Buying a new computer

[azizehp]

I'm a amature at this stuff. I was just wondering what is a good computer to have now when encoding movies?

[anonymez]

:2wlcomdvf

depends entirely on your price range, so you'll have to give us an idea :)

[jmet]

Welcome to the Digital Digest Video forum azizehp!

There is no definite answer to your questions as everyone has their own opinion on what computer specs would be ideal for what you are wanting to do.

Some basics I would recommend though is:
Minimum of 512MB of RAM
A CPU a at least 1Ghz
A DVD burner/writer, not a DVD-ROM
Minimum of 20GB hard drive, 40 GB preferably
A good video card
Good blank media such as Verbatim DataLife brand or Taiyo Yuden brand blank media.


That was just some information off the top of my head, I'm sure more people will be by to add to it or clarify.

[anonymez]

my guidelines:

1. CPU - an AMD athlon64 cpu, at least 3000+. go as high as you can, this will be the most important component when it comes to encoding speed
2. RAM - minimum 512mb ram, 1GB good, 2GB excellent
3. Hard disk - absolute minimum 80GB. get 2 of them. the larger the better. the faster the better.
4. Graphics card - any card with dxva (hardware acceleration), which includes the old geforce 5200 (very very cheap), but i recommend, if you don't do any gaming that is, you go with a geforce 6200, also very cheap.
5. Motherboard - one that fits all the above hardware, and has room for expansion/upgrade. go with a name brand, eg asus, msi, gigabyte, etc

[azizehp]

I have a motherboard and processor both from intel. An intel 820 pentium D processor. Would that work for a start?

[jmet]

Download this program, run it on that computer (if you can) and copy the report it gives you, then come back here and paste it in a reply.

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

[anonymez]

a dual-core processor is a great choice if you wish to multitask while video editing. if you don't multitask, you can dedicate both cores to the job, and get a nice performance increase (this largely depends on the program though).

you say your motherboard and processor are both from intel. make sure you motherboard can take the pentium d.

[mill]

Case NO PS - Antec Super LANBoy Aluminum Mid T Power Supply: PS 535W - Enermax EG565P-FMA REV.2.0 ATX Case Fan: None
Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI Audio/GB- Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual-Core 512K Per Thermal Grease: Shin-Etsu G675 Thermal Grease (Cools CPU Heat Sink Fan: None - Fan REQUIRED - except with RETAIL
Memory: DDR (400) 3200 - 1 GB (2 pcs 512) Patriot 2nd Memory: None
Hard Drive: - SATA3G - Western Digital Caviar SE 160 GB 2nd Hard Drive: SATA3G - Western Digital Caviar SE 160 GB RAID Setup: None
RAID Controller: None
CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/CD-RW: DVD±RW - BENQ DW1640 16X DVD±RW DL w/Soft CD-RW/DVD-RW: None
CD-RW Software: Ahead Nero 6.3 Suite DVD+-RW Software (OE DVD-ROM Software: Cyberlink PowerDVD 6.0 (OEM) Floppy Drive: Mitsumi 1.44 MB 3.5" Floppy Drive More Storage: None
Sound Card: None
Video Card: eVGA GeForce 6600 256MB DDR/PCI-E/HDTV-Ou Modem: None
Network Card: None
Wireless Network Card: None
Add-On Card: None
Case Function Add-On: None
Round Cables: None
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition w/SP2 Additional Software: None
Antivirus: None

Molex Connector: None
Video Capture: None
TV Tuner: None
I was thinkink about getting this built , has anyone have any opinions they like to share with me, ?:wlcomdvf

[anonymez]

nice :)

i'd think about getting a better graphics card though if you do any serious gaming ;) (at least a 6600GT)

[Chewy]

better memory
are you gonna multitask that much?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103529
this cpu will actually outperform the x2 in most scenarios
the 3500 venus seems the sweet spot

[anonymez]

i would go for a dual-core myself, my pc encodes stuff daily, and i'd like to run other apps at the same time..

might get one in a couple of months :D

[Chewy]

