New system, Amd or Intel.. and Raid at DVinfo.net

Christian Magnussen · November 22nd, 2005, 10:26 PM

The endless debate, Amd Vs. Intel...
Tests i've read tell about the same performance in general, some use amd with success, other would never use anything but intel. As far as I'm concerned it all boils down to the chipset? At the moment my computer has a asus MB with Sis 645chipset, completely useless for video...(and i mean USELESS...). Pinnacle LE 6's stability can be compared to a drunk person, but my hp laptop(which is a bit "slower" looking at the specs) is in a different leauge when it comes to editing.
Edit in Pinnacle LE 6Pro, soon Avid Liquid 7 Pro.

Nforce4 vs Intel 955x?

This is what I'm considereing at the moment...

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
Corsair XMS3200 TWINX DDR400 REG/ECC 2048 MB (2x1024)
XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 256 MB
2 X WD 74gb Raptor Raid 0 Sys/Os/Software drive

2/3/4(depending on Raid level) x Hitachi 500gb

For Project/Media/Render disk i wish to Raid the disk, but unshure which level is the "best". I wil use either a promise sata pcie or areca sata pcie controller. Will Raid 5 write fast enough? Or should I opt for Raid 10? I know that Raid for dv/hdv with todays sata harddrives isn't required, but the fact the will keep all the logged(used/unused) material for at least 2 years and had som bad experience with disks crashing i would like to use Raid.

I would appreciatate any suggestions, comments and experience with the same or simular setups.

Glenn Chan · November 22nd, 2005, 10:51 PM

With the RAM, you might want to look at getting normal RAM instead of the low latency stuff. The low timings doesn't seem to do anything for video rendering, at least with Vegas.
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=18841
The timings may make a difference with MPEG2 encoding by a few percent... I haven't looked into that. Check the links in that thread.
*The test relates the 865/Intel chipset platform, which behaves differently from AMD chipsets. I haven't looked into what happens on AMD platforms.

2- RAID 0 actually doubles the data loss if one drive fails.
RAID 1, 3, 5, etc. do provide protection against data loss from hard drive failure. It still doesn't protect against user error.

Christian Magnussen · November 23rd, 2005, 07:40 AM

I might swap the ram for something a bit more economical, i'll decide when I order it. A few % here and there might add up, but I know from expirience that the difference in spec/benchmarks don't always mean better performance in the apps I use. The two "big" questions is still amd and which raid level....

Amd has my wote because of the X2 cpu and well equiped motherboard, but the concern( a bit exaggerated maybe...?) is the nforce chipset...
I'm aware that Raid 0 = loose one disk, loose it all, thats why it's os/software that will use raid 0, no critical data is stored here. But do Raid 5 write fast enough for videoediting..?

Stephen Finton · November 23rd, 2005, 09:01 AM

SATA II is 300MBps. Plenty of speed. RAID is only useful if you are capturing uncompressed HD. Otherwise it is impractical and not reliable. It will not speed up your projects.

The real reason why it has proliferated the PC motherboard market is because it will load games faster but once the game is loaded, memory takes over, so it really is a waste of money. Spend your money on software, if you already have a cool camera.

Jim Ioannidis · November 23rd, 2005, 09:57 AM

RAID is a definate with video.
Gotta protect your data. If you lost a HD you could cap the footage again but all your project files and any modified files (after effect, audio edits) would have to be done all over again.

RAID 0 is no protection, it's fast but will not protect against a drive failure.
RAID 1 is mirroring. 2 drives that act as 1...so if one dies you still have an exact and up to date copy of your data. Also with RAID 1 your drive speed is doubled cuz you got 2 drives delivering the data.
RAID 5 requires atleast 3 or 4 disks (i forget the minimum) and takes up 20% of the total storage for parity so if you lost a drive it could rebuild the data for the parity data. The slow up in RAID 5 is from the controller figuring out parity but it shouldn't hurt performace. The more drives in a RAID 5 set the faster it will perform.
RAID 10 is Raid 1 + Raid 0. Put RAID 1 on 2 pairs of disks so you have 2 mirrored sets and then RAID 0 them together. Speed and redundancy but it's 2 drives worth of storage out of 4 drives.

Im using RAID 10.

Then there is also RAID 50 which is 2 RAID 5 sets RAID 0ed together.

Christian Magnussen · November 23rd, 2005, 12:20 PM

As i wrote, you don't need raid today with the fast sata disk's to edit, but the fact that harddrives die/crash from time to time is reason enough to RAID.
I've been close to loseing hundreds of hours of work documents, pictures and so on.
Ofcourse it's possible to recover a lot if you send the dead drive to say IBAS here in Norway, but the word expensive do get a new meaning when you see the fee...just diagostics cost approx twice what a raid 10 array(4disk) with areca controller costs here in Norway.

