Got my hands on a dual proc AMD - so I put VV3 on it... not impressed.

theigloo wrote on 4/29/2002, 3:22 PM
On friday night, one of our operations guys wheeled in a machine that will become one of our new web-servers. Before they put all the web crap on it, however, I convinced them to let me have it for the weekend. Since I've been in the market for a new machine, I thought this would be a good opportunity to get some straight answers... I was espcially interested to see how a dual proc machine performs.

The system was laid out like this:
Dual AMD MD 1600+ (MD is the dual verson of the XP processor).
2 GB of DDR ECC RAM (that's right - 2 gigs!)
1 30 GB 7200 UDMA Hard drive. (that's crap... not to worry.)

I compared this system to the one I have at home which is this:
Single PIII 667 MHz
384 RAMBUS RAM
1 30 GB 7200 UDMA Hard drive for the OS
1 80 GB 7200 UDMA Hard drive for source video.

Now first things first - all I wanted to compare was the processors' speeds - not the two machines' I/O. I have found, and I'm sure you have too, that the processor becomes a bottleneck durring redering. So I installed VV3 on the new machine (later formated the disk - no infringement!). Then I put exactly the same .AVI file on both machines and rendered them to an MPG1, then an MPG2 and then an MPG4.

In all cases, the dual AMD was 120% faster than my not so old PIII. In other words, it was more than twice as fast. Is this good? Not entirely.

Though faster is better, I'm not sure of the bang for the buck - my prime beef with the Dual AMD was that durring rendering both CPUs shared the load, but neither of them were even close to maxed out. One CPU was at about 70% and the other about 30%. They should have both been cranking.... what's the deal?

The OS and VV3 definatly recognized the dual CPUs, so why weren't they exploited?

Am I better off getting a crazy fast single CPU system? I figure at Sonic Foundry headquarters you have every kinkd of test bench there is - what's the best machine? Who's winning?

Thanks, Matt.
www.theigloo.com

Comments

Cheesehole wrote on 4/29/2002, 3:49 PM
search on "dual processor" on this forum. most of your questions/findings have already been addressed several times :)
SHTUNOT wrote on 4/29/2002, 4:31 PM
I'm sure in the next version of vegas[4] that the dual cpu issue will be addressed and you'll see BOTH cpu's utilized to a gretaer extent if not maxed out.Later.
theigloo wrote on 4/29/2002, 5:23 PM

Cheesehole - I did the search and I found your comment very informative:

"they said that when rendering, one cpu does the processing to create a frame (all the compositing and effects) and mix the audio, while the other does the DV compression."

If neither processor is maxed, however, then this is clearly not a very efficient system. Especially if one proc is at 70% and the other at 30% - because that adds up to one proc. May as well save my cash.

SHTUNOT - how do you know VV4 will address this? When is VV4 due? Can you provide any reference? Othewise its hearsay.

Matt.
SHTUNOT wrote on 4/29/2002, 6:34 PM
A "glass is half full" answer. Go to the product suggestion page for vegas and "remind" the R&D department to have this on their priority list.
Cheesehole wrote on 4/29/2002, 6:51 PM
SoFo reads these forums and has seen the dual processor issue come up so many times that we would *hope* they'll improve the efficiency in VV4. while editing, Vegas harnesses my CPU's better than just about any other software I've edited with. 3dsmax, photoshop, etc... all use dual procs while editing, but Vegas does it better and makes for a more responsive experience.

but more would be better and there is room for significant improvement in DV rendering and MPEG encoding.
nlamartina wrote on 4/30/2002, 1:19 AM
What makes you guys think it won't happen in another patch or two? This is only revision "a", after all...

- Nick
DataMeister wrote on 4/30/2002, 9:04 AM
I am curious why I've not heard much about a dual Xeon (p4) processor machine. I believe they now have 2.4GHz Xeon processors. And with the 2.4GHz processor being the fastest x86 compatible processor out there, period, I would think a dual processor machine would really do some damage (so to speak).

Has anyone used or seen any of the newer dual processor Intel systems?

JBJones
theigloo wrote on 4/30/2002, 12:10 PM

There's a great review of the dual AMD 2100+ versus the dual xeon P4 2.4 at:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/02q2/020402/index.html

It's good for us video editors because it benchmarks a lot of MPG compression. Sonic Foundry - you guys need to have a benchmark section of this site!! They used Xmpeg... I'm sure its similar - but I'm a big fan of apples to apples. But not Macs.

Anway, jbjones, be carefull when getting excited about clock speeds. AMD and Intel both have x86 architectures so they both have to have the same instruction sets... But if the geeks at one company lay out their transistors so they can do a given instruction in fewer clock ticks than the other company's geeks, they'll have a better proc per tick.