I am gonna wait till the new windows OS comes out, I just keep
more computers to multitask, makes processing 3 movies very fast!
anony, I can see you with dual vid cards sooner or later


When I had to digitize 1000 karaoke disks, I used 4, over 200-250 hours of computer time,

[UncasMS]

anony, I can see you with dual vid cards sooner or later

or get the asus n7800gt dual

two nvidia chips on one card


though the performance of hardly any DUAL vga system is worth the money for the time being

[anonymez]

anony, I can see you with dual vid cards sooner or later

i'll be getting something like that as soon as i get a game that can't be brought up to max settings at 1280x1024 at 2XAA 4XAF!! ;)

though the performance of hardly any DUAL vga system is worth the money for the time being

true, but nvidia's SLI (and ati's crossfire) will evolve soon, SLI currently is not exactly the most intelligent method of dividing load between cards. all it does is 'split the screen' into 2 parts, the top is taken care of by 1 card, the bottom by the other. hopefully in the near future it will be cost-effective. if i were to get a new pc now, i'd get an SLI board, and a 7800GTX, and a second one in the next few years ;)

[mill]

Thanks, i dont do much gaming, but i do back ups alot and i am using shrink alot more these days, i was checking out the 4000 amd but the sales person recomended the dual, 3800. Im still thinking it over. Which one would be faster the 3800 dual or the 4000? Or maybe i wouldnt even see a difference between the two if i dont muti task.I was wandering what would also be a good burner

[Chewy]

With windows xp, shrink, and the vast majority of today's apps,
if only one app is active, only one of the dual chips will be working.
The other will be doing squat,nada,zero.
The x2/3800 at 2 ghz would be ~10% slower than a 3500(2.2Ghz).
It's really a close call tho since amd is probably seeling the x2/3800
at an artifically low price(to compete with Intel).
I'd get the venus 3200, oc the heck out of it, and take the money saved
and buy better memory, bigger hard drives, and a 2nd dvd burner.

[toomanycats]

Here's is a list of what I just put together:
Case ATX $79.00
Asus K8v se deluxe with Amd 3700 64 processor $229.00 After rebate
Vantech power supply $69.99
1.5 G Ram around $125.00
160G hard drive $79.99
Radeon X800 256 AGP Pro $179 refurbished w/3year warranty from ATI.com website.
Aopen 16X DVD Burner $29.95 After rebate.
Windows XP Home Edition is on Sale @ Tigerdirect.com. I would highly recommend Tigerdirect.com because of their customer support, competative pricing, technical knowledge. I have been purchasing from them for 12 years and they are rock solid. I purchased all this from them and made a computer far better than you could purchase whole. They have tutorials on their website on how to do this and will gladly support you. I can decrypt a full DVD with DVDShrink and DVD43 running in the backround in 13 minutes. I can burn a Full DVD in approx. 11 minutes. :thumbs_up

[Chewy]

"Asus K8v se deluxe with Amd 3700 64 processor $229.00 After rebate"
real good deal
"1.5 G Ram around $125.00"
????????? are you running dual channel and command rate 1T

a good bench to see how the cpu/memory subsystem is working, take
shrink and transcode a 6-7 gig 2 1/2 hr movie at ~65% compression and
no da or aec. Rip the movie first with decrypter, and use 2 hard drives
with shrink, only then you have eliminated all the other bottlenecks.

[mill]

I seen somthing about useing two hard drives before when ripping, but i cant seem to find it now, its supposed to be faster right?:)

[Chewy]

If you use dvdd to rip the movie to your hard drive, then use shrink to
compress/transcode(make it smaller), it's faster and much less error prone
if the source file(s) are on one hard drive and the output file(s) go on another
hard drive, however ideally these drives do not share a cable.

[toomanycats]

I am running pc2700 ddr. I should have gone to something better but I tried to use ram from my older computer. I must admit don't kow what "command 1T is". I rip my DVD's to my Drive C: 160G, and transcode to drive G: 80G, which I believe does make the process quicker. The Drives are on separate cables. The Ram is a 1 gig stick and a 512M stick which leaves me room for one more as the board has 3 dimms slots.

