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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Building System For REDCine. Need advice

flameop said:
But RedCine diesn't support SLI does it? :-/

Mark, yip, totally agree.. will look at the cases..

Though this is tempting!..

http://www.mountainmods.com/u2ufo-opti1203-black-wrinkle-powder-coat-original-top-p-433.html?osCsid=0a7jgmuhjftncb6kpa23uj29m7
Click to expand...

Yes - I dont think redcine supports SLI - not sure why it ever would....

Seems best to have a few raptors or even 20k drives not sure the name
running as raid for play back?

Of course rendering out - for broadcast/film transfer etc needs a cpu as fast as possable - but we have a small render farm for that - render out shots - while working on others....

But we will see how it all goes in March - when we gets ours -4k is hugh! I cant believe my 30inch screen won't be big enough! I'm very excited.

We have booked one for jan though as we got a nu project for MTV
that might allow for 12 days of Red Hire - but depends on the DP - so might go with super16.
 
offhollywood said:
galexander

This is good stuff. What is your favorite 8-core motherboard at the moment? Best "Bang for your buck" in your opinion - just crunching REDCODE from REDCINE - not running any other apps at all?
Click to expand...

to me the most badass motherboard you can buy right now would be the SuperMicro X7DWA and not wait for the intel skullf_cker, $1500x2=$3000 for cpu's? wtf??

to be honest, i wouldn't buy a dual 8-core, the price vs performance of a single OC 1x quad board with extremely fast FSB versus a 2x quad with mediocre FSB doesn't justify the expense. i would buy two single 1x quad computer boards with 10Gig fiber or w 2 GigE on each and boot strap them for a lot less money and more than double the performance.

the dual quad is like a old big V-8, you need to get it out on the 'road' and let it breath, great for long complex, number crunching, computing massively parallel problems.

the single, extremely fast quad will do a 'quarter-mile' under 3 sec. fast FSB let's say you push it to 1400MHz, your graphics clock is running somewhere around 1800MHz+, your cpu is 3.8GHz+ for about $1000?

compared with 2 x quad running stock at 3GHz, FSB 667MHz(800 if you're lucky) , graphics card running at 1600MHz for about $3500?? the FSB alone difference will nearly triple the amount of data per cycle that is getting shoved around on the bus for the 1x quad.

the 1x quad will basically be crunching at max, the only choke points are the amount of ram on graphics card and on motherboard.

the 2x quad bottlenecks will be SMPing, takes overhead with communication, scheduling (scheduling in winDoZe is damn nightmare and is NOT very deterministic unless you are running some real-time extensions). each cpu slot will be feeding the graphics processor, allocating/malloc ram (probably fragmenting the shit out of it wasting more clock cycles). the 1x quad is similar to FIFO, simple and extremely fast.

for stock, no OC'ing, money no object, most likely supermicro X7QCE, fastest FSB of any server board i've seen WITH 3 PCIe slots, 192gb ram max, quad x 4, you can throw so many processor at that much ram, it more than makes up for the slow Ram clock. it's the old Russian mentality, if you can't beat them with superior technology, throw shitloads of everything you can at them as fast as you can (Bagdad defense ha ha)
 
I'm lost! lol..

So galexander what your saying is a single cpu (quad core) overclocked is the way to go for a workstation ?

The server side I get..

All very confusing for a mac head :-/ lol

TBH I'm more looking to build a rack mounted machine for our Scratch setup. Probably going to get a rack case that has 24 drives internally with a 3ware card. Lots of research to do yet.. :)

Loads of great info in this thread.. thanks guys..

s
 
galexander said:
to me the most badass motherboard you can buy right now would be the SuperMicro X7DWA and not wait for the intel skullf_cker, $1500x2=$3000 for cpu's? wtf??

to be honest, i wouldn't buy a dual 8-core, the price vs performance of a single OC 1x quad board with extremely fast FSB versus a 2x quad with mediocre FSB doesn't justify the expense. i would buy two single 1x quad computer boards with 10Gig fiber or w 2 GigE on each and boot strap them for a lot less money and more than double the performance.

the dual quad is like a old big V-8, you need to get it out on the 'road' and let it breath, great for long complex, number crunching, computing massively parallel problems.

the single, extremely fast quad will do a 'quarter-mile' under 3 sec. fast FSB let's say you push it to 1400MHz, your graphics clock is running somewhere around 1800MHz+, your cpu is 3.8GHz+ for about $1000?

compared with 2 x quad running stock at 3GHz, FSB 667MHz(800 if you're lucky) , graphics card running at 1600MHz for about $3500?? the FSB alone difference will nearly triple the amount of data per cycle that is getting shoved around on the bus for the 1x quad.

the 1x quad will basically be crunching at max, the only choke points are the amount of ram on graphics card and on motherboard.

the 2x quad bottlenecks will be SMPing, takes overhead with communication, scheduling (scheduling in winDoZe is damn nightmare and is NOT very deterministic unless you are running some real-time extensions). each cpu slot will be feeding the graphics processor, allocating/malloc ram (probably fragmenting the shit out of it wasting more clock cycles). the 1x quad is similar to FIFO, simple and extremely fast.

for stock, no OC'ing, money no object, most likely supermicro X7QCE, fastest FSB of any server board i've seen WITH 3 PCIe slots, 192gb ram max, quad x 4, you can throw so many processor at that much ram, it more than makes up for the slow Ram clock. it's the old Russian mentality, if you can't beat them with superior technology, throw shitloads of everything you can at them as fast as you can (Bagdad defense ha ha)
Click to expand...

