Video Editing

[Gerbil333]

I built the system below two years ago and stopped paying attention to hardware. In the past year I've ceased gaming and now find myself editing and rendering video more than "frequently," which is unfortunately far more demanding than gaming was. Yesterday I pushed my peak memory consumption to ~2.45GB with a full suite of editing apps, thereby consuming my futureproof 2GB's of RAM. But 4GB's of DDR isn't an option and it would be overkill for me 95% of the time.

Still, I could use a speed boost; rendering anything obviously kills performance with only one core. I'd like to get at least another year out of the machine, so would a dual core Opteron 165 be a worthy upgrade in the mean time?


Asus A8N-E 2.0 w/Zalman ZM-NB47J
Athlon 64 3200+ Venice
Thermalright XP-90 w/Panaflo L1BX
Corsair 2x1GB TWINX2048-3200C2PT
Radeon X800 XL 256MB w/Zalman VF700-AlCu @5V
SB Audigy 2 ZS
Western Digital 74GB Raptor (8mb cache)
Samsung 500GB HD501LJ

 

[pkme2]

The C2D is a great start and if you're on a budget, you still can build a pretty decent rig.

 

[oynaz]

But he already has an AMD rig. Which socket does your CPU use? 939?

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: oynaz
But he already has an AMD rig. Which socket does your CPU use? 939?

Looks like he's running a 939 MB.

For "video", you'll see a big difference between an X2 3800+ and your 3200+ Venice, for little $$.
An Opteron 165 is too much $$ for the performance you'd get, when compared to the X2 3800+
Opteron 165 = 1.8GHz / 1MB x 2 L2 cache @ $150 (retail) shipped
X2 3800+ = 2GHz / 512kb x 2 L2 @ $91 (oem) shipped

Since you asked... No the added L2 cache of the Opteron doesn't make that much difference.

 

[ribbon13]

Not at all...

totally not there for the exact sort of software you said you use...

yes, an Opteron 165 would do you good but Blain's right about the cost/performance ratio if those prices are accurate

 

[R3MF]

my friend who uses avid edit more than halved his rendering time by moving from a 3200+ at 2GHz to a dual-core 4600+ at 2.4GHz.

 

[rudder]

Originally posted by: pkme2
The C2D is a great start and if you're on a budget, you still can build a pretty decent rig.

I would second the C2D. Although AMD chips are a great bang for the buck (just upgraded my second rig to an X2 4200+), the media encoding benchmarks always favor Intel.

My old Northwood p4 3.0ghz equaled my AMD 3500+ in many encoding benchmarks. Of course gaming was totally opposite.

 

[Donuts]

I'm really happy with my 165 Opteron but it's really only an option if your willing to overclock it. Thats the value of the 165, it has a rep for overclocking like mad. If you want a cheap boost overclock the chip you have. There is probally several hundred MHZ just waiting to be used.

 

[Gerbil333]

C2D would require a new motherboard, RAM, and CPU. Hence, I'd like to hold off another year or longer.

I didn't realize the X2 3800+ was so cheap.

Donts: Yes, I could OC my 3200+, but that wouldn't help multitasking, and that's where it struggles. I need another core.

 

[ribbon13]

I wouldn't run any higher than 25% below maximum overclock differential (difference between base and maximum speeds)for any sort of encoding/editing rig. Before Opterons and C2D, I would never OC an editing rig at all, unless it was cooled by vapor-phase. Times sure have changed.

If you only need the rig to last another year, X2 3800 is the way to go. Longer than that, I'd go for the Opteron 165