Only two things that I know of: Fast processor, and second hard drive (for video capture) connected to the secondary IDE connection (main drive connected to primary IDE).

Already have DVD burner - HP300i (DVD+R/RW) - happy with it!

You mentioned fast hard drive - which one? OS/Program drive? or Video drive? For which would SATA be most important?

I'll be moving from AMD 950mhz with 512mb RAM.

Trying to kick up my rendering speeds to MPG2 for use by DVD Architect.

Now seeing over 5 hours to render a 2 video track with 1 stereo audio track that is 1 hour long.

For hard drive, have at least the OS drive relatively fast, and the video capture drive the fastest you can get. Make sure DMA is enabled, too.

What's the source file for that render? I've spent time trying to optimize my system and realized the slow render was due to my source files, which used to be Mpeg-1. I've switched to DV AVI, and it goes a lot faster.

Rogue One

They have a saying in real estate: Location, location, location.

With rendering its CPU speed. The faster your CPU, the shorter your render times will be. With memory as cheap as it is now I'd go for 1 GB especially if you think you'll use the system for other things while Vegas is rendering.

Source files are always DV AVIs.

One part of new system will be move from Win98SE to WinXP Home.

Should I expect any speed difference based on that?

I'd recomend getting WinXP Pro. If you get XP Home and want to upgrade to duel processors in the next year or 2 (when the AMD 64's drop the intel proces) you'd need to upgrade then. http://www.upgrade-solution.com/ has Win XP Home for around $80 & Pro for $130 (oem). You've gotta buy a piece of hardware, but an extra mouse is worth the cost! :)

You'll like XP for the ntfs file system availability. This will enable you to do captures in excess of 4gb.

Have you thought of keeping your old drives for this system?

If you are buying 2 new drives, why not use your old ones for back ups and extra storage. As a 3rd and 4th drives, you will need a pci controller card.

Actuatly, you know what? Dell and HP are going to release AMD 64bit based computers soon. You might want to wait until they do. The AMD 64bit chips will be way down by then, and you can get a 64bit Windows XP.

I think they are releasing then in December or January.

As everyone else has already said, a fast processor is a must. Rendering is a tractor pull. Also, think about noise and cooling. A CPU running at 100% gets hot. Then the fans make more noise.

HT? Don't know if that'll help or hurt. A render at 100% is 100% whether you've got HT or not. But it'll be easier to get the system's attention with HT, I suppose.

Memory? you just need enough. 512 is good but 1 GB will be better in the long run. You'll find yourself switching between Vegas and Photoshop and AEFX or Red before long so planning for lots of memory is good

Graphics? Dual monitors is very good but otherwise Vegas doesn't use processing power on the card. Maybe that'll change someday although I'd look for that more in 3d apps.

Hard drives? If you're thinking about SATA toms hardware has a recent review. The most useful thing (for render times) is low CPU overhead. The less the HD uses the CPU the more is left for the render. When we first did the vegas render tests Spot got very good times with scsi disks because of their low overhead.

Also, for SATA, look for an intel chipset based board that uses Intel's own chipset based SATA. It's not on the PCI bus and can actually burst at 150Mbps. PCI solutions top out at 133Mbps.

And last, I think that SATA is supposed to be capable of hot swapping. Something to consider for the future when 1394b to SATA bridge boards start showing up. Not that 1394b is an improvement over SATA (Speedwise) but you might find SATA more flexible-especially if you use them in removable drive cartridges.

Rob Mack

Forgive my ignorance guys but I want to buy this Maxtor HD to use as a 3rd HD tomorrow, and have some questions ( I don't trust sales people too much even if their intentions are good) following the stats:

120GB Capacity
Serial ATA version enables transfer speeds up to 150 MB/sec
100% FDB (Fluid Dynamic Bearing) motors
8MB Cache Buffer
Shock Protection System
Data Protection System
3.5-Inch 7200 RPM Performance Class Hard Drives
Designed for Performance PCs, PC Gaming Systems, Digital Video
Specifications Back to Top
Performance Specifications Storage Capacity: 120GB
Rotational Speed: 7200 RPM
Buffer Size: 8MB cache
External Transfer Rate(Mbytes/sec): SATA/150
Average Seek (msec): <9.4
Average Latency (msec): 4.2

Since this HD is probably much faster than what I'm using as my current 2nd IDE, I would like to use this Maxtor as my 2nd and my current (Maxtor 120 gb ata 133).

Stiffler said: "As a 3rd and 4th drives, you will need a pci controller card."
Now here's where I really embarass myself: The Maxtor I'm currently using as a 2nd drive came with a round (I'm assuming this is an ultra ata cable, right?) and I'm using it instead of the flat cable. This cable only has 2 ends though, what will I need to have the the 3 HDs in my case? Or should I just put my current 2nd drive ( to just use as storage) in the available bay of my external firewire HD case?
TIA for your patience,
Randy

Oh boy.

If it's an IDE cable it'll have a 40 pin connector at each end plus one in the middle. The cable itself will have 80 wires going to the 40 pin connectors. The cable is usuall a flat ribbon but can be sold bundled up into a round cable.

If it's SATA then it'll have a much smaller connector at either end but nothing in the middle. You can attach 1 drive per motherboard connector.

Look around the internet for some good web pages. I'll bet WD describes the technology.

Rob Mack