Charlie said:
My old build is 5 years old, and it's fine for everything I do except
video editing. I have 2 DVDs of video.... sent many many 8mm rolls off
to the lab and had it all scanned to video files.... now I have to go
thorough it all, arrange it chronologically, cut out crap and add in
transitions. This means lots of rendering.... and the old computer
doesn't want to do that very quickly. What parameters are best to
optomize for video editing? It seem like multiple threads might help,
but I don't know if my editing program (Premier Elements 9) supports
that.... and don't know how much memory will speed things up. Does
anyone know if a better software program would make things go faster?
Any recommendations appreciated.
Do you have any way to check threaded behavior on your current setup ?
Is your current setup dual core, or single core with Hyperthreading ?
If so, you may be able to judge from Task Manager.
The problem with your question, is the difficulty of getting
straight answers, about any piece of software. I can see your
question ("is my software capable of using multiple cores"),
asked over and over and over again, in Adobe forums, without
any honest answers. This makes it hard for me to promise you
*any* performance improvement.
Not all software algorithms parallelize easily. Some algorithms
for example, will run on two cores, with one of the two cores
doing the bulk of the work, and the other using maybe 30%. And this
is indicative, that a "huge machine" might not run any faster. The
other cores might end up idle in such a case.
Some problems, we know from first principles, they can be
scaled nicely. Some of the things Photoshop does, we can
chop a picture into four pieces, and run the same algorithm
on each piece, on its own core. And then use "stitching" to fix
the edges, to join them back together again. But even Photoshop,
not all the filters work that way. Some run on a single core,
and the others use many cores. Adobe does the single core
filters that way, for "accuracy".
I have a movie editor here, where lots of stuff runs on a single
core, and only during final render, are two cores used. Since
two cores are all that I have, I can't even say whether the
program would use four cores for render, if they were offered.
*******
The sweet spot for a new machine, would be 4C 8T processor for
around $300. A processor with 6C 12T could be around $700, with
a more expensive motherboard (total price around $1400 perhaps
when good RAM is included). For most people the additional
expense does not justify a 35% improvement in multithreaded
performance.
You will likely end up installing a 64 bit OS. Your 32 bit
programs will still run on there.
This table shows memory limits for various situations. Using
a 32 bit program on a 64 bit OS, the lowest max memory it could
use, is 2GB (same as your current setup). If "large address aware"
is available on the program, that lifts the limit slightly. You
can read the table for the various combinations. A 32 bit program
could use as much as 4GB of memory, under some circumstances.
(I'm still waiting to see more than 2GB happen here at my house
)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx
Extra RAM might help if prefetching content, but I don't
see a reason to assume 2GB of memory helps apply an effect
to a single frame of video data. You might stage all your
content on a RAM drive, if you had enough memory in the
computer for that purpose. For example, this one could
build you a 60GB drive out of RAM, for a reasonable price
(i.e. this software is cheap, but RAM is not cheap).
http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk
I use the free version, and have a 4GB RAM Drive running right now.
The product is pay-ware, if you want it to map larger amounts of
memory. The last time I checked, that program had a 64GB limit
(which would be an early PAE limit - some CPUs, the hardware
actually supports more than that, but we don't know what limits
the OS might have with regard to PAE or AWE memory).
So you can try throwing hardware resources at the problem,
but I can't guarantee you'll get 4X faster results than
your current machine.
A popular CPU choice, for $340.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116901
http://ark.intel.com/products/75123/Intel-Core-i7-4770K-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-3_90-GHz?q=4770k
Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) 32 GB
Example of a memory kit. If you actually bought 4x8GB,
with the exception of the RAMDisk idea, most of the time
that RAM would be a total waste. $314. That's just to show
what you could throw into the motherboard of such a machine.
Even 2x4GB would be plenty, as a config (dual channel).
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231674
A randomly selected motherboard, with room for 4 DIMMs. $177
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132046
So I could easily fork out $825 if I was careless, or
a significantly smaller sum if I tempered my tastes a bit.
*******
If the sky was the limit, I'd go 4930K (as a 4960K isn't
going to be that much better). System cost in the $1400 range.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116939
Or if I was a lunatic, maybe a dual G34. A couple of these
in a dual socket motherboard. But getting performance from
something like this, would only happen under very special
conditions (i.e. never going to happen). System cost would be
$3000 or so with an approach like this.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113305
*******
I'm thinking a 4770K and two sticks of RAM, is enough
Given
the uncertainty of the outcome.
Paul