Intel Sandy Bridge

[skydiveoc 0]

Quote

I just put the final pieces together for the build on my new "Black Box of Joy".

i7-980 Extreme Edition processor (6 CPU cores)
24 Gig RAM
Asus Matrix Radeon 5870 video card (2 GB VRAM on board)
Asus Rampage III MB (BlueTooth even for tweaking hardware wirelessly)
(x2) OCZ Solid State Drives (120 GB + 120 GB) striped to Raid0 -OS & Programs drive
(x2) 10,000 rpm Velociraptor- Raid0 striped (500 GB) for working/fast access scrubbing
2GB archive storage drive
1GB archive storage drive
1GB archive storage drive (used as hot swap externally for massive backup)
DVD burner
Blu Ray burner

Now to spend the next few weeks getting everything installed and tweaked to perfect order exactly the way I like it.

I'm not savvy enough to build one on my own but hows this for an out of the box system?
http://www.ibuypower.com/Store/Gamer_Paladin_E860

Is the i7 980 superior that the i7 2600k? The above system is $1699. I can get a Dell or Gateway with the i7 2600k for about $1200.

What do you guys think?
Again, this machine will be used for two guys to edit 5 minute tandem vids using GoPros.

[goobersnuftda 0]

Here is the basic lowdown on PC computers.

They are an anomaly. If you want to buy a car/plane/tractor, you buy the whole thing assembled because it is much cheaper than buying every part at the parts counter and putting it together yourself. When you buy a PC, if you are knowledge enough to order the parts in separately, you get a much, much better computer. Cheaper than a high end company build if you can find someone to put it together for you.

Much in the same way as a home builder builds a home for you and puts in $4 door handles (charges $20) or a $8 contractors special white plastic door chime (charges $48), if you were to buy the items yourself, you get better quality for a dissent price. There is no magic to PC computer parts. The beauty of PC’s is that there are so many vendors and suppliers, the competition keeps the prices down where they should be.

There are only two suppliers of CPU’s (Intel – AMD), hard drives (basically Seagate and Western Digital), video cards (ATI – Nvidia) motherboards (well only one is my opinion, Asus). From time to time one edges the other out but for now the current top end ones are Intel and ATI. All these fancy on line companies do is try to package up the same parts available to everyone and slide in some cheapo parts to make their profit by while charging you full price. Some are fancy like Alienware who have special cases to make them look neat but all the guts are exactly the same.

To source out cases, I like to go here Here

They are a top end computer geek company that does high end crazy things like water cooling, special die in the fluid that luminance with special light kits etc. Right off their home page to the left choose the 2nd option down CASES. They have lots of them but then you get a look at what some are like. Once you have the model and case #, price them out anywhere.

The Balance: building a computer is not pumping as much $$$ into a CPU then bottle neck it down to a 4 Gig system or some chepo mother board. Why buy a sports car if you are only allowed to drive it on gravel roads? The balance must be between the CPU, RAM and Hard drives. If you have a top end CPU but only 4 gig of an extremely small sand box to drive in, you wasted your $$$. If you have too much CPU and RAM but a dog slow working hard drive (because it was cheap) then your bottle neck will slow you down doing video.

Figure out a budget and talk to someone you now or trust (not necessarily the computer salesman) about what proportion you need to spend. A video editing machine will have different emphasis than someone who plays top end video games. As an example, the top end Intel CPU may be $1,000 but if you went to the next model down at $600 it may only be 10% slower but with the extra money you saved you beef up the RAM and HD’s.

Where to buy: I’m not a big fan on the on line super computer building companies. I’m sure they are doing a great job but there is always the low end crud they sneak in to make their profit on and that is what slows you down. All they are doing is nailing together the same parts anyone else has access to but are wearing a bright knitted sweater and selling it to you infomercial style :)

Find a local computer company in your area that has been in a business for a while and has a good reputation. Not only can they help you when things blow up but for a couple hundred more you will get a smoking system better than the on line wonders. BTW, try to stay away from the 16 year old in your neighbourhood that puts computers together in his mom’s garage. He may be good but he lacks the ability to buy computer parts at a true wholesale price. Buying parts off the shelf at Staples does not count as wholesale. Only computer dealers or businesses have accounts with Supercomp etc.

Have fun but what you are asking is “what is the perfect car for me?”. Everyone is unique and it is only the $$$ that limits you.

[goobersnuftda 0]

My local computer supplier received his first batch of Sandy Bridge (Core i7-2600K) processors a few days ago and the wholesaler was near immediately sold out of his 600 units. Can not get any more for another 3 weeks.

The initial advantage to them is the new way they manufacture them and how they are built. Very big price break as compared to their current top end flagship chip (Core i7-980X) around $800 less.

Sandy Bridge (Core i7-2600K)- 4 core processor
980 Extreme (Core i7-980X) - 6 core processor

currently there are no premium Sand Bridge boards yet that have 9 SATA connectors for all my crazy hard drives. The problem with being so very new is that it takes a while for everyone else to catch up with the hardware to support your new chip.

Attached is a benchmark chart someone sent me. As is always the case, when you get to the extreme end of performance, the price to acquire the technology goes up exponentially as well. Going from a 80% efficient furnace to a 92% isn't that much more but going from 92% to 95% is hugly more (just as an example).

[goobersnuftda 0]

News story just out, all of the Sandy Bridge CPU's are being recalled. The flaw is that eventually they will stop communication with hard drives and DVD's. Nice.

