I have $3,000 to spend

[lpenrod]

I need to buy a new computer to use for encoding video (I might play games on it too ). I have $3,000 to spend and I want the most power I can get (I want to stay with the Intel platform). I was looking around and couldn't seem to find a decent dual CPU motherboard. I want to build it myself (I have lots of experience). I couldn't find anything recent on Tom's Hardware. I already have 2 19" monitors.

[leebo]

Send me $2750 and I'll send you back a decent dual processor MB.

Eventually.

[Treebeard]

$3000 dollars wow , that should be enough.

Mobo - MSI 865pe NEO2
CPU - P4 3.0ghz 800fsb
MEM - 1gb pc3200 dual channel DDR
HD - Get a pair of 120gb(or higher)
Drives - wait for the new 8X dvd Plexter dvd burner.
case - something w/ lots of fans and space
Vid Card - GeforceFX 5900 ultra 128mb (or 256 for overkill)

well if u have experience building then u probably know the best to get already.. right.

Have fun.

[lpenrod]

Are there any good dual CPU MB's?

[lpenrod]

Is this any good: http://www.supermicro.com/PRODUCT/SUPERServer/SuperWorkstation7033A-T.htm

Does anyone know anything about it?

[Treebeard]

http://www.partspc.com/store/product1470.html

Why do you really want dual cpu? If your just wanting this for a encode/game machine I think it would be a waste of $.

[lpenrod]

Should I try to find a MB that supports SATA?

What is everyones opinion, is a dual CPU a waste of money? I just want all the power I can get.

[txpharoah]

With $3,000 I'd invest in a Matrox RTX100 for the video card. I'd make that a SERIOUS consideration.

Don't waste money on dual processors. It doesn't help much outside of servers and chained graphics workstations. Get a good Intel P4 2.5-3.0 (within reasonable spending), and whatever motherboard it needs.

Get a Pioneer DVR-A06 for burning DVD-R and DVD+R.

Get DDR RAM (or RDRAM if you can afford it).

Get a SoundBlaster Audigy.

Grab an ATI Radeon for graphics (not an all-in-one, you'd get the Matrox for video work, and it's superior to ATI). Any version is fine, though stick to the 9000-series cards.

Get WESTERN DIGITAL hard drives, not the other ones. Look at their newer 200 GB drive. Use that as a capture drive. Get a 40 or 60 GB to put you OS and programs on.

Grab a PIONEER DVD-ROM, not the other ones. The Pioneers are FAR superior to other drives. Maybe a SONY, as it is decent too.

If I had $3K right now to build a system, this is what I'd look at piecing together. This would be one powerful system. Feel free to PM me with any questions. You could easily build this sytem from Fry's Electronics (or their outpost.com site). Only the Matrox card would need to be bought from ShopMatrox.com

[thayne]

Are there any good dual CPU MB's?

The 3GHz P4 has hyper threading, it's like dual CPU's in one. You can't get dual P4's. Only xeons, and they are geared more for servers. The P4 3GHz FSB is much faster than the Xeon's too. Just get a hyper threading P4 and be happy!

SerialATA is a good option to have, that MSI 865pe NEO2 mentioned above has it. You also want Firewire and USB 2.0. If the board doesn't have Firewire, you can get a card pretty cheap.

[thayne]

Is this any good: http://www.supermicro.com/PRODUCT/SUPERServer/SuperWorkstation7033A-T.htm

Does anyone know anything about it?

I wouldn't get it. It only has 2 standard PCI slots, no firewire so really you only have 1 pci slot and a 533MHz FSB. For video work I doubt you will get any better performance from 2 Xeons than a single 3GHz P4.

[BJ_M]

i would take a dual xeon system any day -- good boards which we use also :

http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderi7505.html
http://www.msicomputer.com/product/detail_spec/product_detail.asp?model=E7505_Master2-F

for a single cpu solution -- i like the neo2
http://www.msicomputer.com/product/detail_spec/product_detail.asp?model=865PE_Neo2-FIS2R

BOXX Tech and IBM both have dual xeon systems that you can buy stripped and build up yourself -- great cases and hardware ..

[txpharoah]

i would take a dual xeon system any day ..

I would agree with this if he/she had about $4-5K to blow instead. The money would be better spent on a large selection of hardware rather than blowing it on CPU/motherboard and taking lesser quality products for other aspects.

