CPU - the fastest you can afford.
GPU - just a guess here, but an nVidia card with lots of CUDA cores.
RAM - as much as your motherboard will support.

The GPU is just a guess but since I am also using FX plug-ins that already use the GPU CUDA cores, that's a safe bet. (I have had nothing but issues with ATI/Radeon cards).

I still don't think that GPU performance will be all the panacea you hope for. I just don't think that the architecture of Vegas will make that an easy or painless rewrite. I hope I am wrong and am willing to admit it if I am. I will be building a new PC to use with V11, so we'll see what the GPU support really adds.

>>I will be building a new PC to use with V11,

Me too. Just starting to gather my spec... Don't think I want to spend more than $300-350 for the CPU .. or $200 for the video card .. I"ll upgrade to V11 at release but wait on the new build until I get some "real world" opinion on the best value CPU and Video card.

An impossible question. "Best" depends entirely upon your application. Don't buy more than you need because prices drop quickly--unless you can justify it in terms of making money for you. In general, I choose the highest performing CPU but where the price point doesn't jump exponentially compared to the next lower CPU. Don't skimp on RAM, but I'm not sold on maxxing out RAM unless your application needs it or RAM prices are agreeable. 6 or 8 GB goes a long way. KNOW why if you are buying more.

Your disk/storage subsystem is likely more important than the GPU. I'd spend on a SSD for the system drive before outlaying for a top of the line GPU. Next, install at least one large drive that is separate from the SSD for data storage--I move the Documents folder to this drive. Utilize RAID1(mirror) for this volume if your data and uptime is critical (you still need regular backups and so you'll need at least TWO additional removable drives for backup that can store your entire data volume and ALSO have room for a system image as well). You might want additional volumes if you are editing multiple high bandwidth video streams. You can install a separate volume for temp storage or use your SSD if it is large enough.

Intel chipsets offer very good RAID for the price. Check that the motherboard you purchase has enough SATA ports for all the storage you specify. DO NOT buy a budget RAID card. The 3-Ware card I originally purchased (which isn't exactly 'budget') is slower than the Intel chipset RAID on my motherboard. Thoroughly research this stuff and don't waste money either.

Your storage subsystem likely will be the MOST EXPENSIVE outlay, and sadly, it is hardly ever mentioned when people talk specs!

ALL OF THE ABOVE will pay off for every other use of your computer. Your GPU will not. Think about this when deciding how to apportion your budget.

For the GPU, consider about how much money is worthwhile. Prices and performance change rapidly and it might make more sense to replace your GPU in 18 months than to spend double just to get one model better. Same for the CPU. Skip a couple iterations in between.

Finally, put in a solid power supply. Again, don't go crazy. Calculate the watts you need and all the connectors required my your motherboard and GPU. I like PC Power & Cooling. They have a great warranty and ship same day for RMAs, even before receiving your return. Buy something solid, but not all "blinged" out for the gawdy gamer crowd.

If your motherboard allows, populate half the memory slots and you can add more later. However, many Intel designs require a minimum number of slots for best performance. In the case of the i7 965 that number is three, but many boards offer four slots. It actually HURTS performance to populate all four. Research all these sorts of details. It takes many hours to spec out a machine properly.

After all that, I threw all the guys of my main machine into a crap-ass case. I tote it around and it's all beat up now. Who cares! That's the way a working machine should be. It actually got stolen out of my truck once and I bought it back from the thieves for $700 (a long story). Because of my beat up case it looked like an average machine! Little did they know there is $5,000 of parts in that box.

Finally, if you stuff a box full of all that weight, PLEASE install all the front/rear cooling fan options available for your case. A great fan which is very quite is the Noctua (http://www.noctua.at/) with "vortex control" notches. Mine have been running for a couple years and are still quiet. Some people find the brown Noctua color ugly. Who cares? I don't. Noctua sells good CPU heatsinks as well. Don't use the OEM heat sink.

I may be doing a new build again soon as well and it would be very nice if SCS could chime in and put up some component specs that work well with their program.

I would love to know what their developers are using.....

Ted

Ted,

I've never seen a system that doesn't run Vegas. There's no magic. Buy decent stuff. The specs you need depend on your application. I can't stress that enough. There's miles of difference in the way different users use Vegas and there is no simple "good/better/best" spec. You (or a consultant) should design a system that meets your needs.

in my experience with other GPU based tools, video memory is an important thing as well. So you may want to look into the quadro cards with fermi architecture as they have a decent qty of cuda cores and higher video memory. Otherwise you may want to dole out for a higher video memory option. (2 or 3 GB of onboard Video memory and that would be per GPU in the case of a 590 where it's really 2 580's sli'd on the same board). For that matter, we don't know if SLI will help in this case ( in my other cuda stuff, SLI doesn't help and has to be disabled for best results ). All of that of course, is assuming ( and probably rightly so ) that it's Cuda enabled processing, and not just some form of Open GL.

Dave

I just upgrading (building) a new system now. While this is a highly subjective topic, here's what I ordered.

