Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 vista64/adobe machine

C

C.K.

Banned
Joined
Jul 11, 2007
Messages
55
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Hey everybody,

I've been following closely this area of the forum. Just as you, I can't wait to play around with the adobe plugin...

I was gonna wait until it's out to get precise feedback on how well it works on what kind of machine etc, but I have to take a decision now.

It seams, from what I read, that a quad core machine will be enough power to cut redcode at 1/4th of the definition (about HD, right?). So my choice is to go for a quad core xeon with 8gb of ram. I know it would be better to go for a 8core pc, but I figured that I would better save money and get a second machine in 6 months or so when processor power will be even greater...

So, first question:. What do you think about that? Will a quad xeon be enough to cut and enjoy 1/4th definition on my 24" screen?

Second question: The choice of the hardware.
I'm not going for a HP or dell workstation. I'd rather save some money and build my station myself. Do you have advice on a good/stable/evolutive motherboard to support a xeon processor? And second, what xeon processor should I go for? What if I tried to overclock a little?

Third question: the choice of a fast system harddrive. What about those SSD? Would they be a good deal to run the system? Or should I rather go for a 15000rpm hard drive?


I'm sorry if these questions have already been asked a lot, but I coun't really find specific advices such as brands and precise references on hardware... Maybe some of you had to build such systems... I just want it to be as stable as possible and avoid stupid mistakes.

Thanks!
 
I am building using a Asus Z7s,

It has PCI, and PCI -e also the board is overclockable.
 
x86box said:
I am building using a Asus Z7s,

It has PCI, and PCI -e also the board is overclockable.
Click to expand...

free advice-- stay away from the Asus Z7 mainboard. If you want to run an overclockable system, then buy intel Skulltrail.

Don't get me wrong, ASUS is a great option. usually. But their implementation of the intel X5400 chipset for an overclockable platform was pretty badly implemented.

trust me, go Skulltrail. You will be happier.

Adam
BOXXlabs
 
you need a dual (12 or 8 pin i can't remember) power supply to overclock skulltrail....

rules out cheap power supplies....$250 minimum and harder to find

just FYI
 
ck, in re: your third question, might want to consider a couple of nice sized and inexpensive sata drives in a RAID 0 configuration as your system HDD, instead of the smaller and more expensive SSD or the size limited 15000 RPM drive. The RAID 0 will be blazing fast.

Some will warn you away from a RAID 0 system drive saying it will double your chance of failure. Initially, that may be correct in that buying two drives means they both have to not be DOA. On the other hand, once they have proven to be stable, when striping them they never run full out except for maybe short spurts.

So, instead of a double risk of failure, I submit that the failure rate of either drive may be less likely than of a single drive setup.

To wit, if you have a load to pull for a set distance, you have an option of splitting that load between two vehicles who never load their engine more than fifty percent. The other option is to put the entire load on one vehicle straining all out to get the heavier load that same distance.

In my mind, the single vehicle is much more likely to have a failure than the two that are for the most part, never under strain.
 
the failure rate would be statistically worse

mathematics

since if one drive fails...you lose all the data from both

if each drive has the probability of failing say 1 out of 10,000
then you would add those probabilities 2 out of 10,000
the more drives the worse chance of failure ( in raid 0)
your vehicle analogy dosn't quite work...because if one engine blows....they both explode and everybody inside dies in the fire
...and with hard drives they do fail everyday and they will eventually fail GUARANTEED
like anything if you have a good raid 0 setup it seems fine...but if you loose data on one drive you regret it.

kinda like if you recorded your social insurance number on 9 peices of paper with one digit on each....lose one you lose it all.

there probably would be less stress on the drives so they may have longer life, but the biggest chance of failure in my experience is data corruption.
if they are just working drives...and they are backed up, and not the original masters then raid 0 is fine
but for the price of 1 extra drive you also have redundancy

raid 5 is a good combo of speed and redundancy....I have used raid 0 lot's and I like to edit with it....but it has no redundancy.

be very careful with those new SSD's.
I bought the OCZ one and it sucks, major data corruption....DO NOT BUY
the only good one out there was just released by intel, and it rocks. The failure rates on those should be better than a standard drive, and they'll be as fast as a good raid 0 setup....but you have to pay big bucks right now.

right now I have a velociraptor as my system drive, and 3 1000gig drives in raid 5....if you needed faster you could use 3-5 velociraptors in raid 5...you would probably have close to 300MB a second with a good raid card...
 
