Adobe Video editing machine

[chixwithtrix]

I'm into video editing as a hobby at the moment and am going to school to make it a profession. I have an old Pentium 4 2.4ghz processor and 256mb of ram...etc that refuses to render anything in Adobe Premiere Pro. edit* - I know it at least needs more RAM to function, but my multitasking suffers as well from Premiere to After Effects, etc so I figgured the best way would be to start over with newer technology that would last me longer than upgrading this older machine.

Needless to say I want to upgrade, though I am fairly computer illiterate when it comes to all the numbers. Please excuse my ignorance in my following questions:

I have $1200 for processor(s), mobo, RAM, and video card. (I can upgrade the RAM and vid card at a later date though). When I went on NewEgg I and looked around at Intel Xeon processors This is the one I was looking at
-I am assuming that Xeon's are only for dual processor applications?
-The only boards I could find for them were server boards. What exactly are server boards?
-Would this processor work well for a video machine? Are Xeons good for normal use (not server)?
The Xeon seemed to have what I was looking for, but I don't know if it would work or there were better things out there...?

Another Processor I was looking at was this one.
-Is it any good for a video editing application?

I will leave it at that for now until I narrow down what processor is good for me. Thanks in advance for any help here.
-Ashley

 

[valve1138]

have an old Pentium 4 2.8ghz processor and 256mb of ram...etc that refuses to render anything in Adobe Premiere Pro.

That would be your problem, you need more RAM. Upgrade to 1 gig and you'll be fine.
Also, make sure you're video files are on a drive seperate from the OS drive.

 

[Zepher]

Yep, just need some memory, 1gig minimum and 2 gigs would be great, especially if you start to use AfterEffects.

We use Matrox RTX.100 cards on our P4 2.0 and 1.8ghz machines with 512megs each. I would put more memory in them but they use RDRAM, that shit is expensive.
Since the Matrox cards do all the processing, there is no rendering, everything is real time.

 

[chixwithtrix]

well, I thought about just upgrading my RAM becasue I know the adobe programs are RAM hogs. But then I said....why don't I just upgrade fully since this machine is so old and gives me odd problems. (I think the machine is four years old.) I just checked in my system, and I have to correct myself - *the processor is a 2.4, not 2.8* sorry for that, I'll fix it im my above post.

I have one 250g SATA srive and a 40g for my main drive. I had a 200g external drive, but a song that I opened from my bf's laptop gave the drive a virus and corrupted the whole thing.

I do use After Effects and Photoshop as well, the multitasking when I am editing kills the current computer.

I still am interested in working on a new machine, anyone have some answers to the above questions? Should I have posted in another forum? Thanks so far for your posts.

 

[Zepher]

As much as I like PC's, have you considered going to a Mac?

for your upgrades, Intel Dual core processor, 1gig minimum of Ram, move the 250gig SATA to the new machine, Asus motherboard (I prefer Asus, but many other manufacturers are good), add another 320+gig to the system.

basically, you just build another computer and use the current one for net surfing or secondary tasks, or just sell it to gather more money, but take out the 250gig SATA and keep the 200gig external if you sell it..

Xeon is geared more towards servers woth multi processors, so I'd skip over those as they aren't cost effective.

 

[engiNURD]

You don't need Xeon CPU's for video/photo editing. Xeon's are for servers, and while they will work fine for desktop applications, there's no need for them.

$1200 is a great budget for a video/photo editing machine. With that budget, you can afford the price inflation of the core2duo's, lol. Go with...

$370 - Intel Core2Duo E6600 2.4Ghz 4MB L2 cache
$175 - MSI 975X Platinum
$190 - G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2-667 (F2-5400PHU2-2GBLA)
$145 - BFG Tech BFGR76256GTOCE Geforce 7600GT 256MB ($30 MIR)
$110 - Antec SONATA II ATX Mid Tower w/ 450Watt SmartPower 2.0
$30 - NEC 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE/ATAPI Model ND-3550A
$12 - shipping from Newegg
==========
$1032 + any tax

If you plan on OC'ing, get this ram instead for $30 more:
$220 - G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2-800 (F2-6400PHU2-2GBNR)

You can use your old drives in the new system unless you want a new one. Use the 40gb as extra storage and make your 250GB your main OS drive. However, I'd suggest getting this, it comes out to $0.29/GB - a great deal:
$95 - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s

As for your external HDD, pull the drive out of the external enclosure and reformat it.

Stick to the core2duo CPUs or Athlon64 X2 socket AM2 CPUs. The new core2duo's use less power, run cooler, and are much better CPUs than the athlon counterparts (The cheapest core2duo can give the most expensive athlon FX a run for its money). DDR2-800 is the most you'll need if you want to OC, otherwise, DDR2-667 works just fine, and can OC your CPU to 3.0Ghz. If you're a casual gamer, then the 7600GT is good enough. Also keep in mind that vista and DX10 are around the corner. If you'll be getting into 3D rendering with Maya and/or 3dsMax, then you'll want to upgrade to a more powerful vidcard, like a 7900GT or X1900XT.

Mac's are overpriced. Though, I haven't checked their new prices. I'll check and give u an update if I think its a better buy.

 

[viper92086]

^ agree with this guy