I'm thinking about upgrading my Avid to an HP xw8400.  I've seen many refurbished systems with full warranties, and there are many options.  I mostly do promo work for the church & orphange in Zambia, and also testing to keep my tech skills up-to-date.  The editing is mostly DV, but will eventually include HDV, but never uncompressed HD.  I'm trying to determine the point of diminishing returns, where more isn't "better", just more costly.

The three options I'm evaluating are procs, RAM, and video card.  Thanks to axelo's post in my FX1500 vs FX3500 thread, it looks like the FX3700 is a better way to go.

As for RAM, even with Vista Biz 64, Avid isn't going to use more than 4GB, so 4GB's seems like a good stopping point.

On to procs.  The first question is, would either of these be better ...2 x Dual core vs 1 x Quad Core.  Same number of procs, just distributed differently.  Next, as some posts seem to indicate that Avid isn't really hitting all 8-Cores, would an 8-Core (2 x 4-Core) really provide significant performance gains over a single 4-Core?

My main editing machine which is optimized for our workflow is a Core 2 Quad Q6600. Versions prior to 3.0 were able to use all cores only for certain operations like Transcoding between resolutions where the performance gan was huge. With the new 3.0. I can see AVID using 2 cores quite often, but not as efficiently when exporting to quicktime as I hoped to. There is a HUGE gain when rendering, but again my FX 3700 helps with that as well. Being conservative and cost efficient I would go for a single CPU system with Quad Core, preferably the lates Q9550. As mentioned before i have a Q6600 and my config manages multiple DNxHD 115 streams simultaneously via FC ATTO i use to connect to Terrablock (which SUCKS BIG TIME - piece of crap) as well as from local RAID storage.

Thanks for the input on procs.

"Terrablock (which SUCKS BIG TIME - piece of crap)"

I'd like to hear more about your issues and experiences with TerraBlock. Ours has performed exactly as advertised, and works well for us.  We have 8 servers, for 120TB's.  I can deliver 10-12 stereams of 4:4:4, and many more 4:2:2.  However, we maxxed out the config, so we have optimal bandwidth.  Each of the 4 servers that service Telecine (4:4:4) are quad-ported to a QLogic 9000 Series Switch.  The 4 servers that service the Symphony Nitris's, DS Nitris's and FCP (including 4:4:4) are dual-ported to the switch.  The Telecine client systems are dual-ported, and the Avids are single ported.

So as not to hijack this thread, and if there's an interest, maybe we should start a new TerraBlock thread.

Me to. Please tell us more.

We have several Terrablocks and are in the process of getting more.  As Randall says, they work as advertised.  But I will say, getting editing systems optimized to take advantage of them is no walk in the park.

Cheers,

Jef

"Being conservative and cost efficient I would go for a single CPU system with Quad Core, preferably the lates Q9550"

What is the Q9550?  One of the systems I've been looking at has the QUAD CORE X5365 3.0GHZ.

OK ... I'm going to start a TerraBlock thread ... this looks like it is going to get interesting.  It'll be under Storage.

New thread is up at Avid Unity / Workgroups / Local Storage

Randall, are you having problems running MC 3.0 on the HP8200? Since you are editing mostly DV what issues are you running into?

The reason that I ask is that I am moving to MC 3.0 on the same computer (I do run the Nvidia FX1400) and I am hoping to keep the same machine for a while before I upgrade. I have considered upgrading the Nvidia card to a FX1700.

I have been editing DV, HDV and XDCAM HD on this machine with AXP 5.8 for a while and except for needing faster and larger hard drives things have been going well.

Q9550 is basically a main-stream version of X5365 - its full name is Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 and it's intended for consumer comps instead of workstations (where xeons are used). Most Xeons have their Core 2 counterparts.

"... are you having problems running MC 3.0 on the HP8200?"

No, none at all.  But, this is how it all started.  I decided I needed a new non-Avid computer.  I also wanted a better video card in that system.  And, I wouldn't mind having a little more juice on the Avid.  So, I figure the xw8200 & nVidia FX1300 would make a great personal system, so now I just need to get the upgraded Avid.  It's such a curse to be a geek.  Everything gets over-engineered ....

Gotcha. It's kinda like when I decided to replace the old toilet in the bathroom because it used too much water and was old. Before it was all over, the whole bathroom had been gutted and everything replaced.

I like the new bathroom, but boy am I glad thats done.

Good luck with building your new system.