[Chewy]

download everest and post the overclock report(not screenshot)
report wizard custom selection plain txt overclock only

like so

--------[ Overclock ]---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CPU Properties:
CPU Type AMD Athlon XP 2700+
CPU Alias Thoroughbred-B
CPU Stepping B0
CPUID CPU Name AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2700+
CPUID Revision 00000681h

CPU Speed:
CPU Clock 2158.82 MHz
CPU Multiplier 13.0x
CPU FSB 166.06 MHz
Memory Bus 166.06 MHz

CPU Cache:
L1 Code Cache 64 KB
L1 Data Cache 64 KB
L2 Cache 256 KB (On-Die, Full-Speed)

Motherboard Properties:
Motherboard ID 63-0100-000001-00101111-090704-KT880$0AAAA000_K7V880-4AA1
Motherboard Name Soyo KT880 DRAGON 2 (5 PCI, 1 AGP Pro, 4 DDR DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN, IEEE-1394)

Chipset Properties:
Motherboard Chipset VIA Apollo KT880
Memory Timings 2-2-2-6 (CL-RCD-RP-RAS)
Command Rate (CR) 2T

SPD Memory Modules:
DIMM2 256 MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM (2.0-2-2-5 @ 166 MHz)
DIMM4 256 MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM (2.0-2-2-5 @ 166 MHz)

BIOS Properties:
System BIOS Date 09/07/04
Video BIOS Date 10/18/04
DMI BIOS Version 080011

Graphics Processor Properties:
Video Adapter Asus V9400-X
GPU Code Name NV18B (AGP 8x 10DE / 0185, Rev C1)
GPU Clock 250 MHz
Memory Clock 202 MHz

[mill]

:) thanks Chewy

[Chewy]

ur welcome, hey this was all greek to me not that long ago,
stuff's getting real complicated quick.

[mill]

If i dont plan on doing any gaming ,an sli motherboard, would that be a waste of money, mainly all i do is back up my movies? Stlll trying to decide. That motherboard mainly is to have to video cards for gaming or programs like photoshop am i right.

[Chewy]

Radeon X800 256 AGP Pro $179 refurbished w/3year warranty from ATI.com website.
80$ card would be good enough

stay with the mobo quoted

[mill]

asus a8n-sli deluxe nforce49 or the one by toomanycats?:)

[Chewy]

Sorry, I can't keep track of different posters in the same thread.
Zimers
sli is expensive and good for gaming, you decide

[mill]

No problem:thanks2: ,yes the sli is very expensive.

[Chewy]

asus a8n-sli deluxe nforce49 or the one by toomanycats?:)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131541

I like this one! but good memory is a must!

agp video is good enough for me

kinda like having some pci slots

[UncasMS]

i never intended to make use of the sli function and nevertheless i bought the asus a8n-sli as i liked the board for all it was worth

[Chewy]

was it the nf4 chipset over via?

[UncasMS]

nf4

[Chewy]

I am still trying to figure out nf2

[toomanycats]

I went from a ATI 9800SE to a X800 256 AGP Pro, the refurbished one from ATI.com. I couldn't be happier. By the way TigerDirect.com is selling a Barebones AsusK8vse deluxe with AMD AAthlon 64 3700 cpu fan, Case, I gig of PC3200 DDR ram, power supply, keyboard and mouse for $399.

[Chewy]

The mobo and cpu and possibily the ram will be good, but the newsgroups
are full of people whose tigerdirect power supplies crapped out on them.

[mill]

nf2 -nf4 ? Now im lost:)

[Chewy]

motherboard chipsets

[UncasMS]

nf => nforce

[mill]

That helps, thanks its all starting to come together now:)PS UncasMS ,are you pleased with the motherboard?

