[Jeff Bauer]

Thanks Bruce. Looks like I have some work to do in trying out some new formats. I guess I just got lazy and stuck with what worked at the time.

Jeff

Vegas Pro 17; Windows 10 64 bit; i7-5960X; ASUS Rampage V Extreme; 32 GB 2133 RAM; Radeon R9 290

[Jeff Bauer]

Bruce,

Thank you for the suggestion. I will try lowering the bit rate.

Regarding your Roku Ultra box do you stream content to it and does it support a wide variety of formats? Seems like I read where the video formats they support are quite limited.

Jeff

Jeff

Vegas Pro 17; Windows 10 64 bit; i7-5960X; ASUS Rampage V Extreme; 32 GB 2133 RAM; Radeon R9 290

[Jeff Bauer]

I have the R9 290 running on an X99 platform. With respect to the quote you provide, I can say that I DO see a rendering performance improvement when using GPU acceleration with the SONY AVC codec. I DO NOT see an improvement when using the MainConcept AVC codec however.

Jeff

Vegas Pro 13; Windows 7 64 bit; i7-5960X; ASUS Rampage V Extreme; 32 GB 2133 RAM; Radeon R9 290

[Jeff Bauer]

David,

Who made the R9 290 you have? Do you think it matters?

Jeff

[Jeff Bauer]

Dave, Steve,

You guys have really gotten me curious and now I am on a mission to figure out the performance differences between the high end consumer grade i7 processors and the server/workstation class Xeon processors. It’s a particular character flaw of mine to overanalyze everything. So, I hope you guys can help educate me. I went to Intel’s website and looked up the specs on the following processors:

i7-5960X (8 core, 3.0 – 3.5 GHZ) which I’ll refer to as i7

Xeon E5-2630 V2 (6 core, 2.6 GHz) which I’ll refer to as V2

Xeon E5-1660 V3 (8 core, 3.0 GHz) which I’ll refer to as V3

I have a spread sheet that compares the specs that I can email you if you wish, but here are the differences I noted:

i7 and V3 have 20MB cache vs 15 MB for V2
Does this matter for editing/rendering in Vegas? I was under the impression it did not.
i7 and V3 are Haswell and V2 is Ivy Bridge
Is there something in the codename that sets them apart? All are based on 22 nm lithography.
V2 supports 7.2 GT/s system bus
I assume this deals with multiple processors per board
V2 supports embedded options
What are these and do the matter for editing/rendering in Vegas?
V2 uses a lot less power
While that is nice, my machine won’t be running 24/7 so not a deciding factor for me.
V2 & V3 support 768 GB of RAM vs 64 GB for i7
This is nice, but I have never worked on a project longer than one hour (in fact I fit over a dozen on a single BD) so 64GB should suffice for me. The only use I would have for 768 GB of RAM would be to create a virtual disk in RAM to do all my editing. While that is recurring dream of mine, it is cost prohibitive with DDR4 memory costing ~$16/GB and a top notch SATA III SSD costing $0.75/GB.
V3 and i7 have a memory bandwidth of 68 GB/s vs. 51.2 GB/s for V2
i7 does not support ECC memory
I don’t need this
V2 uses a different socket type
V3 and i7 are interchangeable
i7 does not support Intel vPro Technology
What is that and does it matter?
i7 does not support Intel Demand Based Switching
What is that and does it matter?
i7 does not support Trusted Execution Technology
What is that and does it matter?
V2 does not support Identity Protection Technology
What is that and does it matter?

Of the items in the above list that I understand (which isn’t a lot) I don’t see a compelling reason to go with one processor or the other.

While the specs/features are nice, I never fully trust them to tell the whole story. I would really like to see the processors in an apples to apples comparison executing in Vegas.

From what I understand, the format (and CODEC’s the format uses) makes a big difference. I’ve even followed discussions that suggest some formats/CODEC’s perform better if you limit the number of cores. At the very least I would like to see Sony AVC/MVC, Main Concept, and XDCAM tested. It would also be interesting to see how multiple video cards (GPU’s) and increasing the RAM above 64 GB on the Xeons effected performance. Are you aware of any place that might have documented any head to head comparisons for these formats in Vegas?

Jeff

[Jeff Bauer]

OK. Thanks Dave. I guess I have some more things to consider before pulling the trigger.

Jeff

[Jeff Bauer]

Interesting. The chip you reference is a 6 core 2.6 GHz while the i7-5960X is an 8 core 3.0 GHz with an unclocked processor. I always thought more cores and a faster clock were better. What makes this Xeon the preferred choice?

Jeff

[Jeff Bauer]

John,

The more I research this, the more I am beginning to think that each format is unique. In that, one may perform better with 2 CPU cores than 4 or 6 cores. Another will use all the available cores to deliver the best performance. Still another might take advantage of multiple GPU’s, while still another may only be able to utilize a single GPU core… It seems to boil down to what CODEC’s are being used.

Another possible issue is mother board bandwidth. On some boards multiple slots/connections may share bandwidth. There may be a bottleneck in the data flow among CPU, GPU, and drives.

Jeff

[Jeff Bauer]

Dave,

Thanks for the feedback. I will probably play around with OCing initially just to see what it can do, but I would like to get acceptable performance without having to rely on it.

The Xeon family of processors is quite large. Do you have any specific recommendations as to which ones to consider?

Jeff

[Jeff Bauer]

Very interesting. Thank you David for taking the time to get these results!! Glad to see that a current video card can actually make a difference on all of the CODEC’s.

Would it also be fair to conclude that having a powerful processor and lots of RAM reduces the importance of the GPU? Or are the results too dependent on the video being processed to draw any conclusions along those lines?

Jeff