[Alex Gerulaitis]

Is there a Tier 1 (HP, Lenovo, Dell, Apple) Core i7 system optimized for PP CS5, i.e. with enough power to handle a GTX470 and a few hard drives? I see Xeon systems but not i7.

700W seems to be the minimum for a stable system with i7-960 or higher, a GTX-470 and a few hard drives and none of their i7 systems have that much power.

If there is no Tier 1 Core i7 system, what other manufacturer would you suggest, within the following criteria:
– nationwide on-site service
– enough power
– clean, professional non-gaming design (e.g. no Alienware or other over the top designs)

(I am a system integrator and have no problem configuring custom systems – some clients prefer to have Tier 1 based systems vs. custom.)

Thanks!

Alex
DV411

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[Davd Keator] “My friend is using Raid 5 on the ICH10R – thats the mother board chipset. He’s averaging 5MB/s on three hard drives…and noticable CPU draw…He just uses his computer for his small business database, no mega speed needed…

He is also using a server edition of windows to get Raid 5 support…”

5MB/s isn’t right: sounds like one of the drives is faulty. Even if the write-back cache is not enabled, the speeds with today’s drives should be in the range of 50-120MB/s writes, 100-250MB/s reads.

Also, if the hardware (or hybrid h/w as with ICH10R chipsets) RAID5 is used, there should be no need for a Windows Server OS: the OS will only see one volume regardless.

Alex
DV411

[Alex Gerulaitis]

Bob,

Has anyone responded to your post? (It doesn’t appear so – I am just checking.)

I have a similar situation with my client’s heterogeneous mix of Windows and Mac systems, where the client wants to use LTO tapes and is asking for help to properly configure the backup.

Wondering if your backup is working anything changed in your configuration since your post, whether you are using Time Machine, and whether you were able to make Mac machines “visible” to the Windows PCs.

I am thinking along the same lines: share specific folders on the Mac, include them in the backup schedule on the PC.

Best,
Alex,
DV411

[Alex Gerulaitis]

Hard drives.

Assuming average single 7200rpm drive performance at about 100MB/s, falling off to 50% at the end of the drive, 10% overhead in RAID0 mode, 30%-50% in RAID5 or RAID6, you would need at least 10-12 drives to reliably achieve Tim Kolb’s figure of 260MB/s of sustained writes across the array’s capacity. There is no small chassis that would fit 10 drives (maybe 8).

You could use 4-6 drives in RAID0 and with a chance of dropped frames when the array is fragmented or full. If you are OK with that, then I would look at two boxes: an array like G-Tech eS Pro, and a decent single socket i7 system. They interconnect via 4-lane SAS (cheap, expandable, reliable).

I don’t know if a graphics card matters much in a system used primarily as a DDR, and not for any graphics-intensive work.

Best,
Alex,
DV411

[Alex Gerulaitis]

For the machine to use all cores in compressor, it must be set up as a Compressor QuickCluster, or a “Virtual Cluster”, according to this Apple Support article.

See your compressor settings.

Best,
Alex,
DV411

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[Nigel Cooper] “The bane of Panny products is still the dated, obsolete and expensive P2 workflow that simply won’t be around come 2009”

P2 still seems to be around…

But still, what is the exact bitrate of DVCPRO HD 720p24 recorded on HPX500 camera, inclusive of audio and metadata?

Thanks.

Best,
Alex,
DV411

[Alex Gerulaitis]

AJA *very* quickly returned my call and said it’s a known issue and they will help me in my misery. 🙂

Best,
Alex,
DV411