new system - burning speed

[dizzynoodle]

hi there,

i am thinking of putting together a third pc at home , one that would kick-butt in performance... i know that there has been a few threads on this, but as of today, this is what i have in mind, tell me what u guys think [the usage of this machine will focus on After Effects 4.1, Photoshop 6, Possibly Premiere 6 - if it is stable this time ! here it is;

*Asus Pb3 [something - which one is best ?]
*PIII 800 or slightly higher [do ub think i would get performnace boost from a 933 or 1ghz ?]
*1gb ram [4 X 256 dimms]
*i have marvel 200TV that i would transfer onto the new system - may go crazy & purchase the Rt2000 [if i can afford it then!]
*9gb IBM scsi LVD hdd + 37gb IBM ide video HDD, now i know i would benifit from a s/w
raid, but i have mixed feelings about the Fast card, any fedback here.
* the rest would be standard stuff sound card ....etc otherwise any ideas to make it better without making it cost a trillion more

thnx guys,

dizzynoodle

[Dr Mordrid]

It's the Asus P3B-F. I have 6 of these, one on an RT-2000 system. It's among the best of the BX chipped mainboards being very fast and very stable. I use the 6 PCI, 1ISA version.

The P3B-F can use up to a PIII/850 CPU but you have to use a slotkey to adapt these FCPGA chips to Slot-1. I use the Gigabyte GA-6R7Pro/6R7+ jumperless model. Works great. You'll also need to updat the P3B-F's BIOS to version. 1006 go get support for this CPU.

The Marvel G200 definitely needs upgrading. Go for a Marvel G400 at the least. This gives the same capture/playback capabilities but adds DualHead/DVDMax. This will allow you to output almost any codec to the vidout, not just MJPeg or RGB.

Of course the RT-2000 is VERY nice on the setup you're proposing. In fact your proposed setup is a virtual clone of mine.

I'd use the boards internal controller with a nice, fast ATA drive for the system drive.

As for video storage, this will depend on which card you're using. With a Marvel G400 you might find a Fasttrak100 IDE RAID handy with its faster captures. This brings YUY2 captures into the game with all their advantages.

With the RT-2000 a nice, huge 7,200 rpm ATA drive is in order. Say, the Maxtor 80g ATA100. Maxtor has a utility for downshifting it to ATA33 if you need to. The RT-2000 doesn't really need the speed offered by RAID's since it only needs a max throughput of about 10-12 mb/s, something the new IDE drives can easily do.

SCSI will just add cost to the system and I wouldn't recommend using it in conjunction with an IDE RAID card. In point of fact I don't recommend SCSI for much at all these days. IDE drives just offer too much bang for the buck....

Sound cards. This will cause trouble ;-)

IMHO you're better off sticking with something simple like the ISA AWE64, especially for the RT-2000. On it you only need an audio card for use with other software. It has its own 48k audio built in for editing.

In general PCI audio cards add a whole new layer of system resource use which can cause A/V synch problems on editing systems. A perfect example for KISS (keep it simple stupid).

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 02 January 2001).]

[dizzynoodle]

man do i know i can count on you Doc ! I initially wanted to address the post to you, but i thought it would defeat the sense of using a forum ! [u know what i mean...]

Thanx for your response, actually i have the scsi card & LVD HDD, and i agree with you, i don't see much speed improvment & it costed an arm & a leg !

I think i will go for the Marvel 400 as the Rt2000 forces me to use Premiere for capturing and i hate that [i have to live with it while using Dv500 ! and it sux!]

On OS's watcha think ? The fact that matrox has not released a decent [let's not call it final] drv set + videotools for win2k scares me. I used win2k with the marvel 200 for about 6 months, hated it as i had to reboot into Nt4 to output to TV ! Shall i stick to 98SE ?

thnx