Unfortunately that is just flat out not true about Raid 0 decreasing the load on the individual drives. Especially on an OS drive, Raid 0 is almost as likely to increase the I/O counts on both drives, depending on your block size. Not that a RAID 0 is bad for an OS drive, but that is not the reason. It will increase your speed, but it clearly does double your chances of failure. Don't bother with 10k or 15k rpm drives for the OS (besides maybe a cheap Raptor) because the increase won't justify the cost. The new 32GB SSDs can be had for about $200, and while the 150MB/s is great, the key thing is the increased number of I/Os which could really help a system drive. I have yet to try this on one of my systems, but I will soon.

Currently all of my systems have single spindle OS drives, and usually a single SATA RAID volume for media, cache, scratch files, etc. (8 or more disks) And that to this point has been the most efficient solution for most editing work, in my experience. Backup disk images of your OS drive are very important, and remove the need for redundancy there.

If you are looking for a total of four cores, don't spend the money on a 5000 series dual socket Xeon workstation. Use a single socket Core2Quad system, which is way cheaper. Regardless of what you want to purchase, if you are looking to save money, I would recommend waiting another few weeks, as Intel's Nehelem release should shake up the market. Also buying a refurbished workstation from Dell Outlet or HP Remarket can save you money while still providing you with a "certified" supported solution. (OpenHD, BMD, Matrox, AVID, etc.)
 
just watch those SSD's

go on some of the forums and you see people screaming for there money back

I know i got stung by one

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=7

these tests show some of the performance. Data corruption happens, system hangs when multitasking..(like 5 minutes to bring up the control panel)
graphics errors....everything...and i can verify
Do your homework...don't be an idiot like I was, and buy into the hype
they were rushed into production...only the intels are stable

the hype is big for SSD's but I would ONLY recommend the Intel ones right now
 
just to stress the SSD thing
look at this

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403&p=8

the OCZ scores 4.06 IO per second....244ms latency
4 per second

and the OCZ slc scores 109 a second while the intel is 11,000

the OCZ is the samsung guts.....there are worse SSD's than these 2.

if you pay $200 for an SSD....watch out

the intel however totally rocks.

i've seen the cool demos on line...and i had my desktop on Vista come up in 10 seconds from boot, and photoshop is up in like 5 seconds....but after that the computer is useless....update your video card drivers and windows requires a re-install
 
In re: the system RAID 0, I have an old Pentium 4 Dell Dimension 8400 with a (combined) 320 GB factory RAID 0 system drive. Had it for a couple or three years now and never a problem. I also have a DELL PowerEdge SC1430 with a RAID 0 system drive (not used much yet) that I feel more confident in trusting my data being striped than I would with a single drive being written to constantly.

Just my experience and preference. No objections to alternate thinking.

OBTW, I have had system drives that were single drives fail numerous times before. Again, just my experience.
 
mdharrington said:
the failure rate would be statistically worse

mathematics

since if one drive fails...you lose all the data from both

if each drive has the probability of failing say 1 out of 10,000
then you would add those probabilities 2 out of 10,000
the more drives the worse chance of failure ( in raid 0)
your vehicle analogy dosn't quite work...because if one engine blows....they both explode and everybody inside dies in the fire
...and with hard drives they do fail everyday and they will eventually fail GUARANTEED
Click to expand...
I wonder if you aren't too invested in the infallibility of statistics... You say the probabilities of a drive failing is say, 1 out of 10,000. But assuming that probability is based on average failure rate where drives that are used at a 10 per cent rate are averaged with drives that are used at 90 percent load, then you are not comparing apples to oranges. If the failure rate for the 90 per cent load drive is 1 in 2,000 then the ones under lighter loads have a much lower failure rate than the average.

Back to the automobile analogy. If you watch NASCAR (if not, :ohmy: ) then you know that on banked tracks where the drivers mash the gas to the floor and never let up, the engine failure rate is often very high as the race wears on (the engine rpm is constantly high.) In the ones where they have to use the brakes in the turns and the rpm's drop, the failure rate is much lower.

I contend that a normal HDD is mechanical just like an automobile engine. One thing that may make a drive behave differently is the way it records the data that it has to retrieve at some other time.

I suggest a RAID 0 striping pattern may be more orderly than a non striped single drive. If true, this could further lend to the efficiency of the RAID 0 system drive, and further delay a failure. Let's face it. No matter if you have a single drive or a RAID 0 drive, you are going to back up critical info.

Why not get the benefits of striping across drives where it counts... in the system drive where your RED data enters your machine?

