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Help Upgrading PC for PP CS$ Please!
Hi, I’m hoping you can help an amateur here:
I tried doing a search on the forum and a few of my questions were answered but there were so many posts titled CS4, Help! without specifics and I couldn’t look at them all! Sorry if my questions have been answered before.I am upgrading my system to support CS4. I built it myself several years ago and edited successfully on 6.5 for a number of years. When I switched to PP 1.0 I had a lot of issues, but worked through it due to a lack of budget. I am a student getting close to graduation and I want to upgrade my system with a plan to upgrade to HD in the future. Here are my questions, and thanks in advance:
I am planning on a new motherboard with 4 gig RAM
Everyone says I should switch to Pentium from AMD. Any thoughts?
Also when it says “Dual 2.8 for HD” does that just mean a Dual Core? Will I see much difference bumping up to a quad core?I have a GeForce 5500 which I have grown attached to over the years. I believe a driver update will give it the Open GL 2.0 support required. Will I see much performance improvements if I just shell out $100 for a nice shiny new card? I saw a nice one that only has DVI outs, but one of my monitors is an old CRT VGA Touchscreen that is a fun novelty and covered with produce stickers. Do the DVI/VGA adapters work ok?
I currently have three hard drives and run premier (Along with Windows and everything else) on one, raw footage on the second, scratch on the third. This is still the optimal set up, correct?
Is their an easy way to add a fourth Drive while keeping my DVD burner? If I add a fourth drive will my performance improve if I run Premier on a drive separate from windows?Also Hard drive tech has progressed a lot since I last tore open my box. If I add a SATA drive, which one should I replace for best performance? (I believe I can find a MB that supports SATA and my old IDEs, please correct me if I am wrong!)
How much increased performance will I get from RAID? Is it really necessary for true HD? If I add RAID, which drive is that for?
Is 500 watts of power enough for all of this? (excluding the RAID array, which I can’t afford right now anyway…)
WOW thats All I hope.
Thank-You so much for putting up with me!
Any and all help is greatly appreciated!David
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6 Replies
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[David Thornton] “Everyone says I should switch to Pentium from AMD. Any thoughts?
Also when it says “Dual 2.8 for HD” does that just mean a Dual Core? Will I see much difference bumping up to a quad core?”Yes, that means Dual Core. You will DEFINITELY see an improvement in performance (between a quad and a dual core) as well as rendering speed.
[David Thornton] “Do the DVI/VGA adapters work ok?”
Yes, I used to use one.
[David Thornton] “I currently have three hard drives and run premier (Along with Windows and everything else) on one, raw footage on the second, scratch on the third. This is still the optimal set up, correct?”
That’s a good setup. You may need a RAID for HD footage if you plan on editing that but most likely not if you’re editing DVC PRO HD or something similar.
[David Thornton] “Is their an easy way to add a fourth Drive while keeping my DVD burner? If I add a fourth drive will my performance improve if I run Premier on a drive separate from windows?”
If you have enough slots, add a DVD burner.
[David Thornton] “Also Hard drive tech has progressed a lot since I last tore open my box. If I add a SATA drive, which one should I replace for best performance? (I believe I can find a MB that supports SATA and my old IDEs, please correct me if I am wrong!)”
You want SATA that supports 3Gbps. Get rid of the IDE drive. SATA is better.
[David Thornton] “How much increased performance will I get from RAID? Is it really necessary for true HD? If I add RAID, which drive is that for?”
RAIDs (if configured for speed) will give you better read/write times. If you have footage that needs to be read at some high data rate like uncompressed HD does, then you’ll need a RAID.
[David Thornton] “Is 500 watts of power enough for all of this? (excluding the RAID array, which I can’t afford right now anyway…)”
It could be depending on what you have in your computer (graphics card, # of hard drives, etc). I think mine’s either an 800 or 1000 watt.
Paul Del Vecchio – Director
https://www.PaulDV.com -
David
Since you seem to be on a tight budget, I will say stick to your 6.5 and you will enjoy and have good sleep. The PPro issue is still problematic and the fact that you want to upgrade from a very old system make the odds heavier. Most of the plugins will not work or may crash from time to time if you upgrade now. The best titlers for 6.5 can’t work in PPro and it’s titler freezes with memory shortages.
Just manage your lovable PC for the meantime and hopefully you will get some money like $1500.00 and go big for a quad-core system with lots of Ram and hard drive. -
Thank You Very Much Paul! I appreciate you going through my long winded post and answering so many of my questions. Just a couple more:
CS4 recommends Dual 2.8s If I get a quad at 2.4 this should cover me, yes? (I’m not sure if the math is as simple as 2.4×4 > 2.8×2)I’m looking at an AMD Phenom. I have always used AMD and it is a bit cheaper. Anyone have a good reason to switch to intel? (I am still scouting Motherboards, so that could also be a factor)
A gentleman at Frys said I will get the best performance if I set up my comp as follows:
RAID Drive Partitioned:
One partition holds Premier/Windows, etc, while the other holds raw footage I am using on the project I am currently editing.Large drive for storing raw footage I am NOT currently working with.
Small drive for scratch disk.
This seems counter intuitive to me… I thought it was always best to have premier running on a separate physical drive than the raw footage. Does the RAID increase speed enough to warrant running everything from the same drive?
This was my original NEW setup plan:
SATA 1TB for holding ALL raw video, including what I am currently editing.
IDE Running Premier/Windows
IDE for a scratch disk.
(I cannot currently afford to replace all my old IDE Drives)
Now I am considering incorporating 2 160gb IDE drives into a RAID 1 or 0 (leaning towards 1 because they are older drives and I’m not editing on HD yet so space shouldn’t be a factor)
These drives are NOT identical, one is 150, the other is 160, probably different speed buffers… Can they still be put into a RAID array.
Will my performance be better if I run Premier from the RAID, use it as a dedicated raw footage drive, or can I partition it and do both?
Thanks again for the help!!
To George:
Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately I lost my 6.5 to the wind a while back. (I do miss its titler!) My financial aid has put me in a position to do some necessary upgrades. My school work last quarter pushed my system to its limits so I’m ready and excited to upgrade. Within my budget is a New MB and processer, 4 gigs ram, new video card, and hopefully a TB of storage. My goal is to get in under $600. Thanks to frys.com it is looking good… I’ll keep you posted -
David
You’re welcome, my vendor would have set you up with a Q6600 for a nice rate if you were in Toronto.
Good luck and have faith you’ll succeed. -
Hi George, I’m looking to upgrade my HP wx8200,Axio SD,CS2,4gb to CS4 & Vista64.
I’m also in Toronto…care to share your vendors contact info?
Thanks
Grant -
Sorry for the delay. I was busy with some customers and no time for net browsing. My vendor is PC VILLAGE on Steeles and Keele 416-987 7196. The techie’s name is Matthew. He is a Guy with a good heart. His support is eternal and advises you if you need to wait for the Prices to go down and the best board to use. I wanted to change a 8400 dual core to 9650 quad, instead of making the sale to asked me to add few dollars to move to Core i7. Or wait to the summer and get the extreme or higher core i7 since I have on workstation to manage.
Try him you might even consider managing the Axio now that it supports the CS4 and grab a new faster system independent of HP rules
and expensive hardware and you will have 2 systems. CS4 works best on a new system in the Vista 64 environment with 8gb to burn.
Good Luck
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