DV Dream Machine 2003

By Vincent Himpe

Well it's been a while now, almost a year has passed since the original article was in the start block. Pentium IV 2GHz and 2.4 GHz are common cpu's now, 120 Gbyte disks are starting to be the norm and Windows XP is commonplace.

Time to look at the state of the art technology and its application in the ultimate DV dream machine 2003 style.

Cases and add-ons

Well let's start at the beginning. The case, but what could possible be told a bout a computer case. Well actually quit a lot. Cases are available in all kinds of formats and color , but we are more interested in the technicalities. A couple of important consideration have to be made , such as the available power , cooling and number of available bays. After all this computer case will probably survive the lifetime of whatever ends up inside.

Practical considerations:

The total available power. Here the rule is the more the better. After all this computer might harbor more gear than you average machine. A supply of 400 watts is nice but if you can get more do so.

Amount of drive bays. And this is not necessarily what is visible from the outside. Sure you will most likely use 2 big drives ( DVD player / CD recorder or even a DVD recorder ) and at least a small one (floppy) possibly more ( maybe a ZIP drive or a media card reader )

The available internal drive bay is also important . A typical video editing station will hold multiple hard disks. Check also of these drive holders can be fitted with a fan. Today high rpm drives run pretty hot , and cooling them increases their performance. Thermal fluctuation cause drives to have to re-calibrate their head amplifier and servo systems. When kept cool by using a fan, this is less frequently needed. The calibration causes interruptions in the disk access. For most applications this is not noticeable , but when capturing video streams you might experience the so called frame drop. After all the video stream does not wait, your computer had better be ready for it.

And last but not least the cosmetic appearance. Today's cases are available in a multitude of colors and shapes. Get rid of that dull gray case and go for a screaming red or ocean blue box, or how about Black magic ?

May of these come with a couple of front mounted USB and firewire connector. This is great since now you no longer have to crawl around the back when you want to attach your camcorder or other peripheral.If not you can always buy a small plug in panel that brings these controls to the front. Some of these panels feature a built in memory card reader as well. If you are going to do any digital photography you might want to have a look at those things as well.

CPU power

What long has been kept for impossibly has happened. The GHz barrier has been broken and the CPU's are gaining more speed month after month.

The last year the pace has been increased dramatically.The step from 1 GHz to 3 GHz has happened over a timeframe of merely 14 months. The last speed tripling, from the original XT at 4.77 MHz to the AT at 12 MHz, took 4 years . Intel has demonstrated in December 2002 that it is possible to clock a single flipflop at well over 400Ghz. so the future holds promising times.

But today you have to choose a CPU. So where do you look ?

The big question is what do you need and what are you willing to spend. he difference between a 2.4GHz and a 2.6 GHZ is only 8but there is a substantial price increase.

Below i plotted the speed to price ratio of a number of Intel CPU/s ( source newegg.com)

The prices of the CPU's are in a downward spiral.

The CPU you buy today may drop tens of dollars over the next month, making you wish that you ha waited.

But if you continue waiting you will never get your machine.

The big difference between the 3GHz and the 3.06Ghz is cause by the FSB speed. the 3GHz has a 800MHz front side bus while the other is 'only' 533MHz. So here a different factor comes into play.

My advice would be to stay away form the top notch cpu's. Get one that is 2 or 3steps below the most expensive one. In this case this would be the 2.66 o 2.8 GHz. Needless to say that of course the motherboard and chipset needs to be adapted to accommodate for these hi-power engines.

Memory

One criteria to select a Motherboard is the kind of memory you are going to use For these hi speed workhorse you will probably need DDR at 333MHz. If you want even faster performance the only option is to move to the hyper-performant,but expensive, Rambus memory. Some chipsets also support the so called interleaving of memory. There you install the memory in pairs. Data is alternately stored in one or the other. That way the memory bus transfer rate doubles. Add that to 32 bit Rambus and you can obtain a whopping 3 Gbyte / second transfer rate.

DDR memory at 333MHz

32 bit wide Rambus memory at 1600 MHz

The question is do you need it ? The answer most likely .. no DD at 333 is already pretty fast. You are better of cramming more memory in than putting faster memory in ( unless of course you pack the money to afford both ). Today's video editing tools like Adobe Premiere can render to ram. That improves the preview performance big time. The more memory the longer previews can be rendered to ram

Motherboard

Now that you have decided on the CPU and memory type you can have a look at what motherboard you want to put all of this on. Of course the first thing you need to look for is if the motherboard supports your particular choice of memory and CPU. Once you isolated the motherboards fit for the CPU of choice, you can look for what other goodies they have on board

Possible features: