Camera Labs

Hi everyone, as those who follow me on various social media channels already know, I'm about to rebuild / upgrade my main work PC for 2012.

The goal is faster video editing, particularly scrubbing as oppose to final rendering. I'll be using Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects CS5.5 under Windows 7 64 bit. I won't be using it for gaming.

These applications love cores, so I'm strongly considering one of the recent Sandy Bridge Extreme processors, probably the cheaper 3630K. I don't believe the upcoming Ivy Bridge will offer me anything other than a die-shrink over previous quad core Sany Bridge, so the current Sandy Bridge Extremes give me the 6-core advantage. Ivy bridge Extremes are a while off yet.

I'd need an X79-based motherboard and would like 8 DIMM slots, and if possible dual ethernet NICs which can be agreggated / teamed-up. I can acommodate ATX boards.

Premiere can exploit Nvidia GPU acceleration, so I'm looking at a GTX570 as the 580 is overkill for my requirements.

Finally, I'm thinking of populating the board with 16GB RAM.

I'll be keeping my existing storage solution: Boot from an SSD, local hardware-accelerated RAID 5 for storage and RAID-5 NAS for backup. I may add another SSD for a scratch disk, but otherwise that side of things is sorted.

So how does this rig sound for my application? Anything you'd change? Any recommendation for board and graphics?

Cheers!

Gordon

ye I think u should go for Ivy Bridge


Motherboard u should go for is Asus P9X79 Pro.

GTX570 is good enough for ur requirements.

And perhaps another SSD for caching

_________________
http://www.AnderssonPhoto.com
Cameras: Leica M8, Nikon FE-2, Canon EOS 1D Mark IV, 5D Mark II, 40D
Lenses: Voigtländer Nokton Classic 35mm 1.4, Ultra Wide Heliar 12mm 5.6 ASPH II, Nikkor AI-S 28mm 2.8, Canon 24-70 2.8L, 85mm 1.2L II, 300mm 2.8L IS, TS-E 45mm 2.8, Sigma 105mm 2.8 Macro
Canon 1.4x/2X TC II, Canon 580EX II X2, Gitzo + Manfrotto.
Wishlist: Leica Monochrom, Summilux 50 ASPH, Voigtlander 35mm 1.2 ASPH II

Hi Gordon,

It's a shame, as I've just discovered, that Premiere Pro doesn't make use of multiple GPUs (yet). Having done a quick Google it does seem to be on a number of folks wishlists but whether Adobe have listened remains to be seen. But that only works if Adobe include multiple GPU usage in CS6, if they release CS6 in your required time frame, if you were going to upgrade anyway and if you can get more bang for your buck by upgrading your current setup with multiple GPUs. Four ifs make a mystery (or a female poodle named by someone with a stutter) so I guess you have to go with what is currently available.

So why the GTX570? If I were opting for a dream rig with a single NVIDIA GPU that was both quickest and quietest I'd be thinking Asus Matrix GTX580 Platinum (review). More expensive, of course, but arguably not prohibitively so. It's faster than the GTX570 (Folding@Home benchmarks elsewhere suggest CUDA enable apps can make use of that speed) and it gets good marks for quietness, a huge virtue in a family environment! A triple slot cooler might be an issue but as you are building a new machine you could design around it. And it glows red under 100 per cent load. What more could you possibly want?

Bob.

_________________
OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

I haven't kept up to date but I understood Ivy Bridge to contain more than just a die shrink. But like all tech, I wouldn't wait too long for it if you need something *now*.

GPU wise, I'm wondering, is this an application that can make good use of Tesla or is a consumer level GPU pretty much as good as it gets already?

_________________
Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Ivy Bridge is more than a die shrink, but it seems most of the improvements have to do with overclocking and the GPU. See here for a description, and here for a few numbers. But I don't think Ivy Bridge is supposed to be out until April 2012.

The Asus P9X79 Pro has AnandTech's Editor's Choice, but you'd have to go up to the Asus P9X79 Deluxe for dual Ethernet ports. It's also worth noting that, on both of these motherboards, the RAID uses up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s and 4 SATA 3Gb/s. I doubt it would matter assuming you're putting a bunch of 2TB or 3TB slow drives together. 3Gb/s is fast enough.

Out of curiosity, why do you want 8 DIMM slots for only 16GB of memory?

_________________
Body: Canon Rebel XS, Canon EOS 7D
Lenses: Sigma 17-70mm f2.8-4.0 OS HSM DC Macro, Canon EF-S 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS II, Canon EF 50mm f1.8 II, Canon EF-S 10-22mm f3.5-4.5 USM, Canon EF 85mm f1.8 II USM

Thanks everyone. Yes, the first Ivy Bridge CPUs are mostly about a die-shrink, which means lower power, lower heat, maybe better OC-ing, and also better integrated graphics. But they'll be quad core to start with.

My applications would better benefit from six-cores than four and I'll be using a separate graphics card, so given that I'm also keen to upgrade now, Sandy Bridge E looks best for me.

As for 8 DIMM slots, I like the possibility of significant memory expansion!