere yet? I have a Mini that was used all of two days because of the Mini's lag when switching from Source to Program and vice versa. The Matrox software also ruined a one month old Vista x64 install even though I uninstalled the software after only a few days. Another problem I encountered was the Matrox presets. If the Mini was not plugged in, AE would crash upon starting the app and Premiere would crash upon opening a project with a Matrox preset. This last issue led me to try opening pproj files on other computers without the matrox software and they all crashed. So, opening a pproj file down the road without the correct matrox software installed could cause issues. If you read Matrox's support forum, you will see many other possible problems. I am led to believe that Matrox is geared for Macs and only has PC support as an afterthought.

And the Mini doesn't support 24p.

If your goal is to monitor your video, Premiere has a built in playback setting which mimics what the Mini and others basically do - but with NO lag. Also, recent nvidia cards have adjustments for just about everything the Mini does except Blue only (which is easily solved). Nvidia cards even can display bars.

I think I need to play with it with an i7 system before I can fully judge the Mini. So far it's been quirky for me, and I have had an issue with the Matrox HDMI calibration losing it's settings. I have to recalibrate each time after rebooting, which is a pain in the butt.

[Harm Millaard]

Originally Posted by Craig Coston

I am about ready to upgrade now. I have to wait until the 6th for a check to clear and then I'm good to go. I have a few questions though.

I am going to go with the i7 920 overclocked system. I was wondering the following:

1. P6T base model, or is there any performance gain/desirable features that makes the upgraded P6T models worth the extra money?

2. Corsair XMS3 1600 DDR3 or Corsair Dominator? Does the Dominator line give much performance/stability difference?

3. GTX 285 or 295? Will Premiere CS4 be able to utilize all of the 295? I was wondering if the 295 shows up as an SLI card or a single card, based on it's architecture.

4. SSD or stick with WD Raptor 74gb?

Re 1: There is no performance gain, but there are features that may make the difference, number of PCIe slots, IDE or not, the location of the various slots, an extra Marvell chip with SAS ports, etc.

Re 2: Keep in mind the CPU cooler you intend to use. My personal favorite is the Noctua NH-D14. The space for the memory sticks may be limited when you install certain coolers. I have seen this happen with the heat sinks on Kingston Hyper-X modules. For the rest get modules with the lowest timings you can find. 6-6-6-18 is much preferred over 9-9-9-30.

Re 3: For CS4 it makes no difference at all. For CS5 we are all eagerly awaiting further info, but one Adobe employee has alluded to the possibility that the GTX285 is about entry level for MPE. The GTX295 is more expensive, but with its stream processors may take more advantage of MPE/CUDA than the 285.

Re 4: I would stick with the Raptor for the time being. Loading times are not really relevant for editing and it may be more beneficial to invest the money in the rest of your disk setup.

[Steve Kalle]

1) P6T SE (base model) vs P6T($20-30 more) - the SE has inferior capacitors, which is why I got the P6T for myself. Better capacitors are good for overclocking stability and longer life.

Consider whether you want 12GB or 24GB of ram. The cost of 4GB DDR3 "NON-ECC" ram is still $200+ whereas 4GB DDR3 ECC is only $125-130 a piece. The Non-ECC is used with the i7 and the ECC is used with the Xeon. The extra cost of the ram for the i7 is nearly the same as the extra cost of the dual-Xeon setup. If you use After Effects and/or Dynamic Link(I think Encore can be used via DL also) in addition to Photoshop while working, 24GB really HELPS.

And remember that Premiere and AE CS5 will be 64bit native apps so they will love ram.

2) There is no real performance gain from more expensive ram. For i7 920, at least DDR3-1333 so the i7 can be overclocked to 3.4-3.6GHz. I'm fairly certain that ram will only run at 1066 and you must overclock the CPU in order to run the ram faster.

3)Get the 285 because the 295 won't be supported in CS5/MPE (at least not upon release).

4) If you have a Raptor, then you can keep using it. If you are buying a new drive for the OS then a SSD is the way to go because it is only slightly more money but WAYYYYY faster. I had 4 Raptors in Raid for the OS & Apps and went to a single Intel X25 80GB SSD, and the SSD makes those Raptors feel 10yrs old. I also like SSDs because of no moving parts and higher reliability.

[Mike McCarthy]

I have tried Cineform files on the Matrox Mini with mixed results. The 4:4:4 ones worked fine, and the 4:2:2 ones did not, which seemed counter intuitive. The I/O Express or Xena line is probably a much better choice for Cineform timeline monitoring. Let me know if you get Cineform files working well on a Matrox Mini timeline.

[Craig Coston]

but one Adobe employee has alluded to the possibility that the GTX285 is about entry level for MPE.

So should I consider waiting and purchasing a higher end video card when CS5 arrives? Or get the 285 now? Right now I have a ATI Radeon x1950 Pro with 512mb RAM. Is there something in the $100 and under range that would give me decent performance now, while allowing me to save money for a better card when CS5 comes?

[Steve Kalle]

"Alluding to"...actually, Adobe personnel have already stated that the 285 is the base for support. Here is the best info on the subject direct from Adobe:
The Genesis Project: Technology Sneek Peek: Adobe® Mercury Playback Engine

[Harm Millaard]

Steve,

Dennis gave his personal opinion and he is not part of the inner circle on these developments. He has often stated a preference for the Quadro 4800, since Dave, his colleague, uses it. But this is not an official stance from Adobe's side. We will just has to wait and see.

[Craig Coston]

So do you guys think that by the time that CS5 comes out there will either be a better model in the "entry level" price range than the GTX 285?

[Harm Millaard]

Likely that will be the GTX380.

[Craig Coston]

I ordered the parts, minus the video card. I'll wait for CS5 to come out before buying one, unless my system is being bottlenecked by my current card. I was thinking about buying something simple like a GeForce 9800GT for the interim, but decided to do more research.

On a side note, I'm occupying my time waiting for this stuff by building a wireless video transmitter that fits in my Sony HCC underwater housing (HDR-HC7 cam fits in it). I just got a successful test above water running the wireless off of 4 AA batteries, now for the underwater test! I plan on running the signal to a pair of video glasses. This will allow me to use that housing that has the stupid flip out mirror. To see the mirror, you have to have your face level with the mirror, which means being all the way in the water. When the water is often below 50 degrees F, that kind of sucks! So this is my solution.

Oh, and I ordered the 80gb Intel X25-M SSD drive. My Raptor is more than a few years old, and I don't want to chance losing my OS drive with a deadline looming (a big shoot in Feb for me!).