Asus P8Z68 M-Pro motherboard - I like Asus boards, I like small form factors, I'm going to use the 3000 series graphics in the CPU (see below). If the GPU abilities of Vegas 11 deliver as promised I'll add a discrete card later.

i2500k processor and Noctua NH U12P SE2 CPU cooler - Dead quiet cooler and I'll overclock to a solid 4GHz or so.

Seasonic SS 400FL - fanless 400W power supply, totally silent and my systems never draw more than 200W under full load since I don't have monster graphics adapters. Definitely don't skimp here!

GSkill 2x4GB memory compatible with this board. Cheaper CAS 9 sticks running at 1600MHz since that's where the sweet spot is price/performance wise with Sandy Bridge.

Intel 320 120GB SSD - Yeah it's not the fastest out there but it probably is the most reliable

WD 2TB "work drive" - Speeds not so important as I don't work with uncompressed video.

Win 7 Ultimate

That's about it. Lean, mean, and silent. I've found that if I keep it simple it has a good chance of being rock solid. Eventually I'll probably upgrade to the 2600k with hyperthreading when the upcoming 2700k drives down the 2600k's price. But for now I'll save the $100.

Hulk, That sounds like a great system! I'd add an optical drive (you probably have one and didn't list it) and a removable drive enclosure for backups.

Kevin:
I almost agree with most of your specs, but for anything but uncompressed HD, your SATA drives would be just fine. RAID is simply not needed. Storage is one of the cheapest parts of the system with 2Tb drives going for $60.

RAM - with Vegas, 16GB of RAM give a lot of RAM preview space.

Thanks Kevin,

Forgot to mention the LG BD optical drive. For back-ups I generally just move projects/files through my network to another computer. Yeah it's slow but in this case it's kind of a good thing, during the transfer you can keep working without slowing down the editing computer since the transfer is so slow. If need be I have a few USB drives around for external transfers. I'm waiting for some USB3 external drives to make those backups quicker.

I'm waiting for all the parts now. I guess I'm kind of a geek as I like to sit down in front of the TV and have an evening building the new computer with the components I selected and assembled just so... cable management and all.

Mark

I would expect to have to get a higher powered PSU at some point. I'm running dual GTX260's and that made me have to upgrade my PSU. I went with a Seasonic 750 gold or something like that. it's a bit pricey but I had some issues that I am suspect of the power supply having caused in an old system, so I didn't want to skimp on quality there. Plus, PSU's can cause so many problems if they're cheap, I just didn't want to have that mess to deal with.

I agree that it's really important to buy a quality power supply. But I also think it's important to try and match your poiwer supply with the requirements of your system. Idling a 800W power supply to power a system only drawing 150W under load puts the power supply in an operating mode where it isn't very efficient. I'll check my current build with kill-a-watt under load when I've build it but I bet it will come up under 200W with all four cores fully loaded. Which would put my PS in the sweet spot efficiency wise.

And when you check with kill-a-watt remember to multiply the number by about 85% since that's about the efficiency of most power supplies, 15% loss. So 200W draw from the wall would be more like 170W to the computer and 30W of heat and other losses.

Of course heavy duty graphics cards can draw quite a bit of power but as I wrote above we don't have any idea of how Vegas will use them. Will it hit them hard like a game and provide a great editing experience or just barely tap into the GPU and increase performance a bit? Will Vegas use the GPU and CPU for maximum performance or if a GPU is detected offload most of the work to that and not the CPU, thus making a fast CPU largely irrelevant?

Let's hope that Vegas will use both the CPU and all GPU resources available for the best possible editing experience.

- Mark

If you are actually serious about video nVidia make cards specifically for our market. Based on other Vegas users experience with the current level of GPU acceleration and from users of other GPU muching NLE's the Quadra cards are the go. The Quadra 2000 or 4000 cards look like the best bet especially if you're using decent monitors.

Bob.

Steve Mann:

>>"for anything but uncompressed HD, your SATA drives would be just fine. RAID is simply not needed."

Then we are in agreement as I did not suggest RAID for video storage, only for OS speed. Alternatively, specifying a single SSD or hybrid or 10K rpm drive for the OS is a good choice. It all depends on budget and need.

The point I should have been more clear on is you should have a small, fast disk volume for your OS that is optimized for lots of small random access. You should have a SEPARATE large volume for data so that OS storage does not get fragmented across a huge 2 TB drive.

For the most simple desktop system I would go ahead with a single drive, but I would still partition the OS separately from data: (1) The first partition is the fastest part of a hard drive; (2) Keeping the OS tight reduces long seek times which happen when OS data gets fragmented across a large drive.

Personally, I avoid $60 consumer drives in favor of enterprise drives which are $200 to $300. I would consider cheap consumer drives for mass storage situations in a redundant RAID6 array, but downtime and 2 TB is way too much to lose on a cheap drive (for my use). Enterprise drives are also faster (and use more power).

All this discussion gets back to my main point: You must design for your application and budget. I suggest a minimum two drive setup for a "good" performing system. On a high performance system, I definitely suggest RAID1 for the OS or a fast SSD or both. I would recommend against consumer drives on a workhorse machine, but I'm okay with using them for field storage or backup where they are used less intensively.

This is why I feel a storage subsystem is not (and should not) be cheap. But, again, it depends on the application.