New Performance Computer (Major Adobe Usage)

dude_56013

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Not sure who caught my post in RCC about moving my computer repair (and building) business to a design oriented business...but I'll be needing a new computer system to handle the Adobe Suites more efficiently...time is money in design, and if I can cut down loading and and lag times, it'll be fantastic. Any who...I won't need a 100% complete rebuild, but it will be close. Here's what I've got picked out so far:

Case - $140 Dunno why Newegg links were screwy last night...but; anyways, if anyone has a better suggestion, I am not willing to go much over $200 on the case, including shipping...it MUST be a full tower, and it MUST be sleek (no stupid angles, no gaudy case fans, no stupid crap like that...I picked that case for a reason. I did have my eye on the Corsair 800D (and a Lian Li), but they were just too spendy.

Board - $210

CPU - $190

RAM (x2) - $170

CPU Cooler - $35. Okay. I'm getting really sick of using this cooler, but honestly, is there anything comparable performance wise in the SAME price bracket? I'm not willing to spend more than $40 for a cooler...I'm getting sick of these ginormous tower heatsinks, but I do enjoy the ease of installation on an AMD system with this as it utilizes the stock mounting bracket and AMD clip.

SSDs (x2) - $250 Will be using this strictly for the O/S drives in RAID0. Depending on the final budget, I may actually snag one more and go with three. I was hoping Intel would have a budget solution in this area, as their SSDs have lower failure rates (they only use their own chips, where other companies use chips from all over the industry..such as Jmicron, etc, etc.). I am looking to RAID0 to theoretically double the throughput, so one SSD is out of the question...go big or go home, here, boys. Yes, I know that they are still spendy in terms of $/GB, but I'm willing to eat that for increased launch speeds and tasks in Adobe.

Total is around $1,000, not factoring in shipping or instant savings at time of purchase. I will NOT be sending in any rebates, so don't tempt me with any. Too much hassle in the past.

I've got 2 - 1TB WD Black drives that I'll be keeping in RAID1 for my data storage in the system, and I've already got 2 - Sony Optiarc 24x burners, along with a fan controller and a handful of Scythe fans to keep things cool. Also have a 750w modular corsair that will be swapped to this new build, as well as my old Sapphire 3870. Oh, and I have Windows 7 to put on it.

However, I won't notice any increased performance in Adobe with a newer GPU, will I? I know that it's mostly taxing on the CPU (which is the reason I went with the hex core in the first place). If it would be significant, I could eventually clear up the extra $250-ish needed for a 6950.

Let me know your thoughts. I know this seems overkill, but considering it's a business expense and a tax deduction with a useful life of 5 years (which I think is ridiculous), and thus, might as well go big and hope it lasts without major upgrades for at least 75% of that time span. I could section 179 it, but I have a feeling I won't roll in any major cashish this year as I haven't started my marketing strategy, or even organized for this new venture yet.

Also, fyi guys, though I'm not a fanboy, in this economy, AMD is and will continue to be at the top of my list platform wise. You would have to try VERY hard to convince me to break the bank on an Intel based system. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

EDIT: Wow. Idk what happened with those links. Even screwier than when I originally pasted them in. Should be working now.
 
Finally someone goes AMD. And im in Love with that case you picked out, but ah your cpu, ram and cpu cooler links arent working. But im assuming you want the 1090t and let me tell you, your gonna need the huge heatsink. the stock copper heatsink lets the cpu get to 59C at stock speeds. ive got the scythe mugen 2 (its basically just like the artic freezer 64) and im able to get 3.5ghz easily stable without a voltage increase and only 54C max temp on prime95. not a huge increase but good enough for me.

And if price is a concern why not just get this mobo. ive got the same one and im not trying to push my equipment on to you, but it has all the same features.. ive got my ram at 1600mhz 7-7-21 CR-1 memtest and prime95 blend stable so it supports the fastest ram. and crossfire running at 16x and 4x 2.0 doesnt really hinder my 5770s performance considering they dont really put out too much bandwith, so adding another 3870 might be more cost efficient then getting a 6950.

