Dual Processor Vegas Performance Increase???

jeskridg wrote on 3/8/2001, 3:43 PM
Hello,

I'm currently running an Asus P3V4X mobo with 700 Mhz P3 and 512MB ram CL3 dimms, not CL2, and running
Win2k.

I'm wondering if anyone can tell me what kind of performance increase I could expect with Vegas by going to a
dual processor system. I was figuring for about $700 I could build a dual 1ghz P3 system with the same RAM
I'm using now. I'm mainly concerned with drastically cutting down my video render times.

Thanks,

Jason E.

Comments

Cheesehole wrote on 4/11/2001, 12:13 PM
Hey dude, I run on a dual PIII 1GHZ system so I can help
you out.

First, dual processors will not decrease your render time
by any more than 10% in the best case I have seen. The
codecs just don't use dual processors. But you can start
up two Vegas instances, and render two video's at once,
taking advantage of both of your processors. Or you can
work on your next video while the first one is rendering
without any noticeable slowdown.

There are a few more clear benefits...

If you are running lots of audio/video plugins at once, and
you want to zoom in on a track while your playing, Vegas
will utilize the second processor while your zooming or
otherwise interacting with the interface. So it keeps the
interface responsive while lots of stuff is going on in
your tracks.

But if you just want to decrease your render times, you're
much better off putting the money into a faster processor.
Check out www.tomshardware.com for more info on running
dual processors.

- ben
karlc wrote on 4/11/2001, 3:37 PM
Just to supplement the first reply, which is excellent.

It also depends upon with what you equate the
term "performance".

In my experience, you will not notice a marked increase in
speed of file operations ... maybe 10 to 20%. But you will
notice a _remarkable_ increase in stability and reliability
when running Vegas on a dual processor machine.

Depending upon your situation, the latter can be more
important overall than a sheer gain in speed.

KAC ...
aress wrote on 4/14/2001, 1:53 PM
i have two systems

one dual pIII 900meg w2k

and a p4 w2k,

my rendering is much faster on the p4. cant wait until
sonic optimizes vegas for the p4, then it will really
scream.

save your money until the p4 rambus system comes down in
price.

ramallo wrote on 4/16/2001, 8:01 AM
Hi,

>my rendering is much faster on the p4.

Is easy, the rendering process only use one processor (Like
the pugins). The dual machine works better and stable than
a single machine with the dual enabled programs.

Bye
mm2k wrote on 4/24/2001, 8:14 AM
It seems the solution to quicker render times was over
looked by the previous RE's. I just bought, but eventually
sold a 29160n Adaptec SCSI controller card. I was using
the card with a 9GB 10,000 RPM Ultra 160 hard drive. My
purpose was initially to lessen the stress on the hard
drive to decrease drop outs. In doing this I noticed my
render time was cut in more that half. Rendering uses the
processor as well as hard drive, even with a faster CPU you
will only see a small change until the drive is upgraded as
well. If your budget will allow it I would go with a
15,000 RPM ultra SCSI set up to improve render time. Don't
hold me to it , but there should be Ultra 320 and 640 on
the market or soon to be released. Rendering animation
relies more heavily on the processor than video from my
experience. EQUIPMENT: PIII 500mhz 512 RAM 60GB ATA100
7200 RPM(For video only), 9GB 5400 RPM IDE (For audio only)
Windows 2k. If your wondering why I no longer use Ultra in
my set up its because I really don't stress the render time
to much at this point.
SonyEPM wrote on 4/24/2001, 9:05 AM
If anybody is looking into lashing together a new system,
the latest AMD machines have a 233mhz bus, and that seems
to make a big difference in overall performance. Definitely
worth considering (even though its a brand new product).

We're demoing Vegas in the AMD pavillion at NAB all week-
all reports on these new boxes so far are thumbs up.
Cheesehole wrote on 4/25/2001, 11:34 PM
-----------------snip----------
In doing this I noticed my render time was cut in more that
half. Rendering uses the processor as well as hard drive,
even with a faster CPU you will only see a small change
until the drive is upgraded as well.
------------------snip---------

It's true that PC's are full of bottlenecks, and that I/O
is often the tightest one, but you should not assume that
getting a faster drive will decrease your render time. It
depends on what you are rendering, and what your
destination codec is. I know in my case, the bottleneck is
in processing power. You'll have to look carefully at your
system to find out where your bottleneck is.

Bring up the task manager and watch the performance meter
while you are rendering. If you are not utilizing close to
100% of your cpu (hovers around 20-30% for example), your
bottleneck may in fact be drive I/O. In that case,
upgrading your drive will most likely increase your render
speed. It could also be that you are running out of RAM
and using virtual memory (which means getting more RAM is
the answer). But if your cpu usage is staying up around 90-
100%, your processing power is the bottleneck, and
upgrading the drive probably won't help.

A great resource to get down and dirty with this stuff is:
http://www.tomshardware.com/


tedbuchanan wrote on 5/9/2001, 7:41 AM
In reference to the demo systems at NAB for VV: in the new AMD 233bus machines, what other components
were used?
1) which sound card ?
2) which graphics card?
3 )how much memory
4) dual processors or single
5) how much memory
kosstheory wrote on 5/25/2002, 1:13 PM
I have gotten excellent results with the following system:

Dual AMD Athlon MP 2000+ processors
ASUS A7M266-D Motherboard
1 GB PC2100 DDR RAM ECC
SIIG UATA 133 RAID CONT Running 4 80 GB Maxtor UATA 133 Drives configured as two drives ( Onoe for Raw Clips and one for rendered media )

When Rendering From DV to DV I achieved 100% CPU usage on both CPUs for the duration of the render, which was quite fast! I was in awe! Seeing those frames shoot by on the preview was a sight for sore eyes. I've never seen anything quite so beautiful.

A lot of people say that the AMD Athlon MP processors are not stable enough to compete with the P4s. This baby is rock steady! I can throw anything at it, and it just gobles it up, and keeps on trucking. And I saved hundreds!

One thing that I am a little concerned about is the CPU usage during other types of renders. Like the mpg2 file I'm rendering right now. The CPUs are only being used to 50%. I suppose that the main concept mpeg2 encoder has no optimization for dual cpus? Looking at the performance tab of the task manager, it looks like CPU 1 is at about 80% and 2 seems to vary between 20% and 30%. There was an earlier post that stated that dual processor support for activities other than DV encoding might use one processor for decoding, and one for encoding. I suppose what the performance tab is showing might be proving that this scenario is true.

I hope that future releases of the main concept mpeg2 codec included with vegas will utilize the dual cpu configuration more efficiently. It is a puzzle why 100% of atleast one of the CPUs isn't being employed. As it is 80+20=100. So, I would probably get about the same results with a single CPU when doing anything other than DV encoding. Oh well. Maybe they should advertise it as "Limited" Dual CPU support, until it's further optomized?

Just my 2 cents