Building new system to run Vegas — any comments or suggestions?

[Terje A. bergesen]

Having just finished my move to a new system, here are my thoughts… If have kept an eye on bang for buck here… if bang is all-important and buck is irrelevant some of the advice can be ignored 🙂 Remember that a lot of the reviews out there are focused on gaming, some of what is good for games is good for video editors (fast CPU, fast RAM) some of it is completely irrelevant (fast, SLI/Crossfire graphics cards).

Note on speed improvement. I upgraded from a Pentium IV running at 2GHz with 1G of memory to an Athlon 64 X2 4400+ with 1G of memory. Tested it on a project that took about 2 hrs 15 minutes to render on the Pentium, came down to 25 minutes on the Athlon. I assume this will improve a little this weekend when I get to tune the Athlon, the memory and the MOBO a little.

CPU: Athlon FX60
I went with the Athlon 64 X2 4400+. My reasoning is as follows. The CPU has 2x1MB L1 Cache, compared to 2x512K for the 3800+ and the 4400+. This should actually make it slightly faster than the 4600 (see below). I did not go with the FX60 simply because it doesn’t add enough bang for the rather significant buck. I figure I can make my 4400+ give me as much bang (see below). In short, this is probably one of the best bang/buck ratios right now, particularly with the MOBO below and some over-clocking.

MOBO: Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe
This is a very good motherboard, particularly for gaming. This was my initial choice for motherboard until the Anandtech review of the Asus A8R-MVP. There is some debate over SLI vs Crossfire for dual graphics cards, but if you are going to use your PC for video editing and not for intense gaming, this is an irrelevant discussion. You are not going to make use of neither Crossfire nor SLI.

A very important reason for me going with the MVP board was over-clocking. I bought the 4400+ which is the same CPU as the 4800+, but clocked slightly lower. This means that I can overclock it similarly and get the 4800 for a somewhat lower price. I can overclock it some more and go to FX60 performance and beyond… I haven’t tried this yet, but Anandtech got some very nice results.

Please note that if you do go with this board though, that you should upgrade the BIOS immediately and also the network drivers. The on-board Gigabit Ethernet card works fine, but it does need the latest drivers from the Network Card manufacturer. The drivers are not yet on the Asus website.

Again, the MVP MOBO gives a lot more bang for the buck than the SLI-Deluxe, unless you are concerned about high-speed gaming.

Video Card: PNY nVidia Quadro FX 540
Seems like a very good choice. I don’t need HD out, so I went with the Asus Geforce 6600 Silencer (no fan = quiet) which has VGA out, DVI out and S-Video for my TV. It runs my 21″ HP CRT very well. The DVI should run any LCD, I haven’t tried it. I have also not yet connected it to my TV yet to see that output, so I can’t comment on that. The card is $97.

Optical Drives: Dual Plextor PX716A or 716SA DVD burners
These I think I would advice against. They get pretty bad reviews on Newegg and other places.

Whether you go with an ATA or SATA interface for your optical drive isn’t terribly important. I chose ATA since I don’t want to tie up any of the SATA interfaces for that. I want to leave those for harddrives. I got two 250G drives, considering getting a third and setting it up in a RAID-5 solution. There is no real drawback to going with an ATA interface for your optical drive.

With the cost of Lightscribe optical drives being down, I would consider one of those. The Lightscribe labeling looks very cool, but you do need to label the disk twice (or thrice) with most of these drives. When you do it looks very cool though.

Monitors: …Samsung 940BF is a highly regarded 19″ LCD
You don’t really need 2ms seconds response time with an LCD for video editing. This is a gaming monitor more than anything else. An LCD with 6ms response time (and even more probably) should be great for editing.

Now, if you can find the monitor, and you can get it for the price that I have seen claimed, $370, it seems like a bargain.

The “consensus” among the users though seem to be that the 19″ LCDs give very little bang for the buck since they typically have the same resolution as the 17″ ones. I’d opt for a 20-21″ LCD with higher resolution and (to keep cost under control) slower response time if I could get it in the same price range.

Given a choice… the Apple 30″ LCD 🙂

—
Terje A. Bergesen

[Doug Graham]

Dell’s widescreen monitors can often be found on special. Their 24″ model is frequently on sale for a bit under $800, and gives a lot of screen real estate for editing. Two of their 20″ monitors would give even more timeline space.

Regards,
Doug Graham

[Bruce Bernard]

Thanks so much Terje & Doug for the suggestions. I am rethinking my motherboard choice. You are right that I have no need for the SLI since I am going to dedicate this machine to editing – I am thinking about building a gaming machine later this year and the Asus MB is a good choice for that. In doing further research, I am leaning towards the Abit AN8 ultra. Has bulit in network, 1394 and 7.1 channel sound which the reviews rate OK because Abit provides a separate sound card. With the money I save on the board and these other items I can probably crank the RAM up to 4 GB, get better performance and still be $ ahead. I’ll go with either the 4400 or 4800 chip, depending on pricing and availability. The Abit board uses the nForce4 chipset which I want to stay with since I already bought the video card.

As to the burners, there are some reports of trouble with the Plextors but I think they are the best frives and would be inclined to chance it. Might go with the PX-740A which is a little less money and fewer trouble reports. Although its a stripped down model it is newer. Any specific recommendations? I naturally considered Sony but there are also some complaints about the DRU-810A.

As to monitors, I have a Dell 2405FPW that I use for gaming and general use. It truly is the “Monitor of the Gods” as one of the gaming mags described it. It’s almost too big for editing. I might go with the 20″ Dell. That I don’t need to decide right away.

Thanks again,

Bruce

mrbb, PA