Is this a good computer for encoding videos?
 

Is this a good computer for encoding videos using Flash Professional CS4?
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Holiday_Special_IV/

The only thing I am going to add is Vista Premium 64-bit edition.

Is there anything else I should add to speed up video encoding?

Or is there anything I can take out to make it cheaper?


Thanks

i7 920 brings back hyper threading which Vista can utilize as 8 different cores.

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* CASE: ($20 off Mail-in Rebate) NEW! Apevia X-Jupiter Jr. 420 Watts Case (G Type Metallic Gray Color with Side-Window)
* Neon Light Upgrade: NONE
* Extra Case Fan Upgrade: Default case fans
* POWER SUPPLY Upgrade: 680 Watts Power Supplies (Hush Power Supply SLI/CrossFire Ready)
* CPU: Intel® Core?2 i7-920 2.66 GHz 8M L3 Cache LGA1366
* COOLING FAN : Intel LGA1366 Certified CPU Fan & Heatsink
* MOTHERBOARD: MSI X58 Platinum Intel X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX Mainboard Triple-Channel DDR3/1600 SATA RAID w/ eSATA, Dual GbLAN, USB2.0, IEEE1394a, &7.1Audio
* MEMORY: 3GB (3x1GB) PC1333 DDR3 PC3 10666 Triple Channel Memory (Corsair or Major Brand)
* VIDEO CARD: ATI Radeon HD 4850 PCI-E 16X 512MB Video Card (Major Brand Powered by ATI)
* VIDEO CARD 2: NONE
* VIDEO CARD 3: NONE
* LCD Monitor: NONE
* 2nd Monitor: NONE
* HARD DRIVE: Single Hard Drive (500GB SATA-II 3.0Gb/s 16MB Cache 7200RPM HDD)
* Data Hard Drive: NONE
* USB PORTABLE DRIVE: NONE
* Optical Drive: (Special Price) LG 20X DVD±R/±RW + CD-R/RW DRIVE DUAL LAYER (BLACK COLOR)
* Optical Drive 2: NONE
* SOUND: HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD 7.1 AUDIO
* SPEAKERS: NONE
* NETWORK: ONBOARD 10/100 NETWORK CARD
* MODEM: NONE
* KEYBOARD: Microsoft® Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 w/ Wireless Internet Keyboard & Laser Mouse
* MOUSE: XtremeGear Optical USB 3 Buttons Gaming Mouse
* Extra Thermal Display : NONE
* Wireless 802.11B/G Network Card: NONE
* Flash Media Reader/Writer: None
* Cable Wiring: None
* Rounded Cable: None
* VIDEO CAMERA: NONE
* PRINTER: None
* PRINTER CABLE: None
* IEEE CARD: NONE
* USB PORT: Built-in USB 2.0 Ports
* FLOPPY: NONE
* OS: NONE - FORMAT HARD DRIVE ONLY
* FREEBIES: None
* Media Center Remote Control & TV Tuner: None
* SERVICE: STANDARD WARRANTY: 3-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY PLUS LIFE-TIME TECHNICAL SUPPORT
* RUSH SERVICE: NO; READY TO SHIP IN 5~10 BUSINESS DAYS

I may switch to a RAID or SCSI drive setup. One of the biggest bottlenecks is drive speed.

Otherwise nice choice :)

I think for the price it is a bargain. Throwing in a SCSI drive will shoot my costs up.

You're golden with the i7. It's faster than anything else.

You should get a sold state drive or Raid 2 hard drives (raid 0) for faster read speed.

Also, read videos from one drive and write to another. In my setup(animation, compositing and editing) I never write and read to the same drive at once.

Why go 64 bit? Which encoding software are you using, and A. is it even 64 bit compatible to even install, and B. is it going to take advantage of that? 64 bit solves more problems right now than what benefits you might get from it. :2 cents:

:2 cents:

I will be using Flash Professional CS4 which supports 64-bits and multi core processors. My hope is with the i7 that I can be encoding video, chopping a photo in Photoshop, have multiple Firefox windows open and maybe watch TV all at the same time with no lag.

I do that all every day with a duo core, you shouldn't have any problems with that. Getting ready to go quad core in next month or so though. Reason being is Im doing multi camera angle HD for weddings now, and most tapes that I capture are 45 mins each. 2 or 3 tapes that size in HD are bogging shit down lol

Just get a Mac encoding machine and be done ;)

It currently takes me anywhere from 6 to 8 minutes to convert a 1 minute AVI, MOV, WMV over to FLV. I am currently on an AMD Athlon 64 3700 Overclocked 2.42GHz with 2 gigs of memory.

If I can cut my encoding time in half, I will be two times more productive.

The Core i7 is unbelievable, great choice.
If you have the dough I'd step up to the 640 which is a bit faster, but not absolutely necessary.