But im all for the best hardware
 
Finally someone goes AMD. And im in Love with that case you picked out, but ah your cpu, ram and cpu cooler links arent working. But im assuming you want the 1090t and let me tell you, your gonna need the huge heatsink. the stock copper heatsink lets the cpu get to 59C at stock speeds. ive got the scythe mugen 2 (its basically just like the artic freezer 64) and im able to get 3.5ghz easily stable without a voltage increase and only 54C max temp on prime95. not a huge increase but good enough for me.

And if price is a concern why not just get this mobo. ive got the same one and im not trying to push my equipment on to you, but it has all the same features.. ive got my ram at 1600mhz 7-7-21 CR-1 memtest and prime95 blend stable so it supports the fastest ram. and crossfire running at 16x and 4x 2.0 doesnt really hinder my 5770s performance considering they dont really put out too much bandwith, so adding another 3870 might be more cost efficient then getting a 6950.

But im all for the best hardware

Well, considering there's no window on the side of the case I picked out, I suppose going with another stellar xigmatek cooler isn't a bad idea. I was just wondering if there had been any new performers to the market...it's always fun to pop the cover off and see something artistic and unique :p....but, I've put four of those xigmateks in computers (2 of my own), so I know it's a great product. And...like you were saying...there's no way in hell I'm leaving a stock cooler on my product. I don't care if it's AMD or Intel. Haha.

I'll look into the mobo. I really wanted something that was either ASUS or Gigabyte and wasn't blue themed :p haha. I've always had some nasty looking mobo and so the red would be kind of fun, I though. Plus, if I do decide to overclock in the future, the chipset is one of the better OC performances for the AMD boards. I wish they just made them black. I hate all the flashy crap. And it's ALL BLUE my gosh. What kind of obsession is out there that people love these blue LEDs, blue fans, blue wires, blue mobos, blue ram. It disgusts my simplistic mind!!!!

Money isn't really an issue (I mean, I'm not gunna spend two grand or anything like that...but you get the point). I'd shell out the dough for whole new 6950 before I got a second 3870, to be honest. I'm not a crossfire kind of guy and I don't think I'll be gaming (all my friends are on xbox)...so the only way I'd upgrade at all is if it would boost performance in Adobe. Plus, that upgrade can be handled way down the road anyways.

Links should be fixed now. Idk what happened haha. I knew that they had been screwy when newegg was crashing hardcore last night, but they were worse when I went to edit this post. Thanks for your input Prodigy. Glad to see you're still around the forum, pal.
 
I had alot of hope for that stock cooler though kinda looked promising with all the copper it had, i was trying to go for an HTPC i have my comp connected to my 50 inch. but the 1090t just makes too much heat... You could go for a corsair h60-h70 which dont take up as much room but those raidators sound like there pretty loud at full load..

yeah thats a nice motherboard, i really do kick myself for not getting it. coulda had 3x5770s, damn car payment keeps holding back my upgrades :/

if your using CS5 the 6000 series are not supported in opengl mode. And all ati cards seem to have problems running in open gl mode on CS5 because more than likely its coded for nvidia. So if your going to use that option its best you get a 400 series card or quadro fx professional card.

is thelis and ghostfl still on? or did they leave too?
 
A few issues here.

Right, lets get the big myth out the road - 59 degrees being too hot under load. No it is not. Don't worry until your running full load at AT LEAST 75 degrees. If your going to be peaking at around 59 degrees or slightly over, don't bother wasting the money on an aftermarket cooler unless it's purely to quieting the thing or you are immediately going to overclock. Why would you otherwise? What's the point. And, as you say, you not going to be looking at it via a window. You can buy it when you need it/if you need it.

