New System – Cores vs Processor Speed

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[James Huenergardt] “Should I go for more cores, or a faster processor with fewer cores?

Like this CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2687W v2 Ivy Bridge-EP 3.4GHz”

On paper, I like more cores, yet for AE purposes, I think E5-2687W v2 is a better choice: far from all CPU-intensive tasks in AE are massively multi-threaded to take advantage of 24 phys cores at all times. This may change in the future of course.

[James Huenergardt] “the majority of my work is motion graphics”

Mostly 1080p resolutions, or something higher?

[James Huenergardt] “Nvidia GTX Titan
700 Watt Power Supply”

700W is probably enough for a Titan (250W) plus two E5-2697v2 (130W ea) plus whatever else is in the system. But what if you add another high-power GPU in the future? I’d perhaps be on a safer side and look for a 800W to 1KW PSU for this build.

Also: consider GTX-780 Ti vs. Titan. Cheaper, faster.

[James Huenergardt] “USB 3.0 Interface Card
E-SATA External Interface Connection”

Is that the plan for media storage?

— Alex Gerulaitis | Systems Engineer | DV411 – Los Angeles, CA

[Alex Gerulaitis]

…and before I forget to do my daily sales pitch: if you’re interested in getting something that’s perhaps more expensive yet something studios and a lot of post shops use for a good reason, consider a Z820 configured by a good integrator – like yours truly. Some things (like build quality, swappable PSUs, on-site support) are unique to it (and some Dell models).

Perhaps your guy can take a look at Z820s?

If you’re buying a system that’s supposed to last 3-7 years, it may also make sense purely on $$ with TCO in mind.

— Alex Gerulaitis | Systems Engineer | DV411 – Los Angeles, CA

[James Huenergardt]

Thanks,

Yeah, 1080P stuff. Seems like clients are asking for that more and more. Although I still do a fair bit of 720P stuff.

For storage, I use a StarTech USB 3.0 drive dock and bare drives. That way, I just pick up a drive and go on the road, which I end up doing a lot of.

So, the GTX-780 is faster. I was looking at the amount of RAM, but maybe 3GB is enough.

Also doing a bit of Element 3D as well as Cinema 4D.

I’m wanting something that will give me the fastest RAM previews so my creative flow isn’t waiting around as much.

Reel Inspirations – http://www.reelinspirations.com
Commercials, Dramas, Image Pieces, Documentaries, Motion Graphics

[Ericbowen]

Then the 12 Core 2697 V2’s are the choice for AE and definitely the choice for 4D. 4D is all about threading and ram. The more threads you have the exponentially faster the export time. AE will thread provided you have enough ram to feed that many threads. 128GB will be enough. 700W PSU is not strong enough for that system. You want a 1000W here especially with a Titan or 780Ti. Alex is referencing the 780Ti and not the 780. There is a big difference there. The Ti has less ram than the Titan which is very important for 4K frames and up but more ram bandwidth which is very important for GPU acceleration period. This is really hard to choose but most of the time the 780Ti is the choice.

Remember USB3 has a much higher latency than internal Sata. E-sata and USB3 are 15 to 17ms while internal sata drives are 6 to 10ms on average. SSD’s are 40 to 55 microseconds. This will be a slow down point for ram preview if your media is extensive or series of stills as most will be coming from 4D. I would not suggest this.

Eric-ADK
Tech Manager
support@adkvideoediting.com

[James Huenergardt]

Thanks for the great input Eric, much appreciated.

I’m currently using a couple of SSD drives to work from for my mograph projects. One for cache, one for projects, etc.

I’ll probably add an SSD drive for cache, but I can do that myself and don’t need the system integrator to do that for me.

The bare Sata drives are mostly for backup and larger editing projects.

I normally keep two drives and ‘mirror’ them with Synchronize Pro and that works really well.

Just curious if anyone can take a gander at how much faster this spec machine would be over my MacPro 2008 with dual quad core 3GHz cpu’s and 16gb of RAM and a Quadro 4000 Mac.

I’m hoping it would be at least twice as fast.

Reel Inspirations – http://www.reelinspirations.com
Commercials, Dramas, Image Pieces, Documentaries, Motion Graphics