yes, for hard drives.

One thing that just happens to occur in computers a lot is that the data being fetched from the drive was recently read or written before. Without a cache buffer, every time the data is requested it must physically be obtained from the drive platters. It finally dawned on some prehistoric drive engineers that if that data could be saved in RAM, it could be fetched MUCH faster, and without interrupting any current seeking and reading/writing the drive might be doing for other reasons. So, as data is physically read from/written to the drive, it is also stored in the cache buffer (RAM) on the drive controller ... just in case it's called for again soon. One other speed advantage is that when writing to a drive, the buffer can accept the data nearly instantly even if the drive isn't ready to store it. This way the computer can go back to running it's program without waiting for the drive, and the drive will then write the data when it's good and ready.

Obviously a bigger buffer allows more data to be stored this way for faster retrieval. 8MB may not seem like much to us media editors, but then again, media files don't often fall into the category of having the same parts read over again quickly. All the other data accesses though, such things as reading the Windows registry and other system tasks, fit nicely into that buffer and these are also the things that slow down drive throughput the most.

The bigger the buffer, the faster and most smoothly a hard drive should be able to transfer data. Well in theory. Think of a buffer as a temporary container. It shouldn't be a problem for hard drives, can be a problem for buring CD's and DV's.

Hard drives need to position their read write heads as they seek data. Dumping data into a buffer prior to releasing it out to the computer's BUS should in theory at least make for faster overall transfer rates and the transfer speed should more orless be more constant than it would without a buffer.

The larger the drive's buffer, the most constant the transfer rate... in theory. How fast a drive transfers data depends in part how badly files are fragemented and what sectors on the drive need to be accessed. If the drive needs to go to a different platter it will slow down for a fraction of a second as the read/write heads are repositioned. SAme too if the file being read is badly fragements and scattered all over the disk. The OS and BIOS first needs to find the right sectors. Normallly, who cares... we're talking fractions of a second.

However when burning a CD or DVD, that slight delay can cause big problems. If the buffer empties, meaning the burning software it trying to pull data faster than the drive can deliver it, you'll make a coaster. Newer CD and DVD burners have buffer underrun technology that generally prevents it.

You can count on the 8meg cache drives to blow your doors off. Thats what
my guru buddy says. He eats, sleeps, dreams, and plays and reconfigures
his computers from 7:00 am to 3:00 AM just to see the difference one new
item can have on performance. Every combination possible. Sometimes
reload Win2K twice a day and an XP to boot. He got tired of calling
microsoft on activating XP so he went to Win2K. Microsoft was giving him
a load of crap about it. He is currently getting into the video stuff
with all the low end software and is irate about how it never includes
what you need and you have to upgrade and spend more money. He is bogged
down on how to get MYDVD 4.0 from re-encoding even when the bitrate is
6.0 megs. I told him I don't have a problem with that because I bought the
REELDVD one that works. Anyhow, just buy the one with the 8meg cache
and you will be thrilled.

James J. Kizak

No one actually stated:

Will it make a difference to VV?

I am looking at a 250GB ATA133 HD with 2MB of Cache, and a 200GB ATA100 HD with 8MB of Cache. Same price. I am currently using a 40 and a 60MB HD with 512KB Cache and that works fine for VV.

I understand that for things which require task switching and other things it will be faster if it has a lot of stuff in cache, but is normal VV operation in that catagory? From current experience, it seems not.

No it won't "speed up" rendering if that's what you're asking. Remember we're talking apples and oranges. What's important for rendering speed is raw horsepower or how powerful your CPU is. So very roughtly a PC running at 2Ghz would take half as long to render the same file as a PC running at 1Ghz.

All a larger buffer on a hard drive will do is move data faster. That's transfer speed. If your buddy spends all day playing around moving files from one drive to another to see if one configuration shaves a second or two off the transfer time then he'll perhaps see a small reduction in time in getting files from drive A to B if the drive buffer is larger, but a larger buffer won't do a thing to reduce rendering times, because a larger buffer don't help the CPU work any faster or better.

why can't you use more than one processor to render? when do you suppose 10 or 20 ghz processors will be available?