Massive thanks galexander -

This helps me a lot -

I love all the "free consulting" one can get on this forum!!!

This thread rocks hard!!

Make this puppy a sticky!!
 
Mark you will learn that I have a talent for starting good threads. :)

Why? You ask? Simple, because I am an idiot on a universal level. That which confuses the shit out of me, mildy interests everyone else!

:)

Jay
 
galexander said:
the 1x quad will basically be crunching at max, the only choke points are the amount of ram on graphics card and on motherboard.
Click to expand...

okay galexander -

last question (well ... maybe) ...

what's your favorite "bang for the buck" single QUAD motherboard?

and again, thanks for sharing -
 
flameop said:
I'm lost! lol..

So galexander what your saying is a single cpu (quad core) overclocked is the way to go for a workstation ?

The server side I get..

All very confusing for a mac head :-/ lol

TBH I'm more looking to build a rack mounted machine for our Scratch setup. Probably going to get a rack case that has 24 drives internally with a 3ware card. Lots of research to do yet.. :)

Loads of great info in this thread.. thanks guys..

s
Click to expand...

yes for price vs performance, you can't beat an OC'ed board.

in a 12/15 months or so when the system probably craps out because you've stressed out the components, you upgrade to the latest and greatest and you haven't spent a ton of money on a server which by then technology will have at least doubled.

instead of being stuck with an expensive and outdated dinosaur of a server, you upgrade to latest and greatest, some kind of water cooled, quad x quad x dual SLI machine.

24 drives, shit, that's going to cost you at least 380Watts at power on and under full load. cooling it will sound like f18 about jump off the deck...
 
lol... yeah.. currently have 38 tabs in safari just on PSU's! :)

Unsure to go fibre attached or a full case with sata internal onto an HBA.

Can get a 950w psu.. the price jump from 16 > 24 disk enclosures is pretty steep though. Plus all that heat :-/ lots more research needed!

option A
5U Rackmount Server Chassis - 24 Hot-Swap Bays - N+1 950W PSU
£1800

option B
4U Rackmount Server Chassis - 16 SATA/SAS Hot-Swap - No PSU
£450 +PSU

Also options for sata/sas or sata ML .. though sas drives are still expensive as hell.. and its more storage space than needing 1200MBs for us currently.
 
offhollywood said:
okay galexander -

last question (well ... maybe) ...

what's your favorite "bang for the buck" single QUAD motherboard?

and again, thanks for sharing -
Click to expand...

i would humbly suggest any of the gigabyte motherboards, like ga-X38, those heatpipes are there for a reason ha ha. you don't need to buy the latest and greatest cpu's for big $$, these boards are made to OC. ram fastest you can afford and still OC.

if you troll around the gaming sites everyone will have different opinions, i have asus p5k-vm running win2k3, as i wanted a microATX format.
 
flameop said:
lol... yeah.. currently have 38 tabs in safari just on PSU's! :)

Unsure to go fibre attached or a full case with sata internal onto an HBA.

Can get a 950w psu.. the price jump from 16 > 24 disk enclosures is pretty steep though. Plus all that heat :-/ lots more research needed!

option A
5U Rackmount Server Chassis - 24 Hot-Swap Bays - N+1 950W PSU
£1800

option B
4U Rackmount Server Chassis - 16 SATA/SAS Hot-Swap - No PSU
£450 +PSU

Also options for sata/sas or sata ML .. though sas drives are still expensive as hell.. and its more storage space than needing 1200MBs for us currently.
Click to expand...

i'd avoid SAS like the plague. with the correct raid array, your MTBF won't be impacted too much. you're going to do with 16x 1TB sata drives? are you archiving the history of the universe part 1? ha ha
 
Lol.. might be!! :-p

Prob use 500gig enterprise as the cost is alot less and no.. we wont need 16TB! yet.. Depends if were working with R3d files or a shed load of dpx/tiffs :-/

One will be used as a workstation another will be server for 3D/comp

Here's the case..
http://www.chenbro.com/corporatesite/products_detail.php?serno=41
 
flameop said:
Lol.. might be!! :-p

Prob use 500gig enterprise as the cost is alot less and no.. we wont need 16TB! yet.. Depends if were working with R3d files or a shed load of dpx/tiffs :-/

One will be used as a workstation another will be server for 3D/comp

Here's the case..
http://www.chenbro.com/corporatesite/products_detail.php?serno=41
Click to expand...

wow, that's going to be loud ha ha..

