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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

Jay A. Kelley said:
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.
Click to expand...

Jay, one thing to note here is that we are seeing an almost 2X speed increase on an 8-core mac x1900 VS 4-core mac x1900 - so, yeah, I know it's NOT $2500 - but it IS a MAC and a PC (bootcamp) - handles REDCODE QT wrapper workflows (which you can't do on a PC right now) and with applecare it's a three year warranty.

I am exploring the whole custom pc box thing because I am curious if it is cheaper (and better) for us to just build four or five dedicated REDCINE CRUNCH BOXES as opposed to buying more 8-core macs.

I am not yet convinced - but this is all interesting stuff.
 
offhollywood said:
Jay, one thing to note here is that we are seeing an almost 2X speed increase on an 8-core mac x1900 VS 4-core mac x1900 - so, yeah, I know it's NOT $2500 - but it IS a MAC and a PC (bootcamp) - handles REDCODE QT wrapper workflows (which you can't do on a PC right now) and with applecare it's a three year warranty.

I am exploring the whole custom pc box thing because I am curious if it is cheaper (and better) for us to just build four or five dedicated REDCINE CRUNCH BOXES as opposed to buying more 8-core macs.

I am not yet convinced - but this is all interesting stuff.
Click to expand...

Interesting indeed, im also holding out on buying perhaps a new mac pro if its released in the macworld of january with the intel 45nm chips or custom building a highly OCed pc im also curios about when apple will release ZFS filesystem read/write capability if we will benefit for a more faster and reliable storage solutions
 
Jay A. Kelley said:
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
Click to expand...

looks sweet, i wouldn't buy that cpu though, i would step down to something more cost effective. either a q6700 or q6600, save your extra $700 for a killer graphics card and getting a copy of win2003 svr. make sure you get and read the latest manual to verify ram compatibility.

OC these days is much easier than the 'good old days' of tweaking voltages, digging through chipset manuals and changing jumpers on the motherboard. the bios will have the mods setup to vary parameters and even if you screw up and it gets unstable, winDoZe blue screens or won't boot you can easily recover when you reboot and switch back to default settings without opening the case or taking out the cmos battery.
 
Anders Holck said:
Leopard ZFS is already in beta.
Apple offers a developers preview at: https://connect.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/MemberSite.woa/wa/getSoftware?bundleID=19884
So I'm pretty sure as well :-)
Click to expand...

ah the mac guys are always entertaining ha ha. no offense.. :)

we're talking about brute force, numbering crunching, screaming video, processing monster NOT something that when you delete a file, a clown appears and juggles it over to the trash can with all of the pretentiousness of a linux/bsd clone at which point it plays the 1812 overture.. ha ha ha i just want to delete a file thank you and like 2 minutes ago.

if you strip out most of the mac bloat ware, you'll get close to a linux/bsd kernel. don't even get me started on why apple won't release the FCP codecs. if it was worth the time and effort, someone would hack the codecs. if not for FCP, why would anyone bother to buy a mac?

i do like some mac products, that macbook pro is unstoppable in the field, built to take punishment of the environmental kind and keep going. i recently bought an airport extreme base station, sweet 802.11G, but i'm going to mod the crappy antennas so i can extend the range from 20meters to about 900m.. anyway i digress.

mac must have an agreement to get the latest intel chips at least 6 months or so before the rest of the market can release them, it's too bad they don't push the envelope more for the price you are paying.
 
Jonna said:
Interesting indeed, im also holding out on buying perhaps a new mac pro if its released in the macworld of january with the intel 45nm chips or custom building a highly OCed pc im also curios about when apple will release ZFS filesystem read/write capability if we will benefit for a more faster and reliable storage solutions
Click to expand...

rarely is the FS the bottleneck. if you want the absolute fastest byte per byte, you can't beat good old FAT16. if fact when i need a small swp drive, i format it this way. no it doesn't support long names, less than 2 gb, blah blah blah but what it does do, is simple and extremely fast with almost no overhead.
 
Jay A. Kelley said:
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.

stuff deleted...

