Dual Xeon for video rendering?
 

A friend has an old windows server, dual xeon 2.4Ghz with 1gb ram...
HP Xeon proliant 370 or something like that.

I've been meaning to buy a new computer to render videos for a while now, and I'd get this for a 'nice' price. Not cheap... But I was wondering whether I should buy this (and I'd have to buy a monitor for it), to render movies.. or just buy a new P4, celeron or something for the same price.

Also, will adding say 4gb of ram increase the rendering performance, or will 1gb be just fine? I want to render .wmv's..and currently I only have 2 computers, and 1 is needed for photoshop etc, and the other is a laptop.. both are rendering at obnoxiously slow rate.

Is the xeon even suitable for rendering, or anything? I have 0-knowledge on 2 processor shit... help. :)

Xeon rules for video and other highCPU load applications.
Buy more ram, I would not use less than 4 gig as a total (use kingston - www.kingston.com )

I have two dual CPU IBM M-pro's with dual 3.0 Ghz 1mb cache running descret Edit + combustion with a matrox boardset (people rent them from me, I dont use them myself anymore)

Thanks, gotta look into that then :)

depending on the software you use the fact that you are using dual xeons may help. if the software handles dual procs well you are good.

when you do capturing you have to have good vid card too.

um...if you need to ask whether or not to get a dual xeon for video rendering, then you don't deserve a dual xeon for video redndering

How should I know? I hope you now feel intellectually superior and l33t that you know more about video rendering than I do. Maybe I should look down on people who ask 'silly' photoshop questions.. if you don't know this-and-that about photoshop, you don't deserve to own it. I never figured you'd be such an arrogant fuck.:2 cents:

What about the new Conroe Dual Core CPU:s, wouldnt they do the job just as well?

dude, it was sarcasm, relax

in depends on your needs.....

if you feel you need to upgrade... upgrade..........

Play nice with TGF.
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/s...eneration.html

Looks like it would work great for video.

Dual Xeons are just fine for video rendering. Plus you can multitask while it renders.

I would get the 4gigs as well, but funny enough Windows usually only recognizes 3 of them and most home video applications can only use 2 gigs, but having the extra RAM when softwares will be able to use them can't hurt.

ha, yeah, I thought he would catch the sarcasm...sorry, I think anyone deserves to have whatever they want, I really am not so l33t that I think only super techies deserve super techy toys

regardless, yes, get the dual xeon...they rule, I have had mine for a whlie and about to upgrade, you CAN NOT beat the processing time...well, you probably could, but for WAY more money than you are going to pay for the machine you mentioned

BTW, pricewatch has some KILLER deals on LCD Flatscreens right now

how much are you paying for it?

Unfortunately sarcasm doesn't come through the net really well without
a) knowing the other person well
b) use of smilies :P

under a grand without monitor

I have 3 dual xeon machines i use for video editing, dvd ripping and encoding. If your doing alot of encoding/ripping you will need the Xeons, they just handle the load better.

My xeons are faster than anything else.

That will out preform a pent or celeron(pos) by a HUGE HUGE HUGE amount

As others said, upgrade the ram to 3-5gigs or so

You will have a very nice fast machine

athlon dual cores for me.. im not an intel user...

haha, damn, you are right.....I always forget to use smilies hahah :thumbsup

good rule of thumb with me on gfy though, i am usually being sarcastic 90% of the time

increasing the ram isnt going to speed up your encode time. i currently have 6 dual core 3.4s with 1gb each and 6 with 2gb plus 1 with 4gb, the difference in encode time is marginal (seconds)

ive tested on p4 and celeron d and xeons with the same results.

buy fast ram, not more ram, a new dual core cpu with ddr2 will be cheaper and faster than a 2.4 xeon

also why buy a monitor? get a KVM switch

Totally agree, Kingston RAM rocks

I'm in europe.. can't get a dual xeon for nearly $900 (USD) here... the cheapest are around 1000 euro... What I looked at new was 1700euro.

use cleaner xl for encoding, it uses both cpus. the xeons are fine, 2gb ram should do it. my video machine has 4, recognizes only 3 and uses most of the time not more than 1gb

a good video card helps a lot when capturing, but you don't need a high end gamer card, the 3D abilities are useless for this anyways.

i have a dual xeon 3.4ghz 2 gigs of ram, 5 tera bytes of storage. the rendering drives are raid 0 10,000 rpm segates and the storage drives are raid 5. All drives and processors are connected to the liquid cooling system.
it renders pretty fast. whats cool is you can set the affinity for each processor, as windows will recognize 4 logical processors due to the hyperthreading.

duke

nice setup ..... :)