Fastest Multimedia PC

[Nitestick]

the opteron 180 is the way to go . if you are not going to game then you won't really benefit from the 7900gtx. you would be better off with something like the Quadro FX. seeing as you have a decent budget and will need both speed and reliability i would look into setting up a RAID 0+1 or RAID 5 array. preferably the RAID 0+1 array as it will give you a high boost of speed for hard drive storage but will also keep a "realtime" backup of all your data

 

[john3]

a Quadro FX? wat is that?

 

[Nitestick]

Sevoma mentioned it in his post. its a highend workstation graphics card

 

[thecubemonkey]

Okay...I've learned a few more things regarding which processor is best for video capture, edit, and render. Here goes:

In a Build your own PC book by Maximum PC it stated that (and I'm paraphrasing) the AMD is best for floating point (important for 3D games) while Intel is best for MP3, multimedia and video. In addition, Mac, known for it's graphic and multimedia capabilities chose an Intel chip for its CPU. Finally, from what I've learned, msot high end video capture, editing and rendering software were built for the Intel processor and thus, in theory, work faster.

That said, I should note that this is for high end, professional usage. I'm doing this as a hobby. I'm not pro and never will be one. I want to create family videos and that's it. I just want the system to handle the tasks quickly. In fact, I read in the newsgroups that most consumer video editing products aren't written for a specific processor but are written to work with AMD or Intel.

With all of that said, one newsgroup poster said it best, "If your a consumer/amateur either chip will do the job without any issues. He said buy the chip that is the least expensive - whether it be Intel or AMD".

So, I'm still leaning to the AMD Opteron dual-core. From what I've read it is a beast and a workhorse. And, I think it is less expensive than the Intel equivalent.

Thoughts? Thanks for the continued help!

TCM

 

[aliasaid]

no one will argue with you there - AMD all the way

as for video card.. since you're not doing anything on a pro level.. stick with the 7900gtx ! at least that way you'll be able to run some sick games

 

[Nitestick]

thecubemonkey, we won't lead you astray . trust me that information is not quite correct. for video work you will be hard pressed to beat an opteron 180. in video encoding a high end AMD dual core like the 180 should roll everything exceot the more expensive Intel 955 Extreme Edition (i'm fairly sure because the statistics are off the top of my head).

 

[john3]

Definitely go for an Opteron, and stick with a 7900GTX, if u want better performance in the video editing section, i think one of the most important parts for it is Ram, im not sure what the Best Dual Channel 2GB Ram is, but im sure people here do.

 

[thecubemonkey]

I NEED HELP!

Okay...is anyone out there running the AMD Opteron with Adobe Premier Elements 2.0? I ask because I went to the Adobe forum and some say they have the Opteron and they get an error stating that their PC does not support SSE2 while others running Opteron say they have no problems.

Can someone running an Opteron download the trial version from Adobe try installing it and let me know what happens?

Thanks!
TCM

 

[john3]

if u see things like that its probably a someting with the BIOS or their video card sux nuts.....or......they dont have enough ram.....(unlikely, but could be the problem).

 

[Nitestick]

ummmm john a 7900gtx is not really going to make a difference to the video rendering and encoding capabilities of the pc. i'm not sure whether the quadro fx or other workstation cards would either but i am certain the 7900gtx will bring you no benefit unless you are gaming.