Premiere CS3 and dual quad-core mobo performance

[Vince Becquiot]

We are on a dual quads but with Vista 64 here (Asus board ,Intel 5000P). The Xeons are E5335.

I’m assuming you are on XP64 ?

Not sure what kind of timeline you are working on, but on a DVCPro HD 1080 24P, with 1920×1200 images, all is real time, no rendering, no tweaks.
In fact, I tried on our Core2Quad, it’s real time as well. Graphics are just run by the nvidia 8800 GT. 4 gigs DDR2 ram on the core2quad. 16 gigs DDR3 on the dual quad. Both run on RAID 5 with 7200 rpm drives (which shouldn’t matter for pictures)

BTW, how complex is that project you are working on?

Have you checked your system performance while this is going on? Are you outputing the preview to other monitors?

Vince

[Arc Nevada]

That is good to know. I take it a Core 2 Quad can do a PIP using HD footage with the realtime preview mode set at highest quality.

[Vince Becquiot]

Yes, that’s high quality, 100% size on a second monitor. I’ve thrown 6 pips in there a while ago, no problems. This is with DVDPro HD, not sure if HDV would put more weight on the system.

Vince

[David Owen]

I’m using XP Pro 32-bit. The project is a SD (DV) project, and, yes, I’m talking about ONLY one track of video, the photo being manipulated.

Since my original post, my dealer says he talked with an Adobe rep and concluded this was a performance tradeoff in the software re-design (between CS2 and CS3). I’m starting to think this might be more of a specific mobo/os issue. Mine is a Supermicro X7DAE with the 5000X chipset (two E5335 processors). I also have a Matrox RT.2X installed, but it’s docs concede that the Matrox board can’t handle moving stills larger than 720×480 in realtime… so I’m ignoring it and trying to get it done purely in Premiere.

Ideas? Recommendations?

[Vince Becquiot]

Yikes, in an SD project? Yep, something is wrong.

Now, you are using a 32 bit OS with dual quads, which means that you are limiting yourself in RAM, but that should still easily handle what you are asking of Premiere. BTW, are all cores being used in the performance window? What are you using for graphics other than the Matrox?

Vince

[David Owen]

I’m using Nvidia GeForce 7950GT graphics card. The dealer initially suspected an issue with it and swapped it for an ATI board, but found no change in performance.

I’ve wondered about the OS… I’m getting only around 15 to 25% usage of the processors max… only two of the eight appear to be getting used.

I have 4GB RAM installed. My older workstation has the same amount of RAM and 32-bit XP, and handles things in real time under CS2. Could it be that the mobo is designed primarily for a 64-bit OS instruction set and the slowdown is due to a more limited “legacy” application of available resources?

– D

[Jan Janowski]

A couple months ago I finally purchased a new computer.
Supermicro Motherboard & Case with SCSI & SATA Raid controllers onboard, 2 Quad Xeons @ 2.66G, 4 GB Ram (3Gb Switch), XP Pro 32 bit.
I’m very happy with it. CS3 works very nicely with it.
Prior to this I ran CS3 on a P4 2.8G W/HT, 2GB ram,
Prior to that Ran PPRO V2 on a P4 2.2G with 1GB ram.

Each computer worked, but you could tell an noticable improvement with the hardware improvements!!

Looking for 1939 Indian Motocycle

[Vince Becquiot]

I don’t own anything above a dual core that doesn’t have Vista 64 on it, so I can’t confirm it. Someone swore to me that xp can see al cores on a Quad. hmmm, I guess it won’t. I think what he meant is that XP/Vista 32 will see all cores, but that you will only be able to assign two cores per application using the “set affinity” function. Which is nice but only useful if you like to multitask. Someone confirm this once and for all?

CS3 certainly uses about 90% of all cores on our machines when it needs it, which really improves the media encoder performances. It uses about 5% of all 8 cores in the task we are talking about (image motion in SD timeline)

Vince

[David Owen]

Jan,

First, sorry… I don’t have a 1939 Indian motorcycle to offer in exchange. I’ll let you know if I stumble onto one.

Could you try setting up a VERY brief SD project with an image file (say, greater than 1000 x 1000) and scale it and move it using keyframes? If you are able to do it using the setup you’ve stated, I’ll definitely need to get more info from you (like the model of the mobo, graphics card, etc.)

Since our two setups sound VERY similar, this could be a BIG help to me and others looking to make this size investment!

Thanks for your response.

– D

[David Owen]

[Vincent Becquiot] “It uses about 5% of all 8 cores in the task we are talking about (image motion in SD timeline)”

Now THAT is more in line with what I’d expect! This is very important to my “case” in convincing others. Thanks!

– D