hi all,

 
YES, i have searched the forums and im finding it hard to find a message that fits my question.

I would like to get another new system, but i dont want to spend tons of cash if my performance doesnt improve for studio work.

Question #1 - I am looking at upgrading to a quad core prosessor over the dual core I already have.  With VISTA business version, ( i think its 64 bit)  I am unsure after reading the posts here that studio will use the capabilties of the quads.  Can anyone help with this ?

Question #2-   I was looking at also going from my gforce 8800 to the radion series after reading that they are superior for video editing etc...

I see that there is the ATI Radion Diamond Multimedia HD 3870 X2 1gb.   I saw it on Ebay for about $400.

I think it must be new, and the top end ?

Question #3 - A have read that many of you have installed the "raptor" hard drive?  Is this just a high end Hard drive that is super fast ?  is it cool to use it a C drive ?

Anyways.... this forum is a total saviour to me in many ways, and your help, as always, is appreciated.

Andrew

Andrew,

#`1 - I think it depends on what type of footage you work with.  Some Hi-Def editing (rendering) seems to utilize quad-core systems quite nicely.  Standard Def projects don't gain much (if any) over dual-core systems.  Of course we hope the situation improves with the next release of Studio, but that's merely a hope that is not based on any statements by Pinnacle.

#2 - Beyond my price point, and it's been too long since I've shopped.  Again I think any performance improvements will be dependent on what type of footage you are rendering and what project settings you use.  I suspect that in many cases the difference between a $200 card and an $400 card will actually be minimal for Studio users.  If I'm wrong, I trust that someone will correct me, and hopefully someone can clarify when additional GPU power will and will not benefit Studio users.

#3 - Yes, the Raptor is simply a higher-performance disk drive, and using it as the "C:" drive would be the best place to put it (for a normal "Studio" system).  Old drives used to spin at 5600 RPM.  Most now spin at 7200 RPM.  The Raptor spins at 10,000 RPM.  It's not the only factor, but faster rotation helps you access data faster.  They are great drives for the C: drive because your system will boot faster and applications will launch faster.  The biggest difference is the "seek" time is shorter.  When you copy a single, huge file, there are other bottle necks, but when you are randomly accessing lots of little bits of data spread across the disk, something like the Raptor really shines.

However, as I said, rotational speed is not the only factor, and "normal" disk drives are narrowing the performance gap, and they provide more disk space for your money.  I am extremely happy with my 500 MB Samsung drives, and they have had very good reviews at AnandTech.com and good user feedback at Newegg.com.  They are quiet, well priced, and the performance is quite good too.  The AnandTech article provides benchmark numbers so you can easily compare it against the Raptor - both "synthetic" and "real world" benchmarks.

150 GB Raptor = $170 = $1.13/GB

500 GB Samsung = $109 = $0.22/GB

It's up to you if the incremental performance is worth it.

Happy shopping. 

andrewturk1970:

Question #2-   I was looking at also going from my gforce 8800 to the radion series after reading that they are superior for video editing etc...

I see that there is the ATI Radion Diamond Multimedia HD 3870 X2 1gb.   I saw it on Ebay for about $400.

I think it must be new, and the top end ?

 

Yes it's new, and yes it's the top end, but it's really overkill for video editing.  THe X2 1gb is actually two HD 3870 512Mb video cards on the same board, running in Crossfire mode.  It's really designed for super-duper high-end game players -- even with video editing, you just don't get the benefit of having the two cards running in parallel. Plus, you may have to consider beefing up other parts of your system, like the power supply if it can't provide enough extra power (550 - 600W would be minimum), and maybe even adding another internal fan to help keep the system cool.

 
You can get a plain HD 3870 512Gb for around $210, and the sweet price/performance point right now seems to be the HD 3850 cards (under $200 for 512Mb, around $150 for 256Mb).  They use the same graphics chip as the 3870, just clocked a little slower out of the box. If you're comfortable with playing around with overclocking the card (probably not necessary for video editing), you can tweak it to almost the same performance as the 3870. If you're already running the 8800, I think your power supply should handle the 38X0 cards.

andrewturk1970:

hi all,

YES, i have searched the forums and im finding it hard to find a message that fits my question.

I would like to get another new system, but i dont want to spend tons of cash if my performance doesnt improve for studio work.

 

Question #1 - I am looking at upgrading to a quad core prosessor over the dual core I already have.  With VISTA business version, ( i think its 64 bit)  I am unsure after reading the posts here that studio will use the capabilties of the quads.  Can anyone help with this ?

 

Question #2-   I was looking at also going from my gforce 8800 to the radion series after reading that they are superior for video editing etc...

I see that there is the ATI Radion Diamond Multimedia HD 3870 X2 1gb.   I saw it on Ebay for about $400.

I think it must be new, and the top end ?

 

Question #3 - A have read that many of you have installed the "raptor" hard drive?  Is this just a high end Hard drive that is super fast ?  is it cool to use it a C drive ?

 

Anyways.... this forum is a total saviour to me in many ways, and your help, as always, is appreciated.

 

Andrew

 

To that I will add that development on a DX10 patch for Liquid is underway, and since Studio is based on Liquid code, there will be people encouraging the Studio development team to incorporate those fixes with Studio.Personally, I think an 8800 series card should do just fine with S11 and don't see why that shouldn't apply to the next Studio build as well. Unless you are a serious "gamer," buying anything more powerful than a mid-priced video display card is not going to provide additional benefits in Studio. The main thing Studio needs in a video card is 256-512MB of VRAM -- 512MB for sure if you may edit HDV. A card with fast VRAM and a wide 256-bit video memory interface will help Studio more than a top-end or x2 GPU. 

Similarly, a fast 10,000 RPM HDD helps apps and game levels load a bit faster but does not significantly help Studio. The best use of $$$ here is to get at least one additional 7,200 RPM drive for video capture and render/aux folder locations so the Studio app can be C: bound and not have to share HDD access time with the video files. Better yet is to have two separate video drives, one for capture files only and the other for render/aux only. Then each part of Studio gets it's own HDD and doesn't have to share with other parts. Studio gets C:, video captures get D: (or whatever) and renders/aux get E: (or whatever). This way all three HDDs can be working at full speed because they are only serving a single purpose of program control, or read/write of video captures, or read/write of rendered/aux files. But if you don't do a lot of video editing there is really no need to go with extra HDDs (as long as they aren't nearly full or fragmented) because the amount of time saved by extra or faster HDDs will not matter much to the casual user, nor is it likely to affect the integrity of the completed project...