[/QUOTE]
 
After many years in this business, here's my $.02 regarding drive arrays...

There is no beating RAID0 striping for cost/performance. It clearly leads in both.

If you don't mind the outside risk of loosing your data due to a disc failure -and can regularly backup your media (or simply recapture it) in case of the unthinkable, then great.

However, over the course of a career in digital media,the odds are pretty good that at some point, a RAID system you are working on will probably suffer a drive failure.

If you can't afford (even the outside) chance of loosing any data due to a drive failure, the the best option (again, in terms of price/performance) is RAID5.

Today's RAID controllers using the intel "IOP348" chipsets (such as the ATTO and Adaptec SAS/SATA controller cards) provide outstanding read & write performance- almost on-par with RAID0.

One of these controllers will set you back $700 -$1200 bucks, but if you want to use inexpensive SATA drives and get killer performance along with fault tolerance, then it's the only way I would go.

Adam
BOXXlabs
 
i have to agree

i used raid 0 with no problems for years...
but all car examples aside, you will eventually loose all your data if you do not back it up.

If you back it up.....raid 0 is the way to go
i ran a daily tv show all on raid 0, and it would be on the system for a week before being dumped to another backup...but i wouldn't do that again
i always had this worry in the back of my head that i would loose the data if it crashed (most people would say I was an idiot to even take that chance)

so in conclusion....nothing wrong with raid 0...
it will however eventually fail....like all drives raided or not
if you back it up, and can accept the risk inbetween backups then no problems

raid 5 however will give you a speed increase( over a single drive) and the ability to suffer the failure of 1 drive, so it's actually more reliable than a single drive
probabilities again...instead of adding the probabilities, you would multiply them


not taking away from what your saying number6 (if that is your real name:bleh: ) I have had raid 0 with no problems for years at a time, but it will eventually fail. a non raided drive also will eventually fail, a raid 5 set can survive the failure of 1 drive.
for peace of mind raid 5
 
I wonder if you aren't too invested in the infallibility of statistics... You say the probabilities of a drive failing is say, 1 out of 10,000. But assuming that probability is based on average failure rate where drives that are used at a 10 per cent rate are averaged with drives that are used at 90 percent load, then you are not comparing apples to oranges. If the failure rate for the 90 per cent load drive is 1 in 2,000 then the ones under lighter loads have a much lower failure rate than the average.
Click to expand...

good point...statistics arn't the be all and end all...thats why i failed it in high school
 
i think the reason i use raid 5 on some of my systems is that the capture and edit drives are the same on our live switching units. So there is no other copy of the media other then what is on the Raid array....so if there is any corruption all the data is lost in a raid 0 setup

raid 0 would be good to capture and edit from the Red drive, but you would want to keep the data on the Red drive, or make a copy of it on a storage drive, until your project goes to final output.
If you capture it from the Red drive and then erase the Red drive, you run the risk of loosing your data. And if you back up a Raid 0 array, you are using extra drives anyway for the backup.

It all depends how valuable your data is.
A big studio shoot has insane backup requirements....double and triplicate LTO tapes, stored at different locations, doubles of the origional drives besides the LTO's ect ect.
 
mdharrington said:
i have to agree

i used raid 0 with no problems for years...
but all car examples aside, you will eventually loose all your data if you do not back it up.

If you back it up.....raid 0 is the way to go
i ran a daily tv show all on raid 0, and it would be on the system for a week before being dumped to another backup...but i wouldn't do that again
i always had this worry in the back of my head that i would loose the data if it crashed (most people would say I was an idiot to even take that chance)
Click to expand...
Agreed, in that environment I would only use a RAID 5.


not taking away from what your saying number6 (if that is your real name:bleh: )
Click to expand...
:) Actually it was my position in the family line of siblings. They finally got it right so they quit.:usd:
 
So now that we have decided that, RAID0 is a fastest option temporarily for editing, but requires backup, and RAID5, is not quite as speedy but does not require backup by way of redundancy. So since we are going to be using extra drives to backup in RAID0 is the speed difference substantial enough for us to not consider RAID5 as an editing drive? (For features, Tv-shows, documentaries things of that nature) Can we talk about RAID10 a.k.a (RAID 1+0). I am still a little unclear about how it works/ its practical usability.

Also lets consider 4k editing data rates here, with redcode we're getting to the max bandwidth of 40MB/s (mega bytes or bits?) for real-time playback. If that's the case than isn't having a 350 MB/s RAID0 overkill? or is it still beneficial in the sense that it will decrease loading times for big projects in Adobe Premiere (considering the latest 64 bit will have native support for 4k footage). As you can tell we are familiarized with the theories and are looking for real world opinions. Also consider that we are not interesting in shooting RAW.

We haven't talked about RAM, how about 8GB running at 1066 is that enough for 4k realtime editing? or make that 2k even. Don't CPU speeds contribute mainly to effects and transitions one would apply to the footage and to rendering times. How essential is having a CPU faster than per say a Dual Core 2.8 ghz.

We would greatly appreciate some answers to these questions as we here at Salahuddin Productions have been in a perpetual state of upgrading since we've ordered our red ones.

Thanks

Processor: Core 2 6600 @ 2.4ghz
Memory: 8GB
System: Vista 64
HDD: RAID0 4 x 640 GB (2.1 TB) (Still debating on changing this setup, I have four more empty bays in my enclosure)
 
Taimoor Salahuddin said:
So now that we have decided that, RAID0 is a fastest option temporarily for editing, but requires backup, and RAID5, is not quite as speedy but does not require backup by way of redundancy. So since we are going to be using extra drives to backup in RAID0 is the speed difference substantial enough for us to not consider RAID5 as an editing drive? (For features, Tv-shows, documentaries things of that nature) Can we talk about RAID10 a.k.a (RAID 1+0). I am still a little unclear about how it works/ its practical usability.

Also lets consider 4k editing data rates here, with redcode we're getting to the max bandwidth of 40MB/s (mega bytes or bits?) for real-time playback. If that's the case than isn't having a 350 MB/s RAID0 overkill? or is it still beneficial in the sense that it will decrease loading times for big projects in Adobe Premiere (considering the latest 64 bit will have native support for 4k footage). As you can tell we are familiarized with the theories and are looking for real world opinions. Also consider that we are not interesting in shooting RAW.

We haven't talked about RAM, how about 8GB running at 1066 is that enough for 4k realtime editing? or make that 2k even. Don't CPU speeds contribute mainly to effects and transitions one would apply to the footage and to rendering times. How essential is having a CPU faster than per say a Dual Core 2.8 ghz.

We would greatly appreciate some answers to these questions as we here at Salahuddin Productions have been in a perpetual state of upgrading since we've ordered our red ones.

Thanks

Processor: Core 2 6600 @ 2.4ghz
Memory: 8GB
System: Vista 64
HDD: RAID0 4 x 640 GB (2.1 TB) (Still debating on changing this setup, I have four more empty bays in my enclosure)
Click to expand...

Taimoor, wish I could answer your questions but my knowledge base is not that detailed. Hope someone who can will answer.

My oun setup is a dual quad core xeon with a RAID 0 system drive. I have two empty bays and hope to add two TB drives in a RAID 0 as a my storage drive. May add an external RAID setup for final backup but will utilize RAID 0 in that as well.

Have installed an ATI Radeon 3650 1 GB PCIe card.

Don't have it yet but will probably end up with about 6 GBs of RAM. I don't know if I'm overkillin' or underkillin' but I'm just going to put together the best I can afford and if it is more than currently required, I am sure the technology will soon grow into it and then past it. Computer builders haven't yet adopted the "Obsolescence is Obsolete" philosophy.

I'll be running the Adobe plug in with CS3 and have hopes that THAT will make having so much horsepouer unnecessary.

edit: forgot to mention Windows Vista x64 OS
 
i have 8 gig on my machine, and want more

depends on the app your using, cs4 will be 64 bit(at least for windows users)
so the more ram the merrier.

doing a ram preview in Fusion i can eat up 8 gigs easily.

regarding raid 5....you can use as many drives as you want...if you had 5 drives in raid 5 you would definately be faster than a 2 drive raid 0 setup.
3 drives in raid 5 is slightly slower than 2 in raid 0

raid 10 is just raid 0 mirrored, so you need 4 drives, but only get the speed of 2 in raid 0....and only half the capacity...

example 4 500gig drives in raid 10
1000 gigs total storage ....speed of 2 drives in raid 0
can tolerate the failure of 2 drives

3 x 500gig drives in raid 5
1000 gigs total storage.....almost the speed of 2 drives in raid 0
can tolerate 1 drive failure

5 x 500gig in raid 5
2000 gig total storage .....depending on your controller 1.5 (and higher) the speed of 2 drives in raid 0
can tolerate 1 failed drive

as much as i've pushed the security of raid 5, you need a good controller to make it fast...
raid 0 is still king for price/performance...but you have to back it up
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top