[UncasMS]

i most definitely AM

though i had to exchange the former chipset fan - it was a noisy little sucker with ~8.000rpm and a plain desaster for a mainboard of this price-range

asus send me a new one as they did with many other angry customers and i doubt that the boards you buy nowadays still have this crappy fan - i bet they have exchanged it for a slightly bigger one with much less rpm

the one i got send from asus only has ~5.000rpm, is bigger in its diameter, cools better and is way more quiet

so i think you wont have to worry with this aspect

the other thing was the nvidia nforce driver

it took me a while to find out that installing the entire nforce driverpack was responsible for SEVERE trouble - in particular the ethernet driver components!

be careful and maybe stay away from installing the ethernet drivers - my internet connection always broke down after a couple of time and NOT using these drivers solved my connectivity problem

[mill]

Thanks for the heads up on those things, as far as i no Monarch is going to install all the drivers, my system is being built by them as we speak. Im keeping my fingers crossed.:)

[anonymez]

IMO chipset fans are not needed (and yes, i too had the displeasure of getting a horribly noisy and malfunctioning chipset fan, courtesy of asus), get a heatsink, they're cheap, silent and will do the job ;)

[UncasMS]

get a heatsink, they're cheap, silent and will do the job

no, they definitely wont do the job on this board

only the zalman will be sufficient but why spend much money on that heatsink, when i can get a new fan from asus for nothing?

[anonymez]

i don't put much faith in asus chipset fans anymore, they spin too fast and loud from my experience, especially the A8V-E Deluxe. also asus support is horrible here in aus, i tried many many places to find a local number, and still nothing, except the laptop service center, which didn't help. thier au website sucks too, its no different from the US. other than that, the boards are great :P

[Chewy]

my asus a8v northbridge fan is as quiet as it gets

[mill]

You think i should call them up now, and find out about the fan before:) they ship it? Well i just got of the phone with them and they said they did have a problem with the fans craping out on them within a couple months but they said they fixed the problem, time will tell.

[UncasMS]

that's exactly what i told you

they used a real piece of s.h.i.t. as a fan on the first series but many people complained and they must have done something about that on later series, that's for sure

the rotations per minutes will tell the difference
the first ones had noisy ~8000rpm, the later ones ~5400

[mill]

Well i hope they not just feeding me a line of -x-x i hope they fixed it .It will be about two or three weeks yet till i find out. The salesman seems pretty cool .:thanks2:

[Chewy]

Well i hope they not just feeding me a line of -x-x i hope they fixed it .It will be about two or three weeks yet till i find out. The salesman seems pretty cool .:thanks2:


Do yourself a favor and see if you can get the powersupply upgraded.

[toomanycats]

It is very possible that my old power supply had problems, as the whole computer crapped out so uniformly. The supply was under powered. If I got that barebones kit I would definatedly check out the specs. I would build my own computer l(ike I just did) from now on because even though it may be a
breaqk even proposition you end up with the machine you want. Anyone getting a Amd 754 socket based processor should know that that socket will be phased out next year, that is why there are such good deals.

[toomanycats]

I have fat fingers

[mill]

PS 535W - Enermax EG565P-FMA REV.2.0 , more?

[Chewy]

PS 535W - Enermax EG565P-FMA REV.2.0 , more?

no, that's more than adequate, way to go, thought you were going
cheaper

:toast: :thumbs_up

[Chewy]

Case NO PS - Antec Super LANBoy Aluminum Mid T Power Supply: PS 535W - Enermax EG565P-FMA REV.2.0 ATX Case Fan: None
Motherboard: Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe nForce4 SLI Audio/GB- Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual-Core 512K Per Thermal Grease: Shin-Etsu G675 Thermal Grease (Cools CPU Heat Sink Fan: None - Fan REQUIRED - except with RETAIL
Memory: DDR (400) 3200 - 1 GB (2 pcs 512) Patriot 2nd Memory: None
Hard Drive: - SATA3G - Western Digital Caviar SE 160 GB 2nd Hard Drive: SATA3G - Western Digital Caviar SE 160 GB RAID Setup: None
RAID Controller: None
CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/CD-RW: DVD±RW - BENQ DW1640 16X DVD±RW DL w/Soft CD-RW/DVD-RW: None
CD-RW Software: Ahead Nero 6.3 Suite DVD+-RW Software (OE DVD-ROM Software: Cyberlink PowerDVD 6.0 (OEM) Floppy Drive: Mitsumi 1.44 MB 3.5" Floppy Drive More Storage: None
Sound Card: None
Video Card: eVGA GeForce 6600 256MB DDR/PCI-E/HDTV-Ou Modem: None
Network Card: None
Wireless Network Card: None
Add-On Card: None
Case Function Add-On: None
Round Cables: None
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition w/SP2 Additional Software: None
Antivirus: None

