What new hardware to purchase ?

Videocentricity

Contributor Location: Long Beach,CA Joined: May 21, 2007 05:37 Messages: 394 Offline

Solved by

Jan 08, 2014 12:36

It's been such a long time since I was on this forum, about 18 months I think, anyway now I am pondering a new PC with Win7 and at least 8Gb ram but there was a post by someone here suggesting that tons of ram may not be fully used unless PD version 64x is in use.

So my question here is simply, what is optimum for

(a) the 32x version of PD11
(b) the 64x version of PD11

meaning, what size/model of Nvidia card and how much ram in the Nvidia card
How much ram on the PC itself i.e. main memory
and finally,

Does the speed of the hard drive and CPU cores have more effect on the rendering throughput ?

So there you have it , assuming no other large applications link MS-Office, email clients etc are running at the same time. If you can't solve the problem - Change the problem

Carl312

Senior Contributor Location: Texas, USA Joined: Mar 16, 2010 20:11 Messages: 9090 Offline

Jan 08, 2014 19:11

The 64 bit Powerdirector on a 64 Bit Operation System will use all of the memory available under conditions that need the extra memory.

32 Bit Powerdirector is limited by the 32 bit addressing to about 4 GB of memory use no matter if you have a 64 Bit OS.
So you want 64 bit software and 64 bit Operation system.

Video Cards should have about 1 GB of onboard RAM.

If you read the minimum specs for Powerdirector, you can see what is the minimum memory and video card memory needed.

What are the minimum system requirements for CyberLink PowerDirector 11
http://www.cyberlink.com/support/product-faq-content.do?id=14950&prodId=4

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

Dafydd B

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 26, 2006 08:20 Messages: 11973 Offline

Jan 10, 2014 13:18

Hi Ron,
Good to see you on the forum.

I would go for an OEM 64bit OS - w8 or w7, minimum of 16gb of Ram, i7 cpu, a 2GB GPU, check out the motherboard spec... ensure you have a large PSU (800 to 1000w) to support multiple HDD. Consider a good sized SSD (fast & for a C drive). BluRay writer is optional - not that expensive and your clients might want AVCHD's. Depends if you're in Scotland or not but remember to check you have sufficient cooling fans in the tower - keep your system cool.

Will you be editing HD footage? The above applies to HD footage.

Check your monitors will accept the connections from the GPU's. Go for HDMI connections. For future editing use, the above will be needed.

There is one site that offers some good data on mobo's, gpu and SSD's. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

I know Carl has rightly pointed you to the minimum spec, you need to go a lot higher to get a smooth editing experience.

Just my 4 penny's worth.

Dafydd

Videocentricity

Contributor Location: Long Beach,CA Joined: May 21, 2007 05:37 Messages: 394 Offline

Jan 10, 2014 16:03

Dafydd,
thank you so much for the reply and hi there for 2014.

Yes, "the team" has two Canon 550D cameras and a selection of good lenses plus my stalwart Sony VX2000 now getting on in years.

Target is to produce a neato movie but the "Director" is tight-lipped about it. So yes, probably 30 to 50 Gb of raw video in HD to edit on a Win7 new computer yet to be purchased, plus an unused Vista PC with a blank 500Gb drive and an NLE from our competitors (S***)
So lots of opportunities for me and my colleague, the movie Writer/Editor/Director who has never edited anything but MS MovieMaker before.
Heck, if it ain't a challenge it's not worth doing.

Cheers. If you can't solve the problem - Change the problem