Jay
Click to expand...

if the system specs were similar you would get nearly double the speed for double the money but they're not.

if take the single quad system with the faster clock, you get an IO throughput of R , which is a function of CPU(quantity, clock, L1/L2 cache), ram(quantity,clock,timing), graphics(clock, ram), motherboard bus(clock)

the fastest you can move useful information around on the system is limited by the slowest component. for the server, the fastest ECC ram is about 667MHz or maybe 800 if you can afford it. also ECC ram takes a performance hit because it does internal error checking. ok that's good if you're calculating the PI to the 1 millionth decimal point.

the single system will push information around at a bus speed of 1333MHz, you are already twice as fast as the server system for less than half the cost. so if you double a single system, your effect throughput would essentialy double, yes there would be some processing at the end to combine if necessary.

performance cost
4cpu@1333MHz =~8cpu@667MHz 4cpu@1333 <<< 8cpu@667
2x4cpu@1333MHz>>8cpu@667MHz 2x4cpu@1333 < 8cpu@667
 
Jay, have hesitated to jump in because for one, I haven't even set up this system yet. But anyway, here's what I bought a month or more ago:

PowerEdge SC 1430
Quad Core Intel® Xeon® E5310; 2X4MB Cache, 1.6GHz, 1066MHZ FSB, No Operating System
PowerEdge SC1430 Quad Core Intel® Xeon® E5310; 2X4MB Cache, 1.6GHz, 1066MHZ FSB
[222-6813]
2nd Processor DISCOUNTED UPGRADE! Quad Core Xeon E5310, 2x4MB Cache, 1.60GHz
[467-0378]
Memory 2GB 667MHz (2x1GB), Dual Ranked Fully Buffered DIMMs
[311-6152]
Keyboard Keyboard, USB, Black
[310-8170]
Monitor No Monitor Option
[320-0058]
Primary Hard Drive 160GB 7.2K RPM Serial ATA 3Gbps 3.5-in Cabled Hard Drive, Primary
[341-3758]
Hard Drive Controller SAS 5IR SAS internal RAID adapter, PCI-Express
[341-3756]
Floppy Drive No Floppy Drive
[341-4035]
Operating System No Operating System
[420-6320]
Mouse Optical Two-Button Mouse, USB, Black
[310-8172]
Network Adapter On-Board Single Gigabit Network Adapter
[430-0488]
CD/DVD Drive No CD/DVD Drive
[313-4389]
System Documentation Electronic Documentation and OpenManage CD Kit
[310-8146]
2nd Hard Drive 160GB 7.2K RPM Serial ATA 3Gbps 3.5-in Cabled Hard Drive, Additional
[341-3754]
Hard Drive Configuration Add-in SAS5iR (SATA/SAS Controller) which supports 2 Hard Drives-RAID 0
[310-8117]
Hardware Support Services 1Yr BASIC SUPPORT: 5x10 HW-Only, 5x10 NBD Onsite
[980-2470]
[985-0857]
[985-9057]
Installation Support Services No Installation Assessment
[900-9997

I bought this system because as luck would have it, Dell had sent out a promotional email the day before that would give me, as a loyal customer, a nice discount on whatever unit I was interested in purchasing from them. That cut the cost doun to about a thousand dollars or so, before tax and with free shipping.

I have bought, but not installed, an OEM copy of Windows Vista 64 bit.

Unlike the true professionals on this thread, I am not concerned with time. I will render for weeks if necessary to get my (eventual) movie outputted to something I can go to festivals with, so a render farm isn't my goal or desire. i just need a grinder.

As for graphics card, I will choose this one: PNY Quadro FX370 256MB DDR2 PCI Express x16 Video Card with Dual DVI, Dual VGA, TV-Out, OpenGL 2.1, DirectX 10.0: VCQFX5500-PCIE-PB (Retail)
Features:
256MB GDDR2 frame buffer
64-bit memory interface
6.4GB/sec memory bandwidth
Twin DVI-I display connectors (one dual-link, one single-link)
PCI Express x16 bus interface
38W maximum power consumption
No auxiliary power required
Active fansink thermal management
ATX form factor, 4.38 (H) x 6.6 (L)
Product Specification:
Requirements PC compatible with Intel Pentium 4/Xeon or AMD Opteron class processor or higher
Open PCI Express x16 lane slot
Microsoft Windows Vista, XP, 2000, or Linux
512MB system memory
50MB of available disk space for full installation
CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
VGA or DVI-I compatible display
450W power supply
Package Contains NVIDIA Quadro FX 370 by PNY graphics board
Two DVI-I to VGA adapters
Drivers for Windows Vista and XP
Detailed Installation Guide
Quickstart Installation Guide
Quadro Application Utilities on CD-ROM (MAXtreme, POWERdraft)
Warranty 1 Year Manufacture
Current price of this card is about $122 bucks + shipping at XPCGear.com. A little higher at Newegg.