The question still is Raid 5 fast enough(writing) for video(dv/hdv). Raid 5(min 3drives) is a bit more economical than Raid 10(min 4 drives), but with then money spent on pc, software, camera and so on a harddrive extra isn't to expensive..

Tung Bui · November 23rd, 2005, 06:37 PM

I was just going to post a question about this exact thing. I was thinking of getting a raid 5 setup. I dont really care about speed but I want redundancy. My current setup is with sata hard disk. What hardware raid card do you guys recommend to use for PC and how much does it cost?
Just with raid 5 is the drive that runs the operating system a part of the raid or is it seperate?
I kinda get paranoid about losing my project files more than losing the video data which can be recaptured. Can you get the project files get saved onto the raid instead of the operating system drive?

Riley Harmon · December 5th, 2005, 04:15 PM

amd dual core x2 for the win, http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10442_7...?tag=cnetfd.wk

ive also read reports of an x2 46/4800 with 2gig ram
beating out a dual 2.7 g5 with equivalent ram in after effects and photoshop tests

i plan on building an x2 witha 7800gt and 2gig ram soon

Christopher Lefchik · December 5th, 2005, 09:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Christian Magnussen

I might swap the ram for something a bit more economical, i'll decide when I order it. A few % here and there might add up, but I know from expirience that the difference in spec/benchmarks don't always mean better performance in the apps I use.

Tests show that for the most part, paying extra for low-latency RAM is a waste of money. I made the mistake of doing this and found out later it didn't make much difference, especially for the price premium.

See the articles linked below for more details:
Fast RAM Provides Low Value
Does RAM Latency Matter?

Just get the fastest memory the motherboard you choose supports (i.e., like PC2-5300, which is different from the latency), from a reputable manufacturer like Crucial.

Ron Evans · December 6th, 2005, 10:35 AM

Tung.
Project files are never very big, video files are big. I usually keep several copies of my project files and backup to CD-R frequently. By project files I include batch capture file,titles as well as the NLE's project file. With this you can always recapture the video files even some time in the future. Consequently I do not use Raid with SATA drives consistently delivery over 50MBs this is almost 15 times the speed needed for DV or native HDV. IF you only have two video drives it is more practical to use them seperately and distribute clip imformation so that one drive is not the main source for all the NLE's video. For my two camera shoots I put camera one video on one drive and camera two video on the second drive and even have a third drive for rendered previews. I thus have timeline playback that never tasks a drive with more than one video stream of 3.5MBS ( 15 times less than the drive capability). IF the project is a complex one then it is likely that the NLE will have to render anyway and in this case it is RAM and processor performance that is important. Once rendered it is now a single stream again and the drive performance is well capable of sustaining all the present output formats. Raid was great when hard drives were only 8G and had transfer rates or 12MBs and used to thermal cycles at random times!!. I used Raid then. This was only a few years ago too. Times change. The last SATA2 drive I got of 200G will sustain over 60MBS when close to empty and even when 85% full will still sustain over 50MBs. You don't need Raid for speed. So the only reason is simplicity of operating on one virtual hard drive and redundancy, then your choice is Raid 5 or 10 and use a lot of extra drives to fill up your case and warm the room up. For a high volume business this is justifiable to save time, keep staff working and meet the needs of clients. If video is a hobby you don't need Raid, spend the money on something else and if you have a problem just recapture. So if you follow my argument you would never use Raid 0.

Ron Evans

Dan Euritt · December 6th, 2005, 01:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim Ioannidis

RAID is a definate with video.
Gotta protect your data. If you lost a HD you could cap the footage again but all your project files and any modified files (after effect, audio edits) would have to be done all over again.

as ron pointed out, if you backed up your project files like you are supposed to, there is little chance of losing 'em... and in fact, i never put the project files on the same drive that the video is stored on... if the audio edits were made within the project, they will be recreated by the project file, and edits on programs like after affects can also be backed up via the small project files, similar to what is done with the master project file.

some great advice in this thread! thanks guys.

