Best use of money - Video vs System vs Memory vs...

Hello - I have a friend who was just asked to put together a system for
Video editing - real videos/multimedia for a recording studio. He asked me
to help him as he has a limited budget and isn't sure where to allocate it.

There are so many ways to allocate the dough - I'm just asking what
configuration would be best (all systems would run XP to support the
software they are using. He would like a G5, but they just can't do it.) I
lean towards sink all you can into the video card, but it's not 3D polygons,
it's video, so maybe overall system robustness is more in line.

Nvidia 6800 SLI and a Pentium 2.8 with 2 GB memory, SATA HD
or
Nvidia 6800 card, 64 Bit Opteron, SCSI HD, 2 GB Memory
or
Nvidia 6800 card, Dual Pentium 2.8's, 2GB Memory, SATA HD

I know the best would be 6800 SLI, Dual Pentiums, SCSI, 2GB+ Memory, but it
sounds like his limit is about $4000 - and he isn't getting a whitebox.
Choices must be made! Thanks for any help in advance, and even if you aren't
sure, I'd like to hear what people here think.

NOTE: There are NO motherboards that I know of on the market that will run
dual Pentium 2.8's.

--
DaveW



"Patrick" <patrick@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:cWUad.3372$mR.1973@twister.rdc-kc.rr.com...
> Hello - I have a friend who was just asked to put together a system for
> Video editing - real videos/multimedia for a recording studio. He asked me
> to help him as he has a limited budget and isn't sure where to allocate
> it.
>
> There are so many ways to allocate the dough - I'm just asking what
> configuration would be best (all systems would run XP to support the
> software they are using. He would like a G5, but they just can't do it.) I
> lean towards sink all you can into the video card, but it's not 3D
> polygons,
> it's video, so maybe overall system robustness is more in line.
>
> Nvidia 6800 SLI and a Pentium 2.8 with 2 GB memory, SATA HD
> or
> Nvidia 6800 card, 64 Bit Opteron, SCSI HD, 2 GB Memory
> or
> Nvidia 6800 card, Dual Pentium 2.8's, 2GB Memory, SATA HD
>
> I know the best would be 6800 SLI, Dual Pentiums, SCSI, 2GB+ Memory, but
> it
> sounds like his limit is about $4000 - and he isn't getting a whitebox.
> Choices must be made! Thanks for any help in advance, and even if you
> aren't
> sure, I'd like to hear what people here think.
>
>

Patrick wrote:

> Hello - I have a friend who was just asked to put together a system for
> Video editing - real videos/multimedia for a recording studio. He asked me
> to help him as he has a limited budget and isn't sure where to allocate
> it.
>
> There are so many ways to allocate the dough - I'm just asking what
> configuration would be best (all systems would run XP to support the
> software they are using. He would like a G5, but they just can't do it.) I
> lean towards sink all you can into the video card, but it's not 3D
> polygons, it's video, so maybe overall system robustness is more in line.
>
> Nvidia 6800 SLI and a Pentium 2.8 with 2 GB memory, SATA HD
> or
> Nvidia 6800 card, 64 Bit Opteron, SCSI HD, 2 GB Memory
> or
> Nvidia 6800 card, Dual Pentium 2.8's, 2GB Memory, SATA HD
>
> I know the best would be 6800 SLI, Dual Pentiums, SCSI, 2GB+ Memory, but
> it sounds like his limit is about $4000 - and he isn't getting a whitebox.
> Choices must be made! Thanks for any help in advance, and even if you
> aren't sure, I'd like to hear what people here think.

First issue is the timeframe. If you want SLI you are going to have to
wait, possibly a long time. There are _no_ Intel chipsets that support 2
X16 slots--the SLI fanboys will tell you otherwise but when you pull the
datasheets on the chipsets that they claim have this feature you will find
that according to the manufacturer they at best support one X16 and one X8.

The fanboys will also tell you that the new nForce4 chipset from nvidia is
supposed to have support for dual X16 slots--there may be some way to
configure it to do that but it's not the default mode--the first nforce4
boards that anyone has shown do _not_ have dual X16.

So it may be available in a few months or may not be available until much
later, but regardless it is not available _now_.

The benefits of SLI for video editing are questionable anyway.

Next, dual processors. There are no dual Pentium-4 boards. Intel fixed the
P4 so that it could not be forced to work in dual mode. To get dual Intels
you have to go to Xeons and pay a Xeon price. Whether this is worthwhile
or not depends on the applications he is using and on how he's capturing.
If he's doing analog capture the ability of duals to handle two interrupts
simultaneously may make the difference between dropped frames and no
dropped frames, if he's doing digital capture then unless he has
applications that specifically support multiple processors he's unlikely to
see a major performance benefit.

