AMD vs. Intel

[Terje A. bergesen]

I love my AMD box, and it works fantastically well with Vegas. I understand the new Intels are catching up, but I have not tried them yet. No problems with the AMD though, and it is fast, fast, fast.

2G of memory should be plenty, you probably won’t see much (if any) difference if you double it. The money can be spent better elsewhere…

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Terje A. Bergesen

[Carlo Simone]

Are you using a dual core processor?? If so, did you switch from a single and did you see a world of difference…

Thanks..

[Terje A. bergesen]

I switched from a single core, Intel Pentium running at 2.4GHz to an AMD 4400 dual core. Just to test it, I rendered a clip in Vegas on the old PC, rendering time was about 1 hr 18 min. I then rendered the same project with the same settings on the new box, the rendering time was 20 min. So, yes, depending on your definition of “world” of course, there was for me a world of difference.

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Terje A. Bergesen

[James_j]

There must be quite a difference between those systems to render 4X as fast. Normally, the most you could expect from simply adding another core would be 2X, usually less – like around 1.3X.

Since I do all my rendering at low priority in the background, it doesn’t really matter how fast it is. Only that I’ve scheduled my time properly.

[Ralph Hajik]

Hi Vegasuser88,

I tried to do a research in the Archives for you on the AMD mean machines, but I was unable to pull it up. If you can research it on August 14, 2005, Gary has his results from his new computer. Then if you go to Nov 5, 2005, blooming was nice enough to post his AMD hardware system. My Dell P3 isn’t doing me justice anymore. I’m running a little behind time so I just ordered my AMD system from TastyComputers.com in Colorado. It will take 3 weeks before I get it and I can’t wait because I feel the need for speed. I hope this helps a little.

Ralph Hajik
Westmont, IL

[Terje A. bergesen]

There must be quite a difference between those systems to render 4X as fast. Normally, the most you could expect from simply adding another core would be 2X, usually less – like around 1.3X.

You are correct that there are differences. There is not a lot of difference in raw CPU speed (MHz), the AMD is only .2 GHz faster. There are a few thing that makes it this much faster though.

1) AMD is generally faster, MHz for MHz than Intel. Some times significantly faster.

2) The AMD has two cores, and therefore can run more in parallell.

3) Each core has a significantly (1M) larger L2 cache than the Pentium, this means that there is far less memory access with the AMD than with the Intel.

4) The AMD PC uses faster memory than the Intel PC, and the memory is on a faster bus.

5) The AMD has an on-chip memory controller making memory access faster than the Intel system which has a separate, on motherboard, memory controller.

These are probably the most significant factors making the AMD that much faster than the Intel system.

Since I do all my rendering at low priority in the background

I am not sure I would set my render to low priority, but that is entirely up to you. With a dual core system I might set the CPU affinity for Vegas to one CPU only.

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Terje A. Bergesen

[James Redmond]

I’m also looking at speeding up my rendering and am looking at a new computer. I generally have 30 hours worth of material to edit and then author to DVD. Anything I can do to decrease the rendering time would be a big help.

Have much ram do you recommend and what motherboard do you use? How much do these effect the rendering?

When you render are you rendering to mpg? For me that seems to be the best (fastest) way to go to get the project to a state to author it in DVD Architect.

Do you think the new version of Vegas will be optimized for a dual processor?

Thanks, James

James Redmond
Dynamic Videos, Inc.
Rogers, AR USA

[James_j]

All else being equal, your choice of motherboard will not significantly decrease your rendering time. Neither will the amount of RAM, assuming you aren’t hitting your page file (In WinXP 512mb is enough; 1g is better).

Yes, if your only intended output is DVD then you may as well render straight to mpeg2.

Vegas is already optimized afaik.

Don’t expect to see a 4X decrease in rendering time unless you too are coming from a much older CPU.

[James Redmond]

James J and others,

I have a Pentinum 4, 3.2 Ghz processor, with 1 gig of ram.

How much faster do you think the rendering time would improve?

Thanks for your help! James

James Redmond
Dynamic Videos, Inc.
Rogers, AR USA

[James_j]

That’s a fairly new system; I doubt you’d see more than a 1.3X increase. Waste of effort; just try to schedule your rendering time overnight. Or on a different system.