New rigs for CAD and videos

[Zumbador]

I'm building two identical rigs, one for CAD (with rendering in Solidworks) and one for video production (After Effects).

Proposed spec:

C2D E8400 Wolfdale
Asus P5E
Zalman 9500 heatsink fans
Corsair XMS2 RAM (undecided speed)
WD Raptor 150GB (possible raid 0)
Seagate Barracuda ES 750GB
EVGA 8800GTS (PCIX-2.0)
Cooler Master Cosmos 1000 Case


Couple questions...
1. Will the C2D overclocked to ~4Ghz outperform a Q6600?
2. Any recommendations on the RAM? Speed and brand?
3. How much faster are two Raid-0 raptors compared to just one for my applications?
4. What size power supply and what brand?

Any other comments on my spec are appreciated. Thanks.

 

[jkresh]

1. You will ahve to check your programs, but I would guess that a quad core would be better (especialy for after effects).
2. Go with a lot, speed and brand don't matter as much (ddr2 is fine, 800mhz, lower timings are better and stick with a decent brand, ocz, corsair, crucial, patriot, mushkin...)
3. I doubt the raid would make much of difference for CAD, it may be beneficial for after effects but probably not worth it.
4. A 600 watt psu from a good brand should be fine (even a realy good 400watt might do it but if you plan on overclocking (especially a quad core) and may add a lot of drives then it can't hurt to have some extra room.

 

[Blain]

It's always best to research the particular software support for hardware before buying your parts.
That way you can determine the most effective use of your dollars.

"Multiprocessor support in After Effects (5.0-6.x)"

 

[gsellis]

I think AE is now V7 (CS3). Adobe says it takes advantage of multi-core systems and it was supposed to add graphics acceleration from the video card from what I heard pre-release. The 8800 and multicores are a good choice. The caution comes with CAD and some products have specific support for specific cards. Verify before you buy. Otherwise, you will get to see a lot of green on your screen.

 

[Zumbador]

Thanks folks.

I've been reading up a lot on multithreading with AE and Solidworks... nobody's willing to give any concrete answers though. They say that there is some multithreading, but that could mean just 2 threads, or hardly using the other cores to capacity.

I noticed the Q9300 Yorkfield just came on the market. Anyone get a chance to try out one of these yet?

 

[jkresh]

there are a few reviews of the q9300 out and generaly it is faster hten the q6600 (by about 5%) at stock, the one thing to consider is that it has less cache (I think 6 vs 8 on the q6600 and 12 on the q9450) so while most apps might not be affected by that some might so you should check.