Also, why the AMD route if money isn't really an issue? Sure they offer great value. But you say you are building a performance computer. Intel have the performance chips at the moment, and they're reasonably priced too. A 1090T is only £10 less than an Intel i5-2500K, and the 1100T is the same price. But, if your overclocking, the i5 will trounce the Phenom. (I'm currently running my 2500k at 4.5GHz, prime stable WITHOUT overvolting). If it's the extra cores your interested in, for your adobe, then you can get the i7 with hyperthreading that would more than balance the odds in heavily multi-threaded apps - and provide you with far far greater performance in other less multithreaded apps. Again, you say you want performance and that money is not much of an issue.

i7-2600 destroys the Phenom 1100T in adobe (and everything else bar two benchmarks - one of those being by 1%):
Compare Intel Core i7-2600S (Sandy Bridge 4c/8t), AMD Phenom II X6 1100T (Thuban 6c)

Did I mention the overclocking potential? Sandybridge overclocks far better than the hex core Phenom.

I like your choice of Gfx card though, I've the same. If your up for overclocking and the likes, try and get a reference HD6950 card with 2GB of memory. The OLD xmas time Asus or something - because these can be flashed to a HD6970, using a reference HD6970 bios, to unlock the disabled stream processors as they are the same chip, they're also cheaper because they are seen as being "older" parts. Again, I did this, with no problems :). It's got dual BIOS too, so a disaster can be easily avoided. Besides, about the crossfire, above 2 cards the scaling is pathetic.

Good that your reusing that decent PSU! On the question of will you get better adobe perfomance out of a better graphics card, this is actually not a silly question. I'm not a user of Adobe, so I don't know much about it, but, I'm pretty sure that Adobe has released extensions that enable GPU accelerated processing - and the results are supposedly not to be sniffed at. Now, what you need to consider (After you do you own research on these extensions and if they bring the performance benefits that I think they do), is whether to get a Nvidia card (if the extensions support CUDA only) or you can stick to the AMD card if the extensions support open CL. Maybe, for the benifit of ensuring compatibility with any GPGPU extensions you should maybe go the Nvidia route, as it supports both CUDA and OpenCL.

The nice 8GB of ram should keeps things pretty snappy too. Raided SataIII SSD's, now that I would like to see :).

Chris.
 
yep lets fund a monopoly just because we cant wait 7 seconds longer for video streams to render.

And phenom IIs dont have that nice high priced slicon that intel has.. 62C is maximum operating temp for the 1100T. So 59C is kinda hot for us.

amd ftw. lol nah the intel is faster go with the sandy platform.
 
yep lets fund a monopoly just because we cant wait 7 seconds longer for video streams to render.

It isn't about funding any monopoly - it's about getting performance. Why even fund AMD, when you could buy Via C7, bring more competition and save the tree's at the same time? AMD's number 2 when it comes to monopoly power, and with their graphics cards, that's only going to become more pronounced. You aren't a fanboi by anychance?

And phenom IIs dont have that nice high priced slicon that intel has.. 62C is maximum operating temp for the 1100T. So 59C is kinda hot for us.
Well, I'd like to see the evidence. The Data sheets only showed expected maximum thermal outputs depending on the Wattage of the CPU, these peaked at about 70. That doesn't mean that's the limit to their operation. In the good old AMD Palomino days, my K7 sat idle at 65, 80 load. No probs.

amd ftw. lol nah the intel is faster go with the sandy platform.

Good man.
 
It isn't about funding any monopoly - it's about getting performance. Why even fund AMD, when you could buy Via C7, bring more competition and save the tree's at the same time? AMD's number 2 when it comes to monopoly power, and with their graphics cards, that's only going to become more pronounced. You aren't a fanboi by anychance?

Well based on steam gaming user stats:
hws_graph_pc_cpumfg.gif

Intel stock is at $21 a share and Amd is at $7 a share. Amd is hardly number 2

So if amd gets phased out what would there be? via does not have the resources to compete against intel and why fund a company thats all about the profit motive, atleast amd trys to save you money with what options they have, $180 for a six core processor, cheap motherboards, amazing graphics. its not about being a fan boi, its just recognizing a company with integrity.

