Thread: Help choosing CPU setup

I've got a budget of $4k-$5k for a video editing setup (premier, pinnacle studio, etc) and I need to stick with HP. I decided on an xw8600 and am trying to decide what cpu(s) I should go with.

My options:

• A single, quad xeon, with all around high specs (like the X5492 with 3.4ghz 12M/1600 or similar),
• Dual, lower spec'd, quad core xeons (like dual E5240 with 3.0ghz 6M/1333).
• Dual quad core cpus with lower clock speeds but more cache (such as dual E5420 with 2.5ghz 12M/1333 or maybe dual E5430 with 2.66ghz 12M/1333).

Basically, I need to know, for video editing, what is more important: cache and FSB, number of total cores, or raw clock speed?

What do you suggest? Thank you!

cores are good for rendering, the raw clock speed will be the fastest at rendering and generaly everthing, apparently the bigger the cache the better, anything there is fine, the cpu i work with has a 2mb cache and i've never had problems.

The heigher the FSB, the faster the componants in the computer will run at.

Someone on another forum suggested I go with an E5500-series Xeon rather than the E5400-series used in the xw8600. I think i might go with an HP Z800 with Dual Quad Core Xeon E5530 (2.4GHz 8MB/1066) CPUs.
Do you have any advice or changes you'd make to this configuration?:

• HP Z800 Workstation
• Genuine Windows Vista® Business 64-bit
• (2X) Intel® Xeon® E5530 2.40 8MB/1066 QC CPU
• NVIDIA Quadro FX580 512MB Graphics
• 24GB (12x2GB) DDR3 - 1333 (3rd party, bought separately)
• (2X) 74GB - SATA-300 - 10K RPM (RAID 1, OS and application install)
• (4X) 500GB - SATA-300 - 7200 RPM (RAID 5, data storage)
• HP 16X DVD+-RW SuperMulti SATA 1st Drive