Time for a new System for PS CS4 and vid editting

davidweaver

Here's what I'm thinking of putting together:

Mobo: ASUS Maximus II Formula LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard. I picked this as it suports 8 sata devices internally and 16 gigs of RAM.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131319

8 gigs of RAM: PNY XLR8 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model MD4096KD2-800-X4
It is timed at 4-4-4-12 and I'm thinking I'll get better performance here than if I went with DDR2 1066 5-5-5-15 timing, but I'm still interested in overclocking this rig a bit so I'm still researching the RAM issues.

Drives:
Two of these:
Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS 300GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s
One for the OS and programs and one for scratch
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136260

And more drives:
A 320gig sata drive for doing image backups of the OS
No reason to backup the scratch drive.

4 samsung 1TB 7200 RPM drives.
One for 'My Documents'
One for Working space and storage of for day to day photo work.
and the other two to do backup copies on an every 3-day basis. Daily for a few select files


Video:
EVGA 512-P3-N980-AR GeForce 9800 GT Hybrid Power 512MB 256-bit GDDR3
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130384

OS:
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 64-bit English

Some cheap sata DVD drive/burner.


Should do PS4 and Premiere/Avid/Vegas just fine.

Blackwood

Looks nice. Similar to my 'workstation', though I opted for a slightly newer video card (ATi Radeon 4850). Also, I don't have the 4 1TB drives, though I may pick up two of the Seagate 1.5TB monsters from Newegg.

davidweaver

I'll probably stick to the 1 TB drives. I create about 2-3 gigs of photo data a year and archive it all off on separate 1TB drives. I don't mind being a touch behind the bleeding edge as it is a lot cheaper. I might consider the video card as it looks interesting.

Thanks!
David

Blackwood wrote:

Looks nice. Similar to my 'workstation', though I opted for a slightly newer video card (ATi Radeon 4850). Also, I don't have the 4 1TB drives, though I may pick up two of the Seagate 1.5TB monsters from Newegg.

Cato

Given the thermal-cycling issues with the Nvidia Geforce 8 & 9 series video cards, you may want to re-think the 9800GT. Chances are it won't crap out, but...

The one issue with the Radeon 4850 is that it doesn't support Nvidia's Cuda, which is apparently necessary for certain functions in CS4. Don't know if it's that big of a deal, though.

What CPU?

Another thought: what's your scratch disk usage like? I wonder if you could set up a RAMDisk in Vista and use that as a scratch disk - it would be much faster than even a Velociraptor.

davidweaver

Cool.... Never thought about a RAM disk, Maybe i I actually put 16 gigs of RAM in it then i might want to do that. Very cool info! I did look at Solid State drives and their performance is poor for my needs.

BTW: CPU: Q9550 core 2 quad

Thanks,
David

Cato wrote:

Given the thermal-cycling issues with the Nvidia Geforce 8 & 9 series video cards, you may want to re-think the 9800GT. Chances are it won't crap out, but...

The one issue with the Radeon 4850 is that it doesn't support Nvidia's Cuda, which is apparently necessary for certain functions in CS4. Don't know if it's that big of a deal, though.

What CPU?

Another thought: what's your scratch disk usage like? I wonder if you could set up a RAMDisk in Vista and use that as a scratch disk - it would be much faster than even a Velociraptor.