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Topic:
Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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darthdastoli
Registered:
Aug '00
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Date Posted:
8/24/06 7:31am
Subject:
Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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I am going to be building my own machine and I have a couple questions. The most important is:
What are the specs I need to be able to play uncompressed video at HD resolution of 1920x1080 at realtime? I am talking about an AVI or Quicktime movie with compression selected as NONE that is rendered out of After Effects or 3D Studio MAX. My main concern here is if a 7200rpm hard drive is fast enough. I'd like to stick with 7200 rpm because it seems that I can't find higher capacities at 10,000 rpm, and all of my external drives are 7200 rpm.
My other questions are basically just advice on what to get. I've already compiled a list of specs and I'd like to know your input on if i makes sense. Basically I need this to render at HD resolution from 3D Studio MAX and After Effects with incredibly complex scenes and compositions made up of hundreds and hundreds of objects and layers upon layers upon layers in nested compositions as far as the eye can see. I also have to edit and mix, but that should all be taken care of with the greater memory requierments of AE and MAX. Anyway, here they are. Thank you for any input:
2 Dual Core Intel® Xeon® Processors 5080 3.73GHz, 2 X 2MB L2,1066
4GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 533MHz, ECC (4 DIMMS)
300GB SAS Hard Drive 1 inch (10,000 rpm)
512MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX 4500, Dual DVI or Dual VGA or DVI + VGA
16X DVD-ROM AND 48X/32X CD-RW
3.5 inch 1.44MB Floppy Drive
Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card
Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 THX Certified Computer 3-Speaker System
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darthviper107
Registered:
Jun '03
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Date Posted:
8/24/06 8:38am
Subject:
RE: Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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One thing I have to say, the complexity of scenes in movies is mostly an illusion, they NEVER ever ever actually use thousands of full quality models in a shot, they always have some kind of trick to make it work. That's just for working and animating with the models though, for rendering that isn't as much an issue since a render farm could handle way more than any single computer (except for maybe the Apexx computer from Boxx) what you have put down looks like a very good configuration. For realtime HD, it isn't so much the hard drive speed that allows you to play it quickly, but the proccessor speed and amount of RAM. On my old system I could never play HD video at realtime, but with my new system, I can do it very easily while doing other things also. Also, remember that in Max the viewports go much faster if you have it set on direct3D instead of OpenGL, even with good video cards.
So, looking at what you have down, I would say you have an extremely good configuration, you should be able work quite well.
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darthdastoli
Registered:
Aug '00
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Date Posted:
8/24/06 11:23am
Subject:
RE: Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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When I said hundreds and hundreds of objects, I was mostly referring to particle related situations, for a good example, modeling a tree for a close up with a series of planes in the absence of hair in the older versions of MAX. But my After Effects exaggerated scenario is not too far off the mark.
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darthviper107
Registered:
Jun '03
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Date Posted:
8/24/06 12:42pm
Subject:
RE: Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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There shouldn't be an issue with After effects, it would still go much faster than rendering in 3ds Max.
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darthdastoli
Registered:
Aug '00
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Date Posted:
8/24/06 8:16pm
Subject:
RE: Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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I'm saying that After Effects crashes on me all the time because of the complexity of the projects just as 3D Studio Max does.
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darthviper107
Registered:
Jun '03
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Date Posted:
8/24/06 9:49pm
Subject:
RE: Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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3ds Max has memory issues, but with a setup like you listed, there shouldn't be any issues like crashing.
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malducin
Registered:
Oct '01
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Date Posted:
8/24/06 10:53pm
Subject:
RE: Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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That's just for working and animating with the models though, for rendering that isn't as much an issue since a render farm could handle way more than any single computer
Of course it's an issue in rendering as well, imagine rendering full detail models that just cover a few pixels, the performance hit would be huge. That's why at rendering things like LOD (levels of detail) are used.
For realtime HD, it isn't so much the hard drive speed that allows you to play it quickly, but the proccessor speed and amount of RAM.
Well the biggest factor is system throughput, and if it's HD uncompressed the CPU wouldn't be that much involved. RAM is an issue if you're referring to playbasts and using RAM based players. But say for editing what you might want to consider is actually a RAID array to have enough system throughput (not to mention for fault tolerance purposes).
I'm saying that After Effects crashes on me all the time because of the complexity of the projects just as 3D Studio Max does.
Why not consider scanline based node based compositors like Shake or Digital Fusion if your main goal is compositing. On the other hand if you need the motion graphics stuff, might as well stick with AE.
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darthviper107
Registered:
Jun '03
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Date Posted:
8/25/06 9:20am
Subject:
RE: Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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malducin posted:
For realtime HD, it isn't so much the hard drive speed that allows you to play it quickly, but the proccessor speed and amount of RAM.
