Question to the Experts about Processors

[Gary Hendricks]

Well, here's a good article for you to read. It shows you the things
you need to look out for when buying a computer for video editing work:

http://www.desktop-video-guide.com/computer-for-video-editing.html


**********************************************************
Sincerely,
Gary Hendricks, Build-Your-Own-Computers.com
The best PC hardware tutorials and how-to guides:
http://www.build-your-own-computers.com/tutorials
**********************************************************

 

[Boba & Ilinka]

I would rather go with 2 HD in raid 0 for faster diling wit HD. Teoreticly
the access is twice as fast as with one drive.

Also consider 820 insted of 830 SPU

Boba Vancouver

 

[kony]

I would rather go with 2 HD in raid 0 for faster diling wit HD. Teoreticly
the access is twice as fast as with one drive.

Also consider 820 insted of 830 SPU

Often 2 drives /not/ in a RAID are even faster than 2 in a
RAID, using one for source and other for destination
file(s). If one can afford 2 different RAID arrays, that
"might" (depending on uses) be even faster.

 

[Maxwell]

I use Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, both of which do some heavy-duty
data crunching. I'm editing and burning every day. If I had to build a new
system from scratch, it would have:

1. high-end video board.
2. dual processors, 3 ghz or so (this is what I lack now)
3. minimum 2 gb RAM
4. greater than 200 G hard drive

If I had to cut back on this, I would retain the dual processors but drop
the clock speed of the CPUs. If I really had to cut deeper, I would then
drop the dual processors and increase the speed of the single CPU. I don't
know that I could go lower than that.

For the average home use and simpler software, what I would consider the
realistic minimum:

1. reasonable video board
2. 2.4 ghz Intel processor
3. 1 gb RAM
4. 80 G hard drive.

You can get by with less, but you may start having chronic problems. I also
suppose you can use the equivalent AMD processor. I tried AMD in their
early years and had a lot of problems. I know they have improved
dramatically, and are fully competitive with Intel, but I just got
comfortable with Intel over the years.

My 2 cents!
Max

 

[Boba & Ilinka]

As far as I understood, in raid 0, files are saved in 2 drives at the same
time ("half" file on one and "half" on other one.)

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:e5TCMPnb9tUJ:www.acnc.com/raid.html+raid+0&hl=en

Boba Vancouver BC

 

[kony]

As far as I understood, in raid 0, files are saved in 2 drives at the same
time ("half" file on one and "half" on other one.)

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:e5TCMPnb9tUJ:www.acnc.com/raid.html+raid+0&hl=en

Boba Vancouver BC

Yes they are split and striped onto both, but the same array
would be reading and writing. That entails a performance
penalty.

 

[Boba & Ilinka]

Koni, are you positively sure about what you are talking?! If it work on
PIII on 300MH you are right. But P4 at 3 GH and 2 mega ram, I am not 100%
sure.


Boba Vancouver BC

 

[kony]

Koni, are you positively sure about what you are talking?! If it work on
PIII on 300MH you are right. But P4 at 3 GH and 2 mega ram, I am not 100%
sure.

The gain from any particular drive combination depends on
the specific task. Video editing is not so specific as to
be able to presume much, since there are inhernatly some
rather large variables like # of files, and file sizes with
uncompressed vs various levels of compression.

RAID0 is generally faster than a lone drive, but once you
start reading and writing from the same volume
simultaneously, your throughput is halved... or however it
breaks down in the particular job, not really exactly half
but both reads and writes contending for the same volume.
If you had a disproportionately large (one or the other,
read or write) and the other, other was very small, the lone
raid volume may again do fairly well. This is of course
ignoring that some software raids also have a bit more CPU
overhead, which in some jobs is the primary bottleneck.

On the other hand with separate volumes, whether those
volumes are single or separate raid arrays, the entire
throughput potential of each can be dedicated to the read,
or write, but not needing to do both.

Sometimes it doesn't even matter much either way, take for
example an MPEG2 video capture, or a DVD rip, and converting
it to MPEG4. CPU overhead is by far the largest bottleneck
and even one older drive would be sufficient.

