For the moment, dual core AMD rules the roost when it comes to
benchmarking, or games, or running day to day Windows, but it never has
been the choice for video work. Video editing is the last area that is
still ruled by the P4. Hyperthreading is particularly suited for this. All
the video apps that I have used are written to support P4 with HT, or Xeon
with HT, with little thought given to AMD coding requirements, and this
makes a huge difference in real world use... particularly in encoding
times. This is universally accepted in the video community, even amount AMD
devotees, but I have performed my own tests in this regard, and have
observed big differences between AMD and Intel when it comes to video encoding.
The most important element of video encoding, and editing, is the CPU, by a
wide margin. P4 or Xeon as fast as you can afford. Then put as much RAM in
your box, as you can afford. 2 to 4 GB but be forewarned that 1GB RAM DIMMs
are very expensive. Don't worry about performance RAM, Kingston value RAM
will be fine. Don't over clock or do anything problematic. You want a very
stable platform when working with video. With a lot of left over RAM you
can run a 1.5 GB RAM drive for your temp files, and this will have a very
positive result when video editing.
Next to the CPU, and a large amount of quality RAM, is your hard drive. You
don't need RAID. RAID5 would actually slow you down, and require enormous
amount of hard drive space to be practical for video work. RAID came into
popularity for desktop use back when hard drives were small, and ran at
5400 RPM. Stick a bunch of these old, small, slow drives together in a RAID
0 and you could have one big drive, and you would certainly notice the
difference in performance. But today things are different.
RAID is an expensive indulgence that doesn't pay off for 99 percent of what
it is used for today. What RAID is best at is increasing performance when
you have lots, and lots, of simultaneous data accesses, and writes, from
many different users.... like on a server. But a single user, in the real
world, will not benefit from a RAID setup outside of benchmark scores. And
RAID can be very problematic. RAID 0, the performance leader, represents a
significant risk of data loss. If you loose any of the drives on the array,
all the Data will be gone. This is probably why you were thinking of RAID 5.
Todays, stand alone, high RPM, high platter density, Enterprise drives
are plenty fast for video work. 10k Raptors are particularly suited for
this, but they are small, and expensive. Video is the black hole of
computing. All your hard drive space, and power disappears quickly. So go
with big fast drives, like the Maxtor MaxLine III 300 GB drives = around
$140, or the WD Caviar RE2 WD 400YR 400 GB for around $185. These are very
fast Enterprise drives with 5 year warranties that I personally use for
video editing. I also use Raptors, and I don't notice a difference. But
don't be shy when buying hard drives because if you work with video, you
will be continuously running low on space.
Your video card is not that important for 2D , as long as you don't plan to
work with HD. HD, however, will require a fast card that can handle all the
data that HD will throw at it. Your capture device will be important to the
quality of your result, and could be part of the video card, like in a ATI
All in Wonder, or by a PCI card, or external device. But this will depend
on what you plan on doing.
Good luck
Rode
The NOSPIN Group
http://www.freepctech.com/rode/
At 08:58 PM 4/5/2006, you wrote:
>I am thinking about building a new computer that would be used primarily
>for 2d editing and video rendering. I would like to do a RAID5
>configuration and my budget is $1,400.
>This is what I came up with at newegg:
>https://secure.newegg.com/NewVersion/Wishlist/PublicWishDetail.asp?WishListNumber=1989379&WishListTitle=first+build
>
>I don't know if this is a good build so if anyone could let me know what
>they would do different, or if anybody has any advice I would appreciate it.
Do you want to signoff PCBUILD or just change to
Digest mode - visit our web site:
http://freepctech.com/pcbuild.shtml
|
