Holee Smokes!

Spot|DSE wrote on 6/8/2005, 2:36 PM

Just finished building an AMD dual 275 machine on a Tyan K8WE mobo, 3 Barracuda 250's, with a PATA boot drive. 4 gigs of RAM running WinXP 32.

This mama screams!
I captured a fairly lengthy stream of HDV, and dropped it on the timeline to test speed, and thought I'd made an error when the m2t file played back at a solid 29.97fps. Rendering out to 4:2:2 and DV simultaneously, this thing is moving at a fast clip. I'm rendering 9 hours of HDV at one shot, and started the render early this afternoon so it would be done by late tonight. It's moving along so fast, I suspect it will be done with both renders in a quarter the expected time.
The power of the new AMD multicores is pretty obvious at this point. This is the first AMD machine I've worked with deeply in over a year. The motherboard has some configuration issues, but after spending several hours with it and the Tyan tech support yesterday, it's been kicking up dust very nicely.
So, if you're looking into a new system for HDV....I'm bowled over.
We bought most of the parts from Colfax International, I'm not associated with them in any way, except they were recommended to us by a person at AMD. (oddly enough, Intel recommended them as well)

Comments

winrockpost wrote on 6/8/2005, 2:48 PM

Jealous, killer system , have you ran the render test veg ?

Marco. wrote on 6/8/2005, 2:57 PM

>> I captured a fairly lengthy stream of HDV, and dropped it on the timeline to test speed,
>> and thought I'd made an error when the m2t file played back at a solid 29.97fps

Sounds very interesting. Having full 29,97 fps playback rate on preview - which kind of preview did you use and which setting (Preview (Auto) / Best (Full) ...) and preview resolution/size did you use?

Marco

BrianStanding wrote on 6/8/2005, 3:00 PM

Dare I ask the cost of this monster?

Yoyodyne wrote on 6/8/2005, 3:12 PM

I am looking for a new HDV system!

Thanks for the update Spot - would love to hear how the render test goes. So this system has two dual core processors? I'm not sure if I understood that part correctly...

Spot|DSE wrote on 6/8/2005, 3:15 PM

1. Haven't run the render test, I need to hit FedEx with this by tomorrow, so for the moment, playing is out of the question. I only wish I could.
2. Preview at Preview/Full
3. 1080 60i.

This is the machine being used on the HDV Solutions tour. We thought we'd have parts 3 weeks ago, but apparently there has been a shortage of this mobo and these procs, so we didn't get it built up til yesterday. Still transferring data, and will likely be doing so. Oddly enough, since my last post, it reached the 90% render mark, on my dual 3.6HT, similar media renders are at 38%, it was started shortly after the other machine. If this keeps up, I might just become an AMD fan! (again, I was AMD fan 4 years back)

epirb wrote on 6/8/2005, 3:34 PM

FED EX ehh?
so thats the grand prize in the raffle!?
I WON I WON !!!

(huh? what?....ohh sorry just woke up, was I talking in my sleep again?)

rmack350 wrote on 6/8/2005, 4:00 PM

two dual core opterons. The 275s are the top of that line and support dual processors on a board.

Spot, how's the fan noise? Does it purr or is it a hovercraft?

Rob Mack

Guy Bruner wrote on 6/8/2005, 5:32 PM

By a coincidence, I ran the configurator at the Colfax site today after reading that Supermicro was now supporting AMD (they have been exclusively Intel). The dual 275s with 4 Gig of DDR3200 ram are over $5000 without hard drives, Firewire or a display card. Since I already have those, I didn't bother adding them in ;-). Also, that's without the dual license that MS will require for having two CPUs. And, since Spot was running WinXP32, it is probably not as fast as WinXP64 and maybe didn't make use of the extra dual core CPU.

I have been AMD for over 7 years now and haven't been disappointed. I'm looking forward to building an 64X2 screamer by the end of the year. However, software has to catch up before it will be reasonable to run a dual 64X2 system.

johnmeyer wrote on 6/8/2005, 5:54 PM

Since it will be awhile before I do HDV, I'd be interested, when you get to it, what sort of benchmarks you get on old-fashioned SD. For instance, if you do something like a simple MPEG-2 encode from a NTSC 4:3 DV AVI file (no rendering, just encoding), using the Vegas 6.0b engine (updated with the "new" MPEG-2 encoder in DVDA 3.0a), how much faster than real-time does it render using the standard NTSC 4:3 DVD Architect Template?

On my old 2.8 GHz "clunker" (I never thought of calling it that until I read your post), I am almost exactly at real-time, with 6.0b.

apit34356 wrote on 6/8/2005, 7:04 PM

Spot, could you post some of the issues and solutions with the mobo running dual AMD 275 during the built? thank you in advance.

ken c wrote on 6/8/2005, 7:47 PM

Congrats on the new machine, Spot....! sounds like a blast.... it's interesting to see how far ahead of me you are w/everything.. gives me something to look forward to, to learn from you as you blaze the trail w/HD and fast pcs...

still learning...

ken

Spot|DSE wrote on 6/8/2005, 7:50 PM

ALL of the issues that I've experienced were related to setting up the SATA. The BIOS won't allow the controller to boot a SATA drive separate from the SATA raid. To accomplish that, you'd want to buy a TekRam or Rocket or similar, to control the SATA Raid, and then use the onboard controller to boot.
The only other issue, is the design of the MOBO is sorta stupid. 2 SATA controllers are next to each other and easy to reach. The other 2 are stacked, and fit right up against the edge of virtually every case made. So, you either get a special case, or cut a standard case.
Get a monster powersupply. These things are power hungry.
There were a couple USB config probs, but this is a beta bios from what I was told. They sent me a new one from Tyan yesterday, and it seems to be working great. There are some odd settings in the Bios, related to AMD, but the folks at Tyan said that would be upgraded shortly. All in all, it wasn't much different than configuring every other system, except for the beta bios. I used an Antec 105 case, and with the bigger bearing fans, it runs very quietly.

rmack350 wrote on 6/8/2005, 9:20 PM

Noise was the issue I was most curious about.

