Video Editing PC

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Sungaisu

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 18, 2009
Messages
416
-Updated PSU-

Want to expand on my current system to be a better and more efficient video editing machine.

Been working a LOT with Adobe After Effects and Sony Vegas, but my current setup is really slow and is starting to annoy me.

Current Setup:
Mobo: MSI P6NGM
Ram: 4GB Corsair XMS2
Video Card: PCI-E 8600GT 256MB (Old one I had layin around)
PSU: Coolermaster 500w
Proc: Intel E5200 2.5GHz Dual Core
HDD: 7200rpm 1TB Western Digital Green Edition x2

Can't really think of anything else I need to include that would be relevant.

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What I was thinkin about getting:
Quad Core:
Intel Core 2 Quad 2.5GHz

Video Card:
XFX GTS 250 1GB DDR3, but cheap.
or

XFX HD-5770 1GB DDR5, HDMI, DX11, Love this one. Anyone know if this transfers sound through the HDMI port?

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
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I'd really like to get a new video card, since that seems to be my weak point, Plus I use a 32" HDTV for my monitor so having HDMI (w/Sound!) would be sweet. What would be a better choice for me? Getting a quad core or a Video card? Both I know help with render time, but I honestly think that my 8600GT is keeping me behind big time.
 
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Which 550W PSU do you have?

Every single HD 5xxx series card supports audio via HDMI. Also, at $143, that GTS 250 is a total and utter ripoff. It should not cost more than $110.

Though the fact that you're using Green drives may also be a factor for a "slow system".

EDIT: What's your max budget for this upgrade? How long after you do one upgrade will you be able to do another upgrade?
 
just a note while i agree the ATI cards the better choice.. the only card that adobe supports for hardware accel is nvidia.. so on that aspect the GTS 250 would be the better choice but thats only if adobe after effect even uses hardware accel..

and yes ATI has pass through audio through HDMI and DVI using the DVI to HDMI converter..
 
It doesn't look like AE CS5 uses the GPU for rendering. Premiere Pro CS5 does use the GPU (Nvidia Only).

AE CS5 can use either ATI or Nvidia cards for Accelerated Previews though.

Which version of AE do you have?

The Green drives' only drawback is probably read speed to load the projects, once loaded it's all in ram (using AE), in Vegas the files are read right off of the drive. Pretty much all video formats except uncompressed HD "should" work fine with the Green drives, but I would recommend using a faster drive, like a WD Black drive as your AV drive.

I just added a second video card (9600GT) to my system so that I can run 3 screens and it makes premiere pro easier to work with since I can have the most used palettes open at the same time.
Also, with Premiere Pro, I can set any of the screens as a full screen monitor. Earlier tonight I set the right screen as full screen monitor and it works great.
editor-2010.jpg
 
I should clarify that I don't mind the FINAL render time, that can take all day if it needs to, what I want to be faster is the previews as I edit things, RAM Preview sections and ect. My PC takes too long to just preview certain parts that I just edited so when I render the video at the end I end up getting parts that aren't done right.

The only difference that I remember from the Green drives and black is the platters. I'd like to get a single 500GB platter or one of the two platter 640GB (Hope I'm remembering that right).

I'm using AE-CS4 at the moment, and Sony Vegas Pro 9.

I was mistaken about my PSU, it's a 500w. CoolerMaster RS-500w


Oh Also, Trying to keep this to one upgrade at the moment, at under $200, want to be around $150 but $200 is the max. I'll be buying one of these upgrades this Friday, the next soon after.
 
Sungaisu said:
I should clarify that I don't mind the FINAL render time, that can take all day if it needs to, what I want to be faster is the previews as I edit things, RAM Preview sections and ect. My PC takes too long to just preview certain parts that I just edited so when I render the video at the end I end up getting parts that aren't done right.

The only difference that I remember from the Green drives and black is the platters. I'd like to get a single 500GB platter or one of the two platter 640GB (Hope I'm remembering that right).

I'm using AE-CS4 at the moment, and Sony Vegas Pro 9.

I was mistaken about my PSU, it's a 500w. CoolerMaster RS-500w


Oh Also, Trying to keep this to one upgrade at the moment, at under $200, want to be around $150 but $200 is the max. I'll be buying one of these upgrades this Friday, the next soon after.
Click to expand...

Not quite. The Green drives also spin at a significantly slower spindle speed than the Black. In fact, the Green (according to one unnamed source) spins at only 5405 RPM.

Zepher said:
It doesn't look like AE CS5 uses the GPU for rendering. Premiere Pro CS5 does use the GPU (Nvidia Only).

AE CS5 can use either ATI or Nvidia cards for Accelerated Previews though.
Click to expand...