Well, I'd like to see the evidence. The Data sheets only showed expected maximum thermal outputs depending on the Wattage of the CPU, these peaked at about 70. That doesn't mean that's the limit to their operation. In the good old AMD Palomino days, my K7 sat idle at 65, 80 load. No probs.

AMD Processors for Desktops: AMD Phenom

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition - HDT90ZFBK6DGR (HDT90ZFBGRBOX)
 
yep lets fund a monopoly just because we cant wait 7 seconds longer for video streams to render.

And phenom IIs dont have that nice high priced slicon that intel has.. 62C is maximum operating temp for the 1100T. So 59C is kinda hot for us.

amd ftw. lol nah the intel is faster go with the sandy platform.

I'm sorry, but if you're building a machine designed for video editing, then you're going to go with the one that does the job faster. I don't know about everyone else, but I don't buy a product to fund the company - I buy it because I want it.

A year or so ago, I would have recommended that you go with Intel. However, I think that recently, Intel have really upped their game. Sure - they are more expensive. But if you can AnandTech - Bench - CPU).

Well based on steam gaming user stats:
hws_graph_pc_cpumfg.gif

Intel stock is at $21 a share and Amd is at $7 a share. Amd is hardly number 2

So if amd gets phased out what would there be? via does not have the resources to compete against intel and why fund a company thats all about the profit motive, atleast amd trys to save you money with what options they have, $180 for a six core processor, cheap motherboards, amazing graphics. its not about being a fan boi, its just recognizing a company with integrity.



AMD Processors for Desktops: AMD Phenom

AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition - HDT90ZFBK6DGR (HDT90ZFBGRBOX)

The jist of what you're saying here still applies - but it's not just about the cost of one share, it's about the number of shares, too.
 
I had alot of hope for that stock cooler though kinda looked promising with all the copper it had, i was trying to go for an HTPC i have my comp connected to my 50 inch. but the 1090t just makes too much heat... You could go for a corsair h60-h70 which dont take up as much room but those raidators sound like there pretty loud at full load..

yeah thats a nice motherboard, i really do kick myself for not getting it. coulda had 3x5770s, damn car payment keeps holding back my upgrades :/

if your using CS5 the 6000 series are not supported in opengl mode. And all ati cards seem to have problems running in open gl mode on CS5 because more than likely its coded for nvidia. So if your going to use that option its best you get a 400 series card or quadro fx professional card.

is thelis and ghostfl still on? or did they leave too?

First. Yes, it is a pretty beasty motherboard. Haha

Second (sorry...too long of a post to split each quote), the stock AMD and Intel coolers are all jokes. Haha. They run things wayyyy to close to max temps for me to be comfy with.

Third, I'll address some things I just dug up about Adobe at the end of this whole post.

A few issues here.

Right, lets get the big myth out the road - 59 degrees being too hot under load. No it is not. Don't worry until your running full load at AT LEAST 75 degrees. If your going to be peaking at around 59 degrees or slightly over, don't bother wasting the money on an aftermarket cooler unless it's purely to quieting the thing or you are immediately going to overclock. Why would you otherwise? What's the point. And, as you say, you not going to be looking at it via a window. You can buy it when you need it/if you need it.

Actually, it is too hot. There is one thing you aren't considering, and that's efficiency. The hotter something gets, the less efficient it is. Do you think I want to have some rig sucking up my electrical bill because I was too lazy to put a cooler on it? No. Also, if you didn't notice the case, one factor of it is it's noise cancelling shell.

Also, why the AMD route if money isn't really an issue? Sure they offer great value. But you say you are building a performance computer. Intel have the performance chips at the moment, and they're reasonably priced too. A 1090T is only £10 less than an Intel i5-2500K, and the 1100T is the same price. But, if your overclocking, the i5 will trounce the Phenom. (I'm currently running my 2500k at 4.5GHz, prime stable WITHOUT overvolting). If it's the extra cores your interested in, for your adobe, then you can get the i7 with hyperthreading that would more than balance the odds in heavily multi-threaded apps - and provide you with far far greater performance in other less multithreaded apps. Again, you say you want performance and that money is not much of an issue.

