64bit Vista for Vegas?

blink3times wrote on 9/1/2007, 12:55 PM

Vista64 is not too much use to Vegas right now. It works but the is no benefit at all. I don't know when the Vegas 64 bit is coming out. I THOUGHT it was supposed to come out with Vegas 8... I am VERY disappointed to see that it will not. I spent quite a few bucks getting myself 64 bit ready strictly for Vegas... but alas.... :(

MH_Stevens wrote on 9/1/2007, 4:06 PM

Where does the competition stand on 64bit?

blink3times wrote on 9/1/2007, 5:19 PM

I don't think there is anything to worry about in that department, As far as I know Vegas is the only NLE to even mention the notion. But you can be sure others are now at least thinking about it.

Technomage wrote on 9/1/2007, 11:04 PM

At least one has started coding a 64bit version. They probably started after Sony so I'd be surprised if they have it finished before IBC 2008. They will probably be showing it at NAB 2008 in a back room somewhere. As for who, I'll give you one hint. The name of the company starts with an "A".

For the record, Vegas will not be the first 64bit NLE. Autodesk Smoke 2007 and Fire 2007 are both 64bit. We have these where I work and when they went 64bit it broke several of our plugins. Of course Autodesk's stuff is in a little different price bracket than Vegas. Also, they run on Linux instead of Windows. The computer itself is just a regular HP workstation with two kickass video boards. I just wish Vegas could get the same performance out of those Nvidia boards that Smoke/Fire do.

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=7118116

xberk wrote on 9/2/2007, 6:38 PM

Just finished building a Q6600 with 4gigs of Ram. Used Vista Home Premium 64bit. Vegas runs very smooth. I haven't used it enough to comment on any improvement over my old P4 3.2 system except for rendering which is vastly improved using the quad core. My render time on the old system was nearly 13 minutes on John Cline's Rendertest.veg, now it is 2 min 8 seconds. This is on a par with other quad core machines running XP or Vista 32 bit. See John Cline's thread: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=543921

So I'd say Vista 64bit may not help but I can't see where it is doing any harm either and we all know that in the future 64 bit will arrive. Cost to me was about $15.00 more to get Vista 64 bit. I realize there may be other issues in going to Vista 64 related to drivers and legacy hardware/software. None of these was a problem for me.

BobbyMurcerFan wrote on 9/4/2007, 11:34 PM

FWIW, Avid has a complete 64-bit version, DS Nitro, but of course it's a VERY expensive finishing system.

xberk,

Very, wise choice, IMHO, going with 64-bit Vista. When a 64-bit version of Vegas comes out, it will fly.

megabit wrote on 9/5/2007, 1:18 AM

I'm running Vista x64 on QX6700, and can confirm the Vegas 7.0e render time is on par with XP. However, the Vista installation makes much better use of the 4GB RAM I have.

The only problem installing Vegas has been the SQL server incompatibility; MS is not supporting the version that comes with Vegas installation under Vista.

Jayster wrote on 9/5/2007, 1:31 AM

There is a 64-bit version of SQL server. I wonder if MM will run on it...

rmack350 wrote on 9/5/2007, 7:33 AM

Yes, they're definitely coding for it because their product was a memory pig and certain add-in hardware from M made the problem infinitely worse. I think that A's newest 32-bit version solved a lot of their memory issues for the moment so I'm not sure how much pressure is on them to make a 64-bit release.

Vegas didn't quite have the same memory problems but it was starting to get close, and if any sort of GPU acceleration is on the roadmap then going 64-bit will be important.

Using Vegas32 on a 64-bit OS should give the program more of the 2 GB of RAM it was probably built for, and let other programs (and the OS) also have more RAM.

Presumably, the 64-bit version of Vegas will be able to use more than 2GB.

Rob Mack

MH_Stevens wrote on 9/5/2007, 1:22 PM

Just to summarize as I started this thread. All the tech guys at PC build companies I spoke with all say avoid 64bit for now as driver problems out weigh benefits and even with 4GB RAM only 3 is available? So I went 32 bit but with 2GB of FAST RAM.

megabit wrote on 9/5/2007, 1:57 PM

To be precise, 3.2GB is available to both x86 Xp and Vista; x64 XP and Vista can utilize more RAM - if not for a 32bit app like the current Vegas version, than for other parallel tasks, which I'm witnessing everyday on my PC.

rmack350 wrote on 9/5/2007, 2:40 PM

Driver problems may well outweigh benefits. I'd buy a system that was built for 64-bit by a company that builds them regularly. You're paying for their testing and experience. (For example, HP offers Vista-64 as an option on some consumer products. It's tested, it works, but they have no concept of the user actually adding different hardware. Crazy! Unheard of!)

If they're saying that 3GB will be all that's available then they either don't have any experience or you're misunderstanding them. What you need is a motherboard, chipset, BIOS, and operating system that are all 64-bit capable. That's the basics. On top of that, everything that needs a driver needs a 64-bit driver. And finally, a software application needs to be 64-bit to access more than 2 GB (there are some exceptions to this, I think).