[FOO]

I'd send it to the MPAA.
The poor guys claim they're starving.


All this talk of dual CPUs reminds me....

I have 2 1600 MHz computers side by side on a network.
I keep thinking of sharing video processing somehow.

It would be nice if one PC could Filter, Resize, etc with Vdub
and frameserve to the other PC running TMPGENC to encode.

Anybody ever tried this ? Can you frameserve through a network ?
I guess it wouldn't kill me to just try it.

[spiderman2k1]

I would not buy right now Intel is coming out with new CPU's in three month that are said to be very good and the price's of CPU's will drop big time.

[txpharoah]

I would not buy right now Intel is coming out with new CPU's in three month that are said to be very good and the price's of CPU's will drop big time.

And if you wait for three months, there will be even better processors just around the corner, and prices may come down more. So by this method, would he have to wait again? Due to the nature of technology, this is bad advice. Sorry. Find the best deal NOW and don't look back. You did your best.

[txpharoah]

It would be nice if one PC could Filter, Resize, etc with Vdub
and frameserve to the other PC running TMPGENC to encode.

Anybody ever tried this ? Can you frameserve through a network ?
I guess it wouldn't kill me to just try it.

It'll probably work, but slowly. Your network will bottleneck. And it'll take time to figure it all out. I've never done it, but the network thing is true no matter what.

[Vizcaya]

Ok, This is what I would get.

Get 2 computers each with these specs.

2.4 Proc intel P4.
1 80gig hardrive, for o/s , Programs, and storage
1 120 gig used for capture
1 firewire card.
Each Computer with DVD-rom
at least 512 megs of Ram

Then get 2 ADS FIREWIRE ENCLOSURES, put 2 Pioneer A05 burners in each of them.

Get 1 firewire canopus ADVC100 converter.

This is the best way to capture on 1 computer, while burning or converting on the other. And you burn with either computer or at the same time. Also use just one monitor , keyboard and mouse , with one of those switches.

cost is probably under 3,000

[FOO]

Txpharoah
I can copy an entire DVD between computers in 6 or 7 minutes
through the network.
Encoding that much takes maybe 6 hours or more

Do you really think the bottleneck is in the network ?
100 base T will do 600 mb/minute. Certainlly the encoder
is not requesting frames that fast. If it was the encode would be
done in less than 10 minutes

I haven't tried it yet. The only question is which side to put
the signpost file on. I'll do it soon.

[phelix]

Txpharoah
I can copy an entire DVD between computers in 6 or 7 minutes
through the network.
Encoding that much takes maybe 6 hours or more

Do you really think the bottleneck is in the network ?
100 base T will do 600 mb/minute. Certainlly the encoder
is not requesting frames that fast. If it was the encode would be
done in less than 10 minutes

I think you're forgetting that when frameserving, the encoder is receiving uncompressed frames. So, it's really something like 720x480x4x30x60 = 2373MB/min or roughly 40MB/sec (320Mb/sec). Even if your frameserver huffyuv enocdes the output, you still end up with 9MB/s (72Mb/sec).

[BJ_M]

i do this -- you can use a firewire network connection also for some speedy transfers .. or 1gb/lan

[jdizzy40]

Confused, you say you have lots of experience but you are asking for advice. Dual processors, why? The extra money could be spent on other hardware items.

[thayne]

Txpharoah
I can copy an entire DVD between computers in 6 or 7 minutes
through the network.
Encoding that much takes maybe 6 hours or more

Do you really think the bottleneck is in the network ?
100 base T will do 600 mb/minute. Certainlly the encoder
is not requesting frames that fast. If it was the encode would be
done in less than 10 minutes

I think you're forgetting that when frameserving, the encoder is receiving uncompressed frames. So, it's really something like 720x480x4x30x60 = 2373MB/min or roughly 40MB/sec (320Mb/sec). Even if your frameserver huffyuv enocdes the output, you still end up with 9MB/s (72Mb/sec).

Get gigabit ethernet. It's not much more than 100 base t

[lpenrod]

I am consdering one of these:

Dual Xeon CPU
MB: Tyan S2665UANF Dual Xeon/E7505/DDR/8X AGP/SCSI/1394/A&L mboard MFN S2665UANF
CPU: P4 XEON 3.06 GHz 512KB Cache x 2
RAM: 512MB PC2100 DDR266 x 2
HDD: TY073LK MAXTOR ATLAS 10K II 73.4GB U160 SCSI 3.5 4.7MS 8MB 68PIN x 2
VIDEO: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB DDR DVI TV OUT 8X AGP
CASE: SC5250 CHASSIS BASE 450W SSI BLK
Total: $3,050

Single CPU
MB: MSI MB MS-6728-030 865PE NEO2-FIS2RIntel SpringDale 865PE Pentium4 800/533 MHz FS DDR400/333
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 / 3.0GHz 512k socket 478 Hyper Threading Technology 800 MHz FSB
RAM: Kingston HYPERX PC3200 512MB 400MHz DDR System Memory - Mfg#: KHX3200/512 x 2
HDD: MAXTOR HD 120GB P/N 6Y120MO 7200RPM 8MB Serial ATA 150 x 2 (mirror)
VIDEO: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB DDR DVI TV OUT 8X AGP
CASE: ??? $100
Total: $1,500

I have floppy, CD/CDRW, DVD-R drives, etc...

Anything I should change?

[galactica]

Just out of curiosity, whats the front bus speed on these machines.

Im a mac person, so obviously if I had $3000 dollars id recommend the
Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5 which has 1GHz frontside bus, 512K L2 cache/processor, 512MB DDR400 128-bit SDRAM (Expandable to 8GB)
160GB Serial ATA, SuperDrive, Three PCI-X Slots, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
64MB DDR.

Just wondering. A good friend of mine built a pc with pretty much the equivalent specs to the G5 (expet it was a Pentium 4 chip) and his was around 2500.

Just curious.

[JamesB69]

I would go with SATA over SCSI, there is no comparison.

On that dual Xeon system it would be a beast. BUT you need to reconsider the power supply. You are talking about 2 Processors, 2 HDD's, Not to mention the Radeon 9800, then any DVD-R or other optical drives. Get more than 450W.

[JamesB69]

Oh yeah, what OS are you using? You probably already have one but if you go with that single processor machine, you could afford to squeeze Windows 2003 Server in there. I installed 98SE, XP Pro, and 2k3 Server Standard on a 133mhz machine and 2k3 server wins the benchmarks as the fastest. I had heard that XP would run faster than 98 but didnt beleive it til i saw it myself.

[lpenrod]

Galactica: We have been having a big G5 vs. Dual Xeon debate. The G5 is pretty impressive. The two main people that will use the station are PC users so the PC will probably win out.

JamesB69: You think SATA is faster than SCSI?? From what I have seen, SATA is a little faster than ATA (Tomshardware). The SCSI controller is a U320 and the drives that I speced were U160 (couldn't afford the U320 drives). Also the budget is for hardware only. I will probably go with Windows 2003 (if the are compatibility problems, them I will use XP).

[JamesB69]

ill admit i dont have hands on experience with SATA but i am in close with the guy that runs a network of a large corporation and he has told me that SATA blows SCSI out of the water. He said something about the SCSI only get high speeds of transfer in bursts but the SATA is constant or something. Dont crucify me for this only what i have heard.

[TheInformer]

Mobo: The Gigabyte 8KNXP board (regular, not the Ultra version) looks to be a good board for what you want. Check out the review on Anandtech:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.html?i=1831&p=16
eBay prices for the board are around $220.

CPU: You'd probably want to look at one of the 800 Mhz frontside bus Pentium 4s that are out. Anandtech has a little article on this:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1834&p=16
A 2.8c or 3.0c P4 looks like what you're after.

RAM: I would recommend at least 512MB. If you can afford more, then go with 1 GB.

Hard drives: 20GB or more for a boot drive and at least 120 GB for a data drive. Of course these should be either ATA133 or SATA drives.

O/S: WinXP Pro

Case: A tower with at least a 400 watt P/S and plenty of air circulation. Don't skimp on the case!

Accessories:
DV <---> analog converter, such as the Sony DVMC-DA1/2 or Canopus ADVC-100. These hardware devices will make your life A LOT simpler, trust me.

UPS. Don't let a power surge ruin a capture!

[ImaWeTodd]

If you want advice on dual. Look here ===>> http://forums.2cpu.com

I have 2 low end dual machines. A 1900x2 and a PIII 933x2.

Today, I would by a single P4. Dual is cool, but introduces it's own set of problems.