News Story

Another good reason why you don't buy the latest stuff.... give it some time for the bugs to be worked out and a track record to be set. So currently the flagship still is the
i7-980 Extreme Edition processor (6 CPU cores).

[skydiveoc 0]

Quote

News story just out, all of the Sandy Bridge CPU's are being recalled. The flaw is that eventually they will stop communication with hard drives and DVD's. Nice.

News Story

Another good reason why you don't buy the latest stuff.... give it some time for the bugs to be worked out and a track record to be set. So currently the flagship still is the
i7-980 Extreme Edition processor (6 CPU cores).

Aye yay yay...almost rolled out the credit card today. Thanks for the education and the update. Feel free to keep the rest of us clueless ones in the loop!

[BlindBrick 0]

I wonder what they did to that Phenom to get such low scores. Don't get me wrong, it is outperformed by the high end Intel line, but not as lopsidedly as that chart suggests.

-Blind

"If you end up in an alligator's jaws, naked, you probably did something to deserve it."

[antonija 0]

It's not the CPUs but the chipsets on motherboards. And it only breaks with SATA 3GB/s controlers, 6GB/s should work fine. AFAIK all motherboard manufacturers said they would replace their boards when Intel releases updated chipset.

Also new processors come out few times a year. If you want best-of-the-best there is no time to wait for bugs to be squashed, you just have to bite the bullet and learn to live on the bleeding edge (of microprocessors).

I understand the need for conformity. Without a concise set of rules to follow we would probably all have to resort to common sense. -David Thorne

[goobersnuftda 0]

Quote

If you want best-of-the-best there is no time to wait for bugs to be squashed, you just have to bite the bullet and learn to live on the bleeding edge (of microprocessors).

Yes that may be true most of the time but in this particular instance, the current Intel flag ship chip (i7-908x) was released back in March 2010. The recently released "Sandy Bridge" chip took less than two weeks to be taken down.

[Flinken 0]

I have á i7 2600K in a bench setup for test and I’m impressed with its performance so far (considering that it costs about 1/3 of the i7 980x).

Compeered to á i7 980x setup, my 2600K was just 25 sec slower running the “Sony Vegas Rendertest-2010” (both systems over clocked, my total time was 129 sec).

6 minute tandem renders in just over 2 minutes, the source being from á Sony CX106E in AVCHD using a lot of cross fades, 4 sections of 33% slow motion, and two sections with superimposed animated text.

I can deal with the chipset issue until it’s resolved, for now I will use the two 6GB/s SATA’s and the E-SATA that are supposed to be safe to use.

[DSE 5]

for PAL, your times are very impressive. I'll assume that's Vegas 10 you're running?

[Flinken 0]

Quote

for PAL, your times are very impressive. I'll assume that's Vegas 10 you're running?

Sorry I’m still using Vegas 9.0e.
I found that rendering to progressive DVD’s improved the rendering times, and I don’t see any significant difference playing an interlaced-DVD v.s progressive-DVD using a standalone DVD player on a 50” Plasma TV. What should I look for?

Note:
The OS (Win7) and Vegas are 64-bit versions.
My times where achieved with the i7 2600K over clocked to 4.5GHz (easy to do) and the 8MB memory where o.c’d to 1600Mhz.
Vegas was set up to use 12 threads and a dynamic preview RAM of 2MB.
The test was performed from cold boot, opening the project in Vegas and the hitting render (the boot time and project loading are not included in the rendering time's achieved).

[skydiveoc 0]

So with Sandybridge being shelved for the time being, would you recommend going with an x58 chipset or an AMD processor?

[DSE 5]

you'll find that Vegas 10 boots MUCH faster, and mpeg-source/destination render times are silly faster.
rendering to progressive from interlaced source should cost next to nothing in time, and makes sense for a lot of reasons

[Icon134 0]

I figured this might be the best place to put this post... I swapped out my Workstation HDD for a OCZ HSDL SSD and Dammit... now I'm going to have to upgrade my processor and get more/faster memory!!!

btw my system Specs are as follows:

- Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R (rev 2.0)
- Intel Core i7 930@2.80 GHz
- Thermaltake Bigwater 760is Liquid Cooled
- 12 GB G.Skill Ripjaws PC3 10666 (DDR3 1333)
- OS Drive - OCZ 360GB HSDL (which is wicked fast)
- Raw Footage (2 TB effective space) - RAID 10+Spare: 4 x 1 TB WD Caviar Black SATA2 + 1 TB Caviar Green as (Spare).
- Working Data Drive (1 TB effecive space) - RAID 0: 2 x 500 GB SATA3 (6 GB/s) for Rendering, etc.
- RAID 1 - Storage/built in backup storage (2 TB effective) - 2 x TB Caviar Green HDD
- 3 ViewSonic 22" - 1920x1080 across the bottom and an an older LD widescreen above them, they're mounted with an Ergotron
- ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6 - useful for x-plane spanned across three displays not so much for video editing.
- All Loaded into a Thermaltake Armor+ Full Tower case...

- External Backup consisting of a Synology Cube Station - CS-407 with 4 x 1.5 TB drives in a RAID 5 setup for ~4.5 GB of effective space (backups to the external are performed weekly at a minimum.)

All in all a pretty damn good system... I haven't done any rendering yet... but startup is wicked fast, and starting/running programs is also noticeably faster as well.

Livin' on the Edge... sleeping with my rigger's wife...

[DSE 5]

not bad. Too bad we don't have a "like" button here on DZ.com.
Thanks for sharing.!