Well the biggest factor is system throughput, and if it's HD uncompressed the CPU wouldn't be that much involved. RAM is an issue if you're referring to playbasts and using RAM based players. But say for editing what you might want to consider is actually a RAID array to have enough system throughput (not to mention for fault tolerance purposes).
I can tell you that proccessor has a lot to do with it. On my old computer system I couldn't possibly play HD movies (Celeron 2.7ghz proccessor) With my new system (using the hard drives from my old system) with a AMD Athlon 64 Dual-Core 4800+ proccessor it goes very fast and I could do other things as well as have HD video playing. RAM has an important role because the video players have to have a cache of video for smooth playback, which is why when you pause a dvd and then play it some time later, it'll play for like a second or so and then stop while it loads up the disc. But yes, the hard drive could be an issue, however unlikely I think even with extremely large uncompressed files. Take for example the Adobe Premiere conformed audio files, working with like 15 audio tracks about 2 minutes long total (layering them) the conformed audio files for that can be up to 4GB, to playback that 2 minutes of audio it's got to go through a lot of data really fast, but it does it just fine with a good proccessor.
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malducin
Registered:
Oct '01
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Date Posted:
8/25/06 2:58pm
Subject:
RE: Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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I'm not disagreeing with you, just saying if your using a compressed movie, the CPU has even a lot more to do, as opposed to just trying to stream the uncompressed HD to the graphics card.
On the other hand maybe I misunderstood the original question, which is why I put 2 cases about the playback. For a RAM based playback, say a playblast from Maya, the Shake player, something like Framecycler, etc. of course RAM is a huge factor. On the other hand if he refers to say editing in Premiere, Vegas and the like, probably the HD and system throughput will be an important factor (especially if your jumping all over the place). And even more important if he's capturing video but then I might have made a wrong supposition, so maybe he's more than fine.
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kylepro88
Registered:
Sep '04
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Date Posted:
8/25/06 5:52pm
Subject:
RE: Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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Your specs seem to be nice but one thing I would suggest is you look into the new Intel Core 2 Duo CPU's. Btw, you didnt list a motherboard, your components are only going to work as well as the motherboard permits. If your looking for a great system here are some specs I suggest:
Antec P180 Black
Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800
ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe
Antec TruePower Trio 650W
Nvidia Quadro FX4500
Corsair XMS DDR800 1GBx4
Seagate 750GB Drives (huge capacity lol)
That will get you doing pretty much anything you want. If you want my personal opinion ide say get a MacPro w/23in display. If you guys want to really get serious with filmmaking, which you seem to be well on your way I suggest you start investing in the real deal. Final Cut Studio will really propell you IMO. AE for the MAC (Universal Binary soon hopefully), or if you dont want MACOSX, run bootcamp lol. Either way I think your set I guess.
-Kyle
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darthviper107
Registered:
Jun '03
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Date Posted:
8/25/06 6:59pm
Subject:
RE: Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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That's a pretty good proccessor, but with the setup he's got his will probably be like twice as fast as that at least, doing a quick check, you can get a motherboard for more than one Xeon proccessor but you can't do that for the Intel Core 2
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swimmerman91
Registered:
Aug '05
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Date Posted:
9/8/06 3:17pm
Subject:
RE: Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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username posted:
Dual Core Intel® Xeon® Processors 5080 3.73GHz, 2 X 2MB L2,1066
please get a AMD processor, it's much better then intel, especially graphics wise
I switched, and love it 
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darthviper107
Registered:
Jun '03
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Date Posted:
9/8/06 6:38pm
Subject:
RE: Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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AMD isn't actually all that, Intel and AMD are close competitors, so there's not really just going with one brand, it's by proccessors. And Xeon proccessors are very good for rendering setups.
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1337mik3
Registered:
Jun '04
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Date Posted:
9/9/06 3:32pm
Subject:
RE: Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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darthviper107 posted:
AMD isn't actually all that, Intel and AMD are close competitors, so there's not really just going with one brand, it's by proccessors. And Xeon proccessors are very good for rendering setups.
I disagree, I have had much expirience with both, and as far as 3d rendering goes, AMD is all that. Obviously depending on what one you get, overall, AMD will suite you better.
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aim/videomik3 http://www.MichaelFrisk.com It is possible to fail in many ways...while to succeed is possible only in one way. -Aristotle
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darthviper107
Registered:
Jun '03
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Date Posted:
9/9/06 5:41pm
Subject:
RE: Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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Unless you've tried every proccessor, then it doesn't matter.
Some proccessors are good some proccessors aren't, that's how everything is.
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Shadow_of_Evil
Registered:
Nov '01
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Date Posted:
9/10/06 3:50am
Subject:
RE: Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution
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I'm saying that After Effects crashes on me all the time because of the complexity of the projects
As well as the fact it's one of the most unstable professional video editing packages on the market. I love AE and use it all the time but the coding REALLY does suck.
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