As the others pointed out, def. get multiple drives, ideally one just for your OS/software ("boot drive"), another RAID0 for your Raw content, and another RAID1 for your encoded content.

If that's too pricey you can still get away with non-RAID configurations, just plain single drives - but def. more than just one.

I'd also add another firewire card, only because the one in your motherboard may die all of a sudden (happened to two of my boards) and you'll want a back up.

Finally: MEMORY. If you're getting a 64 bit OS definitely take advantage of the fact that it can utilize more than the 4 Gig which was a limit with 32 bit OS.
Literally, the more memory, the merrier but it needs to be the DDR3 (expensive) kind because of the i7.

Whatever you do, I would not suggest to do anything else on that machine while you are encoding, not even browsing or watching movies. Regardless of how many cores the chip has you'll still take away disk and memory resources when you do anything else.

Flash encoding isn't totally linear, there are spikes - just like when you browse or do almost anything else. This means at one moment your encoder might need additional resources and if you are doing other stuff that has the same shifting requirements you're asking for trouble (dropped frames or much worse).

Hope this helps and best of luck and success

Cool....thanks for the tips.

More RAM...lol
 

The system specs are fine, except you need more RAM. If you get 64-bit Vista, you can exceed the 3 to 4GB's that is standard. Vista 64 can access large amounts of RAM, and that pays off big time on encoding/decoding.

Keep in mind, the new i7 systems use 'Triple Channel' Ram...so you need three 'sticks' or DIMMs to take advantage of the horsepower in the new i7 cores. (And yes, these are the premier CPU's right now)

So, make sure it comes configured with 3 separate sticks of RAM, which means you're looking at a base config of 6GB or 12GB. This probably the most critical step in configuring your machine...if you don't get this right, it will never perform up to its potential regardless of what else you add to it.

Standard hard drives are cheap, add as much storage as you can reasonably afford. If you want some speed in your hard drive system configure two Western Digital Velociraptors in a RAID 0 array (this gives you the full capacity of both drives and the fastest read/write times), and then add at least a 1Terabyte drive for primary storage.

If you want to drop some major cash, add an SSD (Solid State Drive) from Intel - They are the king of the hill in read/write times and can actually outperform the raptors in certain areas). But the twin Raptors are the enthusiast's choice for high performance and reasonable price.

I'm a bit of hardware geek, so if you have any more questions...let me know. Anyway, hope this helps.

I thought i saw a review where Skulltrail was actually faster then the corei7 when it comes to encoding (dual qx9775 extreme) among a few other things......can't remember though.

You might want to check out the Asus Revolution board (not out yet)...or at least the Asus Rampage II Extreme board...and toss a i7 965 on there... ;)

Oh, and be wary of the voltage requirements...some of the triple channel ram out there are to high and can cause damage to the processor

My bad, thought you we're building a system..i saw now that you're ordering.
Anyway, those specs are fine. Without making major changes to the price, i would change/add these in this order:

First thing I would do is change your montherboard choice to this Asus board..one of the highest marked boards for stability and performance with the Core i7..and has onboard SAS...MSI might have it, haven't checked.
Motherboard: Asus P6T Deluxe....

1) I have two of these bad boys on the way...
VideoCard: Geforce GTX280

2) and if you can still spend, i would change to:
HD: 300GB WD VelociRaptor (you can add another later for raid 0)

3) And if money still isn't an issue, toss in
Chip: core i7 965
Ram: OCZ 6GB DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory

Doesn't really have to be in that order. I'm sure there's some encoding guru's here that can tell you what's truly important when encoding...ie, processing speed, ram etc....then make your choices based on that.

I am sure I can squeeze some money out of somewhere to make the modifications.

The encoding time is critical since its the only bottle neck in my workflow.

Very Nice Choice!!!

:thumbsup

switch mobo to evga or gigabyte and throw in few raptors

the cpu is decent... however you'll definitively want more RAM ... the only problem is that according to what I've heard Vista 32 bit can only take advantage of 4gb ... anything beyond that is wasted... And Vista 64 can be sexy as it uses alll the ram you put on it... but the catch is that 64bit is giving a lot of people problems as far as App compatibility...

So I'd say.. shove 1 more gig of RAM and see what happens...

it's a tri channel memory, you can't just shove 1 more gig :1orglaugh

Memory is super expensive when you have to buy in 3gb, 6gb, 12gb, 24gb etc.


I am upping the memory to 6GB.

I do not think I need ATI Radeon HD 4850 PCI-E 16X 512MB Video Card. I can downgrade that because I am not a big gamer.

WOW!!! I finally got everything imported from my old computer to my new one.

I have increased my productivity by like 80 percent with the new i7 920 intel chip.

Encoding 1 minute WMV files use to take around 10 minutes, now it takes less than 2 minutes.

I'd kick the power supply up to something in or near the 1000 range,

and if your running 64 bit take full advantage and up your ram to 8 gb range at least...

You'll see noticeable improvement.