Seagate makes good set of drives
SATA 3.0Gb/s 160GB ST3160815SV
SATA 3.0Gb/s 250GB ST3250820SV
SATA 3.0Gb/s 320GB ST3320620SV
SATA 3.0Gb/s 500GB ST3500630SV
SATA 3.0Gb/s 750GB ST3750640SV

which i've read are just as good as the enterprise and these are made for 24x7 video acquisition, multiple streams but not quite as expensive.
 
Oh, interesting on the drive front there! thanks.. shall look into that..

Yes.. v noisy ! :-/ we have a 8bay raid and its pretty silent.. have to look into what fan's its using in the back..

will post up any more findings!

cheers

S
 
galexander said:
wow, that's going to be loud ha ha..

Seagate makes good set of drives
SATA 3.0Gb/s 160GB ST3160815SV
SATA 3.0Gb/s 250GB ST3250820SV
SATA 3.0Gb/s 320GB ST3320620SV
SATA 3.0Gb/s 500GB ST3500630SV
SATA 3.0Gb/s 750GB ST3750640SV

which i've read are just as good as the enterprise and these are made for 24x7 video acquisition, multiple streams but not quite as expensive.
Click to expand...

I was just going to ask about Seagate.

Can they be considered a serious\reliable long-term option? They are priced nicely and this 5 year warranty option looks impressive.

I mean, all drives on my home PC are Seagate and I never had any problems with them (knocking on wood).

A lot of professional studios here are also using Seagate.

But I guess that a REDCine\processing station would have to sustain a much heavier traffic and load, so... how many of you are planning to choose Seagate?

And I also heard that the higher the HDD's capacity, the more unstable it is. 320GB is currently considered stable enough but what about the bigger models?
 
karapetkov said:
I was just going to ask about Seagate.

Can they be considered a serious\reliable long-term option? They are priced nicely and this 5 year warranty option looks impressive.

I mean, all drives on my home PC are Seagate and I never had any problems with them (knocking on wood).

A lot of professional studios here are also using Seagate.

But I guess that a REDCine\processing station would have to sustain a much heavier traffic and load, so... how many of you are planning to choose Seagate?

And I also heard that the higher the HDD's capacity, the more unstable it is. 320GB is currently considered stable enough but what about the bigger models?
Click to expand...

i've used seagate, quantum, maxtor, wd, for consumer level stuff, they usually run in cycles, current trends seems to be towards WD. they don't have a SAS line of drives to protect like Seagate. Seagate could have long ago made a 10k rpm sata or ide drive with their cheetah technology but wouldn't bring it to market as it would drive down the over-priced 15k rpm drives. with SAS and SATA merging, maybe the price will eventually come down on the high-end 10k/15k rpm drives.

currently ones are raptors, i'd highly reccommend anyone getting these, small ~150GB but damn they are blazingly fast! achtung, schnell, schnell, raus, raus...

these seagate look to be more for an "industrial" video application, hard, consistent reads/writes streaming with huge AV data. if you're running a security operation in vegas recording huge amounts of digital data for storage/people ID/scans, you'd get probably get these. they would write the streams fairly sequentially without the spindle lifting too often between reads or writes.

the "enterprise" versions are most likely built more for file-servers, database oracle/SAP, tons of access by many people pulling big and small files, lots of random access. they are basically used 'hard' 10 hours a day. if many people pulled huge files at once, these would slow down to a crawl, the "industrial" would keep pumping.

i don't think stability is a factor for drives bigger than 320Gb. to me, it would be more of access time. bigger drives, more platters or denser platter that's a lot of 'real-estate' to randomly spray data. you would have to seriously start ramping up the spindle arm speed on the big Tb drives or the seek time goes up. i like the drives that have a minimum number of platters and quick access time. all else being the same, any manufacturer that says the random seek time on a 200Gb drive is the same as a monster .75/1Tb drive is FOS IMHO. ha ha

so depends on your application really.

just my 0.02
 
Galexalder,

I would like to go back to what you were saying to Mark. I am interested in this concept of running 1 quad chip at 98% efficieny vs. 2 quad chips at less.

If I pay double the price, I would want double the speed, and from what you are saying that may not be the case.

Also you speak a LOT about over-clocking. I am very interested in this, but do not know how it's done.

Given what you have been reading on here, please give your recommendations on a 1 quad chip system overclocked. Money is a consideration, and if I could keep it in the $2,500 range that would be great. If not thats cool too, but any advice in this area would be good.

As for overclocking, is this a very difficult thing to do?

Jay
 
How about this one:

GA-X38-DQ6
Intel Bx80569qx9650a Core 2 Extreme Qx9650 (Only One.. All I can afford, but can add another later)
Kingston HyperX 2GB DDR2 SDRAM Memory Module - 2GB - 1200MHz DDR2-1200/PC2-9600 - Non-ECC - DDR2 (4gb total)
Black Ultra Grid ATX Mid-Tower Computer Chassis ULT33137, w/ 500W V-Series Power Supply & 120mm Fans

Now this system is based on a 1 chip setup since those processors are over 1k a piece. But perhaps I don't need this?

Look at this list and tell me what you would change on it.

Thanks

Jay
 
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