Building a $900-$1000 Intel+Nvidia PC. Should I go with an I5 or I7 for Sony Vegas+Gaming??

[John Rofrano]

I don’t see how you’re going to take $200 out of that build without reducing the graphics card. It is totally useless for Vegas Pro but I understand that you want it for gaming. The most important factor in video editing is CPU power. Core i5’s are adequate for video editing but not optimal. Intel classifies them for “content consumption” but recommend Core i7 for “content creation”. I agree with Intel. You really need a Core i7 for video editing.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Scott Francis]

I am using the i7 4790 (NON K). Great for editing and rendering. I am using an older AMD 6870 and with GPU acceleration, I see pretty fast Mp4 render times. Coming from MXF to MP4, about 60-75% of the length of video (as in one hour video takes 35-45 mins). So if you are using MP4 as your render to format, you should do pretty well. I never overclock anything (as I don’t trust that when working with client files). i7 is all I would use…

Best

Xavier (Scott) Francis
Mind’s Eye Audio/Video Productions

[Heinrich Himmel]

The 4690K is about 1.5x to 2x faster than a 3630qm. If your laptop has a good GPU then there will be little if any benefit to a new system. One thing however, if you have an nVidia optimus GPU your laptop will likely not work properly. Optimus cannot be disabled in many laptops and does not work as it should. The GPU will always be disabled in Sony Vegas, so your render times will be horrible and you will not get any timeline acceleration (editing will be sluggish).

For a Vegas + Gaming build at $1000, why not go AMD? The FX 8320 will outperform the 4690 in Vegas and will play all of your games in 1080p High/Ultra (provided you have a good GPU) (you will get more FPS with the 4690k, but it will not make any game playable that is not playable with the AMD).

Also consider an R9 290x. The 4GB Vapor-X version (now sold out) was only $229 last week. This would save approx $100 on GPU alone and perform equally to the GTX 970 in gaming and outperform it by about 2x in Vegas.

I have suggested a system that meets your budget. It will perform about equal to the 4790K in Vegas. In gaming it will not perform as well as the $1300 system you were considering. Reason being the GTX 970 is slightly better than the R9 290 and the i5/i7 have stronger single core performance. In most games, the difference will be negligible however as neither CPU will bottleneck a single GPU in most cases.

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/p/kvChGX
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/p/kvChGX/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor ($124.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($31.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($118.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($149.00 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive ($85.44 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5″ 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($51.99 @ Directron)
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon R9 290 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card ($222.00 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case ($111.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($64.99 @ NCIX US)
Wireless Network Adapter: TP-Link TL-WDN4800 802.11a/b/g/n PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter ($39.04 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1000.40
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-18 07:52 EST-0500

[Andy Fantom]

@Above poster

For Nvidia Gamestreaming+ShadowPlay, which appeal to me.

For my laptop(which is an optimus laptop) generally it seems that the time of the video matches the render times. So an 8 Minute HD 720 video with default bitrate settings would render in 8-10 minutes.

Thinking about it..would I even need a wireless network card for a desktop? Using powerline adapters+a 2nd router used as an access point, i usually plug my access point router into my laptop to get ethernet.

From reading other forums, doesn’t seem like the 970 really requires a huge power supply. Plus I don’t plan on SLI’ing. I decided to take off+change a few things

https://pcpartpicker.com/p/PP82Bm

Thoughts on this new build? I might add a cheap SSD later. Maybe I might be able to get a cheaper motherboard thats still decent.

[Scott Francis]

I would respectfully disagree with the AMD assessment. I have an AMD 8350 and an Intel 4790, I have run pretty much the same system with the same video card and the i7 absolutely blows the AMD 8 core out of the water in Vegas, it really does. Frankly I was surprised by that myself, I have run AMD in my video rigs for about that last 4 years, and migrated back to Intel….and honestly I am glad I did.

Just my experience, not a promotion of one processor….

Best…

Xavier (Scott) Francis
Mind’s Eye Audio/Video Productions

[John Rofrano]

[Scott Francis] “I have run pretty much the same system with the same video card and the i7 absolutely blows the AMD 8 core out of the water in Vegas, it really does.”

