What should I upgrade for video editing and 3d rendering?

D

defl8or

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Okay, so quite a while back I built my first system. My goal was to get good bang for my buck. That's all, really. I'm not into games, but I do quite a bit of video editing and 3d animation and rendering. I'm kind of thinking the Mobo might actually be the best thing to upgrade, since it only has 3G SATA and USB 2.0 for the rare occasions when I use external drives. Not sure about the RAM...I hear contradicting accounts as to whether that board can support more than 8GB.

Mother board: ASUS M5A78L-M LX V2
Processor: AMD FX-4170
RAM: Kingston 2X4GB 1333mhz (According to CPU-Z, but I'm sure I went with 1600, so I need to check that)
GFX: AMD Radeon 7770
OS: Windows 7 UIltimate (64 bit)
Storage:

Primary drive (windows and a few of my more commonly used apps): Samsung SSD 840 series

Secondary drive (other software and for writing rendered video and grapics to): Not sure. lol. It's 250G and 7,200 rpm. Think it was Seagate

Storage drive (for raw video and all files used in creation of final output (textures, etc) Hitachi 1Tb 7,200 rpm (I may get another and raid level 1 it with this one)

I'm not looking to spend a ton. I'd rather make the most of what I have by good housekeeping than splurging cash all the time. I was thinking of just upgrading to the FX-8150 as an option that will get much faster render times for little outlay. I'd go with faster RAM and more of it, but for the Mobo's limitation. I don;t really wanna be buying a new mobo until it's time to design my next system and that may be a long time off, since I have countless things I'd rather spen my hard-earned on
 
They probably upgraded the controller chip so it could handle more ram. If you max the ram out make sure all the cards are the same. I have 16gigs in my system and bought them as a matched set from Corsair. Their Vengeance line. Cost wasn't too bad.
 
For both of tasks you want to perform you'll certainly want a better CPU. It can support the latest FX CPU on offer but like said you'll need a new motherboard so you can have more ram.
 
BK_123 said:
For both of tasks you want to perform you'll certainly want a better CPU. It can support the latest FX CPU on offer but like said you'll need a new motherboard so you can have more ram.
Click to expand...

I remember running Maya just fine with a 1.2gz single core and 125Mb of ram. lol. But I often had render times of a week or more for a 30 second scene. The board apparently will support double the RAM I have installed, and (if the RAM I have is really 1333mhz) much faster Ram. But I'm sure the Ram I bought was more than 1333. I think it was 1600 at least. I guess I need to look at the stick and, if I'm right, I assume there's a setting in BIOS I need to change.
Think I'll just upgrade the processor for now (Assuming the latest versions of AE and media composer are designed to make full use of 8 cores) I know Maya has been able to for years, at least for rendering. Modelling is pretty easy on the processor anyway.
I'm wondering about reading my raw footage from the same disk that the software is on...Hopefully there's enough room on the SSD for all my video related software, so all the head on the second disk ever has to do is read raw footage. With other programs, it doesn't matter.

Oh, is there any benefit to partitioning that drive? I guess it would help prevent fragmentation maybe..I dunno. I don't really know what goes on when you partition a drive. Like whether it's a "real" thing, or no different to just making another folder and calling it another drive.
 
ahhh....the issue may have been decided for me. i think my GPU might be dead. Was having a little play with AMD overdrive (Never changed any GPU settings there, because it never even detected my card, even though it's an AMD card) ran the windows experience index and got the error about unable to test video playback. Thought nothing of it, did some other stuff, shut down...now on startup the GPU fan spins up and slows down constantly at like 1 second intervals and I get no signal to the monitor. I can't even use onboard gfx because the lead is a different type. I don't even get the low quality GFX you get before installing the driver for the card. I can't change anything in BIOS or anywhere else, because I have no picture. The only thing I can think of...I was still wondering why my RAM reads as 1333mhz in cpu-z and in Overdrive, I saw settings for ram clock speed. I set it to 1600 to see if it would give me an error message or something, and accepted, and got the restart message, then i decided against being lazy and figured i'd just loolk at the stick next time the case was open, so i set it back. Now I thinnk about it I don't think I clicked accept to change it back, so, on the next restart, the change would have taken effect. I read that ram issues can make the GPU behave that way, so...hmmm...I guess that could be what happened there if the RAM really was 1333mhz all along. Thing is....I can't change anything back without being able to see what's going on, and I don't think I have any 1600mhz RAM lying around. I have an older video card lying around, but I'm sure that will have the same trouble. I think it's a Radeon HD4XXX series. BUT...and this just occurred to me...I thought changes made using Overdrive weren't made to the BIOS, but by the software AFTER the system boots? So surely it can't be giving me a problem from the moment the power is turned on?
Well...I'll look around to see if any of the spare RAM I have is 1600, then try the old video card, then....I dunno.
It's a shame, cus I was up to 4.8Ghz and running stable at 49 degrees under load. Was gonna come down a little to allow for dust build up in the heat sink and those all-night renders, though.

Oh...maybe it's not a RAM issue OR in any way related to the OC. Cus of course, as i said, the card never even showed up in Overdrive. Though, it was showing up everywhere else, and I was getting the normal resolution on-screen, so...I dunno.

Or is software like that actually changing the BIOS and merely acting as a GUI you can access without a restart? If so...I guess it can't hurt to reset the BIOS. I'll try another GPU in there to see if maybe the GPU just happened to die while I was changing stuff, purely by coincidence. after THAT, I'm out of ideas apart from stripping back to the bare minimum and seeing if I have any luck. Then there's the "just take it apart then put it back together" approach that works far more often than it should. After THAT I'm out of ideas.
 
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Well, clearing the Cmos didn't work. And I tried an old GFX card, and it had exactly the same issue. I don't think it's that I'm getting no signal, or the monitor usually says so. The monitor says DVI power saving mode and goes into standby. hmmm...I suppose I should have started a new thread for this
 
...once again, memory limitations are not limited by motherboard manufactures as they don't pick the memory controller in use. The controller is built into the CPU, the only limitation is the fact the board only has two slots instead of the four slots the CPU can support. With that CPU and that board, you should be able to get upto 16GB of DDR3-1333 just fine, if it had four slots, 32GB would be possible.

Seriously guys, it's not 2005 anymore, memory controllers are no longer on the motherboard unless you are dealing with a server motherboard that adds additional memory support.

The only reason anyone states the board caps at 8GB is because a few of the lower end chips, like Sempron ones, probably maxed out at half the supported memory.

Also, the only difference between the LX and LX2 is power delivery design. If I am not mistaken, the LX supports to a maximum of 95w TDP, where as the LX2 supports 125w.
 
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