Pentium or AMD???

[Alex Alexzander]

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard someone decide they want an AMD, and then a few weeks later, complain that things are not running well at all. It’s not that the AMD is a bad CPU. It’s that Avid doesn’t optimize for it. They don’t appear to test on it at all.

If you are not going to ever use a Mojo, then I’d say a good Pentium should do it, if you stay close to the specs. Use the correct video card, use the correct driver, etc etc. If you do plan on a Mojo, the easiest thing to do is to simply buy an approved machine from HP.

If you want to build your own, then understand the specs as much as possible. Down to the PCI BUS and Slot configuration, else you will run into problems.

-Alex Alexzander

[Tae]

I LOVE AMD. I think they make the best processors. Hands down.

Avid does not work well on them.

[Earle Nichol]

Hey Alex, thanks for the info. Pretty much what I expected.
Any one else want to weigh in, and convince me otherwise?

Thanks

Pearl

[Michael P]

I just wanted to chime in and say that I have been using Xpress Pro HD 4.5 all the way through 5.2.7 (I’m on the new CPR release) with Mojo without any major problems on my AMD machine. I think that Avid will basically run on any PC configuration if you take the time to make sure that you identify potential problems ahead of time and purchase accordingly. I personally had MAJOR problems with the Mojo when I first bought it. This was actually related to me using a Sound Blaster 2 as my Firewire card. As soon as I installed it onto my Onboard TI chipset firewire, I can now work it flawlessly. Also, I have a far from specification Nvidia 7800GTX SLi configuration, but guess what, Avid still works and I currently have no problems. There was a good 3 months where I was unable to upgrade my video driver beyond driver 78.12 because the drivers from 80.00 to 83.99 would make there be no video overlay playback. This was simply a case of the “If it ain’t broke, Don’t fix it!” story, but I was able to still edit, I just simply had to use an older driver.

Basically, I am trying to say that AMD should work perfectly with Avid, though there you need to put a lot of thought into your configuration BEFORE you build it and then you also need to mess around with some settings and configure it in a way that makes Avid happy. All I do is follow the Xpress Pro installer readme and it tells me everything I need to configure before hand. After changing all these settings and making sure my system is optimized, I am good to go! Anyways, here are my full specs.

Tyan K8WE w/ u320 SCSI option
2x 2ghz Opterons
2gb PC3200 ECC/REG
2 eVGA Geforce 7800GTX in SLi
Audigy 2 ZS Platinum
Promise TX2000 Raid Controller
Avid Mojo
Mbox (w/ DV Toolkit)

Soon I hope to be upgrading to the 3.0ghz Opterons, but for now, I can efficiently run Xpress Pro HD on this system. Next week the real test is going to come because I will be upgrading my Xpress Pro system to a Media Composer software system. God (and Avid) Willing, I should have one powerful MC machine on my hands.