I have also read that the AMD can’t come close to the Intel Core i7’s for video processing. I would not recommend an AMD processor to anyone doing video work.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Heinrich Himmel]

Andy, while the PSU is more than what is required, keep in mind that PSU and case can go into future builds. The rest of the parts cannot. That EVGA is considered Tier III. It is a decent PSU, but may not be the best choice if you stress your PC a lot.

On cases I’ve regretted every Case purchase I’ve made until I bought the corsair 540 air (I’ve always skimped on the case and it is essentially wasted money). Make sure you are happy with the case and that you would not mind using it in every PC you build going forward.

I cannot comment on your laptop based on times. Use something like GPUz to see what the GPU sensors say. On my optimus laptop, it is 0% usage. My i7 (4930K) just rendered a 45 minute movie in 22 minutes. Not many color edits, but lots of cuts and 4 cameras.

I’ve modified your build a little (feel free to use the EVGA PSU to save some money):

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/p/9N2sjX
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/p/9N2sjX/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($248.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: MSI Z87-G41 PC Mate ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($81.97 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($68.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 840 Pro Series 128GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive ($91.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5″ 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($51.99 @ Directron)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card ($349.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Core 3000 USB 3.0 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($77.85 @ OutletPC)
Power Supply: SeaSonic G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($74.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1046.75
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-19 04:18 EST-0500

To Scott & John,

I will have to disagree with the two of you. I own both an i7 4930K and FX 8320 and there is no difference in editing HD footage between the two. In renders, the 4930K’s extra threads pull it ahead, but no more than what is expected (just like it would pull equally ahead of a 4790). The two systems are built very similarly. The difference being the AMD has a GTX 580 while the Intel has an AMD R9 280x and the AMD has 16GB of RAM vs 32GB on the Intel. There may have been other differences accounting for the performance differences in your systems. Of course I overclock all of my CPUs. FYI, the 8320, 8350, 8370, 9370 and 9590 are all the same CPU, just different clock speeds. The 8320 is the best deal from AMD.

[Roger Smith]

I just purchased a Dell 8700 with an I7 and a GT 720 and 8GB of RAM. My rendering of a 1 hour hockey game in 1080p at 4M-8M bits is down to about 2-3 hours, depending on multiple single camera in the screen or all 4 cameras in the screen for coach review.

My question is what is the best way to shave that down even further. You said your rendering is about 45 minutes per hour video. I would love to get down to that. Should I look at the video card upgrade or put more RAM in? John stated the video card is totally useless for Vegas, but would the R9 290x be better than my GT720? Would it make that much of a difference?

Any help would be appreciated. I’ve posted this question in another thread but haven’t gotten any responses to it.

Thanks.

[Scott Francis]

I would suggest more RAM, also make sure to “disable resampling” for the clips. If you are rendering to the exact same format as the original file helps as well (1080p-1080p etc). I said that I am getting about 45 min per hour to MP4, that is important as it can utilize the GPU during render if I choose that option in my render dialog box. You have to select to use openCL/GL/CUDA and such. Other formats (other than MP4 to my knowledge) do not get to utilize the GPU acceleration. One last thing, my UNDERSTANDING is that AMD card are working much better than nVidia at this point in Vegas…

Xavier (Scott) Francis
Mind’s Eye Audio/Video Productions

[Roger Smith]

Thank you very much. This is my first year doing this and I’m feeling my way through setting up my workflow. It’s GoPro cameras shot in 1080p/30fps, and render it to MainConcept Internet 1080p with the bitrate adjusted to 4000Kbps to 8000Kbps to keep the final file manageable for my coaches and families that want to download. Full games land about 2GB.

I’ll check into the resampling, but never came across it before. If I should be rendering to a different template for better/sharper final product at about that size, feel free suggest something.

Some of my work is at https://tiny.cc/bardownmediayoutube. It’s nothing fancy, but with the amount of games I’m doing alone I want to keep the editing quick and the rendering just as quick.

Thanks for any help.