building around rt2500

[thetoe]

i've been watching this forum for months now, and i finally have a (large)question.
i'm building a system around the rt2500 that i recently purchased. i've checked the matrox site and i have settled on these parts to start off:

tyan tiger 200t - mobo
win2k
dual p3 cpu - 1 gig each
1.5 gig - pc133 ram
large raid array(mobo has raid capabilities onboard)
matrox dual monitor card

if i am going in the wrong direction with anything, can some of you with working systems give me a hand?

thankyaverymuch

[Dr Mordrid]

It sounds like a good start, though you'll probably get more performance out of a single AthlonXP 2000+ (or faster) in a SiS 745 chipped mainboard (Asus A7S333, MSI 745 Ultra or ECS K7S6A). Dualie support in Premiere is way overrated.

These boards are also VERY affordable, with most running <$75 USD. All of the above will run fine with DDR266 RAM, which runs about $90 for 512 megs in my area.

Go with a Promise or 3Ware RAID card and not a Highpoint. Highpoints are junk.

Dr. Mordrid

[funky-d-munky]

I agree with the Doc. A modern system with DDR ram and a nice fast XP cpu will mop the floor with that dual P3.

[Dr Mordrid]

And it'll cheap. You can set up an XP2000+ with a SiS 745 chipped mainboard & 1gb of DDR266 RAM for under $400 USD these days.

Go with 512 megs and you can keep it to $300 USD. 512 megs is plenty for the RT-2500, whatever species.

The dualie 1g PIII with that Tyan board and 1gb of PC133 will run $450+ USD and not be near as fast.

You can then take the money you saved and get some other nice toyz

Dr. Mordrid

[lecter]

thetoe said he wanted 1.5G of RAM....how does SiS cope with 3 dimms? In VIA's case it is really not recommended to do that, system stability (as bad as it was to begin with) is pretty much shattered.

[Greebe]

They run fine. It's designed to use upto 3gigs of PC2100 and 2 gigs of PC2700 speed ram.

None of the VIA chipsets are reccomended for use with Matox's editing solutions (read: RT series cards)

[thetoe]

thanks for the info,
is there a recommended chipset for premiere/rt2500, i see SiS 745 is popular. does win2k have a preference between single or dual cpu's?

thankyavermuch

[Dr Mordrid]

Win2K supports dualies, but that means nothing if the software doesn't take advantage of it.

Premiere purports to, but this support is not as good as they would have you think. In actuality only a few program modules support it and the speed gain is marginal.

As noted unless you go with a much faster dualie system than you first listed you'd be better off with a fast AthlonXP system, which would also be much more economical.

Dr. Mordrid

[PETERLEE]

After months of struggling & P*ss*ng about I agree with DrM

Highpoint = Junk (polite version)

[thetoe]

in the forums opinion, how reliable are matrox.com recommended components, i see most mobos have VIA chipsets, which i understand to be trouble with rt2500. and i only see 1 mobo with a SiS chipset(ECS K7S5A- SiS 735).

sorry to bother you guys/gals but i want all the info before i buy!

thankyavermuch

[Dr Mordrid]

The harder you push a system the worse VIA chipped systems do when editing. SiS systems do very well when pushed.

Dr. Mordrid

[SitFlyer]

thetoe,

Dr Mordrid is MURC's Video God. Take his advice and you can't go wrong

[Dr Mordrid]

Dunno about the diety refererence, but SiS 735 boards (which are a bit outdated now) and SiS 745 boards (esp. the MSI 745 Ultra) work just fine with the Matrox RT cards.

As a result of the SiS chipsets stability and high PCI performance my RT.X100 beta system consistantly has fewer problems with new driver builds than those of other RT.X100 testers. Basically I don't see any issues but the real bugs and not chipset/MB conflicts.

Ask Elie about how his AMD chipped Tyan dualie board/RT.X100 system has been doing lately

What a lot of us are looking forward to is the new MSI board coming out with the SiS 746fx northbridge and the SiS 963 southbridge. These will have a very fat 1 GByte/s pipe between the north & south bridges, which should make for considerably smoother performance with high bandwidth PCI cards in the system.

The problem with VIA's chipsets have been discussed here at length many times, but it basically comes down to poor PCI to host memory performance. In short: they suck.

Dr. Mordrid