Can you say...Dinosaur?

stump_grinder wrote on 10/3/2003, 9:51 AM

OK, OK let's get this over with. I've got VV & DVDA on a Pentium 3, 450 mhz tower with half a gig of memory and over 240 gigs of hard drive space on a Windows 98se system. ...(pause for laughter)....

Now, my question.
Does the rendering get ANY quicker on a NEW system; not just XP, but P4 with Hyper-Threading and a butt load of memory? OR is it all in the graphics cards, you know, the ones that start at $2,000.00??

Help, I'm in RENDERING @#%^

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 10/3/2003, 9:56 AM

Nope, not in the hardware. With a fast proc, fast drives, and good ram, render times decrease significantly. Vegas can barely even CRAWL on a 450. Run a P4 2.8 or so, you'll be pleased as can be. Don't spend the extra cash for the latest/greatest proc, because not only are they exceptionally more costly, but you gain very little. Look at the P4 2.4 or 2.8HT, they are cheap and nearly as fast as the 3.06 is. And compared to a 450, you'll think you've purchased a Ferrari

Baylo wrote on 10/3/2003, 9:57 AM

Rendering is all about CPU and RAM. The graphics card has nothing to do with rendering, only displaying the finished product.

So, yes, a nice speedy P4 will make a huge difference to rendering times, realtime previews, etc.

The graphics card has no effect on the running of Vegas. The only effect it really has is on workflow, if you decide that you need to run multiple monitors (which I highly recommend, by the way).

Hope that helps,

Mark

Chienworks wrote on 10/3/2003, 9:57 AM

The graphics card has just about absolutely nothing to do with rendering speed at all. You'll render just as fast with a $19 8MB PCI VGA card as you would with anything else. What you need is a faster processor; that makes more difference than any other hardware.

BillyBoy wrote on 10/3/2003, 9:58 AM

Rendering is CPU intersive. The faster your CPU the shorter your render times. Extra RAM doesn't really help, you have plenty. There is roughly a halfing as you increase CPU speed. So a 1 Ghz CPU should render around 2.2 times faster than your old PC. As you probably already know rendering is also impacted by the complexity of your project.

RichMacDonald wrote on 10/3/2003, 11:18 AM

I got you beat: A PII 350Mhz with 25MB RAM and a 40GB HD. Works fine except when my wife wants to get on the computer during those 50hr renders :-) On my simple projects, 1 second of mpg render takes about 80 seconds of real-time!

I'm budget-constrained right now (to say the least), but I've been getting itchy lately and have been tracking www.pricewatch.com. If you click in the "PC - No OS" option, you'll find some PCs (Athlons in particular) that will render about 5 times faster than your current setup and will cost you less than $200. Or you could pay $300 for a computer that is 6 times faster...Note: I'm assuming you'll reuse your monitor and your other current peripherals.

Holy Cow!!!! I just checked and there is a new record for an unbelievable deal... checkout http://www.tufshop.com/store/product2984.html for a P4 2.8GHz at $300. Or a P4 2.55 GHz for $226 at http://www.tufshop.com/store/product73.html. How can anyone make money on that? Its amazing. And dropping further every week. (Note: Looks like a Via chipset on these links, so it'll take some investigation to decide if this is a good system for our needs. I just posted the first link I saw.)

JJKizak wrote on 10/3/2003, 11:51 AM

If you upgrade to a P4 2.8 with 800 side buss and 400ddr ram and
hyperthreading (XP only) your render times will change from about 50 hrs to about 2 to 6 hrs.

JJK

randy-stewart wrote on 10/3/2003, 7:45 PM

Guys,
I gotta comment on the first four posts to this thread. All within 4-5 minutes of the original poster, all within a minute or two of each other and all saying the same correct thing. The expertise and helpfulness of this forum continues to amaze me. Many thanks to all.
Randy

stump_grinder wrote on 10/6/2003, 7:37 AM

My thanks to one and all. Now...can I borrow some cash for that NEW PC??
Just kidding.

So, if it's not hardware, why does Matrox charge sooooo much for their cards. I understand the dual / triple monitor thind but ....WOW

TomG wrote on 10/6/2003, 8:00 AM

Well, I think it's finance 101 --> Supply vs. Demand.

There are enough people out there that are willing to "pay the piper"

FWIW,

TomG

wcoxe1 wrote on 10/6/2003, 8:20 AM

When it comes to the Matrox Perhelia, it has memory for something that Vegas doesn't currently support. Things like Boris RED, on the other hand, fairly screame through the Parhelia. Nice.