I've been reading the reviews and comments from many sites, but I'm confused at what combo to get. I'm not into OC, I just want something that is fast and reliable. The only real "wants" are USB 2 and 1394 ports-which most boards come with. I've been given an Antec tower case (SX1040) w/400w atx p/s and two WD 80gb eide hdd w/8mb buffer and a Radeon ATI 8500 128mb ddr video card and running XP pro. I started looking into the Gigabyte GA-8IEXP, Aopen AX4GN, Abit IT7 or Asus P4B533. Like I stated in the title, I'm open to any Intel or AMD mobo combos, as long as it's fast. My budget is about $650 for the trio. This newbie thanks all of you in advance for your input.
Looking for the Fastest Mobo,Ram,CPU combo (Intel or AMD) for video editing
- Thread starter BKoyama
- Start date
I've got an Athlon running at 1700 mhz (xp 2100) now, and it's plenty fast for divx encoding. BUT, I think that the P4's with SSE2 support are a little faster. Friend of mine has a p4 running at 2.2 ghz and, using DVDx, seems to be able to encode a bit faster then me. My AMD rig was lots cheaper tho...
.
.I just built the fastest damn computer out of my shop in along while with an Asus A7V333R and XP2200+ that meets your specs. It has Raid 0/1/0+1 and 1394 firewire with the even faster USB2 on board as well as USB1.1.
This board rocks. Slap in a powerful gforce 4 or ATI Radeon, 3 or four 7200 rpm HDDs of your choice,a dvd and CD-RW in a nice case with a 430 watt PS, equip it with an audigy sound card and some 5.1 digital connected speakers, and your system will rock your world.
This is an extremely nice mobo to use. Asus did well with this one.
This board rocks. Slap in a powerful gforce 4 or ATI Radeon, 3 or four 7200 rpm HDDs of your choice,a dvd and CD-RW in a nice case with a 430 watt PS, equip it with an audigy sound card and some 5.1 digital connected speakers, and your system will rock your world.
This is an extremely nice mobo to use. Asus did well with this one.
In reference to your PM, I don't know how much help I can be. I don't know much about video editing. I hope you know what the requirements are.
Motherboards that have the same chipset are all nearly equally fast whether the motherboards cost $70 or $170. If you look at the comparison reviews you often find the ranking changes dependending on the benchmark. Sometimes the reviewers make ridiculous remarks, like "the TEQILA11 leaves the KUDZU92 in the dust" when the difference is only 1%. Then they express bewilderment when in the next benchmark the KUDZU92 tops the list. When one mobo seems to be ahead in all benchmarks, sometimes reviewers have determinened that the mobo manufacturer has set the clock rate 1 MHz faster. If your mobo allows it, you can do the same thing with a setting in the BIOS. In other words, the manufacturer overclocked the mobo.
Mobos do vary in the features they have (sound, OC BIOS, RAID). They also vary in the quality of engineering, the quality of the components and the quality control by the manufacturer, none of which is known. Support directly by the manufacturer varies from poor to impossibly bad, although they will replace failing mobos. The instruction manuals (which you can often download from the manufactures sites to see) varies from complete, if vague on important points, to incomprehensible translations from the Chinese.
Lets face it, most reviewers don't do anything much with their computers. They are tekkies who love the hardware itself. Making a realistic judgement about what a given combination of hardware will accomplish, beyond frames per second in some 3D game, is beyond their personal interest. Intel or AMD could tell them anything about what a great benchmark a particular test is, and they wouldn't know the difference.
Considering performance, it is difficult to find a situation where an equal amount spent on an Athlon system won't get you higher performance than a Pentium 4 system. Until you get into prices beyond Athlons.
Spending at the top-of-the-line level has never made sense to me. The price escalates too fast. And how important can it be to get the best when in three months it won't be top-of-the-line any more? In a year, it will look foolish.