PROBLEMS: One known issue before I even start setting up this gear is 1. this is a server and I'm trying to teach it to be a workstation. It's still a relatively new dog so maybe I can teach it that new trick. 2. The motherboard only has two pci-e slots, and they are 8 lane slots (running at only 4x speeds each) One of those slots has the Hard Drive Controller SAS 5IR SAS internal RAID adapter, PCI-Express in it. That means I have to purchase an "adapter", or "riser", if you will, to adapt the 16 lane pci-e card to the remaining 8 lane pci-e slot. 3. This may very well mean taking a dremel tool and carving out a piece of the case so the card on the riser can be fitted in the machine. I have looked into putting a PCI card into one of the available PCI slots (also PCI-X slots are available for... whatever) but they aren't DirectX 10 compatible, so I decided to go with the PCI-e, although it be only 4x speed on this motherboard. Still probably more throughput than parallel PCI card slot would provide.

This computer was brought to my attention on this forum, and I also bought a 20" Dell display that was touted on this forum. All in all, after buying the card and riser, I will probably have something over $1700 in this machine, including Vista 64 bit software as well. I expect it to handle anything I can throw at it for awhile, and it should have a long and useful life as a secondary machine when I upgrade in a year or two. But, I must say that I probably couldn't get this total package for much less than $2000 at present, but I could be wrong.
 
if i wanted an ultimate cluster cruncher, i would use BartPE on USB sticks, run what apps are needed from the stick and use all of the hardware for processing. one configuration for each node, keep a locked reference image of the OS. if something happens or you need to upgrade, all nodes get the same patches/mods.
 
Offhollywood said:
Jay, one thing to note here is that we are seeing an almost 2X speed increase on an 8-core mac x1900 VS 4-core mac x1900 - so, yeah, I know it's NOT $2500 - but it IS a MAC and a PC (bootcamp) - handles REDCODE QT wrapper workflows (which you can't do on a PC right now) and with applecare it's a three year warranty.

I am exploring the whole custom pc box thing because I am curious if it is cheaper (and better) for us to just build four or five dedicated REDCINE CRUNCH BOXES as opposed to buying more 8-core macs.

I am not yet convinced - but this is all interesting stuff.
Click to expand...

Hey my friend,

I hear ya.. And for feature rich editing, I am pretty sold on FCP. But right now money is a major concern and I need to get up and running.. I also have to say I am very impressed with Cineform. Because I cannot afford Scratch, I am looking for ways to maintain flexibility in the post chain, and Cineform seems to offer this quite well. While I don't love Premiere, it has improved, and I DO love After Effects and some other aspects of the Adobe Suite.

To switch to a MAC system right now will have numerous charges that I am not even thinking about, and you, being a business owner, are only to aware that it's those small $100 - $200 items that seem to nickel and dime you to death.

GA (My nickname for him since I cannot remember how to spell the name) has been giving us advice worth hundreds of dollars and I am SO GRATEFUL for that. Now it's simply a matter of taking this one step at a time.

You remember that rule? I think it went: Good, Fast, Cheap... Pick two but never three. Well I need Good, and Cheap... So I have to make my peace that when my RED comes, it will not be up with the same speed you all did.

This is ok.. I'm going to take my time... Learn what I need to learn, and in the mean time, spend a lot of time with my DSLR and get very familiar with RAW images!

See ya

Jay
 
Jay A. Kelley said:
Hey my friend,

I hear ya.. And for feature rich editing, I am pretty sold on FCP. But right now money is a major concern and I need to get up and running.. I also have to say I am very impressed with Cineform. Because I cannot afford Scratch, I am looking for ways to maintain flexibility in the post chain, and Cineform seems to offer this quite well. While I don't love Premiere, it has improved, and I DO love After Effects and some other aspects of the Adobe Suite.

To switch to a MAC system right now will have numerous charges that I am not even thinking about, and you, being a business owner, are only to aware that it's those small $100 - $200 items that seem to nickel and dime you to death.

GA (My nickname for him since I cannot remember how to spell the name) has been giving us advice worth hundreds of dollars and I am SO GRATEFUL for that. Now it's simply a matter of taking this one step at a time.

You remember that rule? I think it went: Good, Fast, Cheap... Pick two but never three. Well I need Good, and Cheap... So I have to make my peace that when my RED comes, it will not be up with the same speed you all did.

This is ok.. I'm going to take my time... Learn what I need to learn, and in the mean time, spend a lot of time with my DSLR and get very familiar with RAW images!

See ya

Jay
Click to expand...