While I said money isn't an issue, what I'm really saying is that, I will gladly pay a bit more, but the performance damn well better be cake for cake. If I dish out the dough the performance increase better be proportionate to the money spent. That's why I have been using AMD lately. Intel is so damn expensive, and they can't make up their f*#$ing minds about what DAMN SOCKET TO USE. For gosh sakes. I don't want to buy a new MB after every freaking new CPU release.

i7-2600 destroys the Phenom 1100T in adobe (and everything else bar two benchmarks - one of those being by 1%):
Compare Intel Core i7-2600S (Sandy Bridge 4c/8t), AMD Phenom II X6 1100T (Thuban 6c)

Tom's Hardware is not reliable. And, second, I don't even think those are close to factual considering the Intel system apparently consumed zero watts at two points in the testing. Apparently Tom's Hardware has perfected perpetual energy?

Did I mention the overclocking potential? Sandybridge overclocks far better than the hex core Phenom.

I won't be overclocking. This is a design rig. It has to be absolutely the most stable it can be. That means both CPU and GPU.

I like your choice of Gfx card though, I've the same. If your up for overclocking and the likes, try and get a reference HD6950 card with 2GB of memory. The OLD xmas time Asus or something - because these can be flashed to a HD6970, using a reference HD6970 bios, to unlock the disabled stream processors as they are the same chip, they're also cheaper because they are seen as being "older" parts. Again, I did this, with no problems :). It's got dual BIOS too, so a disaster can be easily avoided. Besides, about the crossfire, above 2 cards the scaling is pathetic.

I will discuss this at the bottom of the post.

Good that your reusing that decent PSU! On the question of will you get better adobe perfomance out of a better graphics card, this is actually not a silly question. I'm not a user of Adobe, so I don't know much about it, but, I'm pretty sure that Adobe has released extensions that enable GPU accelerated processing - and the results are supposedly not to be sniffed at. Now, what you need to consider (After you do you own research on these extensions and if they bring the performance benefits that I think they do), is whether to get a Nvidia card (if the extensions support CUDA only) or you can stick to the AMD card if the extensions support open CL. Maybe, for the benifit of ensuring compatibility with any GPGPU extensions you should maybe go the Nvidia route, as it supports both CUDA and OpenCL.

Will discuss below, as well.

The nice 8GB of ram should keeps things pretty snappy too. Raided SataIII SSD's, now that I would like to see :).

It'll actually be 16GB of RAM. I know that for most (including heavy gamers) that would be complete overkill, but you have no idea how RAM intensive Adobe apps are. Now, if you just have one open, you're golden with 4 or 8GB. But if you have a whole editing suite open with large files? 16GB is a must, especially if it means less trips to the drive to dig up and store information (even with an SSD). The SSDs will be great. I can't wait to see the performance of 2 or 3 in RAID0.

yep lets fund a monopoly just because we cant wait 7 seconds longer for video streams to render.

And phenom IIs dont have that nice high priced slicon that intel has.. 62C is maximum operating temp for the 1100T. So 59C is kinda hot for us.

amd ftw. lol nah the intel is faster go with the sandy platform.

It's really a crapshoot, and to be honest, they aren't in the same ballpark. I have no problems with either company, but the affordability that AMD offers the average user is just phenomenal. Intel truly will never beat that as long as AMD is in business. But yes, I commented on the temperature above....too hot!

Well, I'd like to see the evidence. The Data sheets only showed expected maximum thermal outputs depending on the Wattage of the CPU, these peaked at about 70. That doesn't mean that's the limit to their operation. In the good old AMD Palomino days, my K7 sat idle at 65, 80 load. No probs.

