PC Buyer guide and advice.

[S3M]

Hi All, looking for some advice on a new PC.

Looking to use www.pcspecialist.co.uk to build myself a new PC.

While I'm not looking for a brand new top of the market spec PC I want something that can handle video capture without a problem.

What's the current range for good to mid range for Graphic Cards and Processors. Would pefer Intel and Radeon over AMD and Nvidia but please discuss.

Also looking for Window 7 over the giant mess that is Windows 8 but is there any disavantages? Think 8GB memory will be more than enough for the task I want it for. I have no plans to be playing system hog games like Battlefield 4.

[briareos_kerensky]

One thing I'll never understand is the Win8 hate. After the initial setup it's pretty much like Win7, only with different windows styling...anyway, what programs are you going to use? Intel+nVidia would be better if you use Adobe products as you'll gain CUDA support, OpenCL is still in its infancy in Adobeland. If you are going for a 3+ monitor setup AMD is easier and cheaper to setup (especially if you have monitors with Display Port), but if you are planning for uncompressed video capture, you'll better focus your money on CPU and HDDs more than the GPU...what's your budget, if you have any?

[S3M]

?500 to ?800 on the machine itself could push higher but then it would just be overkill I suspect, I will be recordng uncompressed video so I was looking at a 2TB minimum hard drive for video, with a smaller drive for the machine itself.

[briareos_kerensky]

For uncompressed video you might want to double that 2TB HDD and use the motherboard's own RAID controller for a 0 array, unless you go with SSDs, you'll get frame drops at 1080p59.4 or 1080p60.
That said I'd go with a i5 3570K, R7 260X, 16 or 32 GB of RAM, one SSD for OS and programs, the two aforementioned drives and a third, smallish drive for swap (something like 500GB but fast, like a low-end SSD or a WD Velociraptor).

[S3M]

Cheers briareos, will the model of motherboard make much effect?

As long as I'm not dropping something like 10 frames a second, the odd frame won't matter for now.

Big trouble I have at the minute is youtube's limit of 30fps which is causing a lot of the flashing and flickering effects in 2D game not to appear correctly.

[smouty]

The Nvidia 750Ti is meant to be amazing for the 60w power usage.

In Youtube you can play 60fps video using the HTML5 player and selecting 2x speed

[S3M]

Cheers for the tip smouty, I didn't know that will have a play around with HTML5 players when I get the new PC.

Anyone have any good recommendation on paid for video editiing software?

[briareos_kerensky]

Cheers briareos, will the model of motherboard make much effect?

Now that both Intel and AMD include a lot of functions in the chipset, no, not much. Maybe X79 platforms have a disadvantage in relying on an external USB 3 controller, but as long as you use the latest drivers, you won't have troubles. External disk controllers have more or less the same performance, I would concentrate on the disk itself.

Anyone have any good recommendation on paid for video editiing software?

I need Photoshop and Illustrator for other things, and as a logical step I went for the Creative Suite (steadily upgraded the CS2 Standard to CS5 Master, and upgraded it to CS6), therefore I use Premiere and After Effects. There are people thinking the Vegas is the best video-editing software ever produced, but when I tried it, it did everything that Premiere did (and certain things better), but never quite reached AE; it might have changed, but the level of interoperability between Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, and Audition is a huge plus, and I only have to manage one license that covers all programs I need.

[eastyy]

i used sony vegas pro

but i am not expert it was literally my first video editing i have ever done and it was simple for me to make a few youtube vids

i use amd at the moment and heard that there motherboards were more featured though that may have changed for the intel 87 series

[S3M]

Cheers chaps, currently I'm using Movie Maker XP on this machine but I've hit its limits and won't be using it when I change PC.

Asides from FRAPS are there any other decent Desktop recording programs?

[speedlolita]

MSI Afterburner is a decent free one, Dxtory is pretty nice too.

Generally I just stick FRAPS on for a quick video capture due to ease of use, the other two have many different options to configure.

[S3M]

Quick question for the OS with Windows 7 which would be better to go for the 32bit or 64bit version.

I thought the 32bit would have been phased out by now, is there much between them and any major disadvantages?

[speedlolita]

Definitely 64bit.

No question about it.

32bit only exists for legacy hardware.

[Duncan James Waugh]

Any 32bit OS limits your RAM to 4GB.

[charlesr]

Just get Win8. Just because it has Metro doesn't mean to say you have to use Metro.