Hardware Questions..

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plainman007

Well-known member
Dear Members,

Does Vegas perform better with 10,000 rpm dirves. Or will 7200 rpm be more than enough. Will there be some difference in the performance by using these 10,000 rpm drives ?

What is the max RAM that vegas will take advantage of ? Ive read some threads saying id doesnt show a difference after you cross the 1 GB mark ...is that true ?

Also does it pay to have 3 HDisks in the same system ? One for the OS and software. The next HDrive for footage and source material. The last HDrive for rendering to. I figured the OS and Software can run independently. And taking frames out of source processing them and putting them together on the 3rd drive will make things very easy on the system and elicit better performance. Is my assumption right or wrong ?
 
The hard drives probably won't make a meaningful performance difference.

CPU makes the most difference.

RAM will make a difference when you run out. Vegas 6 has a limit to how much it can use from what I remember (~1GB). Then take into account other applications... photoshop, firefox can take up a whack of memory. So 2GB would be safe in that case.
 
But your mention of photoshop etc i think your meaning if we have them all open at the same time right.

So your saying Vegas cant make use of more than 1 GB of Ram ? Fixed ?

Also what would be the better type of RAM to go for ? EC RAM ? DDR2 ? or 400MHZ DDR RAM would do ?

Coming to the CPU is it better to go for an AMD or an INTEL. Also is a dual processor worthwhile ? Or just Dual Core will do. Is Dual Core more effecient than HT ? Or vice versa ? Thanks Glen.
 
But your mention of photoshop etc i think your meaning if we have them all open at the same time right.
Yes.


So your saying Vegas cant make use of more than 1 GB of Ram ? Fixed ?
It's not fixed. It depends on the amount of RAM you allocate to RAM preview. For some reason, Vegas can't take advantage of too much RAM (I forget the figure)... it might be a bug.

RAM types: Get the kind compatible for your motherboard. ECC and registered RAM is for running servers... you don't need it. They have error correction to guard against freak errors (cosmic rays).

CPU: Once Intel's core2 hits the streets, they might be the best bang for your buck.

Definitely go dual core (or dual processor if it's the same price).

Dual processors with dual cores are worth it if you edit professional. Otherwise they probably aren't worth the money, because you don't save enough time to justify the purchase.
 
I would need a machine that would effeciently handle 3ds max and vegas. (not at the same time though). I think both of these are processor hungry. You didnt tell me the difference between dual core and dual core and which would be faster ?

Also please tell me about my idea of having 3 seperate physical drives.
C:for all the software and programs.
D:for all the raw footage to be stored on.
E:for rendering out to.
I felt this would create a free flowing data passage. What do you think.

And lastly what about the speed 7200 rpm or 10000 rpm. Which would help ?
 
Dual core and dual processor is about the same speed. Computer sites like techreport.com, anandtech.com, etc. might have benchmarks. Usually the dual cores are cheaper unless you get some sort of deal. Dual processor parts (i.e. the motherboard) are typically designed for server use, and more expensive because it is tailored towards the server market (i.e. ECC RAM).

The Opterons might be really good for overclocking, but I wouldn't bother.

2- Hard drive speed usually doesn't make any difference. You could split your raw footage onto its own drive though, use the other drive for software and rendering to.

3- For video, it's probably a better idea to go with 7200rpm drives. They perform a little slower, but have much much better capacity:$. RAID enough of them together, and you get the same performance.

performance doesn't matter much anyways, unless trying to capture less-compressed formats.
 
Thanks Glen. But Wouldnt that mean buying more number of independent 7200rpm drives to raid together. Wont that be more cumbersome or space occupying ?

Ive also heard that Uncompressed avis wont play smoothly on a 7200rpm drive. But if its negligible i dont mind going for a 7200rpm drive. They are more available and economic. I think raptor 10000 rpm is about double the price.
 
A RAID array takes more physical space, yes.

I haven't found any need at all to use anything more than a 7200 RPM drive for editing DV. If you have your video on a dedicated drive, even "uncompressed" video plays well (but remember that "uncompressed" is a bit misleading when you're talking about rendering from a DV timeline).
 
Hi David Jimerson,

What i meant by playing uncompressed avis is that i might render from a dv timeline into uncompressed so that i may rerender that clip. And also is the issue that i will be using som 3ds max animations for chromakey work etc. So i might need a drive that can handle uncompressed also well enough. Do you feel 7200 rpm can handle both of these needs (DV/Uncompressed Playback and Edit). If you feel that way then i will go with 7200 rpm sata drives.

Secondly, what do you feel about my idea of using 3 independent drives. 1 for software and progs. 2 for footage and media, 3 to render to. Will this setup help system efficiency ?
 
I've rendered uncompressed AVIs (though they're not really "uncompressed" in the true sense) and had no problem editing them later -- though playback will slow down with fewer effects than it will for DV.

