Check specs to build a new PC…

[Dave Haynie]

Here’s the other thing.. how soon do you need this?

I just replaced my motherboard… cost me $450, and it’s a good upgrade. But unexpected (MB failure) and so, I didn’t pick the right time to buy. So my upgrade was financially fairly modest.

If I had the cash for a leading edge PC, at this point in human history, I’d wait. The reason for this is simple: Intel will be announcing their next generation “Sandy Bridge” CPU architecture next month at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

The fact they chose CES is a pretty good indicator that they’re already in production, and will probably have units shipping in 1Q2011. See here: https://www.anandtech.com/show/3922/intels-sandy-bridge-architecture-exposed.

Don’t know yet.. but this could do two things. For one, it may drastically de-value the i5 and maybe even i7 you buy today (they have not discussed a 6-core version). Second thing, it may drive down the price of the existing line of Intel chips.

The main board that failed had an Intel Q9550 on it. That chip was at Intel’s top-end $1,000 price point when it first shipped. I bought mine shortly after the i7s came out, something like six months later, and I paid around $200.

-Dave

[Fabio Mereghetti]

Thanks.

About the right time to upgrade, when I did it the last time about five years ago, I decided to go for one of the top possible setups of the moment, without thinking when and what would come out (maybe) in the next few months. I went for an AMD 64 FX53 and it served me well until I entered the world of video editing.
So, now I think the way to go is to an i7. As I won’t do video editing all the time and I don’t have plans to make it become a second job I chose the i7-950 as the best balance for my needs.

The same for the mobo. The only concern about it is that, maybe, in a couple of years I would be glad to have a native USB 3.0 support so I would have to get the P6X58D premium instead of the P6T v2, I think.

For the graphic card I think the gtx 460 1GB will be OK. It’s little less powerful than the 470 but it’s also cooler. By the way: have you any advice to give about which brand to buy? There are a lot of gtx 460 based cards but I don’t really know how to choose among them.

Thanks again.

Fabio.

[Marlen Mathers]

I saw on the Videoguys message board that the Sandy Bridge intro is for the budget line proccessors. Is this correct? Here’s the quote:

The Sandy Bridge releasing on Jan 9 is the replacement for the budget line
socket 1156. also mobile processors.

the big dog sandy bridge will not be until 4th quarter next yr.

so no need to wait unless you were looking at a budget line system…
and no they will not have 6 cores…

[John Rofrano]

[fabio mereghetti] “Somewhere I read of a “2GB x core rule”: does that make sense?
If yes, does that relate to “phisical or virtual cores”? So 8 or 16GB?
Videoguys reccommend 12GB so what?”

That general rule of thumb applies to physical cores. It’s a way of making sure that each core has enough memory to do work. It does not hold for processors that use triple buffered memory like the Core i7. In that case you want to increase memory in multiples of 3 (3GB, 6GB, 9GB, 12GB, etc.).

[fabio mereghetti] “And about W764: which one (lan with no domain, just workgroups)?”

That depends on how much memory you plan to use and whether you need network domain support or not. I use Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium which is limited to 16GB of memory. That was plenty for me. Windows 7 Professional supports up to 192GB.

~jr

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

[Dave Haynie]

The Socket 1156 is the mainstream processor — everything that’s not i7, which is considered high-end. I didn’t realize the rollout was that far apart — the new Socket LGA-1155 replaces the mainstream+low-end LGA-1156, while the high end LGA-1366 is being replaced by LGA-2011; that’s the one that’s coming much later in the year, and the one that will support 6-core chips.

They’re keeping the basic names — i3, i5, and i7, but the Sandy Bridge chips will be iN-2xxx in name. And yet, the initial release will have i7 models, at least for laptops. But it looks to be true that Sandy Bridge chips, i7s or otherwise, will max out at two DRAM channels and four cores — you’ll need the new socket to go beyond that. Which isn’t going to come soon.

But that doesn’t mean there won’t be price pressure — if Sandy Bridge is as big an improvement as Intel implies, a 4-core S.B. processor will outperform i5s on pretty much anything, but even 4-core i7s, depending on the job.

The simple fact that it’s still confusing is reason enough to wait a couple of weeks, IF you can wait. You can’t always, as I couldn’t when my main board failed.

-Dave

[Marlen Mathers]

I went online to price the GTX470,but got confused between all the options. There were multiple cards from providers like ASUS, Gigabyte, Palit etc. Is there a specific one that I should choose knowing that I’ll be using the ASUS P6X58D-E mother board?

[John Rofrano]

[Marlen Mathers] ” Is there a specific one that I should choose knowing that I’ll be using the ASUS P6X58D-E mother board?”

I’m guessing that an ASUS graphics card will work well with an ASUS motherboard. if it doesn’t, I would buy anything from ASUS again. lol. There are no “options”… all of the cards are a few dollars different in price but they are all basically the same card. I prefer PNY for graphics cards. They make the high-end Quadro cards too. Buy from someone like NewEgg because they have a great RMA policy and you can check the ratings to see what other people think of the card.

~jr

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

[Danny Hays]

So, to clear things up for me, GPU only speeds up ACV renders in Vegas 10 right? No preview acceleration right? It really bugs me that Adobe can use GPU for preview. I saw a video for CS5 Premiere where someone put the newly added Ultrakey pluggin on a track and got realtime preview. I’m a vegas fan over Premier by far. I think Sony may have jumped the gun saying GPU support with Pro 10 when it’s so limited on how it helps. I hope Sony follows these forums and catches up.

[John Rofrano]

[Danny Hays] “So, to clear things up for me, GPU only speeds up ACV renders in Vegas 10 right? No preview acceleration right?”

That’s correct.

[Danny Hays] ” It really bugs me that Adobe can use GPU for preview. I saw a video for CS5 Premiere where someone put the newly added Ultrakey pluggin on a track and got realtime preview.”

Don’t get bugged… get Boris BCC7 Chroma Key plug-in. It’s GPU/OpenGL accelerated. I get real-time playback of keyed footage. Sony has opened the gates for all sorts of accelerated plug-ins with their OpenFX support. It will just take time for all of this to come together.

~jr

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

[Danny Hays]

Really? I didn’t know that. you’ve mentioned Boris keyer to me before and I watched a video tutorial on it. It looked like it did a great job,even wall shadows if I remember correctly. Does it do floor shadows? I want to do full body keyed shots and would need them for it to look real. You may have seen this tutorial on After Effects by Andrew Kramer, but this is what I want to do with my keyed shots. This tutorial is only using one virtual light but more can be used.
https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/3d_shadows/
I want to make some music videos using this technic where I’m playing all the parts and have the shadows from each of me casted from the same light(s). Doing this in AE, even with GPU, would be very involved. If it does do floor shadows like this then I’m defenetly interested. Their site shows RED, BLUE, FX and Continuum. Can I purchace just the chromakey pluggin? By the way, I thought your video tutorial on BCC Extruded Text in Sony Vegas Pro 10 was great. Do you use Camtasia?