I just built the best video editing PC ever!

Nice system. I've just got a Core i7 920 w/ 6gb 1600mhz memory... but I'm pretty happy with the performance.

Are you editing your EX1 footage with this machine?

it's not bad.

how much?

Can it play minesweeper?

how much for that?

Time = money. We have always used the best we could get for many years and every machine has paid for itself in days.

Oops, didn't notice the SSD at first - cool beans. Bet that machine flies. $4k-$5k machine right?

You should have just bought a mac....

Come on now.. You do realize that he would need another 12GB or more of ram. 4 Quad core cpus, at least 10TB of space, 4 of those video cards and a 100000 watt power supply, right? that game is intense and needs major power.

Total bill was $5500

I must say this machine kicks ass and takes no names.
Slices through full HD video in it's sleep.
With the new Corsair Force SSD drive Photoshop loads less than 2 seconds, NO BS!

I have another i7 920 with 12GB of 1333 that took forever to render and encode HD video.

What really makes this new machine rock is the Nividia Quadro FX 5800 with Adobe's new Mercury Playback Engine in Premier Pro CS5.
The Nividia GPU was over $3,000 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814133253

Yes times is MONEY. I can now finish videos and go have fun.
No way Jose! Mac right now sucks ass! I don't even wanna hear the MAC bullshit already.
I have an associate who just bought a $6500 Power Mac a few weeks ago and we are regretting it something fierce.
Apple/Mac dropped the ball long time ago.

Here is my editing room as it is now.

Notice the Power Mac all the way to the right.
The latest and greatest Mac, and it SUCKS.
It does not even come close to the machine all the way to left I just built.

Next to the new PC build is my i7 920 which was not getting what I needed done fast enough.

When I tell a person something, I tell no lies. I have done a side by side comparison, and there is no comparison.
Mac has dropped the ball by not installing i7 cores into their top of the line machines.

I edit all of my Canon 5D MkII and SONY EX1 footage with the new beast.

Thats probably only because you obviously dont know how to use the mac correctly.

I won't get into the Mac/PC debate, but I will say that it would be impossible for a top of the line mac pro (not power mac, they've been discontinued years ago) to use a core i7...

And lets stop bullshitting here...
First, the "latest and greatest" mac isn't a power mac (they were discontinued in 2006 when apple switched to intel processors).
Second, a "latest and greatest" mac pro would cost far more than $6,500. More like $10k+
Also, you spent 3 grand on a video card for what? editing porn videos? Do you even realize that the bulk of your video editing uses very little gpu power? I could see if you were doing some serious work in say maya or 3d cad. Otherwise, you just wasted a shit load of money for something you'll never, ever, get full use out of, much less need.

So, let's deduct the 3k you foolishly spent on the video card, that leaves you with a $2,500 system. Which is still really nice, but at the end of the day it's not the "best video editing pc ever".

In case you're curious, here's my system:
Asus Z8NA-D6C Mobo
2x Intel Xeon 5620's
12GB DDR3 Memory (I don't need Registered/ECC memory so I went the cheap route)
1x 128GB ssd system drive.
Nvidia GTS250 512MB video card

Now, I run mac osx snow leopard on this machine, and it performs quite well.
Render time for 1 hour unedited 1080p hd video for editing/playback: 6-10 minutes.
Encode time for ~30 minute HD video (.mov): less than 30 seconds if rendering to same settings as my project.
Encode time for ~30 minute mpg: 10-15 minutes.

My only downfall is when encoding to WMV. It takes longer than any other format; but that's due to quick time 7's limitations... I found quicktime 7 to be the best app to use for exporting wmv (with the use of flip4mac). but it has it's drawbacks as it doesn't multithread very well at all. The upside is, I can encode all files I need for hd wmv (usually 7) at the same time.

I have yet to fully test this machine under a windows environment so I honestly can't give mu feedback there

Huh?

The core i7-980x that you have (3.33GHz 6 core) IS in the top of the line macs. You can even go further and have 12 cores...

store.apple.com/us/configure/MC915LL/A?mco=MTk4Mjc2MDA

The Westmere are the i7-980x's - aka core i9

To have had the exact same setup ie the 3.33 GHz 6 cores would have cost you $4200

Ain't that the truth.

that's on a 12-month old iMac. Not bought for encoding, but it does a nifty job the few times I ask it too...

Fair point.

I should have worded that better.. an i7 has only one qpi link so it'd be impossible to use it in a dual processor setup (which you'd have if you got the latest and greatest mac ><).

Not exactly... Xeon (aka server/workstation) cpu's are made with much higher quality than desktop cpu's; desktop cpu's (ie i7) are made for power first, whereas WS/server processors are made for stability ><

I'm not a CPU buff, so I'll take your word for it! But I read the i7-980x are codenamed Westmere and I see the BTO Mac Pros use Xeon Westmere going up to 2x2.93GHz 6 core (ie 12cores), so I figure this "Apple dropped the ball in not adding i7s" is BS, since they did. Even more so if the Xeons are built for stability vis-a-vis i7s

Right, I probably should have also commented on that as well because at the end of the day, the xeon's perform almost the same as the desktop i7's, which nullifies the whole "dropped the ball" comment in the first place ><

With the exception that you can't overclock them (unless you spend $600+ alone on the EVGA Classified SR-2 motherboard).

btw, Intel is rolling out new processors in January

codename Sandy Bridge