Your proposed drive setup is actually quite typical. Quite a few do it that way.
 
10000 rpm raptor is good on some things.

10000 rpm raptor is good on some things.

I run 2 gb also of ram since in my 939board having more make the ram run at 2T settings vs 1T. Meaning it is alot slower. As for 10000rpm raptor. I use mine for programs and OS. only allocated on a 15gb partition and have the rest for data storage. I then use my 300gb SATA (2partitions) for rendering data and uprezing data. The other 2 80gig PATA is for SFX storage and Project Backup. The real difference you will see in having the raptor is bootup of your system and shutdown. As for rendering my 64 X2 3800 has really helping the speed since the dual cores has help rendering times. I have yet to really take full advantage of my boards capability because I had a bottleneck in a form of a 480w PSU..when I get my OCZ Gamexstation 700w PSU this week then I really see if renderting times will increase not to mention my uprezing in photozoom pro. Especially since I had some lockups due to lack of power in my 12v which should be solved with the new PSU.
 
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Ok so all this that ive been hearing about vegas not being able to see more than 1GB ram is wrong ? Or is it that windows had some limitation on the amount of ram it could recognise and use ?

Smithy > what are u trying to say ? that your 2gb ram has actually made your system slower. Or that your system is running slow even thought it has 2GB ? I cant figure what your trying to say. Also your processor 64 x 2 means its a single processor dual core or 2 processors on a single board ?
 
I'm saying that if you put more that 2gb on the board it will slow your system down a lot because the timings will drop down to 2T vs 1T which is the fastest setting. A64 X2 3800 means there is 2 processors built into one die not 2 separate processors on the board.
 
On old Pentium systems (865/875 chipset), running 4 indentical sticks in dual channel will:
-give improved memory bandwidth.
-give poorer/slower memory timings (i.e. 2T versus 1T)

For video editing, memory bandwidth is much more important than latency. So 4 sticks would be better.

I don't know if this is still relevant since the chipsets and memory controllers are difference.

2- The old AMD64 cores had trouble with 4 sticks of RAM... this has been fixed.

3- In any case, it doesn't really matter. The performance difference is just a few percent... almost neglible.

Ok so all this that ive been hearing about vegas not being able to see more than 1GB ram is wrong ? Or is it that windows had some limitation on the amount of ram it could recognise and use ?
It looks like I was spreading not-so-good information there... I can't remember the details well. However, it is sort of a Vegas bug.

Windows (32-bit) has a 2GB limitation on a program or something like that.

4- 2GB is not a bad idea if you multitask.

I have 500MB and it's ok/good enough. 1 or 2GB would be what I would go for.
 
Great,, Because im planning to go with 2GB. Not sure if i wud multitask to that extent but this would also help my 3ds max working. Max is ram and processor hungry. I need a machine that would be optiized for both. Regading the Harddisks ill settle for 7200rpm since Jimerson himself suggested that 10,000rpm is really not needed.

What processor should i opt for. A dual core Intel or AMD opterons 64 bit ? Does 64 bit even make sense since none of our appliactions are 64 bit yet ? Please tell me what would be the best processor i should get ?
 
Both the newest Intel and AMD processors are 64-bit. There has/will be big price cuts to both companies' processors, since Intel is coming out with their core2 CPUs which are a newer generation and faster than Intel's 5xx line and AMD64 processors.

I haven't followed prices and performance really closely so I don't have very good information here. The prices change really often, so that makes things hard to judge. It also depends on your budget and how much time you spend editing.
 
I have 2gb but my performance still sucks...

I have a question about the separate drives. I capture all of my videos, and render out to an external hard drive that plus in via USB. Would this slow down my rendering? I started using the external drive because I heard if you use the C drive it will slow things down.
 
I have some measurements on my web site that I did with my 10K Raptor vs 7200 PM drives (at the bottom of my HDV page). The raptors are not worth the money for video editing. They are 5x the price and only a 12% improvement in performance. Way, way, way overpriced for video editing!!!

You can see the specs of my system on my PC Equipment page. Dual Core AMD X2 4600+, 2GB memory, 4 drives, OpSys, Stock Media, and 2 in a RAID 0 for video projects (capture, render). The RAID 0 is not needed for DV but I do mostly HDV now so it helps a lot.

bballplaya283 said:
I have a question about the separate drives. I capture all of my videos, and render out to an external hard drive that plus in via USB. Would this slow down my rendering?
Click to expand...
Yup, USB can slow things down. There are two reasons for this. First, USB bandwidth is shared so you will not get the full bandwidth because your other USB ports are reserving bandwidth even if they aren’t using it. Second, USB requires your CPU for data transfer so it will contend with you NLE for CPU time and slow down the render.

Get a firewire drive. Firewire drives can use their full bandwidth and they don’t require any CPU time at all so you will get better throughput with firewire drives. (or even better buy another drive inside your PC and you’ll get internal bus speeds)

~jr
 
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