In my own experience it is always better to go thru the process of building your own workstation to educate yourself on the latest best practices.

Hence my questions to be asked:

• Vendor build workstation or custom build one?
• CPU choice Xeon or I7 (Skylake generation)?
• DDR 2133 or 2400 registered vs. unregistered memory modules?
• Video card NVIDIA Quadro M6000 or NVIDIA TITAN X?
• What about: Thunderbolt 3? *I don’t think Xeon CPU motherboards have the thunderbolt 3 feature.

I know a lot of these things will depend on the amount of money one can spend. However, I’m trying to find the middle ground between the two and see what can get me thru the next 4 years.

Things that I know and want:

• High performance 4K+ editing workstation (time is money, money you can always make but you can’t get time back).
• New CPU 12-20 cores (Intel SkyLake) Video (NVidia Pascal) architecture.
• 64-128 GB of DDR4 memory.
• USB 3.1 with Thunderbolt 3
• M.2 SSD based on NVMe Protocol (PCIe, Gen. 3, x4) in Raid 0 for OS boot up and additional SSD in Raid 0 for Media.
• Asus motherboards are really stable and I have no complains so far.
• Editing software to be used: Blackmagic Resolve.
• Backup to NAS storage.

I’m going thru the research phase at this time hence this post to gather all valid points for the next workstation for video editing. If anyone is going thru an upgrade process at this time please share your thought and experience.

         -3584NVIDIA CUDA® Cores
         -1417Base Clock (MHz)
         -1531Boost Clock (MHz)

Memory Specs:
         -10 GbpsMemory Speed
         -12 GB GDDR5XStandard Memory Config
         -384-bitMemory Interface Width
         -480Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)

Technology Support:
        -Simultaneous Multi-Projection
        -VR Ready
        -NVIDIA Ansel
        -SLI HB Bridge SupportedNVIDIA SLI® Ready
        -NVIDIA G-SYNC™-Ready
        -NVIDIA GameStream™-Ready
        -NVIDIA GPU Boost™ 3.0 
        -12 API with feature level 12_1
        -Microsoft DirectX
        -4.5OpenGL
        -PCIe 3.0Bus 

Support
Windows 7-10, Linux, FreeBSDx86 

Display Support:
          -7680x4320@60Hz Maximum Digital Resolution 
          -DP 1.43, HDMI 2.0b, Dual Link-DVIStandard Display Connectors
          -Multi Monitor
          -2.2HDCP

Graphics Card Dimensions:
              -4.376"Height
              -10.5"Length
              -2 SlotWidth

Thermal and Power Specs:
               -94Maximum GPU Temperature (in C)
               -250 WGraphics Card Power (W)
               -600 WRecommended System Power (W)4
               -1 8-pin and 1 6-pinSupplementary Power Connectors


1 - Windows 10 requires November 2015 update or newer. 
2 - 7680x4320 at 60Hz RGB 8-bit with dual DisplayPort connectors or 7680x4320 at 60Hz YUV420 8-bit with one DisplayPort 1.3 connector. 
3 - DisplayPort 1.2 Certified, DisplayPort 1.3/1.4 Ready. 
4 - Recommendation is made based on PC configured with an Intel Core i7 3.2 GHz processor. Pre-built system may require less power depending on system configuration.

1 Nvidia 980 Reference that is BNIB. The box isn't sealed but the card is. - $480

And 1 ZOTAC EXTREME AMP! Edition of the 970, which has had limited use in my computer and in fantastic condition. This is the first gen edition with the backplate and the 3 panel things, so they are rare to find for so cheap. It runs almost as fast as the 980's for half the price - $320.

Free shipping if you buy more than 1 item. Conus and Paypal only. Local pickup in Los Angeles will not have any paypal fees or whatever and I'm available all weekend.

http://imgur.com/0eHRNw9,PxlJZ5x,9qQqmJo,HK545S0,dW1wDmP

I am a film maker and am planning to go for the Panasonic GH4 camera.

On my current setup, i tried to run some original footages from the GH4 camera and its not very smooth on the Adobe Premier Pro editing software Playback while editing (Tried setting it at FULL, 1/4, 1/8 but its laggy).

Do i need an additional 755M Graphics card (or any other cheaper, better third party alternative for it)? Or just a further upgrade of 8GB internal Memory ram would be good enough with the preexisting 2gb 755M in my Laptop for the purpose mentioned? If yes, whats the best Memory upgrade for my laptop (Third party model name of the RAM, cost etc.).

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-Zenbook-UX303LN-Subnotebook-Review.137995.0.html

I really can't find any faults as far as specs, performance, or battery life. Only thing left is to see the screen in person. Is there anything else with similar or better specs at a similar price ($1299 USD w/1800p display + 512GB SSD) that can compare? I'd rather not go back to Apple, as the only reason I bought the rMBP 15 was for the hardware, and I haven't warmed up to OS X or the gimped flavor of Windows run in Parallels and Boot Camp.

