To Mingy and HouseofMac,

Thanks so much for your very helpful discussion. If you don't mind, I have some questions about the new computer I want to build, and it seems you both have knowledge of the system I'm about to purchase. I plan on buying a 1080/60p camera (such as the TM700), mainly because I do a lot of slow-motion shots and I want the extra frames (and a better camera).

I'm switching from Premiere Elements to PD9 Ultra, because I want a 64-bit system, as it seems it could better handle the 1080/60p camera I want.

I'm thinking of building an i7-2600k with a GigaByte GA-H67MA-D2H-B3 Intel H67 Chipset. Here goes:

1. I know I need the H67 (as opposed to the P67) to take advantage of the i7 on board graphics (which I definitely want). It may be too late to ask this one, but do you have an opinion as to whether I should wait for the Z68 chipset, which apparently is a combo of the H67 and the P67? My thought is that I never play games, so I don't need the P67 or the Z68.

2. Do you recommend a solid state drive for your apps? PD9 recommends 20GB or 100GB for Blue-Ray burning, so I'm thinking I need at least 128GB or 256GB SSD, but they are expensive. Does it improve the video-editing experience to run your programs off a SSD?

3. It sounds like Mingy opines that a separate video card is not necessary. Is there any studdering when you are scrubbing over your video footage when editing 1080/60p footage in PD9 using the on-board graphics? Frankly, this is the singular most important reason I am buying a new computer. I want to edit quickly, with no hiccups or studdering as I edit the footage, especially when I use color correction, etc. and have mulitiple picture-in-picture windows of HD footage on the screen at once.

4. If you do experience studdering when editing, do you think a separate GPU would improve the process? My understanding is when using PD9, you have to choose either integrated graphics or GPU. (I may not know what I'm talking about on this last one.)

Bottom line, I would like a silky smooth experience when editing/scrubbing over the video timeline, and I'm willing to build a computer to achieve that. I just don't want to buy unnecessary parts ($500 video card) unless it will be worth it.

Any other thoughts would be much appreciated.

Thanks so much,
Geoff.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/9

It is not just speed but also transcoding quality that should be considered. See link above before you comit to sandy bridge.

Geoff

Sorry for the delay - its been a busy few months and I have been mostly offline.

I'm sure its too late, but just in case.


1. I know I need the H67 (as opposed to the P67) to take advantage of the i7 on board graphics (which I definitely want). It may be too late to ask this one, but do you have an opinion as to whether I should wait for the Z68 chipset, which apparently is a combo of the H67 and the P67? My thought is that I never play games, so I don't need the P67 or the Z68.

I got one of the early, buggy, H67 boards and over the weekend switched over to a Z68. Since Z68 is supposed ot be a super-set of the H67, I figured I'd get the best of both worlds. I haven't benchmarked with PD9 yet, but the overall system benchmark looks a bit better. I'll try some rendering and get back to you.


2. Do you recommend a solid state drive for your apps? PD9 recommends 20GB or 100GB for Blue-Ray burning, so I'm thinking I need at least 128GB or 256GB SSD, but they are expensive. Does it improve the video-editing experience to run your programs off a SSD?

I would absolutely recommend an SSD for any system with whatever application. Buy an SSD and consider picking up a bunch of cheap HDDs to make a RAID. Use your SSD for program info and HDD (or RAID) for everything else like data, etc..) It may be worthwhile to occasionally move stuff on to SSD for processing, but I figure they are 'read mostly' devices. It really speeds up boot, program loading, etc.. I got a 128G Crucial and have about 60% left after all the installs, etc.. I would have preferred a Revodrive, and bought one, but they have serious compatibility issues.


3. It sounds like Mingy opines that a separate video card is not necessary. Is there any studdering when you are scrubbing over your video footage when editing 1080/60p footage in PD9 using the on-board graphics? Frankly, this is the singular most important reason I am buying a new computer. I want to edit quickly, with no hiccups or studdering as I edit the footage, especially when I use color correction, etc. and have mulitiple picture-in-picture windows of HD footage on the screen at once.


Everything I have read inidcates Sadnybridge provides best 'bang for the buck' rendering. In fact, DMM's link, below, seems to confirm that, unless I'm missing something. I have no complaints, however, I am not a professional video editor. I did find AVCHD -> Bluray had a fair bit of motion noise, but I don't think its the fault of the hardware. I'll probably write out to AVCHD in the future as it seems to give the cleanest output and, in any event, most Bluray players seem to read it ok.


