New Base PC

[Phil S]

Hello

Haven't bought a PC for five years and am thinking of getting a new base unit as mine is now creaking a bit and has trouble rendering up videos using VS10+ which I make quite a lot of.

Trouble is I'm completely out of date with the latest processors, this of course being an important item.

Can anybody give me an idea of the best processors around now that suit VS10. Looking to buy a top one (but always a balance with cost) so my rendering happens with ease.

Is their a preffered type between Intel or AMD. What's the difference or best between 64bit, Dual Core and a different term they use - Core Duo.

Was thinking of 2Gb RAM but what about the HD, should I have two. Does the videocard really matter with VS or will an average one be good enough, don't want to play games.

Very confusing. Any comments or recomendations would be helpful please?

[sjj1805]

I am surprised no one has answered yet. I have done this reply simply to bring it back up into the recent post lists. I am sure this is an item of interest to many of our users.

Anyone have any input for this member please?

[frantid]

This is not a simple question a lot depends on whether you like to tweak it yourself or just buy off the shelf.

I would advise waiting the quad-cores are coming out in the next few months as well as vista. This means that prices will fall on the "old" tech, like dual core processors and xp.

I've seen faster benchmark scores with the new core 2 duo's from intel, but the jury is still out on how both amd and intel cpu's will work with native 64 bit computing.

Unless you absolutely need to have a quad core or vista, I would get a dual core shortly after these break. If you get one, make sure it's got ddr2 memory and sata 300 capability. That should get you another 5 years.

[alan.glaister]

A lot of people advocate Intels over AMD for arithmetic intensive activities like rendering video's and video editing.

However I don't know if that holds sway with the new duo core processors I would assume so.

As for the rest here's the basics I'd say to you.

Balance up the highest CPU you can afford with the most RAM you can afford.

If you have to compromise then drop the odd MHz in CPU power in favour of more RAM. Higher amounts of RAM in many cases can offset a lower power processor as the CPU spends less time dealing with paging the memory. (paging memory is where windows uses the HD as virtual RAM - apologies if you already knew that).

In terms of Graphics cards make sure you buy a card that has dedicated ram. I can't remember the correct technical term for it but some cards use some or all of the system ram to make the cards "virtual memory"
As a rule of thumb anything costing less than £50 will share some or all of its RAM with the system memory. So if you get 2GB ram then skimp on the graphics card your 2GB ram reduces for every MB of your Graphic card that isn't dedicated.
Personally I wouldn't go for anything less than a 256MB card as they will struggle with the loads you'll put on the system for video editing.

As for HD's 2 discs is a must. On my system I have a 80GB SATA 7200rpm which holds the OS & apps then a dedicated 200GB SATA 7200rpm for the AVI & video editing files.

If you don't go for a dedicated disc for the video capture then expect to have a lot of frustration capturing once you've used your system for any amount of time as the HDD will get gunked up and then windows kindly cleans up during "idle" processes.

I got 200GB and I've used over 21GB of that for my kids last 1 hour school play so get the biggest you can get. Also I think the prices of 10K+rpm SATA drives are dropping. The faster the rpm of the disc the faster your system will run - because after all the HDD is still the slowest part of any PC system.

If you are interested then I used PC Specialistto do my last PC, great systems at unbelievably low prices and you just pick a base model to start from then build the rest yourself.

[CycleWriter]

A lot of people advocate Intels over AMD for arithmetic intensive activities like rendering video's and video editing.

However I don't know if that holds sway with the new duo core processors I would assume so.

Up to and including the PentiumD chips, the AMD Athlon X2 processors beat Intel's dual core offerings. The latest Intel Core Duo chips are the current speed leaders. Don't be confused by the terms Dual Core and Core Duo, they are completely different as far as product goes.

Since a minority of software currently available is just now starting to provide dual core abilities, buying a computer with a single core processor for anything but basic web surfing and word processing makes little sense. If upgrade path is important, the previously mentioned SATA 300 and DDR2 compatibility is a must. Dedicated video is also important. Integrated video with shared RAM is not a solution for an editing environment. Video editing doesn't see significant benefit from large amounts of RAM. 1gb is usually more than enough and the recommended minimum for any computer these days. If choosing between a computer with 2gb of RAM and integrated video and one with 1gb RAM and a dedicated video card with at least 128mb of VRAM, I'd take the latter. Another important consideration for video editing is hard drive. A large HD is necessary (at least 250gb) with a dual hard drive system being preferred. Firewire and multiple USB 2.0 ports are also a requirement for video editing. Hope this helps.

[2Dogs]

Hi Phil,

assuming that you're not going to put together your own pc, but instead buy one from PC World or wherever - just ask the forum before you buy!