When we first got an 844 at work it was in an XW8000 which was too loud to work near. Then we added a RAID array of something like 12 or 16 disks and that was too loud to be in the same room with.

In the end we had to buy a Noren rack to put the whole assembly into. Now it's quiet except for the cursing when the 844 gets fouled up.

Rob Mack

Spot|DSE wrote on 6/8/2005, 9:27 PM

Ooohhhh! A Noren.
Nope this thing runs really quiet. I spent several hours on speaker phone with the speaker right next to it, and the tech team couldn't hear it at all. It's quite quiet. But to have a Noren! Even to have the space for one....would be nice

Wolfgang S. wrote on 6/9/2005, 3:27 AM

That are great news. I hated to learn that on my P4 3.2 GHz playback of native m2t material is not possible with full preview quality.

Orcatek wrote on 6/9/2005, 5:35 AM

Extra MS license(guy)? Std license supports 2 cpu's, and last I read MS treats dual cores as a single for licensing.

WINXP64 would be a cool test to run.

Just think, in a year it may be cheap enough for it to makes sense for all of us to buy. Now you need to have a serious need - but it would be fun.

rmack350 wrote on 6/9/2005, 8:21 AM

Heh!

They had to buy two. But worse yet, my employer's office space is a beautiful converted attic at the top of a three floor Victorian. Sidewalk to office is actually 5 floors.

If you've ever had to move something big up the stairs of a Vic you should be horrified right now.

The first unit was brought up by some fairly green movers. The second, we hired some piano movers who got the thing up here lickety-split.

It's a big open floor plan with 4 edit stations and 4 general workstations. Not very good for audio work even if the equipment is quiet. This gear was stopping all 6 of us from working.

The Norens work well here in San Francisco, where the air is usually cool. These boxes are essentially giant heat-pipe systems. They're passive and need to be in a fairly cool environment. They'll never be cooler inside than the ambient temp is outside.

If you ever get one try to make sure the wheels are big and beefy. Our first one had casters that were too small and wouldn't rotate. They also tended to sink into our softwood floor. Once these things are loaded you don't want to have to change the wheels.

Rob Mack

RBartlett wrote on 6/9/2005, 8:56 AM

A sample quote

Price appears to be in the sub $4k bracket for the main items (especially for someone who already owns at least some of the parts not listed:

Motherboard is US$555, 2GB DRAM is US$173 (Corsair 400MHz - 2 slithers)
2x CPUs are US$2800 2.2GHz X2 Opteron 275

plus case, plus server class PSU for Tyan, plus gfx (if SLI, plus adapter). )

I knew this was going to be a good year for video workstations! It seems that AMD are the ones that "can-do" this season. Shame about the CPU price for early adopters.

My money (if I had some) would be on the equivalent class of technology attending to the gamer market, ie something less than the 2xx Opteron. The dual chip CPU is wonderful but probably not cost effective considering the gain for the cost against a similar X2 core uni-chip motherboard with everything else equal. Chances are the gamer PC will support DDR2 or QDR memory before the next server class machines are updated. We'll see how the value pans out and how Vegas6 and render-farms fit into it all.

Wonderful post though.

rmack350 wrote on 6/9/2005, 10:21 AM

What you're getting here is a quasi 4 cpu system. You won't be able to get that with the plain X2. As far as DDR2 goes, the integrated memory controller on the Ath64 or Opteron only supports DDR1. You won't see DDR2 on AMD 'till next year because the memory controller is on the cpu.

For anything greater than 3 GB of memory you should be running win64. You can install 4gb under win32 but other devices will use up some of the address space that the last 1GB would need-so some of it will go unused.

It sounds like a great system, regardless of the NLE you're using. Best of all, Apple won't be using the Opterons. Hah!

Rob Mack

Yoyodyne wrote on 6/9/2005, 11:06 AM

Oh man - this sounds great! kind of a bummer the chips are so spendy but if you figure your really getting two for that price it's not so bad. I know I should wait but I don't think I can!

Thanks for all this info guys,

Yoyodyne

GlennChan wrote on 6/9/2005, 4:23 PM

can we get a rendertest.veg result pretty please? I'm sure it'll take less than a minute.

Spot|DSE wrote on 6/9/2005, 4:27 PM

After loading roughly 400 gig of HD on the machine, it definitely has slowed down significantly, so it's a good time to play/test. I'll run the rendertest after I'm finished transferring media. First things first. :-)
m2t playback is now at the expected range of 20fps or so. Uncompressed HD is about the same.
BTW, I think I mentioned before, this is the machine that will be accompanying us on the HDV Solutions tour, for those who will be stopping by.

Spot|DSE wrote on 6/10/2005, 8:18 AM

Render time of the *new* render test (created for Vegas 5 w/3D stuff) is coming in at 2:01

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 6/10/2005, 8:47 AM

not to be a nit pick, but would this be at good, or best?

Dave