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Question

Question on Dell Precision Workstation

Jun 13, 2013 11:01AM PDT

Hello all!

I'm new here - great to be a part of the forums!

I am about to purchase a new computer to do all of my video-editing on. I edit using Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8.0. I will be editing a lot of green screen footage, some HD footage too, so the file sizes are pretty hefty! The laptop I currently have, a Dell Inspiron with an i5 and 4 GB RAM, is CONSTANTLY lagging, hanging up in the middle of rendering, overheating, and just not doing the job.

I'm currently looking at purchasing a Dell Precision T3600 from here:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=swct36m&model_id=p...

This computer seems to fit my needs. I am only going to be using this computer for editing/rendering my videos, nothing else. I'm a total noob when it comes to computer hardware; I've researched it for several hours, but still have much to learn.

I would be extremely grateful if anyone could help me out with the following question:

My budget is approximately $1200. I can upgrade this T3600 Workstation a bit, i.e. upgrading to a better CPU OR to a better graphics card, but probably not both. My options are the following:

1) Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1607 (Four Core, 3.0GHz, 10M) [add $32.20] with NVIDIA® Quadro® K600, 1GB, 1 DP & 1 DVI-I (DP-DVI & DVI-VGA adapters) [add $77.00]

2) Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1607 (Four Core, 3.0GHz, 10M) [add $32.20] with Dual NVIDIA® Quadro® K600, 1GB, 2 cards w/ 1 DP & 1 DVI-I each, (2 DP-DVI & 2 DVI-VGA adapters) [add $206.50]

3) Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1620 (Four Core 3.6GHz, 10M, Turbo) [add $175.70] with NVIDIA® Quadro® K600, 1GB, 1 DP & 1 DVI-I (DP-DVI & DVI-VGA adapters) [add $77.00]

4) Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1607 (Four Core, 3.0GHz, 10M) [add $32.20] with 1.0GB NVIDIA® Quadro® 2000, Dual MON, 2 DP & 1 DVI [add $346.50]

So basically, should I be putting more money into the CPU or the graphics card? Is it better for me to have two average graphics cards, or one really nice graphics card?

Sorry for the long message! Thank you SO much for your help, everyone!

Have a fantastic day!
Tony
www.captaincatholic.net

PS: Last thing - do you think I should go with 8 GB of non-ECC memory, or 4 GB or ECC memory? I'm leaning towards the former because it's twice as much RAM.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
That link at the end
Jun 13, 2013 11:38AM PDT

Is spam so I'm going to shortchange you. Even my old first gen video editing on an Acer ter-600 with 256MB RAM did not hang. That hang is often due to poor cooling or a faulty CODEC.

Because I run into that a lot I find folk that have the faulty CODEC install that on their next machine and then flame everyone for their troubles. Not that we expect folk to know about the fawlty tower of CODEC or CODEC Hell (whichever you wish to call it) but I'm only addressing an area that seems to plague so many.

The web link is in my view spam.
Bob

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Link
Jun 13, 2013 1:34PM PDT

Hey there! Thanks for your help!

Sorry about that, didn't know that was considered spam! The weblink is a link to my website (my online video editing series), but I wouldn't have posted it if I had known it would be considered spam. Looks like I'm unable to remove it now, unless you know of a way to do that.

Anyway, thanks for your help!
Tony

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You could repost without
Jun 14, 2013 1:44AM PDT

And ask for the old post to be removed.

But on the topic, the issue of a bad codec is one that I encountered far too often. I don't want to repeat what a codec is or does on Windows but there are many bad ones and have folk losing untold amounts of time as they call up the hardware maker, software support and well, it's not their problem.

I don't have a solid cure for this issue except to call it out and hope folk that are that deep into video work understand what is going on.
Bob

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Answer
Dell Recomendations for Sony Vegas Pro
Jun 21, 2013 12:25AM PDT

Tony

I would recommend something like this config

Model: Dell Precision T3600 Dell Precision T3600, 635W (larger power supply for furture expansion)
Processor : Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-1607 (Four Core, 3.0GHz, 10M) ( can go up to 3.6 if you like)
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional,SP1, No Media, 64-bit, English
Memory: 8GB: DDR3 UDIMM Memory, 1600MHz, Non-ECC (4 x 2 GB DIMMs)
Graphics: 1GB AMD FirePro V4900 (will be able to take advantage of openCL acceleration)
Boot Hard Drive: 500GB, 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA 3Gb/s Hard Drive
2nd Hard Drive: 256GB, 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive ( optional but I recommended for fast media access)

I would put more money into processor and storage speed than higher end graphics.

Hope this helps,

Scott