The first advantage of a P4 will be SSE2, which AMD has yet to follow Intel on. These added CPU instructions appear to be almost totally why the P4 solidly beats an identically labeled Athlon (2000 vs 2000+) in media-encoding benchmarks that have been written to use those instructions. I think the price premium you pay ($50-$100?) might be worth it to someone avidly interested in this. OTOH, if you don't do this type of thing intensively, the fact that an Athlon might be a notch slower would not be bothersome. Another thing is, if it is compute-bound, where you have to wait till it gets done, you can just have the computer do it while you're off somewhere else, or sleeping at night if takes that long. If they write the program properly, you can word-process or surf the internet and not know it is churning away in the background, and your program shouldn't take much longer to finish either. Should be no problem on Windows XP. (Pro version is pointless to 99.99% of the people, beside being a PITA.)
The second advantage of a P4 is memory sloshing. In manipulating huge files, such as images, just moving the file around within memory and to/from the CPU at high speed cuts into processing time quite a bit. The P4 with RDRAM excels at this. Maybe you can get 2 256M 1066MHz RDRAM for less than $250.(Intel is phasing out RDRAM chipsets for some reason.) With DDR DRAM, there is still some advantage. You should be able to get 512M PC2100 for around $120.
As you move the P4 speed down, the difference vs price gets to be questionable, so I think this makes sense:
170 An ASUS P4 Intel 850x style mobo
200 P4 2.4G
240 512 RDRAM
610
Maybe this:
120 An ASUS P4 Intel 845x style mobo
210 P4 2.4G
120 512 DDR
450
compared to this:
130 ASUS VIA KT333 style mobo
110 XP 2100
120 512 DDR
330
Choosing depends on how important that extra performance is. I don't think it could be more than about 20%. Intel will probably sell a 20% faster chip for the same price in six months. To me it isn't important. To some, it's the $300 that is hardly worth thinking about.
Why 2100+ vs 2.4G? I eliminated the Athlon 2200+ because it was the top-of-the-line Athlon listed on pricewatch. I bumped up the P4 to 2.4G because it had nearly the same price as the 2.2G If you go to a 2G P4, you are going to have a hard time seeing any improvement over the Athlon.
I only picked ASUS because they have a sterling long-term reputation with their higher priced motherboards. Many people swear by other brands too. EPOX. IWILL.
Intel chipsets are the least quirkey of them all, if only because it is the one for which hardware designers design their add-ons. The recent SIS chipsets have gotten a great reputation and have excellent performance at a cut-rate price. As I understand it, SIS has a license (from Intel)to essentially clone Intel's chipset.
For Athlons, VIA chipsets are the ones that predominate, so it is the least risky to use with plug-ins and add-ons.
What I am looking at right now for myself: EPOX 8K5A3+ with XP1600+ OCed to 2100+. What's holding me back? I want to know if it will handle HDs over 127G (which will be normal in a year.) I also want to see an nForce2 before I decide, and I want to see the T-bred B, and ...
The only video editing I ever did was to cut and splice some crumby, approximately 10M MPG clips and it took about 0 time waiting for the computer. This is on an Athlon Tbird 1400MHz, ABIT KT7 mobo, with 256M SDR memory.
Motherboards that have the same chipset are all nearly equally fast whether the motherboards cost $70 or $170. If you look at the comparison reviews you often find the ranking changes dependending on the benchmark. Sometimes the reviewers make ridiculous remarks, like "the TEQILA11 leaves the KUDZU92 in the dust" when the difference is only 1%. Then they express bewilderment when in the next benchmark the KUDZU92 tops the list. When one mobo seems to be ahead in all benchmarks, sometimes reviewers have determinened that the mobo manufacturer has set the clock rate 1 MHz faster. If your mobo allows it, you can do the same thing with a setting in the BIOS. In other words, the manufacturer overclocked the mobo.
