Help with new editor.....Windows 7 64-Bit Xeon 5520 processor 12 GB Memory.

Question

Hello, I have built a new system from scratch for our Creative Services Editor with the following:
1- ZALMAN PROFESSIONAL GS-1000-BK Black Computer Case Aluminum- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811235014
1- Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST3500320NS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148294
4- SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185
1- ASUS P6T7 WS Supercomputer "Ultimate Gamer" choose 3Way SLI + PhysX at Real X16 X58 CEB Intel Motherboard- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131390
2- CORSAIR DOMINATOR 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory (12 GB Total)- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145289
1- Intel Xeon E5520 Nehalem 2.26GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 80W Quad-Core Server Processor- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117185
1- PNY Quadro FX 4800 VCQFX4800-PCIE-PB Quadro FX 4800 1.5GB 384-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Supported Workstation Video Card- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133252
Ok, the system has some DVD burners and a huge 120 mm fan heat sink for the processor and a 850 watt power supply as well.
The OS 64-bit windows 7 is installed all by itself on the 500 GB Drive C.  I currently have the 4 1 TB samsungs on a Raid-0 for all project video files and other content.  After reading many of Harms posts I may just set them all up as stand alone drives and split things up a bit for performance.
CS5 runs well with the Mercury playback engine, and when importing normal DV video from DVCAM through a Blackmagic HD/SD-SDI Decklink card off of a DSR-1800 deck works fine.  The issue I am having is when we use still images, or like when we imported some Mac ProRess 422 footage, the system will scrub through it fine but when you try and play the timeline it freezes.  I did notice an error shows up in the lower right corner saying frames were dropped.
From everything I reaserched with this system purchase, having the Quadro FX 4800 was supposed to make everything run smooth and take out render times. This machine is supper fast for everything else but seems to have issues doing simple things with images that have been scaled in the effect controls.  If the footage is basic SD video edits no problem.  Still images are large sometimes, but nothing his old 2003 Pinicle Liquid can't handle after some render time.
If the GPU acceleration is on, and I play the timeline, few seconds and then stops.  If I turn off GPU, and hit enter to have it Render, it plays fine after Render is complete.  Seems like something is not feeding the GPU/CPU the data fast enough.
Any thoughts.  Is the Xeon not the right direction, should I swap for a Core i9?  Xeon rates really high on the CPU benchmark... Shows up as 8 cores due to hyperthreading.
Any idea's would be great,
Thank you,

Answer 1

Update:
     I swapped my processor with the i7-950 chip and even though the windows Experience Index went from 7.4 to 7.5 on the processor calculations per second.  My scores are Memory: 7.5, Graphics: 7.1 3D: 7.1 Primary hard disk performance is 5.9 making that the total score.
     I will run the benchmark again on the system tomorrow and post the results of a chip change.
     I have not changed the drive configuration or changed windows services yet.  I talked to black magic tech support and he said that for SD video I should be fine with 2 standard 7200 RPM drives.  He was surprised I was having the dropped frames with the 4 disk raid 0.  He said to test in another machine just to see if the card could be bad.
     I found a utility on the machine that is part of the black magic software that tests the hard drives.  Here are the results:
Boot drive.  It is a Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST3500320NS
Scratch drive Raid 0 array- 4- SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM
From the numbers it looks like the Raid 0 is giving much better performance over the single drive, but why am I still having the problems.  The dropped frames issue is still happening so I am going to try to move the black magic card to another PCI-e slot on the motherboard. I may have to try another brand of HD-SDI input/output card.
I am going to test the card in another editor that does not have an intel processor or near the specs of this system just to rule out the card or the hardware as I found this on Blackmagic website:
15 March 2010 — Number 193
Asus P6T series motherboards
The Asus P6T series of motherboards are currently incompatible with all x1 lane PCI Express products from Blackmagic Design. This includes the Intensity series cards as well as DeckLink SDI and DeckLink Studio. This incompatibility is being actively investigated but a possible resolution to the problem is currently unknown.
This incompatibility only affects x1 lane PCI Express cards from Blackmagic Design. Our x4 lane PCI Express products work fine with the Asus P6T series of motherboards and these include the DeckLink HD Extreme and Multibridge family of capture devices.
UPDATE: We have been informed that this issue has been resolved with the latest BIOS update from Asus. If you're running into issues with our x1 lane PCI Express cards and your motherboard, please check the manufacturers' website to see if there's a newer version of BIOS that you can use.
Back... 
Now, I have the Asus P6T7 WS Supercomputer.  I did do a Bios Update today but do not know if the issue refered to in this support notice also applies to my model of motherboard.  The tech at BlackMagic did not seem to know about this issue.
Does anyone have any other idea's of what I could be missing?  If it turns out to be an incompatible motherboard I do not have a problem with changing it.  I would like to know if anyone is having a successful setup using the Decklink SDI with CS5 without any issues of dropped frames on items that are GPU rendered.  If I turn off the GPU acceleration and have to hit enter for render it isn't an issue as the "preview files" created when rendered are smaller and easier to play from the hard drives.
The timelines that have issues are using still images of 3-4 megapixel sizes that are being shrunk and moved on the timeline to fit in NTSC 4:3 output.  I could probably stop the issue if I resized the pictures to 1 Megapixel or smaller and used the smaller version but the yellow bar is telling me it can do that conversion on the fly.  Why drop frames??????
Thanks, (sorry for the long post)