Processor Madness...

[Gary Paul Walker]

My friend is putting together an economical, yet workable desktop for Scarlet footage.. we've made decisions on all the componants save for the processor.

i7 vs i5 ?

Does anyone have any recommendations? Are the differences between the two that vast?

 

[Jake Bastian]

How obsolete do you want your purchase to immediately be? A good i7 processor isn't really that expensive - you can build a really decent one for around $1400 that isn't going to knock your socks off, but will definitely hold it's own with Red footage presuming you don't need full res real-time playback.

 

[Ryan Patch]

The difference in price between a i5 and i7 really isn't enough to justify NOT spending the money for it. Go i7.

Intel is shipping Ivy Bridge CPUs soon, so you might look into waiting for that (either to use those chips, or to have current chips drop in price).

Ryan

 

[Keith_D]

Spend the money for the i7.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

There's actually much more of a gap between Core i7 3930K and Core i7 3820 (or 2600) than between Core i7 3820 and Core i5 2500K. In any case, you should go for Core i7 3930K.

 

[Tony Lorentzen]

Subdahip is right on the spot. The Core i7 3930K and a LGA2011 Sandy Bridge board is the way to go!

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

There's actually much more of a gap between Core i7 3930K and Core i7 3820 (or 2600) than between Core i7 3820 and Core i5 2500K. In any case, you should go for Core i7 3930K.

YES!

 

[David Kurvers]

Sorry to be a bummer but your best bet would be to build a decent PC with a decent i7 processor and stuff a RED rocket card in it. You can build a fast PC system but nothing is as fast as having a realtime video card doing the heavy lifting. If you're going to be making $$$ with your footage then time is $$$ and a RR card will help you get more done.

 

[Yannick Verry]

+1 for David.

Get a decent processor like i7 2600k (so cheap!) and put the money in lot of ram, good raid system and several gtx 580 for cuda and/or a rocket (not cheap). The processor isn't that a critical element these days.

 

[luigivaltulini]

Sorry to be a bummer but your best bet would be to build a decent PC with a decent i7 processor and stuff a RED rocket card in it. You can build a fast PC system but nothing is as fast as having a realtime video card doing the heavy lifting. If you're going to be making $$$ with your footage then time is $$$ and a RR card will help you get more done.

+100
this is just the right way.

 

[Antonio Ribeiro]

But then of course, there's the RAID issue. If you haven't made ny decisions on this front, I would really recommend you go for the following set up (I have one and it has made a light-year difference in how footage is processed. Let's put it this way: I no longer have to watch paint dry.

1 x Enhance-Tech E800MS 8-bay Cable-less Enclosure with quiet PSU and fans
1 x Areca ARC-1880x SAS RAID Controller Card
8 x matched 3.0 TB Desktop Edition Drives
2 x 1m miniSAS to miniSAS Cables

Speeds of 900MB/s. Good luck with it.

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

Tagged.

 

[Hurcan Yilmazer]

CPU and GPU benchmarks for the sake of humanity
CPU
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

VideoCard (GPU)
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html