Molex Connector: None
Video Capture: None
TV Tuner: None
I was thinkink about getting this built , has anyone have any opinions they like to share with me, ?:wlcomdvf


is this what you ordered?

[mill]

Yep thats the one, but i changed the burner to a nec 3540.

[UncasMS]

the enermax are very good - go for it if they are in your price range

i wouldnt want to trade my enermax for other psu in my pcs

[Chewy]

He already has, I got confused, too many computers being built in this thread.
Pricing enermax supplies next!

[mill]

Must be that time of year to upgrade. But this 2800 amd HP desk top im using now does wanders too.

[Chewy]

You'll never regret going custom open architecture versus proprietary,
not that all factory made(Dell, HP ,Comcrap, Emach, Gateway(restinpeace))
computers were wholy proprietary. Working on factory computers is almost always a pain in the a**. Too many oem devices with poor support.
Dell is probably the easiest, comcrap the worst. I did an acer by sears
that after 4 yrs there was no support.

r2dr and cp3o were much easier to work on.

[LT. Columbo]

what is the fastest home pc on the market today? have you seen or heard of anything "elite"? like to know how far they are now....:)

[Chewy]

the celery 9000

workstation class
2 AMD Dual-Core Opteron 280 Italy 1GHz FSB 2MB L2 Cache Socket 940

cheaper mobo ASUS K8N-DL Dual Socket 940 NVIDIA nForce4 Professional Extended ATX Server Motherboard

4x Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB 10,000 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150 Hard Drive

2x(4gigs) OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Platinum System Memory - Retail

any $500 pci-e vid card

odds and ends 10 grand with change for vista next year

[LT. Columbo]

any links?

[Chewy]

any links?

no, just send the 50% downpayment, I'll cover the rest


:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

newegg

sorry, you specified home computer

[LT. Columbo]

sounds pretty fancy chewy, i bet the millenium falcon has all that and more;)

[mill]

How about kvm switches, do i have to find one thats compatible with my systems and monitor, or all they all the same?

[Chewy]

How about kvm switches, do i have to find one thats compatible with my systems and monitor, or all they all the same?

a nightmare, first they have to like your hardware, and
you have to match ps2 or usb to the type of switch.
There are several good economical ones available
for ps2 keyboards and mice. Dvi and usb make it too
expensive and complicated. Some support better monitors, other
don't.

[mill]

Maybe im paranoid, but is it possible to have a switch do somthing to both systems, say like you think your switched over, and your deleting some temp files, and at the same time its doing somthing you dont know about too the other system like reformating your hard drive lol?

[Floppy]

That system sounds a million chewy....

However down to the mortal world and this galaxy.....

I would stick with what you got for another six months.... When it comes to this PC stuff it is really the case of _Good things come to those who wait...

[Floppy]

any links?

ASUS K8N-DL Motherboard (http://www.shopping.com/xPF-ASUS_Asus_K8N_DL_nForce4_Pro_Audio_GB_LAN_USB_IEEE _PCI_E_SATA_DDR_E_ATX_Opteron_ETA_4_15)

[Chewy]

Well I guess we could stretch the home spec for video serving,
anony......, have to add some large hard drives.

[LT. Columbo]

thanx floppy

[Chewy]

shouldn't have specified elite, that means
big bucks, got me carried away

[Floppy]

thanx floppy

Errmmmm, Your welcome my man :)