Actually, although the GTS 250 can technically use the GPU accelerated rendering feature of PP CS5, it might actually perform slower in this mode than in software-only mode if the CPU is strong enough to do the job. And Adobe currently officially supports only the GTX 285, the Quadro FX 3800, FX 4800, FX 5800 and Quadro CX cards for GPU-accelerated rendering. A software tweak can enable the GPU-accelerated mode for other CUDA-powered NVIDIA GPUs - but at least 765MB of available local graphics RAM is required for the GPU accelerated mode to work at all. (This means forget about GPU acceleration if you have only a 512MB card, or even a 768MB card if you're using a Windows resolution/color depth of higher than 1024x768x32.) And even if the GPU acceleration feature of PP CS5 were enabled, there is a very good chance that the system with the lower-end GPU in question could underperform that very same hardware setup with CS5 running in software-only (CPU-intensive) mode.

And do note that all of the officially supported GPUs on Adobe's list have at least 192 stream processors. The GTS 250 has only 128 stream processors.
 
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Sungaisu said:
I was mistaken about my PSU, it's a 500w. CoolerMaster RS-500w
Click to expand...

You're gonna have to buy a new PSU then: That PSU is crap. Your current setup was low power enough to avoid issues but a quad-core upgrade or a GPU upgrade, let alone both of those combined, would definitely cause harm to the system due to that PSU.

Before you do any upgrade, I'd recommend a new PSU:
$50 - Corsair 400CX 400W PSU

Yes the Corsair will be enough for a quad-core upgrade and a new GPU.

HDD wise, I'd recommend this:
$56 - Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
 
I wouldn't mind putting a new PSU ontop of the new GPU upgrade. On both of my HDD's it says 7200RPM on them, not 5400. It could be lying, but I haven't noticed a difference in OS load times between mine and my friends WD 500GB Black edition. It will be an upgrade for me surely, but wouldn't a GPU be the best upgrade?

That's what I'm trying to narrow down right now, is what would be the best thing for my PC at this moment. I'll eventually be upgrading a few more parts, but as of right now, what would be good?

I lean towards the GPU more than the CPU at the moment because gaming would be nice to do on the big TV as well, albeit it not being my sole purpose of the computer, hence why I like the HD5770.
 
I say upgrade the CPU first for two reasons:
1) You can get that Q8300 for $112 to $122:
https://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?nam...essor-Q8300-2-5GHz-1333MHz-4MB-LGA775-CPU-OEM

That price is not gonna last long.

2) Prices for the HD 5770 are dropping a bit.

If you wait too long to do the CPU upgrade, by then it'll be too cost-prohibitive to upgrade to a C2Q setup. So with the PSU and CPU upgrade, that should about $170 to $180.
 
To maximize your performance, I would go with what Danny says, CPU first.
GPU looks like it would only help with previews on AE and do nothing on Vegas.

What type of video are you currently working with?

How many video layers/titles/effects can you currently run without the preview playback requiring a render?

I am getting some Canon 7D video files tonight to test on my machine to see how much faster it would be with a Q6600, GTX285 and CS5 vs a Q9550, 8600GT, and CS4.
I'll be using Native 7D clips as well as Cineform encodes of the same clips.
My friend is currently shooing a documentary and we want to see how much time savings can be accomplished during creation and BluRay output if he upgrades to CS5 and the 285 (or 4xx series when it becomes officially supported).
 
The video files I deal with are mainly from my HDPVR, recording in a M2TS file. I'm obviously no expert at this but I'm getting deeper and deeper into learning about video editing and video effects. I use a good amount of effects/layers inside AE, either stuff I'm learning from Video Copilot, or just me messing around with particles.

Regardless of what it is, adding one effect seems to shut me down completely to a crawl during previews.

I like the idea of doing the quad + PSU. I may get impatient and buy the card as well, but who knows for sure. I'm interested in your turnout with the Q6600 + GTX285 vs the Q9550 and 8600GT. Is there a performance boost between CS4 and CS5?
 
Well, AE and PP CS5 are both native 64bit apps so you can use more memory and not limited to 2GB, so you can have longer full res RAM previews in AE. And PP CS5 has the Mercury Playback Engine which helps with realtime playback and exporting your timeline.

If you are having the main slowdowns in AE then video card and PSU "should" help quite a bit, since it is the gfx card that is processing the on-screen previews of your work area.

I remember back in the day when I used to use Lightwave 3D for my job and I was just using a regular video card and working with complex scenes it would take up to a few seconds to update the screen if I moved something in the scene. then a friend of mine bought an ATI FireGL card and it would update the scenes in real-time which was very impressive.
 
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Yea I figured just as much. My friends 9800GT does a much better job at rendering them.
 
Danny Bui said:
You're gonna have to buy a new PSU then: That PSU is crap. Your current setup was low power enough to avoid issues but a quad-core upgrade or a GPU upgrade, let alone both of those combined, would definitely cause harm to the system due to that PSU.

Before you do any upgrade, I'd recommend a new PSU:
$50 - Corsair 400CX 400W PSU

Yes the Corsair will be enough for a quad-core upgrade and a new GPU.

HDD wise, I'd recommend this:
$56 - Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
Click to expand...


