I just upgraded my box this week from an Intel P4 2.8 HT 2GB with a WD raptor to an AMD 64x2 4400 2GB with dual raptors in Raid 0 and my render times decreased by a factor of 5 - 10 times. Blew me away the difference.

After I do rendering I store all video files on a seperate stand alone Buffalo Terastation that hold 1.6 TB. This way I have plenty of storage and its has redundancy due to Raid 5 support.

I would go for a least a gig of memory. Especially if want to have any other programs open alongside Vegas,

You should definitely go for a dual-core chip if can afford it. AMD X2's are the best dual-core chip you can buy.

I just got a new HP with the Athlon 4200 X2 processor based on the positive comments I've read on this forum. However, my render times have not improved and my real-time playback is worse than my P4 laptop. I looked on the "System" tab on the control panel and was shocked to see that it lists the clock speed at 984 Mhz. Am I looking at the wrong number? Do I have something set incorrectly? Did I waste my money by buying the wrong machine? Any help is appreciated.

cecharris: Some of the laptops will slow the processor down to save battery life. WHen the CPU is in use, your system *should* increase to normal speed. There may be a bug preventing it from doing so? If one core is idle (the CPU has two cores), the computer might slow the processor down instead of having it run at the right speed.

That's my guess anyways.

Just to be clear... the new computer is a desktop (HP Media Center m7248n to be exact), not a laptop. What I was saying is that the new desktop computer does not perform as well as my P4 laptop, which I'm trying to replace for Vegas purposes. Thanks!

I have some questions about this topic as well. Was just about to search the archives for this topic when I saw the thread.

I happily use Vegas 5 and don't have any current intentions to upgrade. I also use Boris Red 3.02 quite a bit and don't have current intentions to upgrade that either.

A hardware-oriented friend of mine suggested that the Athlon 64 dual core chips currently available are indeed extremely fast processors; however, he cautioned me that if I'm using older software the 64-bit processor may have to emulate 32-bits to run it. He further suggested to me that the emulation process itself might cause the chip to perform worse than an older 32-bit chip.

Is this accurate information? It's a very interesting topic to me because I have for some time now wanted to upgrade my hardware (current = Dell 8200 w/ 2.53GHz P4 chip, 1 Gig RAM, single 7200 rpm HD) to optimize for Vegas 5 and Boris Red 3.02 performance.

Especially troubling with Boris Red, the preview to RAM--i.e., to see what you're actually doing during a complex project--is very poor with the above configuration. I hope someday to have a machine that will give me high-quality preview-to-RAM using Red and shorter render times in Vegas 5 and Red...

By the way, the Boris folks are either not very knowlegeable about optimal hardware for running their product, or else they don't care much about it. I am really tired of learning about the "minimum" system requirements--the "most highly optimized" system configurations would also be VERY helpful to know about.

Best regards,

Lee

Something is wrong. My 4200 X2 is almost twice as fast as my AMD 64 3000.

Things to look into:

- My system tab says 2.21 GHZ as the speed for my 4200. If we are looking at the same panel, then your settings are messed up. I'm not sure how tweakable your bios is (most of the commercial products are not very accesable (versus the custom mobo option). This may be your biggest problem. Time to check out the HP support line.
- Even though it is shipped with an X2, make sure you have Windows Pro, not home. My understanding is that home does not take advantage of dual CPUs.
- HP's and Dells ship with a TON of junk that gets loaded in the startup. You should turn a lot of these items off within msconfig (within run panel).
- Does it have two hard drives (one for the operating system and another for the video capture, playback, etc.?

It's late, that's all I can think of now. Hope it helps.

minimum 1gb RAM...preferably 2gb...the more RAM the smoother everything run...
yes i am master of the obvious...

Here's what I've read (moving to x2 4400 when it arrives).

Are you sure it's setup in the bios properly?...or flash your bios to a version that can recognize the x2 procs?

Install the dual core microsoft hotfix?
(hotfix related most likely) Did you load (winxp )SP2? I heard there's a prob recognizing dual-core unless you install sp2. Can anybody confirm this?

Install the drivers for your x2 on this page (amd support):
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_13118,00.html