Mobos do vary in the features they have (sound, OC BIOS, RAID). They also vary in the quality of engineering, the quality of the components and the quality control by the manufacturer, none of which is known. Support directly by the manufacturer varies from poor to impossibly bad, although they will replace failing mobos. The instruction manuals (which you can often download from the manufactures sites to see) varies from complete, if vague on important points, to incomprehensible translations from the Chinese.
Lets face it, most reviewers don't do anything much with their computers. They are tekkies who love the hardware itself. Making a realistic judgement about what a given combination of hardware will accomplish, beyond frames per second in some 3D game, is beyond their personal interest. Intel or AMD could tell them anything about what a great benchmark a particular test is, and they wouldn't know the difference.
Considering performance, it is difficult to find a situation where an equal amount spent on an Athlon system won't get you higher performance than a Pentium 4 system. Until you get into prices beyond Athlons.
Spending at the top-of-the-line level has never made sense to me. The price escalates too fast. And how important can it be to get the best when in three months it won't be top-of-the-line any more? In a year, it will look foolish.
The first advantage of a P4 will be SSE2, which AMD has yet to follow Intel on. These added CPU instructions appear to be almost totally why the P4 solidly beats an identically labeled Athlon (2000 vs 2000+) in media-encoding benchmarks that have been written to use those instructions. I think the price premium you pay ($50-$100?) might be worth it to someone avidly interested in this. OTOH, if you don't do this type of thing intensively, the fact that an Athlon might be a notch slower would not be bothersome. Another thing is, if it is compute-bound, where you have to wait till it gets done, you can just have the computer do it while you're off somewhere else, or sleeping at night if takes that long. If they write the program properly, you can word-process or surf the internet and not know it is churning away in the background, and your program shouldn't take much longer to finish either. Should be no problem on Windows XP. (Pro version is pointless to 99.99% of the people, beside being a PITA.)
The second advantage of a P4 is memory sloshing. In manipulating huge files, such as images, just moving the file around within memory and to/from the CPU at high speed cuts into processing time quite a bit. The P4 with RDRAM excels at this. Maybe you can get 2 256M 1066MHz RDRAM for less than $250.(Intel is phasing out RDRAM chipsets for some reason.) With DDR DRAM, there is still some advantage. You should be able to get 512M PC2100 for around $120.
As you move the P4 speed down, the difference vs price gets to be questionable, so I think this makes sense:
170 An ASUS P4 Intel 850x style mobo
200 P4 2.4G
240 512 RDRAM
610
Maybe this:
120 An ASUS P4 Intel 845x style mobo
210 P4 2.4G
120 512 DDR
450
compared to this:
130 ASUS VIA KT333 style mobo
110 XP 2100
120 512 DDR
330
Choosing depends on how important that extra performance is. I don't think it could be more than about 20%. Intel will probably sell a 20% faster chip for the same price in six months. To me it isn't important. To some, it's the $300 that is hardly worth thinking about.
Why 2100+ vs 2.4G? I eliminated the Athlon 2200+ because it was the top-of-the-line Athlon listed on pricewatch. I bumped up the P4 to 2.4G because it had nearly the same price as the 2.2G If you go to a 2G P4, you are going to have a hard time seeing any improvement over the Athlon.
I only picked ASUS because they have a sterling long-term reputation with their higher priced motherboards. Many people swear by other brands too. EPOX. IWILL.
Intel chipsets are the least quirkey of them all, if only because it is the one for which hardware designers design their add-ons. The recent SIS chipsets have gotten a great reputation and have excellent performance at a cut-rate price. As I understand it, SIS has a license (from Intel)to essentially clone Intel's chipset.
For Athlons, VIA chipsets are the ones that predominate, so it is the least risky to use with plug-ins and add-ons.
What I am looking at right now for myself: EPOX 8K5A3+ with XP1600+ OCed to 2100+. What's holding me back? I want to know if it will handle HDs over 127G (which will be normal in a year.) I also want to see an nForce2 before I decide, and I want to see the T-bred B, and ...