 

[Harvey]

No this is not exactly correct.

Raid 0 consists of 2 hard drives which are 'mirrored'. This means that the
*same* information is written to both drives at the same drive. If one
breaks, the other can carry on until the broken one is replaced. Then the
mirror is 'rebuilt'.

Raid 0 will generally be slower than a stand alone drive. However there are
many variables here. If each drive is on its own controller, speeds will
approach that of a dedicated drive, but will never be faster than a single
drive of similar type.

Raid 5 consists of a minimum of 3 drives. In this configuration, 2 drives
will be 'striped'. Part of a file will be written to one drive, part to the
other. The third drive is used for error correction. If one drive failes,
the other two drives are able to recreate the data.

Raid 5 can be faster than either Raid 0 or standalone. Again, it depends on
the controllers and how it is setup. Dedicated controller for each drive is
fastest. Software controlled Raid is slowest.

No clear cut answer. Raid is more about data redundency than speed, though
Raid 5 is sometimes used for speed as well.

Harvey

 

[kony]

No this is not exactly correct.

Raid 0 consists of 2 hard drives which are 'mirrored'. This means that the
*same* information is written to both drives at the same drive. If one
breaks, the other can carry on until the broken one is replaced. Then the
mirror is 'rebuilt'.

you are thinking of RAID1, not 0.

Raid 0 will generally be slower than a stand alone drive.

RAID1 will be faster at reads, by a little, and similar or
sometimes slower writes. This is ignoring the
implementation, that if it's on the PCI bus that is yet
another variable and potential latency if not outright
bottleneck.

However there are
many variables here. If each drive is on its own controller, speeds will
approach that of a dedicated drive, but will never be faster than a single
drive of similar type.

It can be faster at reads, benchmarks do reveal this.

 

[Bill Vermillion]

No this is not exactly correct.

Raid 0 consists of 2 hard drives which are 'mirrored'.

No. RAID 1 is a 'mirrored' configuration - where both disks have the
same data for safety. The lost of 1 drive just means you have lost
your safety net.

RAID 0 is 'stripped' where the data is split between the drives so
the loss of one drive means the loss of all data.

This means that the *same* information is written to both drives
at the same drive. If one breaks, the other can carry on until
the broken one is replaced. Then the mirror is 'rebuilt'.

That is RAID 1. In RAID 0 you lose your data.

Raid 0 will generally be slower than a stand alone drive. However
there are many variables here. If each drive is on its own
controller, speeds will approach that of a dedicated drive, but
will never be faster than a single drive of similar type.

Raid 5 consists of a minimum of 3 drives. In this configuration,
2 drives will be 'striped'. Part of a file will be written to
one drive, part to the other. The third drive is used for error
correction. If one drive failes, the other two drives are able to
recreate the data.

Actually in a proper RAID 5 the parity bits are rotated through the
drive array.

Raid 5 can be faster than either Raid 0 or standalone. Again,
it depends on the controllers and how it is setup. Dedicated
controller for each drive is fastest. Software controlled Raid is
slowest.

In most cases RAID 5 is the slowest when it comes to writing - you
have a 50% more write overhead when you use three drives. And
a 3-drive RAID 5 is the lowest configuration while you can have
many more drives than three.

No clear cut answer. Raid is more about data redundency than
speed, though Raid 5 is sometimes used for speed as well.

RAID 0 is speed with NO safety net at all.

RAID 1 is fastest.

RAID 5 means you can add many drives so your array can exceed the
size of any standard disk drives.

I used to run RAID in old Unix servers - most of the time it was
to get more data capacity. 200MB drives were only $400 each -
while a 600MB drive started at more than what the 3 smaller drives
cost.

Bill

 

[Bill Vermillion]

Yes they are split and striped onto both, but the same array
would be reading and writing. That entails a performance
penalty.

Writes take the most time - reads will be faster than writes in
any raid configuration. But depending on your drive perfomance
and the other HW you could actually get to the point where the data
from the HDs will be more than the computer interface can handle.

And RAID arrays work much better when you use SCSI.

Bill