Dual CPU Motherboards in the real world - advice please!

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

TheBigCheese

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Hi guys

I'm looking for a video editing machine, and not just any old video editing machine...it's got to be able to cope with 1080p video and regularly be able to edit and encode video and audio up to 50GB to fit onto a dual layer blu-ray disc.

Because of this extreme cpu power that's needed I've been wondering about the motherboards you can buy that will take two cpus on them.

I've only heard about them and tbh I don't even know what they are called (or what operating systems would support them!) so if anyone has any advice, info or experience regarding them I would be most grateful to hear it.

Many thanks :)
 
You really need to be looking into a GPU that can handle this kind of tasking and not the CPU.

A good range is ATI for encoding video and audio.

A decent ATI Card along with even the E2180 would be enough to do the tasks you need, although extra cache on a CPU would get you faster results.
 
Wiggins said:
You really need to be looking into a GPU that can handle this kind of tasking and not the CPU.
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wrong, editing video is cpu intensive and also you need a fast hard disk, preferably in a raid array, and a lot of ram. gpu doesnt play a part really in this kind of task.
 
Thanks for the posts so far guys.

Yes the GPU does have a part to play - if you are adding extras to the video such as colour tints, or fades etc, but for the standard encoding it is CPU all the way.

Regarding your post Dogoid, yes I will be adding fast HDDs in RAID arrays:
1 Drive for OS & Program
RAID 0 for editing (scratch disks etc)
RAID 5 for output
eSATA for backup

I am looking for around 8GB RAM as well so it will be a 64bit system, Vista 64 I would think.

Thanks for your posts so far early on a Sunday morning :)
 
Whilst a dual CPU motherboard would do better at this sort of thing, a pretty decent quad core would probably do it quickly as long as the rest of your system can keep up with it. It'd also be a lot cheaper as well compared to the price of the stuff you'd need for dual cpu setup (that intel skulltrail board needs a different type of memory, not like your standard DIMMs).

The new intel 45nm quad cores have got quite a lot of cache on board and they also overclock well, so that could be another route for you if you don't want to go all out on the skulltrail
 
You also need to be looking at an O/S that supports multiple processors. From what i gather, Thats Vista Business or Ultimate. Not Home basic or Home Premium. They support multiple cores, but not multiple processors.
 
Dogoid said:
wrong, editing video is cpu intensive and also you need a fast hard disk, preferably in a raid array, and a lot of ram. gpu doesnt play a part really in this kind of task.
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Agree unless your putting lots of 3D effects and overlays on the video, in which case a half decent GFX card is beneficial..
 
If you can afford it I would certainly go with Skulltrail for this type of application.You would need vistax64 ultimate or business, to see dual cpu's.

But it would be about £1200 just for the Mobo, ram, cpu's and dual layer writer.
 
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Chimerical said:
Just buy a 5400 Intel Chipset Supermicro or Tyan board.

These can be had for cheaper than the Skulltrail.

Plus, with these type of boards, you have to make sure you buy the right PSU. Enermax Galaxy's are compatible with Dual Socket Server boards.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon1333/5400/X7DWA-N.cfm
Click to expand...

I'd second that. Skulltrail is basically a modified 5400 based board anyway, but with the additional support for Crossfire and Nvidia chips for SLI which push the cost up.

Note also that these tend to be FB-DIMMS rather then regular DDR2 memory, but you can use skt 771 Xeon Chips rather then the Extreme chips that paying way over for.

As others have said that if running Vista on it go for the x64 and will need to be Business or Ultimate to see the second CPU. Depending upon the Application you are using to edit Video then may want Windows 2003 instead.

None of these types of board are cheap, as they are for Workstation or Server market not desktops and so are more expensive. They also tend to have more Server type features and PCI-X expansion rather then PCI-E. Also make sure that the board has a PCI-E x16 electrical as well as physcial slot as a lot of these boards don't have them, after all who needs a PCI-E x16 on a Server, as typically an Integrated or low end ATI is installed onboard.


Of course you may want to consider an off the shelf Video-Editing machine, or possibly even look at a Mac Pro as this is built to do this stuff all day long. You would need to upgrade the Video Card of course but an 8800GT should be enough.
 
TheBigCheese, I have no idea what kind of requirements the tasks you do have on the CPU but realistically could you not get away with a clocked Q6600? It would be very cheap way to a powerful entry-level workstation?