Stephen Finton · December 6th, 2005, 02:36 PM

Yeah. We just back up the project files. All of our video and audio is still on tape, if we lose it on a drive. Wy spend several hundred more to get drive redundancy, when you can burn a couple of CD-Rs every now and then. Plus, everytime I get a new harddrive, I am too tempted to use it for extra drive space. ;)

Miguel Lombana · December 6th, 2005, 08:26 PM

You know this topic comes up over and over, there should almost be a "sticky" with a list of recent purchases. Everytime a user gets a new machine they should post it's configuration, Vendor, Mobo, Chipset, CPU, etc. Would also make for a nice timeline effect as over time you'll start to see the PC evolution.

Just a suggestion... ML

November 22nd, 2005, 10:26 PM	#1
Christian Magnussen Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Oslo, Norway Posts: 191	New system, Amd or Intel.. and Raid The endless debate, Amd Vs. Intel... Tests i've read tell about the same performance in general, some use amd with success, other would never use anything but intel. As far as I'm concerned it all boils down to the chipset? At the moment my computer has a asus MB with Sis 645chipset, completely useless for video...(and i mean USELESS...). Pinnacle LE 6's stability can be compared to a drunk person, but my hp laptop(which is a bit "slower" looking at the specs) is in a different leauge when it comes to editing. Edit in Pinnacle LE 6Pro, soon Avid Liquid 7 Pro. Nforce4 vs Intel 955x? This is what I'm considereing at the moment... AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Corsair XMS3200 TWINX DDR400 REG/ECC 2048 MB (2x1024) XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 256 MB 2 X WD 74gb Raptor Raid 0 Sys/Os/Software drive 2/3/4(depending on Raid level) x Hitachi 500gb For Project/Media/Render disk i wish to Raid the disk, but unshure which level is the "best". I wil use either a promise sata pcie or areca sata pcie controller. Will Raid 5 write fast enough? Or should I opt for Raid 10? I know that Raid for dv/hdv with todays sata harddrives isn't required, but the fact the will keep all the logged(used/unused) material for at least 2 years and had som bad experience with disks crashing i would like to use Raid. I would appreciatate any suggestions, comments and experience with the same or simular setups.

November 23rd, 2005, 09:57 AM	#5
Jim Ioannidis Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Boston, MA Posts: 60	RAID is a definate with video. Gotta protect your data. If you lost a HD you could cap the footage again but all your project files and any modified files (after effect, audio edits) would have to be done all over again. RAID 0 is no protection, it's fast but will not protect against a drive failure. RAID 1 is mirroring. 2 drives that act as 1...so if one dies you still have an exact and up to date copy of your data. Also with RAID 1 your drive speed is doubled cuz you got 2 drives delivering the data. RAID 5 requires atleast 3 or 4 disks (i forget the minimum) and takes up 20% of the total storage for parity so if you lost a drive it could rebuild the data for the parity data. The slow up in RAID 5 is from the controller figuring out parity but it shouldn't hurt performace. The more drives in a RAID 5 set the faster it will perform. RAID 10 is Raid 1 + Raid 0. Put RAID 1 on 2 pairs of disks so you have 2 mirrored sets and then RAID 0 them together. Speed and redundancy but it's 2 drives worth of storage out of 4 drives. Im using RAID 10. Then there is also RAID 50 which is 2 RAID 5 sets RAID 0ed together. __________________ www.downfallproductions.com

December 6th, 2005, 08:26 PM	#13
Miguel Lombana Major Player Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Litchfield Park, AZ (W/of Phoenix) Posts: 502	You know this topic comes up over and over, there should almost be a "sticky" with a list of recent purchases. Everytime a user gets a new machine they should post it's configuration, Vendor, Mobo, Chipset, CPU, etc. Would also make for a nice timeline effect as over time you'll start to see the PC evolution. Just a suggestion... ML __________________ Miguel Lombana http://www.miguellombana.com & http://www.phoenixhamradio.com

November 22nd, 2005, 10:51 PM	#2
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	With the RAM, you might want to look at getting normal RAM instead of the low latency stuff. The low timings doesn't seem to do anything for video rendering, at least with Vegas. http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=18841 The timings may make a difference with MPEG2 encoding by a few percent... I haven't looked into that. Check the links in that thread. *The test relates the 865/Intel chipset platform, which behaves differently from AMD chipsets. I haven't looked into what happens on AMD platforms. 2- RAID 0 actually doubles the data loss if one drive fails. RAID 1, 3, 5, etc. do provide protection against data loss from hard drive failure. It still doesn't protect against user error.

November 23rd, 2005, 07:40 AM	#3
Christian Magnussen Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Oslo, Norway Posts: 191	I might swap the ram for something a bit more economical, i'll decide when I order it. A few % here and there might add up, but I know from expirience that the difference in spec/benchmarks don't always mean better performance in the apps I use. The two "big" questions is still amd and which raid level.... Amd has my wote because of the X2 cpu and well equiped motherboard, but the concern( a bit exaggerated maybe...?) is the nforce chipset... I'm aware that Raid 0 = loose one disk, loose it all, thats why it's os/software that will use raid 0, no critical data is stored here. But do Raid 5 write fast enough for videoediting..?