The best bang for the buck at the moment might be an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 based system - but prices change so quickly, and special offers can arise. (the E6300 is the base model Core 2 Duo cpu)

If you are not taking advantage of the huge overclocking potential of the Core 2 Duo cpu (which you can't realistically do unless you build your own pc) an AMD X2 4600 system would be fairly close in performance.

I would suggest you go for a full sized tower case if possible, which will give you enough room for multiple hard drives. Even my own (now venerable) mini tower pc can hold two hard drives, however, and I hook up old/spare drives using USB enclosures.

You might read of "I/O" bottlenecks. Having two physical hard drives (as opposed to just two partitions on a single hard drive) can overcome these. In tests I've done in the past, there was a THREEFOLD reduction in the time taken to write a large file from one IDE drive to another compared with writing it to the same drive. One of the few times this kind of scenario actually occurs when using VS is when "SMART rendering".

RAM is currently expensive, but as CycleWriter says is not particularly critical for VS usage. Installing more RAM had virtually no effect on video encoding speed, for example, in tests I carried out on my own system a year or two back. I could quite happily run VS with just one 256Mb stick.

SMART rendering showed improvement with more RAM, but in the overall scheme of things for any given project, it's not a significant time saving.

I would also recommend a separate video card - but the cards you're likely to get with common "tier one" pc's such as those from Dell, HP, Gateway etc will generally be very much low end cards. Even so, they should suffice for video editing purposes.

I still only have a single layer DVD writer in my pc. Since the cheapest DL disks over here run to about $1:50 apiece, I continue to burn to $0:20 single layer disks. I suspect that Blu-Ray and HDDVD disks will be unrealistically priced too - but maybe DL disks will come down in price.

I'm definitely with frantid on the matter of Windows Vista, the new all-singing, all-dancing operating system. They say 2Gb will be the realistic minimum RAM. The great thing about Vista is that it will make non-Vista compliant stuff cheaper.

[maddrummer3301]

.

[Phil S]

Many thanks for the replies.

Taking in all the replies and Condensing them I thought something like this:

Core 2 Duo E6400 (only £ 20 more than the E6300)
Asus DDR 2 Socket 775 MB with 6ch sound, 8 USB, 2 Firewire
1 Gb RAM (very expensive at present can always add more later)
Hard Disk 1 160Gb SATA (for O/S and Applications)
Hard Disk 2 250Gb SATA (for Video Files and Photos)
Dedicated Video Card 256Mb RAM (probably a GeForce)
16x DVD RW plus DVD ROM

I'll re-use my TFT, Keyboard, Mouse and Speakers.

What do you think? Anything that might let down rendering time for VS in this set up?

[maddrummer3301]

.

[2Dogs]

Core 2 Duo E6400 (only � 20 more than the E6300)

Sounds good to me!

Asus DDR 2 Socket 775 MB with 6ch sound, 8 USB, 2 Firewire

The ASUS P5B-E 1.02G is rated highest amongst a selection of mid-range boards by Anandtech.com. It can give you the highest overclocking too if you want. Pity you rarely see Firewire800, which would be really useful for external drives.

1 Gb RAM (very expensive at present can always add more later)

You might consider one 1Gb module and adding another later - otherwise selling on 2x512Mb modules when you upgrade to 2 x 1Gb.

Hard Disk 1 160Gb SATA (for O/S and Applications)
Hard Disk 2 250Gb SATA (for Video Files and Photos)

Samsung make a highly regarded 160Gb SATA drive. You might consider using a RAID array too, but you can always add drives later.

Dedicated Video Card 256Mb RAM (probably a GeForce)
16x DVD RW plus DVD ROM

The video card is possibly the least critical component for video editing, but you might possibly look for a useful range of outputs to differentiate one card from another. Some DVD burners are multi format, and go up to 18x. You might be interested in DVD-RAM capabilities too, maybe even lightscribe. If you're a gamer, some Games will only run with the game CD in a CD drive rather than a DVD drive.

What do you think? Anything that might let down rendering time for VS in this set up?

VS10+ SP1 adds Core 2 Duo support. I'm not sure how well implemented that is compared with, say, Athlon X2 support, but there's no reason why your proposed system shouldn't render pretty darn quickly.

The E6400 has the potential to run faster than any Athlon X2, including all of the FX cpu's - if you overclock it. At stock speed, the difference is not so great. Core 2 duo motherboards are significantly pricier than AMD AM2 boards, however, so at stock speeds, some AMD systems might still be price/performance competitive.

A full sized tower case gives you lots of room for extra drives.

Perhaps you could do some tests when you have it all, and post the results.

Good luck!