And it has harware H.264 encoder. No, not CUDA based.

All Kepler GPUs also incorporate a new hardware-based H.264 video encoder, NVENC. Prior to the introduction of Kepler, video encoding on previous GeForce products was handled by encode software running on the GPU’s array of CUDA Cores. While the CUDA Cores were able to deliver tremendous performance speedups compared to CPU-based encoding, one downside of using these high-speed processor cores to process video encoding was increased power consumption. By using specialized circuitry for H.264 encoding, the NVENC hardware encoder in Kepler is almost four times faster than our previous CUDA-based encoder while consuming much less power.

It is important to note that an application can choose to encode using both NVENC hardware and NVIDIA’s legacy CUDA encoder in parallel, without negatively affecting each other. However, some video pre-processing algorithms may require CUDA, and this will result in reduced performance from the CUDA encoder since the available CUDA Cores will be shared by the encoder and pre-processor. NVENC provides the following:

• Can encode full HD resolution (1080p) videos up to 8x faster than real-time. For example, in high performance mode, encoding of a 16 minute long 1080p, 30 fps video will take approximately 2 minutes.
• Support for H.264 Base, Main, and High Profile Level 4.1 (same as Blu-ray standard)
• Supports MVC (Multiview Video Coding) for stereoscopic video—an extension of H.264 which is used for Blu-ray 3D.
• Up to 4096x4096 encode

Via: http://www.geforce.com/Active/en_US/en_US/pdf/GeForce-GTX-680-Whitepaper-FINAL.pdf

It could be very interesting to see native support in main NLE for this feature.

Some tests: http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-680-review/6

You end up with 1152 total CUDA cores and 96 texture units. GK104’s back-end remains intact though, consisting of four ROP clusters that output eight 32-bit integer pixels per clock each, maxing out at 32. Similarly, four 64-bit memory controllers create a 256-bit aggregate interface.

At least at first, GeForce GTX 760s will sport 2 GB of GDDR5 memory operating at 1502 MHz, just like the GeForce GTX 670 and 680, pushing up to 192.2 GB/s. This is probably the 760's biggest advantage against GeForce GTX 660 Ti. A 192-bit memory bus limits that card's bandwidth to 144.2 GB/s, which hurts at higher resolutions with anti-aliasing cranked up.

GeForce GTX 760 also compensates for a less-complex GPU configuration through higher core clock rates. Its GK104 runs at 980 MHz (base), but is rated for a GPU Boost clock rate of 1033 MHz. That’s more aggressive than GeForce GTX 660 Ti and 670, both armed with 1344-shader incarnations of GK104 set at a 915 MHz base frequency. What you're going to see in the benchmarks is that some workloads tend to favor shader count, others react to the GPU's clock rate, and a third group enjoys memory bandwidth.

Reviews

• http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/geforce-gtx-760-review-gk104,3542.html
• http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2013/06/25/nvidia-geforce-gtx-760-2gb-review/1
• http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_760/

The GTX 780 would be the flagship product of the 700 series and would be based on a cut down version of the GK110 core codenamed “GK110-300-A2″. This core would have 2304 cores and a 3 GB GDDR5 memory which would operate along a 384-bit memory interface. The core is maintained at 863 MHz with Turbo boost of 900 MHz while the memory operates at the reference 1502 MHz or 6 GHz effective clock speed. The GPU would be powered by an 8+6 Pin connectors which represent a 250W TDP while display connectors include Dual Link DVI, HDMI and a single display port.

From the benchmarks GeForce GTX 780 is almost 20% faster than the GeForce GTX 680

Expected price - $599

Via: http://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-780-official-specifications-chart-unveiled/

Progress now comes at a cost and is really slow.

GTX TITAN GPU Engine Specs:

2688CUDA Cores

837Base Clock (MHz)

876Boost Clock (MHz)

187.5Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec)

GTX TITAN Memory Specs:

6.0 GbpsMemory Clock

6144 MBStandard Memory Config

GDDR5Memory Interface

384-bit GDDR5Memory Interface Width

288.4Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)

GTX TITAN Support:

4.3OpenGL

PCI Express 3.0 Bus Support

YesCertified for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, or Windows XP

GPU Boost 2.0, 3D Vision, CUDA, DirectX 11, PhysX, TXAA, Adaptive VSync, FXAA, 3D Vision Surround, SLI-readySupported Technologies

Yes3D Vision Ready 11Microsoft DirectX 11.1 API

Yes Blu Ray 3D

Yes3D Gaming

Yes3D Vision Live (Photos and Videos)

Display Port

4 displaysMulti Monitor

4096x2160Maximum Digital Resolution

2048x1536Maximum VGA Resolution

YesHDCP

YesHDMI

One Dual Link DVI-I, One Dual Link DVI-D, One HDMI, One DisplayPortStandard Display Connectors

InternalAudio Input for HDMI