Jay -

Most important thing is to buy AT THE LAST MOMENT. This world moves fast. We are going to fight like dogs not to buy more hardware (with the exception of some additional Red camera accessories) until NAB.

Premiere is going to get better. FCP is going to get better. REDCODE QT is going to get better. CPUs and motherboards get cheaper practically every month.

You should remember that you are actually lucky, because when your Red arrives, there will be more answers than questions. So many great folks sharing info on this site -it's crazy. When we got ours cameras, there were mostly questions.

My business partner Aldey and I often reflect on the fact that as painful as it is to be a "bootstrapped" company - (we have no investors - we have to purchase and/or finance equipment directly out of cash-flow) - it has worked in our favor many times, when we were sure we wanted to purchase one piece of hardware - and by the time we had the funds set aside - there was a better, cheaper solution.

I think you are wise to "get up and running" as fast and cheaply as you can. Get a project or two under your belt. Bag a new client or two - by then, various solutions that are not even apparent right now will emerge.
 
GA... Moving on to next question

GA... Moving on to next question

Ok I swapped the processor to the Q6700.. Did some reading and it would seem that we're cool up to 3.2Ghz OCing that processor with no real problem.

I am going to go with the Gigabyte Motherboard you suggested.. But here's my question:

I can only get one processor as you suggest and then OC the hell out of it (Not really, they got that processor up to 4.8ghz but it was with liquid nitro!!)

The question / Trick is this: Another quad processor is only $500.00.. So it may not be double the speed, but if it's 1.5x the speed for only $500 more.. That seems to still be a good deal.. I am guessing you can still OC a dual system.. So we're looking at a 8 core system running at 3.2...

Now if we're looking at a 1.2x increase in speed, then I don't think that will go anywhere.

Also please explain "teaming" computers. Is this helpful? How does it work?

Also: Why Windows server 2003?

Jay

I love the Gigabyte Motherboad.. Just wish it had 1394b instead of a
 
Tech Talk @ Sundance

Tech Talk @ Sundance

Offhollywood said:
Jay -

Most important thing is to buy AT THE LAST MOMENT. This world moves fast. We are going to fight like dogs not to buy more hardware (with the exception of some additional Red camera accessories) until NAB.

Premiere is going to get better. FCP is going to get better. REDCODE QT is going to get better. CPUs and motherboards get cheaper practically every month.

You should remember that you are actually lucky, because when your Red arrives, there will be more answers than questions. So many great folks sharing info on this site -it's crazy. When we got ours cameras, there were mostly questions.

My business partner Aldey and I often reflect on the fact that as painful as it is to be a "bootstrapped" company - (we have no investors - we have to purchase and/or finance equipment directly out of cash-flow) - it has worked in our favor many times, when we were sure we wanted to purchase one piece of hardware - and by the time we had the funds set aside - there was a better, cheaper solution.

I think you are wise to "get up and running" as fast and cheaply as you can. Get a project or two under your belt. Bag a new client or two - by then, various solutions that are not even apparent right now will emerge.
Click to expand...

Mark, Great points
Many of us with “Middle” or late reservations will benefit from lower CPU pricing and better Codec software updates. Wavelet based compression is very efficient at preserving image quality to the eye, but very processor intensive to convert. Your point about Technology cost reducing by waiting a few mouths is very valid, we could not shoot 4K at this price point Six months ago……….
Will you be at Sundance?
If so I’d like to get together with other RED enthusiasts for a tech talk happy hour..
 
here's my .02

here's my .02

1. for the two macs with 2x quad vs 1x quad, naturally you would see close to doubling in computational power, you are comparing apples to apples. i was comparing servers boards to single cpu slot boards. apples and oranges. the oranges are better.

that gigabyte board with a much faster clock and bus will beat that 2x quad mac with the right video card for far less $$. this system will also leave that Dell system in dust for about half the cost.

2. 2 out of 3... relatively speaking these boards and components are not cheap for the average consumer. they are actually expensive for a home system but compared with the hugely expensive and lower performing server systems, they are still cheap. you can't really build a decent 2k/4k editing machine with the standard consumer grade stuff. well you can but it will be ssSSlllLLLlllooOOowwWWww gaming gear is the most expensive, high-performing consumer level you can get. so yes it is 2 of 3, good and fast but not cheap.

3. i would say do NOT buy at the last moment but to get your system about two months before you get a red. build-it or have it built, debug all of the software drivers, video codecs, whatever is needed. go shoot something and start editing, something anything and get going on the learning curve.