November 23rd, 2005, 09:01 AM	#4
Stephen Finton Major Player Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 344	SATA II is 300MBps. Plenty of speed. RAID is only useful if you are capturing uncompressed HD. Otherwise it is impractical and not reliable. It will not speed up your projects. The real reason why it has proliferated the PC motherboard market is because it will load games faster but once the game is loaded, memory takes over, so it really is a waste of money. Spend your money on software, if you already have a cool camera.

November 23rd, 2005, 12:20 PM	#6
Christian Magnussen Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Oslo, Norway Posts: 191	As i wrote, you don't need raid today with the fast sata disk's to edit, but the fact that harddrives die/crash from time to time is reason enough to RAID. I've been close to loseing hundreds of hours of work documents, pictures and so on. Ofcourse it's possible to recover a lot if you send the dead drive to say IBAS here in Norway, but the word expensive do get a new meaning when you see the fee...just diagostics cost approx twice what a raid 10 array(4disk) with areca controller costs here in Norway. The question still is Raid 5 fast enough(writing) for video(dv/hdv). Raid 5(min 3drives) is a bit more economical than Raid 10(min 4 drives), but with then money spent on pc, software, camera and so on a harddrive extra isn't to expensive..

November 23rd, 2005, 06:37 PM	#7
Tung Bui Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Sydney, Australia Posts: 101	I was just going to post a question about this exact thing. I was thinking of getting a raid 5 setup. I dont really care about speed but I want redundancy. My current setup is with sata hard disk. What hardware raid card do you guys recommend to use for PC and how much does it cost? Just with raid 5 is the drive that runs the operating system a part of the raid or is it seperate? I kinda get paranoid about losing my project files more than losing the video data which can be recaptured. Can you get the project files get saved onto the raid instead of the operating system drive?

December 5th, 2005, 04:15 PM	#8
Riley Harmon Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Oklahoma Posts: 424	amd dual core x2 for the win, http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10442_7...?tag=cnetfd.wk ive also read reports of an x2 46/4800 with 2gig ram beating out a dual 2.7 g5 with equivalent ram in after effects and photoshop tests i plan on building an x2 witha 7800gt and 2gig ram soon

December 6th, 2005, 10:35 AM	#10
Ron Evans Inner Circle Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Posts: 4,222	Tung. Project files are never very big, video files are big. I usually keep several copies of my project files and backup to CD-R frequently. By project files I include batch capture file,titles as well as the NLE's project file. With this you can always recapture the video files even some time in the future. Consequently I do not use Raid with SATA drives consistently delivery over 50MBs this is almost 15 times the speed needed for DV or native HDV. IF you only have two video drives it is more practical to use them seperately and distribute clip imformation so that one drive is not the main source for all the NLE's video. For my two camera shoots I put camera one video on one drive and camera two video on the second drive and even have a third drive for rendered previews. I thus have timeline playback that never tasks a drive with more than one video stream of 3.5MBS ( 15 times less than the drive capability). IF the project is a complex one then it is likely that the NLE will have to render anyway and in this case it is RAM and processor performance that is important. Once rendered it is now a single stream again and the drive performance is well capable of sustaining all the present output formats. Raid was great when hard drives were only 8G and had transfer rates or 12MBs and used to thermal cycles at random times!!. I used Raid then. This was only a few years ago too. Times change. The last SATA2 drive I got of 200G will sustain over 60MBS when close to empty and even when 85% full will still sustain over 50MBs. You don't need Raid for speed. So the only reason is simplicity of operating on one virtual hard drive and redundancy, then your choice is Raid 5 or 10 and use a lot of extra drives to fill up your case and warm the room up. For a high volume business this is justifiable to save time, keep staff working and meet the needs of clients. If video is a hobby you don't need Raid, spend the money on something else and if you have a problem just recapture. So if you follow my argument you would never use Raid 0. Ron Evans

December 6th, 2005, 02:36 PM	#12
Stephen Finton Major Player Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Houston, TX Posts: 344	Yeah. We just back up the project files. All of our video and audio is still on tape, if we lose it on a drive. Wy spend several hundred more to get drive redundancy, when you can burn a couple of CD-Rs every now and then. Plus, everytime I get a new harddrive, I am too tempted to use it for extra drive space. ;)