If you have already thought about and discounted it then ignore me, just making sure :)
 
Many thanks for all the posts so far guys, the amount of info is really excellent! :D

The skulltrail sounded really interesting initially, looking further into it it, I've read that (if I've read it right) can be throttled a bit by slower RAM (requiring the specialist RAM).

The 5400 boards sound good, and I especially like the ones that can run standard DDR2 RAM.
I have to admit I'm totally unfamiliar with Xeon chips...would they be as efficient in number crunching in video editing tasks as they would be running servers?

I'll try to add a bit more detail based on the comments...

I will be using Adobe Premier Pro CS3 (and possibly Fireworks) to capture, edit , encode and output video, anything from SD up to 1080P HD so the faster the machine the better.

I will be buying it for the business so price is relevant to performance...obviously I don't want to spend more than I have to but I am well aware it will be in the four figures rather than three figures!

I was thinking of using Vista 64bit Ultimate, I hadn't considered Windows 2003...I've just checked the Adobe box and it doesn't say anything about 2003 so I guess it doesn't support it, it just says XP and Vista (32bit annoyingly, though I have read and been told in here that it will work under 64 bit).

I did consider an off the shelf option but it was very silly money...£5000ish for the specs I was looking for and I'm sure I can do it myself for less, I have had experience system building (about 15 and counting) but I've never built on a dual cpu board so that's a bit daunting!

I considered a Mac G5 but all our machines are on XP Pro so it didn't make sense to have one machine completely different (and I've never used a Mac so it would be a steeper learning curve).

I did consider overclocking a Q6600, I've discounted it though because I've never overclocked before (though OCUKs guaranteed overclockable chips sound good!) and also it would be doing cpu intensive tasks for hours at a time, day in day out. Therefore it needs to be utterly stable and not liable to overheating, and it also possibly wouldn't be powerful enough, which is why I've discounted it.
 
ServerSpec.jpg


That's basically the system that you're looking at. Please note that the RAM is classed as 'Apple Mac Memory' therefore probably isn't compatible with an Intel board (although it should be as it's standard FB-DIMM memory and Mac's are Intel based anyway).

Plus, you should swap out the Skulltrail for a cheaper, equivalent Server board.

I've listed an expensive e-ATX case and PSU aswell, so these impact on the price aswell, of course.

All in all, it's the same sort of cost as a faster 8-core Mac Pro
 
I don't think he will need enermax, get him something cheaper, 500-600watt is more than he needs. I would get HD3870 from HIS with IceQ cooling, it will run a lot cooler and is uber silent plus its very nice for video, the other radeon coolers are damn noisy.

Also imo 8gb of memory would be very usefull there, and maybe try to get CL4 memory.
No idea about case since i've never had it but I think he could save some buck there on getting some of the fulltower range from thermaltake.

---
EDIT:

AND Definitely more HDD space, I'll take at least 2x1tb in RAID. or like 3 or 4x750.
 
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Thanks for the posts again guys! :)

Thanks for the shopping list Chimerical that's really handy!

I wondered what cases would take EATX...they're not cheap are they!

Yes I will be looking for more drives and more RAM as well.

This is what I posted near the top of page one:

1 Drive for OS & Program
RAID 0 for editing (scratch disks etc)
RAID 5 for output
eSATA for backup

I am looking for around 8GB RAM as well so it will be a 64bit system, Vista 64 I would think.

I'm now thinking of upping that to 16GB RAM...you can never have enough and prices seem to be dirt cheap for DDR2 at the moment.

If there is better config for shifting vast amounts of data around, or specialist RAID controller cards I'm more than willing to invest in them...I had a RAID 0 and a RAID 5 on my machine at home a while ago (games more than anything) and the RAID 5 constantly kept falling over...it was a basic motherboard controller chip.

Graphics wise I think I would look at Nvidia, there is a specialist software package for adding rendering effects called Magic Bullet and that is specifically built to take advantage of Nvidia and can show render effects in real time using the GPU power.

HDDs...I think I would be looking at 750GBs rather than 1TBs, I understand that they are a little slower.
 
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Here's a really expensive RAID controller:

Adaptec Sata & Sas Raid 31205 Pci-e 8-lane 256mb 12-channel Raid.

Price: £363

raid_31205.jpg


And you could always buy a Quadro card if you want flawless drivers and features for GPU rendering:

Nvidia Quadro FX 3700

Price: £630

766081-A.jpg
 
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