The only video editing I ever did was to cut and splice some crumby, approximately 10M MPG clips and it took about 0 time waiting for the computer. This is on an Athlon Tbird 1400MHz, ABIT KT7 mobo, with 256M SDR memory.
While there's merit to some of what KF has to say, his (or her) statement: "The second advantage of a P4 is memory sloshing. In manipulating huge files, such as images, just moving the file around within memory and to/from the CPU at high speed cuts into processing time quite a bit. The P4 with RDRAM excels at this"... simply isn't true!
I do a lot of image/video editing, and for that specific use I'm here to tell you there is no faster PC than an i850E platform with a fast 533MHz P4 and PC1066 RDRAM!
While I admit you will have to shell out quite a few more bucks for that platform than a DDR platform (especially since those apps need 512MB of memory), if you can afford to add another $100 to your budget, that will get it and you won't be sorry!
I do a lot of image/video editing, and for that specific use I'm here to tell you there is no faster PC than an i850E platform with a fast 533MHz P4 and PC1066 RDRAM!
While I admit you will have to shell out quite a few more bucks for that platform than a DDR platform (especially since those apps need 512MB of memory), if you can afford to add another $100 to your budget, that will get it and you won't be sorry!
Just want to add that I speak from direct experience, as we have 1 RDRAM PC and 2 DDR PCs (1 P4 and 1 T-Bred) in my family, and I've tried running the same apps on all 3 PC's!
IntelConvert,
>The second advantage of a P4 is memory sloshing. In manipulating huge files, such as images, just moving the file around
>within memory and to/from the CPU at high speed cuts into processing time quite a bit. The P4 with RDRAM excels at this"...
Since I say RDRAM excels (especially for this) and you say it's as fast as it gets, what part of this statement is "simply untrue." I don't get it.
Hope I clarified it if there is some doubt.
>The second advantage of a P4 is memory sloshing. In manipulating huge files, such as images, just moving the file around
>within memory and to/from the CPU at high speed cuts into processing time quite a bit. The P4 with RDRAM excels at this"...
Since I say RDRAM excels (especially for this) and you say it's as fast as it gets, what part of this statement is "simply untrue." I don't get it.
Hope I clarified it if there is some doubt.
Sorry KF if I misconstrued the meaning of that statement. It seemed to me that you were saying that the P4 with RDRAM excels at memory sloshing... which cuts into processing time quite a bit! - So it was that (apparently incorrect) interpretation that I objected to.
Originally posted by: IntelConvert
Sorry KF if I misconstrued the meaning of that statement. It seemed to me that you were saying that the P4 with RDRAM excels at memory sloshing... which cuts into processing time quite a bit! - So it was that (apparently incorrect) interpretation that I objected to.
I think I get it.
"Sloshing" is my slangy way of saying "moving to and fro". Maybe sloshing sounds bad, but it often is the fastest way to handle programming problems provided you have plenty of memory, as opposed to constantly accessing the slower hard drive. Cutting into processing time is a good thing. Adding to the processing time is bad. (the sense is reversed compared to speed.)
'Sloshing' is never desirable as it's an uncontrolled action. The only time I've ever seen the word used in connection with computers is 'cache-sloshing', which is a also bad (just like sloshing is bad in fuel tanks, etc.)!
I never happened to run across this bit of technical jargon. (Thrashing yes.) Just lucky I guess. No word is so amusing and humble that tekkies won't adopt, usurp and pervert it. It is a plain English word, long in use for varied purposes, like most plain words, and I am going to resist their poisonous intrusion. I don't see any necessity for sloshing to be undesireable or uncontrolled. Why this malicious effort to twist a delightful word? When I slosh the dishes in the dishpan they come clean easily. When the washing machine sloshes the clothes around it gets out the ground-in dirt. When a gold miner sloshes around his pan of mud and grit, he retrieves the inaccesabe gold. These things are not undesireable. They are not uncontrolled. If a programmer makes the choice to slosh stuff around in memory, the quicker it can be done, the greater the advantage.
