This IS the Avid L2: Re: [Avid-L2] Spec'ing a new Z840

Thursday, August 31, 2017

Re: [Avid-L2] Spec'ing a new Z840 - typical ?'s

Caveat: These answers do not speak to Avid specifically, just editing and performance in general.

OS - Win 7 or Win 10? (can't say I like Win 10 but Jan 2020 isn't that far away for EOL of Win 7)

Enterprise seems generally comfortable with Win 10. Our Systems installers are now spacing Win 10 routinely. Assuming your apps are compatible, I would recommend win 10 on new hardware.

OS drive - SSD or PCIe SSD? Does a PCIe drive really offer value as an OS drive on an MC system vs an SSD?

SSD all the way. Not even a close call. Cost is the only advantage of HDD.

CPU's - Age old Core count vs clock speed question How is MC at multithreading now?

Both. ;) Everything about modern systems is multi-threaded. Even if a specific app or function is restricted to a single core, your overall performance is dramatically improved with multiple cores. Check benchmarks for the most cost effective combination. Generally more cores is the cheaper way to get performance.

RAID Internal - 8-12TB SATA RAID 5 (worth it vs external on a PCIe bus via Thunderbolt-2?)

No. Though it is nice to have decent internal storage in a pinch.

External RAID I/O - Thunderbolt-2 seems to be the best option these days

Subjective, but yes. However, RAID 5 is not the best choice for arrays over 5 discs, and not necessarily for any SSD raid because of the way RAIDs fail. Also consider software RAID rather than hardware RAID.

Graphics card - 8GB vs 16GB vs 24GB (how much GPU can/does Avid MC use? Likewise for Squeeze too)

It's an easy upgrade and an expensive waste if you buy to much. 8GB is more than sufficient for 4K editing. One cannot know that more would not accelerate specific apps or functions, current or future, without testing, BUT the main accelerator in a graphics card is the GPU not the RAM. Go for faster GPU over more RAM.

I'm interested in best all-around performance. Willing to spend a little extra as with each passing year life gets shorter and I don't need renders consuming any more of it than necessary.

Rendering is all about processing power. More and faster CPUs (and in some cases GPUs). But as with anything, it only needs to be fast enough. There is a point of diminishing returns. Only you can figure out where that is.

Cheers,

tod

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Posted by: hoplist@hillmanncarr.com

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