which perf improvements with a new PC?

[Stephen Mann]

– how faster do you think the rendering will be
Your renders will definitely be faster. No one can provide a quantitative answer to this, but going from dual-core to i7 will be substantially faster since Vegas is processor-intensive.

– is it worth to use a nVidia CUDA video card? (I read that Vegas can render faster with it). Which speed factor can we get with such a video card?
Vegas Studio does use the CUDA card, but Vegas Pro does not. Perhaps the studio product is Sony’s “public beta” of CUDA??? One can hope. How much faster? Who knows. I don’t use Studio and haven’t seen any comparisons to quote.

– would you recommend me to install Windows 7 in 32 bits or 64 bits ? What are the pros and cons of each from a video editing prospective?
64-bit for sure. This is the direction everything is moving toward, and I haven’t had any conflicts or problems since installing Windows 7-64 in my quad PC. Performance and memory access is improved in 64-bit. In fact, in Win 7-32 you can only address 4Gb of RAM.

Microsoft cripples memory access in the less-expensive Win 7 64bit products: Starter – 2Gb, Home Bacic – 8Gb, Premium – 16Gb, and all others – 192 Gb. I wonder if Ms has ever sold a copy of Starter?

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Frederic Baumann]

Thanks Steve for your answers, especially regarding the 64-bit question. Quite useful!!

Regarding perf improvements with the i7, I don’t ask anybody to commit and sign a paper 🙂 But if I get only 10% more performance, then it’s not worth for me buying a new PC. I am not even sure that I would go for a new PC if the processing times are cut “only” by 2.

So, maybe someone here, according to his experience, could have a guess about the gain I would get with an i7 compared to my dual core, and tell me if it would roughly be 10% more perf, 100% more, or 1000% more (well I doubt for this last option, unfortunately).

Thanks in advance,
Frederic

[Norman Willis]

Frederic,

All other factors being equal (and provided sufficient RAM, which you don’t have) a CoreDuoQuad will render approximately twice as fast as a Core2Duo.

When I switched from Vegas Pro x32 to Vegas Pro x64 just recently, my render times for a 10 minute video with maybe three or four layers dropped from two and a half hours to maybe fifty minutes (more than twice as fast).

I don’t know your budget, but you could upgrade cheaply by getting a CoreDuoQuad and 8GB RAM, and then format C:\ and install Windows 7 x64 and Vegas x64. That will be a budget upgrade that will make your rendering maybe (I’m guessing) three or four times as fast.

If you have the funds, a Core i7 is supposed to be at least 40% faster than said CoreDuoQuad (above) before any overclocking (and overclocking will take it even more, provided you have sufficient cooling). So maybe five or six times as fast.

Also please bear in mind that you can get great performance gains by having more than one drive. Leave Windows and Vegas on C:\ (minimum 7200 RPM spin) and put all of your project files on D:\ (minimum 7200 RPM spin but some say a RAID 0 or RAID 10 configuration will move even faster).

I hope that helps.

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org

[Norman Willis]

>>Vegas Studio does use the CUDA card, but Vegas Pro does not. Perhaps the studio product is Sony’s “public beta” of CUDA??? One can hope.

Steve, that would really be great.

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org

[John Rofrano]

I agree with Stephen. Get an i7 with at least 6GB of memory and Windows 7 64-bit. You will probably have around a 6x improvement going from a Core 2 Duo to a Quad i7. Also get the fastest graphics card you can afford because Movie Studio HD 10 will definitely use it boost AVC/H.264 render performance.

I wonder if Ms has ever sold a copy of Starter?

Lots of ’em. This is what they ship on Netbook PC’s which quite often only have 1GB of memory. Prior to Windows 7, all Netbooks still came with Windows XP because the bloated Vista couldn’t run on them. Windows 7 Starter is targeted directly at the small Netbooks which are quite handy little devices.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Stephen Mann]

I have been collecting render data for a few weeks. See if this helps:

https://www.mmdv.com/sonyvegas/rendertest/about.php

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Stephen Mann]

If you do now or plan to use Adobe Aftereffects, it will like the CUDA card very well. No ATI cards need apply.

something to consider for the future.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Norman Willis]

John, I agree that if Frederic has the budget and wants to see maximum gains he should get a new Core i7. But he has not mentioned budget besides some vague desire to limit outlay should a new box ‘only’ double his rendering speed.

I just want Frederic to be aware of his other options, since he can get maybe 2/3rds of the performance gains for maybe 1/3rd of the cost simply by upgrading his processor, RAM, and switching to x64.

Also he has not mentioned his hard drive configuration, but if he only has one hard drive he could double it yet again for a very small outlay of cash…and in this economy (or in any economy) some guys need to keep an eye to cost.

But there is no question that a Core i7 is the ideal.

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org

[Norman Willis]

Hi Stephen.

From your post:

>>The fastest render time when John Cline released the original test was 120 seconds on an Intel 2.66Ghz Core2 Quad Extreme. Recently, the render times have been in the 30-40 second range using the latest Intel i7 processors.

That would seem to indicate that Vegas renders perhaps three times as fast on the Core i7 than the CoreDuo Quad. Does that seem to match your experience? If so, that is much faster than the 40% overall gains that Intel was advertising initially with the Core i7. (Also, what was the clock/overclock speed on the Core i7 in this test?)

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org

[Norman Willis]

OK, nevermind. Your chart speaks for itself.

Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org