Rate limiting hardware for video editing??

[mcurtin]

Plan to do mainly video editing but also want as good as possible gaming system (budget $2500) but already have monitor. Also some hid def video editing.

What will hold up throughput the most as far as hardware goes? I was planning to get 3-4 GB memory or should $ be put into betters GPU(s) and or CPU?

 

[Lord Banshee]

just to be general
1) 4GB RAM (The more the better, but need 64-Bit OS if you get more than 4GB)
2) Core2Duo (faster the better) and Motherboard(ask in Mobo or CPU section for best)
3) ATI X1950XTX (.. i want one)
4) Either RAID or Raptor Hard Drives (Video can get big so hard drives are the bottleneck so anything you can do to make them faster would be better)
5) Creative X-Fi Music (Good sound card all around)

And i still think you will have a lot of money left.

 

[mcurtin]

Thanks for your timely response.

1. OK, will go for the 4 GB ram (over 3)
2. I'm probably going to do C2D 6400 or 6700 depending on (speed/$ ratio)
3. It was either that one or possibly nVidia 7950 GX 2; would Crossfiring two ATI 1950s or 1950 with one of the less expensive 1900s give noticeable effect on video editing?
4. Was planning on 10,000 rpm Raptor (74G) for OS and executables and then RAID two 250 or 320 or 400 GB 7200s for the data.

5. Thanks for the tip; I'll see what the on board sound sounds like also.

 

[Lord Banshee]

No stay away from SLI and Crossfire...

You will not need that kind of GPU power for video editing and unless you are running games at 2048x1600 or greater then "I" don't see the point for either of those too. You need VSYNC for video editing (i would think) tearing from on screen playback video and games would be a b!tch without... at least for me. SLI (not sure about crossfire) has problems with vsync.

I think some of the intel chipset on board audio are pretty good, but i have never used it.

 

[Atheus]

I would definately get one of the new ATIs for video editing - they have all kinds of neat accelaration features for encoding. Two of them would be overkill I think.

Banshee: why do you say he needs 4GB of RAM? No games require anything like that, and for video editing? You could fit an entire HD movie in main memory without even counting the 512MB frame buffer... surely this is not required...

 

[smopoim86]

I built a high end editing rig(just short of a mac as far as editing goes) and there is absolutely no reason to get 4gb of ram.... i have only hit the page file once with the 2gb, and that was editing 10-15 pics in photoshop while encoding a dvd and rendering an hd video.

even at that, it was at 2.1gb of mem useage, so unless you multitask like crazy with intensive apps there is no real reason for more thatn 2gb

 

[Lord Banshee]

Atheus:

My only reason for 4GB is i have used 2GB for some time at work, Not doing HD Video Editing, but mostly CAD work and some Video here and there with After Effects and i have more than once hit the 2GB limit. But i am a man who love to multi task so i don't find my self closes my apps unless i am done with this so sometimes there are 3-4 RAM eating programs running at once.

So HD videos are alot bigger so i assumed working with editing them will require lots of RAM... Thats all

 

[mcurtin]

Thanks, this is the kind of practical info I was looking for.

 

[eelw]

I wonder how much memory is really required for video encoding. With my 3.4 Northwood and 1 GB of DDR400, encoding 500MB MPEG2 files to h.264, RAM usage was around 200-300MB. But now with my E6400, those same encodings only use around 50-70MBs. Don't get why the sudden drop in RAM usage.

As for HW video acceleration, almost all cards have MPEG2 HW acceleration. Only the 7800/7900 and X1x00 lines have h.264 decoding and limited encoding. So there really isn't much need for high end GPUs for a video encoding rig.

 

[shamans]

Why would you need a good vid card unless you're doing 3d work? (which is rare)

(Did some quick research and yah, you don't need a 3d card unless you're doing 3d work, which is quite rare for the typical video editor)

 

[cmdrdredd]

My quick recommendation...

Asus P5B Deluxe Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (overclock it a bit)
2GB Corsair XMS2 6400C4 memory
ATI x1800 or similar video
Raptor SATA RAID (w/single drive to install OS on)
Seasonic S12-600 PSU


That's just a start. The rest of the components would probably be based on what you want (case design etc). You probably won't need the RAID but $2500 is a good deal of cash to work with so I think you can squeeze it in. The main think for video encosing is your CPU. The faster the CPU the faster it works. The above config is a pretty respectable gaming platform as well.

 

[mcurtin]

If my sons bring over their latest 3-D and almost video-like games will they be saying to me--why didn't you get more memory? I notice many of the systems seen on various forums have 2GB ram. Are there many (any) games out there that require 3 or 4GB ram?
Thanks again