hi, i am currently switching over to using AMD A10 6800k line of cpu with integrated gpu. i use 2133 hz memory clocked to 2400hz. in this way the gpu has maximum capacity and outperforms intel i7 with integrated gpu.

running cineform benchmark i get 40 fps ...

benefit is that vmix depends on this combination of cpu and gpu and you keep one pci e slot free. and the amd A10 is a bargan!

my top system uses two ssd in raid. other systems just ons ssd.

i have 4 bm cards 2intensities and 2mini rec and one 1vga hdmi capture card. also two internet connections, i don't use wifi on card, if i need it i take my own wifi switch.

my smaller systems have two pci e cards. i can use a bm shuttle if i need more input or an output.

vmix is not cpu heavy, i need maximum cpu mostly for streaming using fmle at high res.

i am testing my set down volting the cpu ( from a standard 1.4 volt i bring it down to 1.25 ) which reduces heat. the 6800 k i clock to 4.4 ghz.

this way i am able to build reliable systems for about 500 to 800 euro's in a small portable case and it will do exactly what i need it to do.

the trick is to smooth things out and match inputs outputs streaming etc. in case of heavy use of clips etc, just use one system for recording switching and output and one system for streaming.

i record in 720 p mpeg and can stream to 1080p25 using this setup, for long periods, no bsod or dropouts. cpu at about 80% max with temp around 40C.

good luck
stefan

As always, we made countless lists before buying anything, and thought we would be able to buy our hardware faster then the money actually came in.

Now it's finally on our account, so we're going to spend it :)

I'm now finetuning the specs of the pc, it currently looks like this:


Motherboard: Asus X99-E WS
CPU: Intel Core i7-5930K
Ram: 16 gb DDR4
GPU: XFX R9 290X 8GB Double Dissipation Edition
C drive: 60 gb SSD
Data drive: 1TB SSD


Still I'm not sure if I'm doing it right here. I've been looking everywhere, but i can't find any decent information about the best builds.

What I know for sure is that we need a 40 lanes cpu, so we can put the maximum of capture cards (We plan to use 6/7 slots for capture cards, eventually being able to use 24 HD inputs or 6x 4K inputs).

I found somewhere that Martin mentioned video memory is important, so I maxed that out with the R9 290x with 8GB of video memory. Not sure about the AMD vs nvidia thing, but both clockspeed and video memory should be amongst the best. I don't really care about heat or power consumption, so AMD looks like good choice.

Since vmix doesn't rely on cuda, I thought i could try it with AMD and max out the video memory. On the other hand, I never saw anyone talk about using an AMD card here, is there a good reason for this?

The motherboard looks like a good choice: it's asus, so it has a great bios, and 7 pcie gen 3 slots + the X99 chipset seem to be a badass combination to maximise the output of the system.

For the drives I chose just the cheapest SSD's, since we just use them right now to record in 50 mbit mpeg. If ever needed, we can always put some in raid for 4K video or multicorder stuff, but that's not needed (yet).

Right now we have one Yuan 4x sdi card, and a few intensity pro's that we use for component video capturing. We plan to scale up the system with more sdi connections, but only slowly, since we only have 8 camera's at the moment. For me the most important factor is scalability, if we would ever need to use more camera's, I want the system to scale without having to replace the core components.

Since it's a lot of money to spend on hardware, I wanted to check a last time on the forum here. We're going to build the pc in cooperation with a local pc shop, that also builds supercomputers for the university of Antwerp and builds some pc's for national television. The problem is they never really built a pc for software switching, so it might be some trial and error here. If anyone has some final advise, please let me know, it might save some headaches ;)

I will post some pictures when it's ready, since it will be a very special build in a huge peli-case. All screens, audio mixer,.. will be built in, so we just have to connect the camera's, network and 1 power cable.

Thanks!