Final spec for new DV Editing Machine...

[Claymonkey]

eh for corp use I've had nothing but luck with Dell. Just make sure you buy gold support. I still would NOT buy or recommend them for personal use though

[schmosef]

"corp use"? you mean corporate desktops? or workstation class?

[Claymonkey]

I mostly have experience with their desktops and servers. I touched every variant of the Optiplex 240-280 for a few years.

[Fluff]

http://www.pny.com/products/quadro/fx/540PciExV.asp

Not sure if you are aware of this product. I know it's not Matrox but it does have component out.

Here is an interesting product.

http://www.span.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=24_704_795&products_id=1128

[schmosef]

Dell might have some good people on their sever team, and they might have some good (simple)corporate desktops... but I would never want to count on them for technical expertise in high end system config.

As a computer dealer I've ran into Dell hardware a lot over the years. It's never been a pleasant experience.

I've just started writing about a couple bad experiences I've had with Dell and realised that the stories are so long and complicated (and boring) that it's best if you just take my word for it.

I often tell my customers that I don't care if they buy their hardware from Dell because it usually ends up that they have to pay me more for consulting and system support than if they were to buy HP or clone hardware from me in the first place.

Every one of my customers who's been duped by Dell's advertising has lived to regret it. They tell themselves that they are buying Dell because of their "great support" but when problems arise it's me that they call, not Dell. And when I have to spend an hour on the phone spec'ing a replacement part or convincing some Dell n00b tech "specialist" that a certain piece of hardware needs to get replaced no one ends up happy. Not me for the wasted time and not my customer for having to pay for my time.

[schmosef]

http://www.pny.com/products/quadro/fx/540PciExV.asp

Not sure if you are aware of this product. I know it's not Matrox but it does have component out.

Here is an interesting product.

http://www.span.com/catalog/product_...oducts_id=1128

Thanks Fluff,

The Matrox RT.X100 hardware is so much more than just a capture and output card: http://www.matrox.com/video/products...pro_top_10.pdf

As far as I know it's the only card on the market that does what it does. It's also sometime highly flaky and unstable. It's a toss up. What it does well, it does better than anything else out there. What it does poorly, will make you want to throw your workstation out the window.

[Fluff]

That HP xw8200 seems to be approved by matrox.

http://www.hp.com/workstations/pws/xw8200/smartbuys.html

I'd be tempted to get one of them. Use that as a base. The bottom one for 2499usd then you can add a graphics card of your choice.

I may get distressed at the size of that antec case not the height but the depth, may not be that quiet either.

[schmosef]

You would really do that? Because of the case? This is a DV Workstation, not a HTPC, fan noise and case size aren't issues. Actually, these Antec True Power PSUs have fan only power connectors and are able to reduce the fan speed when the temp is low.

That model isn't available in Canada. If you go to hp.ca you can see what they're offereing here. I'm an HP dealer so I can buy these wholesale. Looking at the prices I can get these for about 10% less than MSRP.

I actually quoted out a system with Xeon's and it came out to much more money for not much more performance.

Regarding the idea of buying an OEM workstaion and building on it... An important lesson I've learned, the hard way, is that OEM hardware is certified to work excellently out of the box, but you get no support for building onto it.

I've had many problems in the past where a simple bios update fixed an upgrade compatibility problem for a customer who had an Asus motherboard but that same issue couldn't be resolved because, IBM, or Dell, or HP, decided that they didn't need to enable some feature in the bios or provide an update because the PC had been discontinued in the last few months.

When we sell HP equipment, we sell it with HP branded upgrades because that's the only way we can guarantee compatibility. It's a big concern for us.

I have to ask you, this hardware that you've linked (the PNY card, and the AJA card, and the Promise external RAID subsystem), have you every used any of it? I'm just trying to understand if you're making a recommendation or just brainstorming.

[Dr Mordrid]

Thanks Fluff,

The Matrox RT.X100 hardware is so much more than just a capture and output card: http://www.matrox.com/video/products...pro_top_10.pdf

As far as I know it's the only card on the market that does what it does. It's also sometime highly flaky and unstable.

The RT.X100 is only "flaky/unstable" if you put it in a system with a lot of PCI overhead or one whose NB/SB pipeline isn't fast enough. Intels and the SiS MuTIOL pipeline are more than fast enough, as long as you don't overburden them with extraneous junk. VIA and ATI/ULi & NFORCE's hypertransport suck.

Extraneous junk includes onboard audio, audio cards with high PCI or software latency (M-Audio is OK) and many onboard/PCI RAID configurations. Keep it lean and mean.

IMO RAID for RT.X100 project storage has the following advantages; mainly data redundency (RAID5), size and speed....which in the days of SATA and fast PATA drives is not that big a deal unless you're using many, MANY effects.

Remaining RAID advantage: data redundency if a drive fails.

Dr. Mordrid

[schmosef]

With my proposed spec the RAID controller is on a PCI-E 4x slot.

I don't know enough about how PCI-E works. Is it isolated from the PCI bus?

[Fluff]

To be honest I was just brainstorming, then having a look at what people like Boxx and others put in their video workstations.

http://www.planetdv.net/Content/Editing_Systems/Professional_Editing_Workstations.asp

I retract the external promise raid subsystem as have realised it is only 40mb/s throughput and expensive for the money.

My question is that the RTx 100 is getting on for 3.5 years old, has processing power surpassed it?

I am not that qualified compared to others on what should / should not go into a dv workstation.

I would assume that with the Quadro 540 with the component out you could have one widescreen tft for doing timeline work, then the component outs to go to a one of those 14" or 15" broadcast monitors, for checking the work.

A pair of active monitors for doing the audio mixing. Genelec 80x0a etc / maudio and countless others.

[Dr Mordrid]

Has processing power surpassed the RT.X100 hardware? Partially.

Most of the newer effects for the RT.X100 are already software based.

That said it does use one significant hardware resource most software tools do not: its internal G550 GPU is used for 3D effects and video filtering. This is coming in software editing apps that use the main display cards GPU, but slowly. So far it's pretty much limited to using OpenGL.

ATI is making a foray into this with their AVIVO XCode plugin, which is still in beta. XCode will pass video encodes to an ATI X1000 series cards programmable pixel shaders for encoding at up to 5x the speed of using a systems CPU. If only sofware makers would do likewise for their effect processing.....

Where it is really outdated is in that it cannot support HD formats like HDV with its hardware. Matrox has created an updated device that can in the AXIO, but the cost is prohibitive for most people.

One side note: don't expect more than a couple more driver updates for the RT.X100. It's approaching EOL and I'd be suprised if new drivers were released past the initial one or two for Vista.

Dr. Mordrid