I tried to understand cache sloshing by looking up on the Internet. Suffice it to say programmers have inexplicably chosen this word when it has no applicability to the situation they decribe.
KF, 'if you don't like (agree with) the message, don't shoot the messenger'.
Seriously though, as long as we both agree on the superiority of the i850E-P4(533MHz)-PC1066 platform (at least insofar as image/video editing use), why don't we just get past the semantics... Ok?
Seriously though, as long as we both agree on the superiority of the i850E-P4(533MHz)-PC1066 platform (at least insofar as image/video editing use), why don't we just get past the semantics... Ok?
I just finish building a nice new Pentium 4 machine 3 days ago. ASUS P4T533 MB with the Intel P4 2.53 processor, 256megs PC 1066 RIMM 4200 memory (fast fast fast and more to follow) 2 Maxtor 7200 80gig HDs and one 20 gig, ASUS 16X DVD/ROM, TEAC 40-12-48 CD/RW, SB Audigy Platinum, ASUS Geforce TI 4200 vid card, Creative V.92 modem, A drive, Antec True Blue 480w PS, and a whole bunch of nice round colored cables plus a couple of blue cathcode lights, and it's all encased in a awesome Directron 201 SF case with 3 windows. OS is Win XP Pro. All together I have 8 fans going in there and this machine is so quiet you can't even tell that it is on. It's fast, it's quiet, it's beautiful, it's amazing, it loves big graphic files and it loves games, and I love it. What more can I say????
My recommendations (based on my experiences with them):
Don't forget that high resolution video editing requires very fast drives with high I/O throughput. So IDE drives will not be sufficent (unless you're just editing home movies).
Single Processor: P4 2.53Ghz, Asus P4T533-C w/ 512MB of Kingston PC1066 RDRAM (or more), 3Dlabs Wildcat VP (Radeon 9700 Pro or Geforce4Ti4600 will do in most cases), Seagate X15 Cheetah Hard Drives and Adaptec 29160 Controller. OS: Windows 2000 Professional.
Dual Processor: Dual AMD Athlon MP 2100+, Asus A7M266-D Motherboard, 3Dlabs Wildcat VP (Radeon 9700 Pro or Geforce4Ti4600 will do in most cases), 1024MB of Corsair PC2100 ECC Registered DDR, Seagate X15 Cheetah Drives and Adaptec 29160 Controller. OS: Windows 2000 Professional.
Of course, both of these will exceed your budget of $650, but I wouldn't dream of anything less for serious video editing.
Don't forget that high resolution video editing requires very fast drives with high I/O throughput. So IDE drives will not be sufficent (unless you're just editing home movies).
Single Processor: P4 2.53Ghz, Asus P4T533-C w/ 512MB of Kingston PC1066 RDRAM (or more), 3Dlabs Wildcat VP (Radeon 9700 Pro or Geforce4Ti4600 will do in most cases), Seagate X15 Cheetah Hard Drives and Adaptec 29160 Controller. OS: Windows 2000 Professional.
Dual Processor: Dual AMD Athlon MP 2100+, Asus A7M266-D Motherboard, 3Dlabs Wildcat VP (Radeon 9700 Pro or Geforce4Ti4600 will do in most cases), 1024MB of Corsair PC2100 ECC Registered DDR, Seagate X15 Cheetah Drives and Adaptec 29160 Controller. OS: Windows 2000 Professional.
Of course, both of these will exceed your budget of $650, but I wouldn't dream of anything less for serious video editing.
I just bought the Acorp dual 370 mobo and it works great with my single 933. Board is just $26.95 and I have seen a few PIII 733s for $65 lately. I bet you could easily build a hummer for under $650.
