[jvrieger]

I need to build a system to edit video with Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, and would like to know what Motherboard, CPU and Video Card setup would work the best.

I have considered the Phenom or the Q6600 so far as well as the Radeon HD 3870 video card. That is the price range I am looking at, around $250 per item or so.

Also is the Spider platform something to consider or should I go Intel, I have always used AMD in the past.



Thanks for the help,

James

[cheesewheels99]

intel all the way also you will wana get nvidia

[Carbon]

I'm not really sure how much rendering is going to be affected by the video card. I would get a mid-range or lower for the video card and a quad-core for the CPU as well as good RAM.

[Mike0001]

Loads of processing power, oodles or RAM! Yeah, quad core, why not?

It will be slooow whatever you choose, there are just degrees of slowness!

[jvrieger]

I guess my concern for speed is not as important and quality. I want to make sure what I choose will not drop frames, reduce the quality of the rendered product, and so on. The premiere website seemed to state that the video card was most important for instant high quality playback while editing. If that is the case then I am leaning towards the Q6600 and plenty of high speed ram. Any good comparison websites for the different types and speeds of ram?


Thanks,


James

[alex]

Originally Posted by jvrieger I guess my concern for speed is not as important and quality. I want to make sure what I choose will not drop frames, reduce the quality of the rendered product, and so on. The premiere website seemed to state that the video card was most important for instant high quality playback while editing. If that is the case then I am leaning towards the Q6600 and plenty of high speed ram. Any good comparison websites for the different types and speeds of ram? Thanks, James

Correct re the card.

Bottom line is you'll be wanting high-bandwidth and low-latency across the build. Be it the motherboard chipset or the ram. Ram latency's in an Intel build don't tend to come into it usually due to how the ram is controlled but as even a single frame drop on a pass can reduce the quality of the finished product I'd highly recommend taking care with these two.

I'd recommend a Q6600 for the cpu.
A motherboard with the P35 chipset as it has a lower latency over X38 or any of the SLI chipsets.
For the card you'll be wanting the highest memory bandwidth attainable at your budget. The newer 8800GT has a 256bit memory controller but, stock, 1.8ghz effective ram speed. 3rd party manufacturers (EVGA, BFG etc) have, in a lot of cases, improved on this though.

You could potentially go for the older 320mb 8800GTS as it has a 320bit wide memory controller and on some 3rd party models you'll find the ram (1.6ghz effective at stock speed) clocked much higher.

Out of the two I'd be leaning toward the GT simply because of the communication throughput that can be attained. A 256mb model will more than suffice for this usage.

For the ram, even though DDR2 800 is the fastest DDR2 officially recognised, many boards will natively support the faster DDR2 1066mhz ram. Though I feel this may well be overkill but the choice is yours. Just ensure you do your homework on the motherboard beforehand should you decide on the faster ram of the two. Look for a latency of 4-4-4-12. That would be ideal. And even DDR2 800 with this low latency is rather cheap nowadays.

I'd also be looking at a hdd with fast write times. Hitachi Deskstar's or Ultrastar's are a good bet.

[Lawsonmh15]

The mod is right. I do custom workstations and servers and the difference in render time for identical 5 minute files, is minutes apart. My biggest question, is whether or not a xeon or dual xeon system would smoke the P35. I pride myself on offering the ultimate solution, which is why I spent hours finding a distributor that would hand pick the G0 stepped Q6600's.

Is there a Xeon based chipset better for rendering than the P35?