Tips & Tricks > Dream system
I would like to pick all of your brains here if I may.
We have a turnkey system we bought about three years ago and we are really happy with it. I want to move this system to our Youth worship facility because they are using nothing but powerpoint for their worship services on Wednesday nights. In order to do that of course we would need to purchase a new computer for our main worship facility. I know the specs to run SSP V7 and I know this computer surpasses them quite nicely especially since I did some recent upgrades. I want to know what you guy's dream machine would be if faced with making this decision for your own churches and what features I should consider for the future. We are a medium sized church on a tight budget but I don't want to sacrifice quality.
Thanks!
R-Technics does produce systems designed to SSP that are about the same as what you would spend for a Dell system, but without all the junk software. You might give them shot. I know the last time I newegged a system, it would be more than the balpark price R-Technics gave me.
As far as what I would use, it would be a 2.8-3.2 single core w/ as much L1 and L2 cache as I could find, 4GB of the fasted RAM available (or I could afford), 2 160GB SATA HDDs that are Striped RAID, two DVD-R+/RW with WinDVD 4 or 6 and Nero Burning Rom, The best NVidia card I could afford, and MS Office 2003 that includes Excel and PPT.
Thanks for the advice Tom. You would think that would be the case but the Youth only have one service per week in the youth hall. They have a song service with about four or five praise songs and watch a great video lesson on DVD called FUEL. The song lyrics are projected using powerpoint and an ancient computer. The "business" is shown on the screen between songs. I want to get them SSP in a bad way. The computer that we now have will do whatever they could possibly need for that small service. I actually have a pretty good graphics card ATI X700 installed in it. The youth now days just don't seem to be as impressed with cool high end graphics as much as the young (or in my case maybe not so young) adults. It is something they grew up with and just take for granted.
Our regular services are far from contemporary. I guess you could call them blended with a slight touch of Southern Gospel. Believe it or not though the graphics I have put out there have gotten nothing but positive feedback. I frequently use worshipfilm.com's long plays for songs, and Digital Juice jumpbacks. Another reason I would like the high end computer in the main sanctuary is because our media room is a great work place and I will be able to work on other media arts utilizing the same system.
I know there is someone out there who has put together a dream system. Share the specs please. 
Will this do? I would like some input from people who know about what we do before I take a proposal to the finance committee and the church.
Dell Precision 690
Operating System
Genuine Windows® XP Professional, SP2, No Media
Dell Precision Workstation 690 (750W - 32bit) Dual Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 5080 3.73GHz, 2 X 2MB L2, 1066
Memory
2GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 533MHz, ECC (4 DIMMS)
Monitors
2 - Dell 17 inch UltraSharp™ 1707FP Flat Panel, adjustable stand, VGA/DVI
Graphic Cards
256MB PCIe x16 ATI FireGL V7200, Dual DVI or Dual VGA or DVI + VGA
Hard Drive Configuration
C4 All SATA drives, RAID 0, 2 drive total configuration
Hard Drive Internal Controller Option SATA/SAS Integrated Card - For Connecting Internal Hard Drives
Boot Hard Drive
160GB SATA 3.0Gb/s,7200 RPM Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst Cache™
2nd Hard Drive
160GB SATA 3.0Gb/s,7200 RPM Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst Cache™
CD-ROM, DVD, and Read-Write Devices
16XDVD AND 16XDVD+/-RW, w/ Cyberlink PowerDVD™ and Roxio Creator™
Sound Card
Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ XtremeMusic (D), w/Dolby® Digital 5.1
Speakers
Dell A225 Two Piece Stereo System
Intel Hyper-Threading Hyper-Threading feature preset to ON. Can be disabled/enabled in BIOS.
Software
Adobe Production Studio Standard w/ Photoshop CS2
FrontPage 2003 - Full Version
Microsoft Office Small Business Edition 2003
Norton SystemWorks 2006
Dell Service & Support Plans 3 Year On-site Business Standard Plan
1. You're buying a brand new system and still want to use a 533MHz FSB? Maybe the V7200 can't absorb any more, I don't know, but it's worth looking into, especially since in your case the memory is feeding two cpu's.
2. Beyond good hardware, performance is also affected by codec's. They are hard to fix because nobody identifies what codec (brand and rev number) a given brand of video file requires. I have some avi files from mfgr A that play smooth but other seemingly identical files from mfgr B that don't.
3. I updated DirectX 9.0c on the primary projection machine to the Aug 2006 version. What harm can that do, right? But now audio streaming from a radio station doesn't work on the songshow limited account, only on the admin account. And I don't know how to fix that, either.
Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements) is nice to have on the projection computer, for last minute graphic tweaks. PPT is needed, so having Word and Excel along for the ride is good for pounding out last minute notes for the projection operator.
But my dream system would not be used as anyone else's workstation. It would remain a projection only machine.
Hey, you said we should dream.
So if your projector natively supports 1024 x 768, you may be able to pick up an older 15" LCD the supports that resolution.
Trying to run a 1280 x 1024 monitor (which most 17" LCDs are) at 1024 x 768 is rarely a pretty sight.
Speakers would be more clutter and 2 more sets of wires there in the sound board/projection booth (wherever this is located).
The ATI FireGL V7200 may be the wrong kind of card to get the most out of SongShowPlus. Hopefully someone from R-Technics will chime in here on that.
CyberLink's PowerDVD does not install the necessary drivers for SongShowPlus to show DVDs and/or MPEG2s. You will want to also include a separate purchase of Intervideo's WinDVD. See System Requirements.
It used to be the case that SSP worked best with WinDVD 4 or 6, not necessarily 7. I don't know if that is still the case, but since it's mostly the CODECS that SSP needs, you can get an older version from eBay and have it work quite nicely with SSP.
You didn't mention keyboard or mouse. Some folks like to get a wireless keyboard and mouse to try to reduce wire clutter. But I think it's just one more thing that could go wrong.
That system is very expensive, and not well suited to SSP. Go to Support->Knowledge Base and click the link, "Click here for SSP System Requirements." In that list are the recommendations for "Full Graphics Mode, Extreme Performance." You should be able to build a system for less cost with better performance than the Dell.
The Xeon processor is more expensive, aimed at a different market, and may introduce problems. The ATI FireGL (and the NVIDIA Quadro) costs a lot (the V7200 costs over $700), and is again aimed at a different market and may not even work correctly with SSP.
SSP does not support Cyberlink DVD.
If you stick with the parts listed on our system requirements link, you should have a fantastic SSP experience, and for less money as well. The "Full Graphics Mode, Extreme Performance" parts are exactly what you want for a "Dream System."
In summary, the Dell you are looking at costs more, runs slower, and may not even run SSP correctly. It is simply intended for a different purpose, such as high-end workstation (CAD) or server environments.
Thanks guys for being so helpful. These are the sort of replies I was fishing for.
Steven,
I believe I will go with your recommendation of building my own. Please hook me up with some resources. You can email me @ kelley9105@aol.com .
Thanks,
Joe
ViewSonic 19" VP930B Thinedge HDTV LCD Flat Panel (Black)
-Need a nice large control screen, pick up another nice 15" for your display screen
And wouldn't a dream system have a 16:9 projector, so you'd need a wide screen display screen?
The Xeon processor is more expensive, aimed at a different market, and may introduce problems.
So I was trying to explain to him why it might not work well on that system.
I think I've got him convinced to try the laptop that they are currently using at thier church for projection.
An ATI Radeon will work better than a FireGL, from what I hear.