> when do you suppose 10 or 20 ghz processors will be available?

If Moore’s Law holds true (and it has since 1971), processor speed doubles every 2 years. I bought a 1.7Ghz P4 in 2000. In 2002 we saw 3Ghz P4’s (2x faster) so in two more years (2004) we should have 6Ghz, 2006 should bring 12Ghz and 2008 should yield 24Ghz.

So realistically, I suppose 20Ghz processors will show up in the next 4 to 5 years. Now if they can get DVD burners up to 24x by then we’ll be all set. ;-)

~jr

Its really great, now that I have my quad 96GHz machine with dual 48.4 Terrabyte Drives. Things automatically background render so fast that I REALLY have real time output of those 78GB HD files by the time I am finished with a project.

I just love my new 62" OLED 1/16" thick "Color Accurate" PC Monitor with included "Internal-External" monitor in true TV color that coils up into the ceiling when not in use. When I show my finished project on the 129" rolled down ceiling mounted OLED, it REALLY looks great. Not a scan line visible, now that they have perfected 1080 double interpolated progressive.

However, with all the new things in VV 9.5, I am using more and more effects, Internal KeyFramable Noise Reduction and Sound Enhancement, and the frame rate in preview is slowing down a bit.

I dropped the preview quality level to Good, the other day, and things went almost at full speed, until I added a few more of those 7-dimension transitions. It slowed down, again. Still, in Preview mode it is fantastic.

Compared to the Brand-x Thunder Video Processing "real time" Card, at only $4,564.00 (Academic pricing), including Premier 7.89. it is a super bargain, and the INTERFACE, is SO much better that I can't believe anyone would use anything BUT Vegas.

Still, I am designing another new editing computer. Can't wait for the new 156GHz Pentium VII chips next year. Quad mounted, with Super-Hyper-Over- and-Under Threading, they should REALLY be great. Yep, I am really looking forward to 2010.

Happy New Year, and keep dreaming.

Actually generation two of DVD burners (those supporting DVD+RW/R ARE running at about 24X CD speed, or 2.4-2.5 DVD speed.

We still have a LONG way to go, though. Remember, the full DVD specification is for two sides, 8 total layers, and about 18GB of data. Of course, all that should be obsolete in a year, as the new specs for BluRay and other things come of age and they want to put 24 to 40 GB on them.

Then we will be glad to have 2.5 speed, as it will take half a day to full one even at that speed.

That's the thing about technology... it doesn't stand still. Good I guess, but expensive to keep up.

10 ghz would be nice!

still curious if you can use more than one processor to render faster (not background rendering)?

Wanted to add my two cents:

Increasing buffer cache doesn't help THAT much. If it made a huge difference, drives would have lots of buffer already.

A buffer can help interface between a very fast process (the CPU and memory) and an extremely slow process (locating information on the disk platters). Another thing: computer people found out many years ago was that if the process wanted a bit of data, the odds were high that the next data needed would be located close to the previous bit of data. So if the first request for data results in a large chunk of data coming into the buffer, then the next request will probably find what it needs already in that buffer.

For video, what matters mostly instead is streaming performance. The hard drive needs to keep up with the 4MB/sec video data stream. This was a real issue 5 years ago with IDE drives, but today's drive can support a constant data stream of perhaps 20MB-40MB/sec. The buffer doesn't have much of a role in this, though it's nice to be able to temporarily shoot the data already in the buffer across to the PC at the maximum transfer rate, which has been moving up steadily from 33MB/sec (ATA-33) to 100MB/sec (ATA-100) and even beyond.

I think the recent veg render tests have shown that what matters a great deal in render performance is CPU horsepower and very fast RAM access.

Thank you Riredale. That is what my "education" and experience has told me, just wanted to see what everyone thought. The cpu seems to be a big bottleneck, and I can't wait for a faster one, if it were only something I could afford.