Going AMD, there's no benefit to using a single Opteron over a single
Athlon-64 and the Athlon-64s for a given clock speed are a _lot_ less
expensive. On the other hand dual Opterons would be an option, with the
same caveats as for the P4.

But the choice between P4 and AMD-64 is complicated in this case by the fact
that video editing is one of the few areas where the P4 holds its own
against the AMD-64s.

At one time disk performance was a major factor in the performance of
video-editing workstations, but the current generation of disks is fast
enough that this may no longer be a major issue. On the other hand, he'll
be wanting lots of disk capacity--video editing eats disk like crazy--and
some method of high-capacity offline or near-line storage if he doesn't
have a large drive array.

The best thing to do is find out what application he is using and see what
the software vendor says about optimizing systems for their software.



--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Thanks for all the help - I think 1 X16, 2GB of Memory, P4 3.2 and SATA RAID
5 (3x240 for 480GB) will probably keep me under $4000.

But I'm going to check with the manufacturer of the software first!

"Patrick" <test@test.com> writes:
> Thanks for all the help - I think 1 X16, 2GB of Memory, P4 3.2 and SATA RAID
> 5 (3x240 for 480GB) will probably keep me under $4000.

RAID5 is fine for databases, but for video editing? I would just
stripe the disks and get twice the write speed.
Marcin

"Marcin Nowak" <Marcin.Nowak@remove_it.cern.ch> wrote in message
news:k6tu3ex9.fsf@remove_it.cern.ch...
> "Patrick" <test@test.com> writes:
> > Thanks for all the help - I think 1 X16, 2GB of Memory, P4 3.2 and SATA
RAID
> > 5 (3x240 for 480GB) will probably keep me under $4000.
>
> RAID5 is fine for databases, but for video editing? I would just
> stripe the disks and get twice the write speed.
> Marcin

This is more of a fault tolerance thing than performance. SATA Raid
controllers are pretty cheap - instead of one 400GB drive with no fault
tolerance, I would rather have 3 drives that are fault tolerant.

"Patrick" <patrick@hello.com> writes:

> "Marcin Nowak" wrote in message
> > "Patrick" <test@test.com> writes:
> > > Thanks for all the help - I think 1 X16, 2GB of Memory, P4 3.2 and SATA
> RAID
> > > 5 (3x240 for 480GB) will probably keep me under $4000.
> >
> > RAID5 is fine for databases, but for video editing? I would just
> > stripe the disks and get twice the write speed.
> > Marcin
>
> This is more of a fault tolerance thing than performance. SATA Raid
> controllers are pretty cheap - instead of one 400GB drive with no fault
> tolerance, I would rather have 3 drives that are fault tolerant.

Of course RAID 0 trades fault tolerance in favour of speed. I simply
assumed that this vast space would be rather used as a working area,
not really to keep a valuable results for longer.
In case you really care for data safty, maybe a mirroring would be
better? With 4 disks RAID 1+0 you get the same fault tolerance and
twice the speed.
I think you actually get better fault tolerance this way - I don't
believe this cheap RAID controllers are very good when actual problems
happen...
Marcin

DaveW wrote:
> NOTE: There are NO motherboards that I know of on the market that will run
> dual Pentium 2.8's.
>
Then you don't know the market very well. Just about all the major
motherboard vendors have them. They are mainly used as server boards and
can be used with any multi processor compatible OS(WindowsNT,XP(Home and
Pro), 2000, Linux, Unix).

Tim wrote:

> DaveW wrote:
>> NOTE: There are NO motherboards that I know of on the market that will
>> run dual Pentium 2.8's.
>>
> Then you don't know the market very well. Just about all the major
> motherboard vendors have them. They are mainly used as server boards and
> can be used with any multi processor compatible OS(WindowsNT,XP(Home and
> Pro), 2000, Linux, Unix).

Please identify _one_ such board. Intel doesn't have one. Neither does
ASUS. Or Gigabyte. Or Tyan. Or Supermicro. All of those "major
motherboard vendors" have dual Socket 603/604 boards that take Xeons, not
dual Socket 478 boards that take Pentium 4s. Several others makers of
dual-processor boards do not make any duals at all that take Intel
processors. Do you _know_ of any dual Socket 478 boards or were you just
parading your ignorance?

--
--John
Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)