Times have changed. More components squashed into an even smaller space. This means that heat must go down. You can't run em like you used to. Just like how older cars had cast blocks. Now most new ones have aluminum...you get em hot just once...you risk warping the block and you're done for good. While the actual max temperature is kind of up in the air, they give a max for a reason...it's been tested safe and working up to that point. After that point, either you'll see a huge drop in performance, or you'll see a huge drop in efficiency. Or both.

Well based on steam gaming user stats:
hws_graph_pc_cpumfg.gif

Intel stock is at $21 a share and Amd is at $7 a share. Amd is hardly number 2

So if amd gets phased out what would there be? via does not have the resources to compete against intel and why fund a company thats all about the profit motive, atleast amd trys to save you money with what options they have, $180 for a six core processor, cheap motherboards, amazing graphics. its not about being a fan boi, its just recognizing a company with integrity.

Intel would be a monopoly in an instant if AMD went out of business. That would be a whole 'nother mess...we'd have the government stepping in to regulate prices..it would just be zoo. The market is better with AMD in the game. VIA still makes some good chips for add on cards and such. Good lil' company, but it would never be able to even walk up to Intel's door, let alone knock on it, if AMD went down.

Right. So on to the bad news that I've been saying I would discuss. I have dug up somethings and it does seem that Adobe only supports Nvidia cards in terms of graphics acceleration with CUDA and such. So, that's enough to sway me over to pick up an Nvidia card, although the price/performance ratio won't make me quite as happy. Linky. While that link is only for Premiere, it should be the same across the board.

Also, while I could very well still go with AMD, I'm a "one man band" kind of person. I had mixing and matching boards and GPUs. So, this means, I will most likely move to an Intel based system for this build. That's okay with me, I guess. I'll have to scrounge for some extra dough and really push hard to break even this year, but the biggest expense will be out of the way. (Haha, guys, keep in mind...I'm 20...in college; I don't have a credit line or anything. So this business venture is a big deal to me, and I've gotta get it right the first time as I don't have the capital to fix it down the road).

I'm sorry, but if you're building a machine designed for video editing, then you're going to go with the one that does the job faster. I don't know about everyone else, but I don't buy a product to fund the company - I buy it because I want it.

Correct. We are consumers, not business partners with them (well...haha...unless you actually are! :p)

A year or so ago, I would have recommended that you go with Intel. However, I think that recently, Intel have really upped their game. Sure - they are more expensive. But if you can AnandTech - Bench - CPU).

Thanks for posting from a more reliable source, Joe. I appreciate the effort. That really is enough to sell me on the price difference, as I know a lot of those figures will somehow play into what editing and design I'll do in Adobe.

The jist of what you're saying here still applies - but it's not just about the cost of one share, it's about the number of shares, too.

Correct again. You can't compare apples to oranges.

I'm currently digging on Newegg to see what boards I like, though, if someone could explain why so many have split controllers for the SATAIII ports, that'd be great. I've read on so many now that It has 2 - 6GB/s ports on the chipset, and then 2 others on a Marvell controller. And then 2 - 3GB/s ports. Why the split for the SATAIII's? Chipset limitation? Or is advantageous? Very confused with that.

I will post the board, CPU, and card I'm looking at shortly.

P.S. Did Intel fix the Sandybridge issues with the M/B suppliers yet?

P.S.S - @Prodigy: Not sure if ghost is around (remember seeing a post by a him quite a while back...), but I think Thelis still lurks. He had a big falling out.

______________

Right. So, after digging for hours on different forums, Adobe's site, and newegg. I feel fairly comfortable posting the new core setup that I've got in mind as of now:

Board - $170
CPU - $315
GPU - $340

__

EDIT: LINKS DIRECTLY ABOVE ARE BROKEN. Use the ones in my post below.
__
So we're looking at a total cost of around $1450
or so. For the increased performance, I feel as though that is acceptable to work into the budget. The biggest cost coming from the video card. But if that allows for better HD editing with CUDA and MPE with Premiere Pro, it's justifiable over time.
 
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