I have $3,000 to spend

[galactica]

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.

Who's the WE? Just curious.
Ive got one of the dual 2.0 hgz on order
Where can i get more specs on the dual Xeon so i can see what it has???

[BJ_M]

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.

the opposite is true ... why ALL high end raid systems and d-base servers use scsi ...
as well as ALL high end NLE systems ... in fact some of them will not even warrenty the system with IDE drives (any type) or run with IDE (period).

[falconx]

go for a powerful capture card which it does not need a fast computer..

[lpenrod]

Galactica: We - I am buying the computer for the company I work at.

Below is what I ordered. Hopefully I will have the parts some time week.

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
DVD-CD/RW: Sony DRU510A
CASE: http://www.xoxide.com/xoxideturbine.html
Monitors: Samsung SyncMaster 191T-BK (black) x 2

[Nelson37]

Dual Processors - High initial cost, cost-benefit ratio less attractive, limited re-usability, limited re-saleability. Also you are stuck with yesterday's chips and performance. Consider buying two machines and a hot-swappable Firewire drive.

SATA - get it on the board but don't buy the drives yet, never buy first-generation technology. SCSI shines in a multi-user environment. Raided or even dual IDE is fine for capture, spend the bucks elsewhere.

If you get the Matrox card, processor speed becomes less relevant.

I would put some of the money into a hi-quality VCR with TBC for VHS transfer, or a good display or TV.

[cplevel42]

Galactica: We - I am buying the computer for the company I work at.

Below is what I ordered. Hopefully I will have the parts some time week.

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
DVD-CD/RW: Sony DRU510A
CASE: http://www.xoxide.com/xoxideturbine.html
Monitors: Samsung SyncMaster 191T-BK (black) x 2

Looks like a nice system. Are you sure that the MSI mobo can use the pc3200 RAM?

Does that mobo have built in LAN and IEEE 1394?

What are you doing for sound, using the onboard audio? If not, go with the soundblaster audigy as Txpharoh suggested. Its cheep and works great.

[txpharoah]

With $3K to go, you should still consider a powerful capture card. Getting a top-of-the-line pro-power system with a consumer card won't do much for you. Granted I like the ATI AIW series cards, and they're the first consumer card I recommend, you should seriously look at the Matrox RTX100 since pro-quality seems to be the goal.

And again, dual CPU won't help that much. Rarely is the second processor used by video work, even on many proprietary pro programs.

[lpenrod]

cplevel42:
800MHz FSB uses PC3200.
Audio
* 6 Channels software audio codec C-Media 9739A
* Compliance with AC97 v2.2 Spec
* Meet PC2001 audio performance requirement
* Support SPDIF out via S-Bracket only
Lan
* Intel® 82562EZ (CSA interface)
* Integrated Fast Ethernet MAC and PHY in one chip
* Supports 10Mb/s, 100Mb/s and 1000Mb/s
* Compliance with PCI 2.2
* Supports ACPI Power Management
On-Board Peripherals
* 1 floppy port supports 2 FDDs with 360K, 720K, 1.2M, 1.44M and 2.88Mbytes
* 1 serial port COM A
* 1 parallel port supports SPP/EPP/ECP mode
* 8 USB 2.0 ports (Rear x 6 / **Front x 2) (**Front USB ports are supported by pin-out)
* 1 Line-In/Line-Out/Mic-In port
* 2 PS/2 connectors
* 1 LAN RJ45 connector
* 3 IEEE1394 port controlled by VIA VT6306, with up to 400Mbps transfer rate.

txpharoah:
I am primarily going to convert already captured video files and the rest will be transfered off devices using firewire. Hopefully I do very little capturing.

[icoty]

Listen to galactica and get a dual 2 GHz Power Mac G5. With a mac, you can never go wrong.

[WickedDevils]

I have a dual Athlon 2400MP processor w/ a gig of ram. I think it runs nice, Atleast when I convert I dont kill my computer totally(except with TMPG because of multi-threading). If I don't need the extra CPU speed I just convert 2 movies at once.

[txpharoah]

Listen to galactica and get a dual 2 GHz Power Mac G5. With a mac, you can never go wrong.

I really like Mac myself, but they have narrow uses. The PC software (as of this minute) is far superior to the options and choices of Apple, which are few and expensive. It's sort of a double-screw in my mind.

They MPEG2 options are not all that great (though high quality), and the hardware and software options are best suited for video editing only, and nothing more. Not copying DVDs, etc.

