| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Krusty |
Posted - 03/21/2004 : 14:31:35
My father just gave me the go-ahead to build the worlds ultimate video editing / mad photoshop system for him. I had compiled a parts list several months ago to give him a tentative price and types of components, but that parts list is now slightly outdated.
Originally, the plan was a P4 system using the Abit IC7 or IS7 motherboard. The plan is still to build a P4 system, but those might not be the best motherboards out any more.
Got a few pentium 4 motherboard recommendations?
|
| 9 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Krusty |
Posted - 03/30/2004 : 00:23:41
There's room for memory upgrades in the future. I've only got 2 of 4 slots filled. I got 2*120GB drives for the main system. For the matrox rtx.100 card, it requires 2 additional hard drives. It's far better than having 2GB of memory because you don't even need to render the videos. It renders and outputs in real time. For the rtx.100 card, I have 2*80GB drives.
|
| Andrid |
Posted - 03/29/2004 : 23:21:26
quote:
Whoa! If the mobo that fast, I'm sure theirs going to be some heating issues.
--no...things are made so that when running at stock speeds, they don't fail
Question
Andrid, the board you recommended. Is it using DDR sticks or RDRAM sticks? I'm thinking the rdram is still expensive. I don't know, I was thinking about making a new system this year.
--ddr. RDRAM is something that only major geeks use. It might be faster than ddr, but they are more for show than tell. and they cost an arm and a leg to get.
Maybe a P4...
"Just because your a genius doesn't make you a smart guy"
soyo is a great company. they arne't as big a name as asus, but they serve more into the geek market. that was a great choice.
video editing is just about the only good time for raid. just make sure he has enough hard disk space (maybe 2*120g hard drives).
you might want to look into more memory instead of raid (if you can still return your hard drive) cause giving him 2 g of memory, will let him load the whole movie into the memory instead of taking it from the hard disk each time.
------------------
absu-****ing-lutly |
| Krusty |
Posted - 03/27/2004 : 23:43:56
The IC7 uses DDR sticks.
As for the board I chose, I went with a Soyo Dragon 2 v.1.0 black label. It's an i875p motherboard that comes with 4 serial ata ports which all support RAID and an additional set of ATA133 ports that also support RAID. This sucker can hold up to 12 drives and I'm already using up 6. It also supprots 4GB of ram, has gigabit ethernet, usb 2.0, firewire, and a 7 in 1 card reader to boot.
I'll let you know what I think of it a bit later. At the moment, I'm getting rather pissed at it because stupid friggin motherboards never come with a floppy disk with the RAID drivers. They always expect you to make your own floppy (winXP REQUIRES that you use a floppy disk to install RAID drivers when installing XP). The motherboard manual said where to locate the files for the RAID drivers on the cd, but that directory doesn't exist on the cd. Soo..I went to the Soyo web site and downloaded the drivers, took out the files I didn't need, and made my own installation floppy. Unfortunately, I could only do this with one set of RAID drivers (there's 2 RAID controllers on this mobo).
At this very moment, I'm attempting to get the hardware serial ATA RAID to function. Serial ATA ports 3 and 4 use hardware RAID so it doesn't require cpu juice to run. Unfortunately, serial ATA ports 3 and 4 are not technically bootable. I got windows to install onto it (it required an additional bootable drive to install) but upon resetting after the first time, it comes up telling me I'm missing hal.dll. I think this is because it's still attempting to boot to that other hard drive it required to install windows. So I'm formatting that additional drive now to see if that solves the problem. Next step is to give up and use the software RAID that is supported on serial ATA ports 1 and 2. Those are bootable.
|
| Impact4ever |
Posted - 03/25/2004 : 13:11:23
Whoa! If the mobo that fast, I'm sure theirs going to be some heating issues.
Question
Andrid, the board you recommended. Is it using DDR sticks or RDRAM sticks? I'm thinking the rdram is still expensive. I don't know, I was thinking about making a new system this year.
Maybe a P4...
"Just because your a genius doesn't make you a smart guy" |
| Andrid |
Posted - 03/25/2004 : 09:03:26
A good motherboard is the basis to a fast and stable and easy to build system. you are a bit more skilled at building systems though, so you can get away with a non top notch one. for performance, the i875p. this is the faster one there is. second fastest is i865pe. nice price and just a tiny bit slower is the sis chipset 655tx.
the change between their speeds is very small.
I'm move of an Asus guy, just because I always followed their product names, so I don't need to read a handful of other things, but the IC7 is very nice for i875p. Asus p4p800 is good for i665pe. Asus p4s800d-e deluxe is a good 655tx board. It costs very little, but it has a lot of features.
------------------
absu-****ing-lutly |
| Krusty |
Posted - 03/21/2004 : 16:57:49
The move from 32 bit to 64 bit is going to be just as slow and painful as the move from 16 bit to 32 bit. It isn't gonna be worth getting a 64 bit solution until 64 bit takes up at least 25% of the market. There's still the compatibility issue.
Additionally, last year I was having a conversation with the guy that invented hyperthreading. He told me that intels 64 bit (Itanium) stuff they were working on was so unbelievably horrible that he can't see it as ever becoming decent. So I'd be wary of holding out for Intels 64 bit processor.
Also, for what will probably be the next 6 years or so, companies will continue to provide 32 bit software. They'd be stupid not to. Every single Joe Sixpack out there that only upgrades every 8 years is going to keep software companies providing 32 bit software.
Anyhoo, I don't forsee 64 bit being anything but a cool new idea to spend extra money on for at least a year. Come next January, people may be looking at 64 bit a little more but right now it's just something to waste money on.
|
| na85 |
Posted - 03/21/2004 : 16:30:27
Intel's new chip is supposed to be 64 bit, and I've heard it's going to blow the doors off anything the G5 can put out. How soon does your father want this system? If intel puts out a 64 bit chip in the near future, major software companies will start supporting it. If your dad doesn't need the system right now, you maybe want to wait a bit.
They call me Sodium |
| Krusty |
Posted - 03/21/2004 : 15:09:49
not a clue when pci express comes out
As for the 64 bit solution, I definately did think about it. The problem is that my father is getting some crazy video output device called like a Matrox RTX 100 or something like that. It's really picky about the hardware it likes and a 64 bit solution isn't exactly fully supported by everyone yet.
If it turns out that 64 bit is the way to go, I can easily upgrade the motherboard and processor in a year.
The major use of this system will be for video editing, not 3d animation. So what it would need to be good at are things such as AfterFX and premier (as well as photoshop). So, for now, 32 bit is what I'm going to be doing. The stuff up and coming in the next 6 months may be better, but the stuff out today should do just as good.
|
| Impact4ever |
Posted - 03/21/2004 : 15:03:06
I remembered reading an article in my tech mags saying adobe's newest version of photoshop can take full advantage of 64bit processors. I thinks Maya and Lightwave can do the same. So I was woundering have thought about making a 64bit system?
O yeah... does anybody knows when the PCI-X is coming out.
"Just because your a genius doesn't make you a smart guy" |
|
|
