What to expect from a new build I'm planning

Question

I have a basic "opinion" or "guess" question, please.
I'm planning a new build at some point and have to make a decision on when to take the financial plunge. In a few months, funds will be better, but I can manage the cost now if the speed improvements will be worth it. Speed improvements mean time which means money.
I'm running a small business producing videos for ourselves for business presentations (marketing and fund-raising) using Premiere Pro, outputting to FLV and DVD.
My content is pretty simple: video footage (talking head) from a camcorder, with two more tracks for titles and Photoshop images, with dip-to-black transitions. Soon I'll have my video guru provide some 3D animations that will also be included.
Until now, I've been capturing my footage into an interlaced project where I cut the raw footage into usable pieces. Then, I output those pieces to AVI, which I then run through a routine in Virtual Dub with presets my guru provided me with to take care of noise reduction and deinterlacing. Then, I import that resultant AVI (or set of AVIs) to a progressive project where I finish my editing and add the additional tracks with the titles, images and transitions.
Then, I output that to AVI, and convert those AVIs to FLV and/or use Encore to create DVD images.
The main concern I have is the very long wait times when I output to AVI from Premiere, process with Virtual Dub, and output to DVD image from Encore. (Of course, reduction in any wait time adds up, too.)
So, I have to try to guess at what kind of time I'll save when doing those tasks (and across overall working time) once I build the new machine. That will help me decide on whether to build the new machine now or later, based on the financial criteria.
I currently own an HP workstation, but it will not support the new Fermie CUDA cards. I want to use a GTX-470 (or -480). This is the pivotal issue that requires I build a new machine. Until then, I’m not using the CS5 MPE-CUDA features. What I don't know is how much time it will really save me on those major time-consuming tasks when I do make the jump.
One important consideration may lie in the fact that, accoring to my video guru, one of the advantages of the way Premiere CS5 plays well together with the approved CUDA cards is that it does GPU-based deinterlacing. He's suggesting this should may save me the time of having to do it in Virtual Dub phase (I'm not sure what he suggests about the noise reduction -- I think he may have commented that it may no longer be unnecessary, though to me it has seemd to make a huge improvement).
(Note: I see there are still some bugs in CS5 that hamper the benefits for now. For instance, I've read that there's an issue with CS5 whereby it takes a long time to export to AVI, and that there's a compromise with DV on an external monitor, but I don't know that those are issues in my decision since the former is going to exist regardless of whether I do the new build and the latter probably doesn't even apply to me.)
Here are my two system configurations, the "before and after," that I want to compare or, rather, to please ask for some guesses about as to potential time savings. Maybe I should call them the "Current" and "New build."
CURRENT:
- HP z400 machine -- mid-tower (no room for cooling a Fermie card)
- CPU: Xeon quad-core 4-thread
- RAM: 8MB DDR2
- GPU: nVidia FX-580 (obviously won't support new benefits of CS5 the way the GTX-470/480 in the new build will)
- DRIVES: one HD for OS/apps, one HD for swap, and three HDs in a RAID-5 array for data
NEW BUILD:
- high-end full-tower case with plenty of cooling support
- MOBO: ASUS P6X58D
- CPU: i7 930 (maybe OCd a bit, or maybe 980x)
- RAM: 12GB DDR3 triple-channel
- GPU: nVidia GTX-470 (or maybe 480)
- DRIVES: either same as current system, or maybe going to five drives in a RAID-3 array for data
I'd be hugely grateful for any guesses as to how much time in the major encoding tasks (and in overall work time) the new build is likely to save me.
Thanks so much!
Jay

Answer 1

Bill Gehrke wrote:
Jay, I wonder about this statement of yours "I currently own an HP workstation, but it will not support the new Fermie CUDA cards". How did you come to that conclusion?
Hi Bill,
Well, I make that assertion after a huge amount of time lost trying to make it work.
(See my posts July 16 and July 18th in this thread for the longer version of my excursion: http://forums.adobe.com/message/2945538#2945538)
The GTX-470 calls for at least 550W of power, The HP z400 workstation comes with 475W and it's a proprietary power supply. It won't take a standard ATX PSU -- the screw holes won't line up and even its pin-out for the system power plug is custom.
Undaunted, I bought a Corsair HX750W power supply and placed it outside of the machine on the floor, and used it solely to power the GPU.
I put the GTX-470 in and left the case cover off while familiarizing myself with Windows 7 for a couple days, but when I came into the office the third say the machine was locked up and the GPU was scorching hot. All fans on all components seemed to be working fine.
(I also noticed that the onboard sound never installed and there was no sound, and that the Sound, video and game controllers section in Device Manager only had four instances of "NVIDIA High Definition Audio." HP tech support was at a loss. My video guru says those drivers are probably normal from the GTX-470 card, but nobody could explain why the mother board considered that a replacement for the onboard sound. We don't know if that was a sign of imperfect compatibility between the GPU and mother board, which seems feasible since I had already learned -- the hard way after days of work -- that the mother board was at least a little custom in that the PSU was custom even at the system plug.)
So, when I had come that mornign and found the machine locked and the GPU super hot, I expermimented by cooling the machine down with a huge 12" external fan, then rebooted. For the next fifteen hours I waited to see if it would again heat up and lock up (or was it "lock up then heat up"?) and put more load on it by playing an AVI in WMP full-screen a number of times. For those fifteen hours the system ran fine and GPU stayed somewhere between cool and only very moderately warm.
Nobody has had a reason why it had ended up with the machine locked and the GTX-470 resulted scorching hot.
Bad GPU? Insufficient cooling? (Which maybe caused the system board to lock down the machine... which caused it to keep the GPU going with insufficient fan power???) Incompatibility between the GPU and system board? (Which had caused it to lock up the GPU in "on" mode and thus get scorching hot?)
And the consensus among those who thought it was a cooling issue was "almost" unanimous in saying that just running it with the case cover on would not be enough to keep the GPU reliably below the necessary cooling threshold, especially since I hadn't even begun to put a real load on it (I hadn't even installed Premiere on the machine yet).
And, it seemed evident to me that trying to creatively pack the machine with fans and cooling was just not realistic. If it is, I'd like to know, since that would be a lot cheaper than building a $5,000 machine. Here's a picture of the machine with the GTX-470 in it: www.silver100.com/x/z400_GTX-470.JPG.
Of course, all the cooling in the world still wouldn't help if the problem was compatibility with the system board.
You'll notice I got no responses at that other thread when I asked what the "guess" was as to the cause. So, I figured that -- short of it being a bad GPU -- building a new machine was the only way to fix it if it was a cooling problem and the only way to fix it if it was a compatibility problem.
I'm sure anxious to hear your thoughts.
Thanks so much!
Jay