My Mac at work has Virtual PC loaded on it to utilize some PC software, however, not all of it works. And the DVD burner is not seen in VPC.

Given his response to me, I think an ATI AIW 9800 is probably fine, given his usage, and his system specs are alright. Although I still behind the fact that dual processors are rarely useful in video. That's more for servers and graphics rendering.

[PaulDiston]

Y0ou should consider a SCSI hdd as well. They are alot faster than IDE.

[txpharoah]

Y0ou should consider a SCSI hdd as well. They are alot faster than IDE.

But many times smaller, and at a much higher cost.

[PaulDiston]

With $3000 to spend you are not going to notice the higher cost. You could use a 18 or 36 Gb SCSI drive for os and programs and 200Gb for data storage.

[dcsos]

The MAC G5 is a very powerful choice..
But you'll need more than three thousand more If you want anything other than DVD STUDIO PRO as DVD MAKER for your system
Too bad mac has so few applications....

With a mac, you can never go wrong

This is most true of the RESALE value..
It doesn't dip to shit instantly like a PC!

If I were building now I'd tAKE A LOOK AT THE
SHUTTLE AB-48
the basic mobo is 68 dollars, has 5 pci slots supports 800BUSif you over clock slightly,
DDR RAM and USB 2 (no lan at that price)and HYPERTHREADS (i believe)
http://us.shuttle.com/specs.asp?pro_id=253

[marsmayhem]

No one's mentioned analog to digital video bridges?

I have an ATI myself, and it's analog captures aren't bad (but a bit noisy, I'm saddened to say). But I digress - my point is, if he wants to have a proper capture setup (and from the looks of his setup, I think that's a safe assumption), and support both analog and digital input, shouldn't someone recommend a bridge amongst all the other components?

[galactica]

Listen to galactica and get a dual 2 GHz Power Mac G5. With a mac, you can never go wrong.

Oh I totally agree. Have one on order at the moment

Id be interested to see how it stacks up with the systems like lpenrod
is describing.


lpenrod: what sort of cost are we looking at for the system you described?

[lpenrod]

We just ordered 3 of the new dual G5's yesterday. I will take a look at one of them and see how it works.

[Cecilio]

this is what i would do, plus i think its pretty smart too. My computer is not that good ok i know that, but its not bad. I bought my computer for about 1500 in May of 2002, plus i got about 500 dollars of mail in rebate. now you can get better pcs for about the same price, at 1500 with dvd burners, and you might get about 400 dollars of mail in rebate, so i would probably buy 3 new computers with P4 you dont really need 3 dvd burners, as this is a waste of money. you would need a dvd burner and a dvd drive one the main CPU. and the other ones well just have cd burners. and then you network these 3 computers together and if you want to do 3 dvd movies at once well its easy, all you got to do is put DVD ripping programs on all three computers, share your dvd drive, and rip movie (a) to computer 1 rip movie (b) to computer 2 and rip movie (c) to computer 3. then when you have all dvds ripped, you just start up DVD2SVCD and encode using TMPGEnc or my favorite CCE 2.5 i mean if you have it. and you can finish 3 movies in probably around 3 hours.

[thayne]

Y0ou should consider a SCSI hdd as well. They are alot faster than IDE.

My IDE IBM Deskstar smokes my Seagate Ultra 160 scsi drive, it's not even close! scsi is a waste, go with Serial ATA....

[gizmofanv]

I'm not be pro like other, but I had very good luck (so far) with sony/vaio desktop. Comes with lots of software. Click on the link. http://www.sonystyle.com/intershoproot/eCS/Store/en/documents/specifications/rz36g.pdf I did burn some dvd's from dv format with excellent quality video. you do not need to buy any recording hardware or software. Most of all you may save some money for media.

[txpharoah]

Y0ou should consider a SCSI hdd as well. They are alot faster than IDE.

My IDE IBM Deskstar smokes my Seagate Ultra 160 scsi drive, it's not even close! scsi is a waste, go with Serial ATA....

Tests are proving this. SCSI may be great. But I'd never trade in my 200 GB WD UltraATA drive for some piss-ant 30GB SCSI drive. NOT ON A HOME SYSTEM! Maybe an NLE or server, but nowhere else. The extra RPMs aren't useful when it spins down to allow the system to catch up to it. Only during capture (writes) is the SCSI RPM speed useful, but 7200rpm is more than adequate, given other aspects of the system hardware allow for the sustained quality datarates.