4. If you do experience studdering when editing, do you think a separate GPU would improve the process? My understanding is when using PD9, you have to choose either integrated graphics or GPU. (I may not know what I'm talking about on this last one.)

I have not experienced any performance issues, but I may not be doing the same stuff you want to do.

Bottom line, I would like a silky smooth experience when editing/scrubbing over the video timeline, and I'm willing to build a computer to achieve that. I just don't want to buy unnecessary parts ($500 video card) unless it will be worth it.

Any other thoughts would be much appreciated.

Now that the Z68 is out, you can move to a fully upgraded i7 Sandybridge with 16G DDR3, SSD, etc., and, if you still aren't happy, get a high end AMD or Nvidia card as a supplement since most of these boards come with Lucid Virtu, which is supposed ot match the application to the video hardware.

I'll try do some benchmarks and make a new thread.

To Mingy or any others, i had my heart set on a I7 2600K and GIGABYTE Z68 motherboard enabled with LucidLogix Virtu GPU Virtualization technology which would allow me to switch to the GTX 570 (which is no slouch) My question now is, am I wasting $$ on the GTX 570 is there any advantage in having the Video card and will the HD3000 and quicksync outperform the video card with Power director 9? I do not game at all.

I really don't know much about high end graphics cards. The Z68 seems to give a performance lift over the H67, but I have no idea how HD3000 compares to a GTX for rendering, etc.. I was pretty impressed with the transcoding benchmarks I ran with the HD3000, however.

What I can suggest is you think of an SSD vs. the GTX. The SSD *does* offer a significant lift.

Thanks, Mingy, for taking the time to write such a thorough response to my earlier questions.

Here's an update:

I did build a system with an i7-2600k, H67 motherboard, and 8GB RAM. I added a 120-GB SSD for apps and a 2T HDD for data. I did NOT add a video card, as I wanted to see if the on-board, integrated graphics would be sufficient. I also bought a Sony HDC-HX9V camera, which has 1080p 60fps video at ~24bps. (Great camera, by the way. PD9 had no problem with the full-quality, 60 fps, and I likely will never go back to 30 fps.)

1. I don't know if the Z68 would have made a difference, as I went with the H67. So far, it has been great. I've done three substantial video projects, and the rendering is very fast. I don't regret buying a separate video card (I think; see below).

2. I love the SSD. My rig (Windows 7, 64-bit) starts up very quickly, and all apps seem to launch much more quickly.

3. I still would like to see the editing phase a bit more responsive. PD9's ability to use shadow files and preview in several different quality levels below full HD helps a ton, but zipping around the timeline is not zippy. Do you think a separate video card would improve the editing experience? I think I understand that one cannot use both the onboard graphics and a separate video card simultaneously, but I'd be willing to switch back and forth (if that's possible within PD9) between editing and output-rendering if it would improve the editing experience. I usually step away during rendering anyway, so speed during that phase is less important.

4. One last question: Although I purchased 8GB RAM, the system monitor never shows the computer using more than 3.75 GB of the available RAM (I usually check while it's rendering). Does anyone know why I'm not seeing RAM usage closer to 8GB? I feel like I wasted some money.

Thanks,
Geoff.

Geoff

I don't think I can answer either question. I recently replaced my defective Intel H67 with a Z68 and have been wrestling with moving my numerous apps over, so I haven't touched PD9 in a while. You'd *think* Windows would allow this, but no, I had to start with a complete new istall, which blew up all kinds of things, including software development I was working on.

The Z68 has the ability to support both a discrete card and HD3000 graphics, however, you have to have a monitor plugged in to the HD3000 graphics to use the built in accelleration. These board come with middleware (Lucid Virtx) which (I am told) use the discrete GPU when appropriate and the on board GPU when appropriate. Through a bizarre sequence of events I ended up with a discrete GPU, but I haven't yet benchmarked with PD9. I posted a question about Z68 performance, with discrete GPU but nobody said anything.

I think that with H67 you chose between HD3000 or discrete but never both. So you might have to do something like get a second monitor or maybe it just can't work. I don't know. I suspect you need a pretty high end GPU to do better than the HD3000, so you probably want to be real sure before you spent the money.

With respect to memory, at first I thought you said you could only use 3.75G, which I think is pretty close to the limit set by Windows 32 bit. You did install and running PD9 as 64 bit, right? Other than that, it may just have to do with the content or things like FX.

In any event, as a rule of thumb, you can never have too much memory! Something will want to use it.