I noticed the HDD you recommended is a blue drive. I know black drives are supposed to be the "fast" ones, and blue are supposed to be the reliable ones. Is there a performance drop from a Black drive to a Blue?
 
Sungaisu said:
I noticed the HDD you recommended is a blue drive. I know black drives are supposed to be the "fast" ones, and blue are supposed to be the reliable ones. Is there a performance drop from a Black drive to a Blue?
Click to expand...

In general the Black is suppose to the fasted than the Blue drive but in actual practice, that's not the case. There's many situations where the Blue versions outperform the Black versions.

The WD 500GB Blue drive has recently been released in a single platter version that makes it 50% faster than the WD 640GB Blue or Black. There has been no confirmation that the WD 500GB Black drive is a single platter version now. As such, the WD 500GB Blue is faster than the WD 500GB Black drive. In fact, it's the faster than any Blue or Black 640GB, 750GB or 1TB drive.
 
That's pretty damn impressive for a $55 HDD. I'll be seriously considering this now.
 
Is that all versions of the 500GB blue drive? I just got one back from RMA which is the IDE version.
 
Zepher said:
Is that all versions of the 500GB blue drive? I just got one back from RMA which is the IDE version.
Click to expand...

No, just the latest SATA version. The IDE version was/is still a three-platter affair because the sequential transfer rate on the outer tracks of even the 250GB-platter version exceeds the maximum practical bandwidth of the Ultra ATA/100 interface as used on the WD PATA drives. And of course, earlier SATA versions of the 500GB Blue used three 166GB platters, and later two 333GB platters which had one side of one of the platters unused (the very same configuration as in all currently shipping versions of the 500GB Black).
 
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Can anyone reccomend a good heatsink for that Intel C2Q I'll be ordering it very soon (Next day or so) And I'd like to make sure that mofo stays nice and cold.

My Coolermaster RC690 has plenty of room for a nice heatsink. Always had good luck with the Freezer Pro series on my old AMD builds, they still a good brand?
 
Sungaisu said:
Can anyone reccomend a good heatsink for that Intel C2Q I'll be ordering it very soon (Next day or so) And I'd like to make sure that mofo stays nice and cold.

My Coolermaster RC690 has plenty of room for a nice heatsink. Always had good luck with the Freezer Pro series on my old AMD builds, they still a good brand?
Click to expand...
The Freezer Pro is not a good choice nowadays for the money. I recommend this HSF instead:

$30 - Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus HSF for LGA 1366 and LGA 1156
 
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Don't want to bump this thread again, but lookin at the Corsair PSU, I realized it's not modular.

Lookin for something a bit more manageable, any thoughts on this one:

$50 Raidmax Hybrid 2 530w

Would that be enough to power my 5770 and the Quad?

I don't want this for the LED as my RC690 places the PSU at the bottom so fancy colors are no bonus for me, but I do want something modular and still pretty cheap.
 
The words modular and cheap do not belong in the same line.

That Raidmax is a piece of crap. The only real advantage it has over the similarly priced Corsair 400CX are the modular cables. The Corsair is far superior to the Raidmax in every way possible.

The cheapest quality modular PSU would be this:
$100 - XFX P1-650X-CAG9 650W Modular PSU

Also did you ever buy that CPU?

EDIT: If you haven't bought the Q8300 when I recommended to, unfortunately, it has now become cost-prohibitive to upgrade to a C2Q CPU. At $141 shipped, that Q8300 is far too expensive considering that you can get this faster AMD setup with a better CPU upgrade path for not that much more:
$155 - AMD Athlon II X4 635 CPU + Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H AMD 785G mATX Motherboard Combo
 
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I didn't get the quad because I found a used 5770 for a really good deal and knew people would jump on it if I didn't.

I just ordered the combo you posted, along with the Corsair 400w, I'd rather have a good quality PSU vs having one that's shiny and a tiny bit more manageable. I like the look of the Corsair way more than the Raidmax I posted. Now to get a HSF for the AMD...
 
Sungaisu said:
I didn't get the quad because I found a used 5770 for a really good deal and knew people would jump on it if I didn't.

I just ordered the combo you posted, along with the Corsair 400w, I'd rather have a good quality PSU vs having one that's shiny and a tiny bit more manageable. I like the look of the Corsair way more than the Raidmax I posted. Now to get a HSF for the AMD...
Click to expand...

Wise decision. I have not used that Raidmax PSU myself, but I believe it to be outdated and of relatively low quality by modern standards. That PSU is only 60 to 65 percent efficient versus the 80-Plus certification on the Corsair you picked. Worse, in order to get that highfalutin wattage rating at such a low price, APFC had to go. And don't expect it to deliver anywhere close to its 530W rating at realistic internal PSU temperatures of 45~50°C; in fact, the 530W rating is achieved at an unrealistically low internal temperature of 20°C. In other words, don't expect it to deliver more than 400W under realistic conditions.
 
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