CHP FIREWIRE IEEE 1394 CONTROLLER CARD 3 port $15
Samsung Original DDR333 PC-2700 512mb CAS2.5 - OEM Version $155
ECS K7VTA3-RAID VIA KT333 Chipset ATX Motherboard - RETAIL $69
AMD ATHLON XP 2200+/266 FSB PROCESSOR CPU - RETAIL $169
total for the above $408
All from NEWEGG.com
Very fast rig, cheap and offers raid for those bad ass hard drives of yours!
even enough money for a faster video card you can get you a
VGA CHAINTECH GEFORCE4 TI4600 128MB VGA & TV-OUT, DVI OUT. RETAIL BOX for $235
or another shtik of Memory, and another bad ass hard drive.(more memory, and storage size/speed for video editing the better)
after shipping on all that it should be right around your budget range. +/- $15
It doesn't have USB 2 though.
If you run CAD type programs, I'd go with a dual Athlon MP setup of some kind(Tyan), blows anything else away when it comes to these, ask anyone who's ever run CAD on both AMD and INHELL
Samsung Original DDR333 PC-2700 512mb CAS2.5 - OEM Version $155
ECS K7VTA3-RAID VIA KT333 Chipset ATX Motherboard - RETAIL $69
AMD ATHLON XP 2200+/266 FSB PROCESSOR CPU - RETAIL $169
total for the above $408
All from NEWEGG.com
Very fast rig, cheap and offers raid for those bad ass hard drives of yours!
even enough money for a faster video card you can get you a
VGA CHAINTECH GEFORCE4 TI4600 128MB VGA & TV-OUT, DVI OUT. RETAIL BOX for $235
or another shtik of Memory, and another bad ass hard drive.(more memory, and storage size/speed for video editing the better)
after shipping on all that it should be right around your budget range. +/- $15
It doesn't have USB 2 though.
If you run CAD type programs, I'd go with a dual Athlon MP setup of some kind(Tyan), blows anything else away when it comes to these, ask anyone who's ever run CAD on both AMD and INHELL
I'm not Anyone, I'm Someone.
Dual Intel® Xeon Processors 2.4GHz 400MHz FSB w/ 512KB Cache
Supermicro P4DC6+ Intel 860 Motherboard w/1AGP/6PCI
1GB RDRAM PC-800
Onboard Adaptec 32-bit Dual-Channel Ultra160 SCSI Controller
36GB 15,000RPM Ultra160 SCSI - 3.6ms Seek Time
36GB 15,000RPM Ultra160 SCSI - 3.6ms Seek Time
SoundBlaster Audigy 5.1 w/1394
Creative MegaWorks 510D
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional
You said best, not cheapest, Right?
Dual Intel® Xeon Processors 2.4GHz 400MHz FSB w/ 512KB Cache
Supermicro P4DC6+ Intel 860 Motherboard w/1AGP/6PCI
1GB RDRAM PC-800
Onboard Adaptec 32-bit Dual-Channel Ultra160 SCSI Controller
36GB 15,000RPM Ultra160 SCSI - 3.6ms Seek Time
36GB 15,000RPM Ultra160 SCSI - 3.6ms Seek Time
SoundBlaster Audigy 5.1 w/1394
Creative MegaWorks 510D
Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional
You said best, not cheapest, Right?
Have you considered a Dual Processor computer? If you say you want the FASTEST a Dual 2.4 XEON with a couple GB of RAMBUS spinning up on a RAID0 or RAID5 array of Seagate Cheetah X15-36LPs [fastest hard drives in existance] would fit the bill. Many applications are SMP enabled nowdays. And the Prestonia XEONS have Hyperthreading You are going to see a lot more apps taking advantage of this, especially with the P4 Northwoods at 3ghz slated to have Hyperthreading enabled.
Now if you don't want the fastest...but you said you did...go with a single CPU system using IDE drives.
Now if you don't want the fastest...but you said you did...go with a single CPU system using IDE drives.
I would get Dual Athlon's with a 760MPX board. Better than a dual Xeon, see anandtech's review of them.
I am running dual Durons right now in my Asus 760MPX board.
I am running dual Durons right now in my Asus 760MPX board.
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