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  • Anyone using Xeon workstations for CS5?

    Posted by Joseph W. bourke on April 15, 2011 at 3:36 pm

    I’ve been looking at specs for a CS5 (and CS5.5) machine which will be somewhat future-proof. Has anyone had experience with the Supermicro products:

    https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4U/7046/SYS-7046A-3.cfm

    This beast will take up to 192GB of RAM, and it looks as if it might be state of the art for at least a couple of years (cough – cough).

    Also the HP server line looks interesting – I just don’t know enough to know whether “servers” are compatible as workstations for AE CS5 and up. Anyone using any of these? Thanks.

    Joe Bourke
    Owner/Creative Director
    Bourke Media
    http://www.bourkemedia.com

    Jon Bagge replied 15 years, 1 month ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • Michael Szalapski

    April 15, 2011 at 4:51 pm

    I’ve worked with CS5 on HP xw8600 workstations and loved it.

    – The Great Szalam
    (The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

    No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

  • Joseph W. bourke

    April 15, 2011 at 6:10 pm

    Thanks Dave –

    What Adobe packages are you primarily using on the HP? I’m planning on using the CS5 (soon to be 5.5 upgrade) Master Suite, focusing mostly on AE, Premiere, Photoshop, and Soundbooth (soon to be Audition), plus Terragen 2 (a real RAM hog), 3DS Max 2011, and that’s about it.

    I’m just curious what you’ve found in your experience to be problems, or tweaks you’ve made. What video card are you using? Thanks.

    Joe Bourke
    Owner/Creative Director
    Bourke Media
    http://www.bourkemedia.com

  • Joseph W. bourke

    April 15, 2011 at 7:49 pm

    It’s a tricky one, but thanks Dave. Most of what I’m currently doing involves lots of graphics from AE CS4, going into Premiere along with Camtasia software captures. So I’m lucky if I’ve got 4 layers going in Premiere. Right now, my dual-quad is doing just fine handling the workload, pretty much in real time, at 1920 x 1080. But the wrinkle is that I just bought the CS5 Master Collection, and I want to get the upgrade to CS5.5, so I think the old quad core is going to become my desktop machine, and part of a little render farm for 3DS Max.

    I just want to be ready for any crunch work, and I’m currently working on a 3D Studio project that is very render-intensive, so it’s sort of a dual purpose machine I’m looking at getting. I think the HP looks like a pretty good fit. Thanks again.

    Joe Bourke
    Owner/Creative Director
    Bourke Media
    http://www.bourkemedia.com

  • Jon Bagge

    April 16, 2011 at 7:25 pm

    Or you can look at Dell T5500 or T7500 workstations.
    I have a T7500 which has 12 memory slots (if you have two processors).

    Dell or HP workstation or a Mac Pro are all good solid machines.

    You might want to look at refurbished if you’re trying to save money, these things aren’t cheap.

    ————–
    http://www.jonbagge.net
    Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
    Avid – FCP – After Effects

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