IMHO it is far easier to edit some footage of people standing around eating White Castle or Ted Drewes for free than wasting people's time and your money on a production, then start uploading, get feedback. you want to focus on the issues of the Red and not others.

i would suggest that when you get the Red you want to hit the ground running, so all you need do is unpack and shoot. to me, that is one very, expensive piece of gear to not have filming or being rented, whatever your business plan is.

4. i'm still waiting to see what results you get for the video card and codecs, to me that will be the critical issue. as i still slog it out with a 7300gt.. ha ha the people over at silicon imaging with a 2k camera are using cineform, supposedly the codec will work at 4k?? it is also is a wavelet based compression system with raw available.

5. 3.2GHz OC is easy :) mine currently runs just under 3GHz with a 2.4GHz cpu, stock cooler, 1200MHz FSB.

6. look for an Adaptec 1394B PCI-X controller, it has two FW800 ports and one USB. don't get one of those knock-off el-cheapos no-name adapters. adaptecs are cheap if you can find them, mine was $9 off Ebay. more importantly get the ubCore Pro drivers, they are free but much better performance than the stock crappy WinDoZe/TI/adaptec drivers. these drivers will actually allow you to push 1394 to 3.2Gb/s if you have any devices that would go that fast ha ha.

7. most consumer level board don't have dual CPU sockets besides the next intel one. 90% of games are not threaded enough to use more cpu cores, so throwing more cpus at gaming doesn't get much performance increase.

the only normal applications that are really hyper-threaded, that will gobble up all of your cpu horsepower are, anything by Adobe, premiere, photoshop, etc. so when you launch premiere you will see all of you cpus get hammered and of course my fav POV-ray.

after intel releases their next gaming board, asus, msi, gigabyte will release real hard-core gaming machines a few months later and those would be the ones to get. intel has no experience with gaming boards, i wouldn't buy from them.

8. Win Server, is one of the only 32bit OSes i know that will support more ram that the 32bit limit of 2Gb. if you use standard XP, it will use ~3Gb or so the rest isn't used at all but Server has a extensions to use up to 32Gb or 64Gb depending on which version of Server you get.

WinDoZe will gobble up about 300/450Mb while running, so that ram is unavailable for processing.

so Server supports ram >2Gb while being 32-bit OS. Most codecs I've seen and tried aren't ready for 64-bit. if they run they were very flaky. another year x64 might be ready for prime time. also Server is much more stable than XP, better networking support, still supports all of DirectX, etc.

if you do the calculations and find that you can do all of your processing with <= ~2.4Gb, then get standard XP pro, save a few bucks. don't go anywhere near Vista... i don't let windows use a pagefile so it gobbles up close to 600Gb, but it is much faster.

with server i easily set a process like matlab an affinity to particular processor and make it 'high' priority, meaning it screams along number crunching, which another processor set to play the latest episode of Top Gear. ha ha. you can do these with XP just not as easily or quickly.

9. with 'teaming' or boot strapping, if you have a computer with two GiGe ports. you are basically using software to combine two 1GiGe ports into one big 2GiGE port, doubling your network bandwidth without the $$$ of a 10GigE port.

if you built-two of these and boot strapped, you can double the processing power as a single entity. as far as processing data, you can have independent processing, editing and display of data. this is a case of linear cost vs performance, double cost=double performance.
 
Mark,

You are thinking what I am thinking. I am trying to put together a system that will allow some growth, but not kill me.

I am seriously looking at the DELL 30" monitor. To many good things said about it. Aside from that.. I'll be getting a quad core2.66 system and leave it open to accept another processor in the future. A LOT of what GA has said makes sense to me, and I believe I can squeeze some dollars out of a new system if I play my cards right.

Graphics cards are still the fly in the ointment for me. At this point I am looking to get something that will "just work" because there is not enough agreement on the issue. I will really take my time on this one.

I am thinking the quadro FX 1700 for now.

based on the way things have gone for the 100-200 group, I am expecting to see my RED in the next 3-4 weeks (I am 327). Jim will be far more reluctant to issue anymore recalls with 300 cameras out there (But he'll do it if nessesary!).

There is so much stuff on the way.. It's both exciting and frightening!
Jay
 
David Birdy said:
Will you be at Sundance?
If so I’d like to get together with other RED enthusiasts for a tech talk happy hour..
Click to expand...

sadly, I don't think I can actually make it this year - due to building the new facility - and we hope to have another TWO features shooting RED in NYC before mid-Feb- there is just so much to do - NAB I will go a few days ahead and stay for the entire time and do some socializing and celebrating for sure!!
 
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