Memory mapped hardware *always* uses addresses starting at 4GB and working down from there. Memory that would like to use the same addresses can be remapped by the BIOS to addresses above 4GB. If you're using a 32-bit OS, it can't see those upper addresses. But if you use a 64-bit OS it can see addresses above 4GB and so will use that memory. However, if you bought a board that maxed out at 16GB and you filled it, you'd start to notice the loss of those memory mapped hardware addresses again. The point is that the hardware is still using the addresses from 4GB on down, even under a 64-bit OS.

Rob Mack

rmack350 wrote on 9/5/2007, 2:43 PM

3.2 is an approximate number. It can be less. Our XW9300 systems can see about 2.4 GB out of 4GB. We have a lot of hardware in them and these consume addresses that memory would otherwise use.

Systems with dual graphics cards sporting lots of memory on each card are very likely to see lower addressable memory.

Rob Mack

MH_Stevens wrote on 9/5/2007, 8:40 PM

And if you do 64-bit right as Rob suggest you are into a lot more money. I'm taking that into consideration. If money was no object then 64 bit sure. I'll tell you a funny story. My daughter wants a MacBook pro, so I sent her to a custom site so she could choose what components she wanted. The quote -- $15,842!

rmack350 wrote on 9/5/2007, 9:50 PM

Oh, that system I described is a lot more money but it was built for PPro and Axio. You could get a 64-bit system for Vegas for lots less. As far as we know there isn't much in the way of special hardware that will benefit Vegas Pro 8. At least nothing's been said yet.

Once you start thinking you need a really killer system you're also starting to look at other infrastructure costs too. The 'puter's not the biggest part of the picture any more.

Rob Mack

MH_Stevens wrote on 9/6/2007, 10:11 AM

Another thing I found that turned me away from 64 bit, and this may just be related to the systems I looked at as I don't understand it, but all the 2GB memory was faster than the 4GB being offered.

rmack350 wrote on 9/6/2007, 1:38 PM

Hmmm. That's possible, but if you were looking at servers that required ECC memory then it's pretty certain they specked out slower.

There are some HP consumer computers that you can have built with 64-bit Vista Ultimate instead of 32-bit Home Premium. The added cost is 80 bucks and that cost would be the same as an upgrade to 32-bit Vista Ultimate. So the cost is driven by it being Vista Ultimate, not 64-bit.

Maybe this link works:
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/cto/computer_customize_components.do

If the link doesn't work, the system to configure is a d4990y.

I'm not saying that's the way to go, just using it as an example, and presumably you can get a system full of hardware that is totally 64-bit compatible. What you don't necessarily get is a system that can accept a Xena card.

Rob Mack

MH_Stevens wrote on 9/6/2007, 4:01 PM

Rob: I've looked at all the HP 64bit and they have poor video. Screen resolution and cards. With the system I just ordered I got 17.1" 1900x122 wuxvga and a Quadro card. Nothing like that with HP and for the same thing I got via AVADirect HP would have been nearly a grand more. HP 20" screens are on 900 lines. Didn't like em. Also, no fast RAM with HP.

I took the builders advice and stayed with 32 bit but the machine will take another 2GB of 800RAM and a 64 bit OS anytime I want it. So hurry up Vegas.

rmack350 wrote on 9/6/2007, 5:38 PM

I'm not trying to push HP, just using them as an example. Obviously you won't get a Quadro card in any consumer oriented PC, but the unit I was pointing to uses 800MHz DDR2 DIMMs which is what you're getting from your builder, it sounds like.

Anyway, I think your point was that you couldn't get fast RAM on a system built with a 64-bit OS. I suppose you'd have to define the RAM you're looking for because that's not what I'm seeing.

Rob

MH_Stevens wrote on 9/6/2007, 7:51 PM

Where does HP show the speed of their RAM? I check all the specs of the HDX which I considered (but dropped because of the screen resolution) and could not find RAM makers or detailed specs.

I'm sort of disappointed I'm not going 64 bit yet but I think I've done the right thing. Remember, for me this notebook is a field monitor and capture device. There will be no hardware connected to consume high memory resources. My main objective is to get the latency out of OnLocation/DV Rack and have the best field monitor picture I can..

rmack350 wrote on 9/6/2007, 10:00 PM

You know, I started to get suspicious after the last post, but I never noticed where you said you were talking about a notebook. Sorry, we weren't on the same page there.

Notebooks have a different problem with RAM because they typically have 2 SO-DIMM slots. So you'd have to install 2 2GB SO-DIMMs to get 4 GB and the 2gb sticks are disproportionately expensive compared to 1 GB sticks.

Now, as far as 64-bit support, you have to have CPU, BIOS, Chipset, and OS all supporting it. I think Intel's notebook processors may actually not have the 64bit extensions (It might be that only the Turion supports it). If that's the case then you can't go 64-bit with most notebooks. I could be wrong about this but I think i'm in the ballpark on the details.

Without complete 64-bit support you can't address the full 4 GB of RAM. But then again, going with a 32-bit OS is a nice safe bet. It's no fun to be on the bleeding side of the cutting edge, after all.

Rob