whould it worth a dual processor set up? (newbye)

[paulatreides]

Hello everyone!
Here is my idea although I´m not sure about it. I want a powerful computer mainly for video editing and compressing tasks. I use my computer for playing games, but I do it from time to time, and usually, strategy games, so 3D performance is not a great issue for me. So, I am guessing if a could get a pair of dual core (relative) cheap opterons or athlons, a dual processor motherboard, some RAM, a HUGE hard disk (maybe two on RAID) and an average Ati or Nvidia card. Whould it be possible with a budget between $ 1400 and 2000? Any comment would be wellcome. Thank you very much in advance.

 

[pmr]

Hello everyone!
Here is my idea although I´m not sure about it. I want a powerful computer mainly for video editing and compressing tasks. I use my computer for playing games, but I do it from time to time, and usually, strategy games, so 3D performance is not a great issue for me. So, I am guessing if a could get a pair of dual core (relative) cheap opterons or athlons, a dual processor motherboard, some RAM, a HUGE hard disk (maybe two on RAID) and an average Ati or Nvidia card. Whould it be possible with a budget between $ 1400 and 2000? Any comment would be wellcome. Thank you very much in advance.

Well, to run two processors in one mobo, you gotta go opteron. U can´t do it with athlons.
You have a lot to choose. Personally I'd forget dual processor setups and go for dual cores. Here you can choose from opterons, X2 or Pentium D or Xeons.
For now I recommend u to take a look at Pentium D 950 for about $330 in many US stores.
You can easily build a system with Pentium D 950, Motherboard, 2 GB of ram, 2X250 GB HDD, Geforce 7600GT, DVD RW, Case for about $1500-$1600 (without tft, keyboard etc).

 

[Fox_granit]

Paul, use your mentat training lol, anytime you can more than one task it'll help you out. My personal setup listed below was less the 1200$ US. I would recommend an OPTY 165, about 2 gigs ram, 2x WD 250gig hd with the 16mb buffers, a 7600 gt, with either a Abit or ASUS MB. A power supply of 600W, my Ultra has done me well.

As far as mainboards go, it depends on SLI or not, (IMHO not) and/or firewire. I would recommend Abit over Asus cost wise, although you can find the A8N-E from ZipZoomFly pretty cheaply right now. I would spend about 90 - 100$ here.

The higher amount of ram you have, the better rendering you'll do. Same will also hold true for your video card. Both the 7600gt and 2gigs of ram can be bought for less than 190$ respectively.

An OPTY 165 will hold better in the long run for video editing because its designed as a server proccessor, so less heat over all and it can stand running full throttle for long periods of time. they are running less than $350. You could bump up to a 170, but those are costing a bit more.

250gig WD HD's are running about 95$ a piece and a case can be well under $100 without a power supply. The power supply just depends on what you think you need but a good one will run about 90$.

Spend some money on a regular DVD READER for copying and a DVD+/-RW from Plextor for burning. You could find both for less than 50$ each.

With a case, this should all come for less than 1500$ depending on your case and power supply. Since seagate has come out with a 750gig drive, you should see HD prices fall.

 

[mdd1963]

"I would recommend an OPTY 165, about 2 gigs ram, 2x WD 250gig hd with the 16mb buffers, a 7600 gt, with either a Abit or ASUS MB."

I concur! (A dual 940 mainboard jacks up the cost very quickly, and the 265, 270 series of cpus are not cheap, either)

 

[rippleyaliens]

1st thing.
What software will you be running? If it is multi threaded. Then yah go for the opty 165... If you have a larger budget, then squeeze out some money for a dual opty MB, and the opty 265.. Plenty of ram, etc....
IF your software uses any kind of hard drive IO/s.. Then make sure you have fast hard drives. And fast meaning, 10k's and more than 1, lol...
But your monitor best be nice. Meaning, if you have to look at it all day, i would not penny pinch at getting a larger monitor. 20w or 24w. Monitors will last through 3-4 systems, so that is a long term investment..

 

[paulatreides]

thank you all for your feedback
Actually I'm not in a hurry, just asking this time. Nowadays I own two athlons one XP 2000 and an underclocked thunderbird 1400 to 1050 for dowloading purposes (now it rarely go over 45 C). But such processors are by far too short to use them in video editing (even with plenty of RAM as they have). So, I think I'm going to uptade sooner or later, and wanted to know if there was a goog chance of making a time proof computer for that purpose. Since getting the ultimate dual core processor won't be cheap I was thinking on taking another way and get two affordable dual core processors, and a ton of RAM. That way, I could get more powerful opties when they become outdated stuff for less money and still have a very powerful pc. The same goes for the graphics, I think. Of course, if the motherboard is going to be too expensive, it won't be a serious alternative, buy I got tired of that old game of "you are outdated, get a new micro means new mobo, new ram, new graphics, new psu..." Yes, you're right newbye question :roll: . As for the software, I wanted a solid platform for learning LINUX, but for some time I'm going to go on using that now-no-so-crappy Window$$
Will have to use more mentat power

 

[sandmannight]

Ah yes DUNE. It has been a while