Matt.
theigloo wrote on 4/30/2002, 12:14 PM

Crap! Wrong link... the last one was a single proc... here's the dual version:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/02q1/0203131/index.html
altphase wrote on 4/30/2002, 3:39 PM
In my opinion, you're almost always better off getting a fast single processor PC for running Windows apps. Even in cases where the OS benefits from dual processors (as with Win NT,2K,XP) the apps will rarely use them to the full extent even if optimized for multi-cpu. The reason for that is probably that there are many processes withing a program like VV3 that would need to be optimized just for rendering, and just like most other programs, VV3 relies on third party components for some of its tasks (for example rendering to any external codecs). There are some programs which will scream with a dual-cpu system (try Tmpgenc) but usually they're written for a very specific task, unlike VV which does audio,video,scaling,filtering,encoding,etc.. I've spent a lot of time working with dual-cpu Win computers and would not buy one myself for the reason that I use a variety of programs, most of which are not dual-cpu optimized.
DataMeister wrote on 5/8/2002, 2:35 PM
Hi,

From what I've read (I haven't used a dual proc. system myself, yet) even if you don't have software optimized for dual processors you can still see advantages when doing extensive multitasking. For instance if you were rendering a video in Vegas, but then wanted to go do something in Photoshop, you would get much better performance in the second application on a dual processor system than you would on a single processor system. Would those who know, agree?

JBJones
Cheesehole wrote on 5/9/2002, 4:57 PM
yes, your example is correct. while working in photoshop you wouldn't see any slow-down.
theigloo wrote on 5/10/2002, 3:22 AM

I agree with cheesehole. That was the thing that impressed me most. I took a chunk of video and began redering it. The processors did not max. The video rendered in 8 minutes. When it was done, I opened another instance of vegas put the same chunk of video in it and began redering both of them at the same time. They both finished in 8 minutes.
viking2100 wrote on 5/18/2002, 9:29 PM
Hi,

We are thinking about build a Asus a7m266d dual athlon MP 1900+ system w/2 gib ram for a monster video project. How long did it take you to render ntsc dv w/your dual processor system. We currently have a single processor system - athlon 1.333mhz and have about 10 hours of ntsc video to preview and render. The system is fine for editing, but prerendering and rendering take a while considering we have between 4-6 layers of video. I am just wondering how much of a difference we will see w/the dual system. Is it worth the upgrade? We are in time crunch and need to proof the video content and render for mastering.

Would 1900+ duals allow for smooth previewing of 4-6 layers without selectively prerendering? What do you think would be the render time per hour of video?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. We have to decide whether or not to order the components by monday.

Thanks
Cheesehole wrote on 5/19/2002, 2:54 AM
>>Would 1900+ duals allow for smooth previewing of 4-6 layers without selectively prerendering? What do you think would be the render time per hour of video?

you will see a decrease in render time, but not a huge one. remember, DV renders in VV3 only use about 65% of the CPU power of a dual system. also remember, that an Athalon 1900+ (1.6Ghz) is only 300MHz faster than an Athalon 1.3Ghz.

assuming that VV3 uses 65% of dual CPUs for DV rendering of a typical project...

1.6GHz * 2 = 3.2GHz * .65 = 2.08Ghz effective render power in VV3

expect about a 65% gain in render speed compared to a single 1.33GHz Athalon. a project that took 60 minutes to render on the 1.33GHz should take about 36 minutes on the dual 1.6GHz.

the "how many layers of video" question is dependant on the project, but as compared to your single 1.33Ghz, don't expect a huge gain. the dual cpus are great for a responsive editing experience, but they don't increase the number of layers of video you can use in realtime by very much. I'd estimate about 15-30% more "layer rendering power" in a dual system as compared with a single cpu system of the same speed... that's if you are just playing the project, and not editing *while* you play the project. that's when dual cpus start to pay off.

still, if you are going to be doing a ton of editing on this box, and you aren't on a super tight budget, I'd recommend going dual. when assessing the value of a dual system vs single, think *wider* not *faster*. if you are a power user and like to do a lot of stuff at once, then dual is key.
theigloo wrote on 5/29/2002, 12:22 AM


I endend up buying a dual proc amd 1900+.

One thing I really like is that it renders as it goes. If you loop a complex secton, you may only get about 8 fps. But let it sit and loop a few rounds and it works it's way up to 29.97 really fast. I have done that with very complicated 7 layer shots.

I really like the dual proc. You'll see a big gain. Not 2x, but big. Plus, while rendering, you can open a new session and keep editing with no loss of horsepower.. I suggest chopping your project into chuncks and rendering one while editing another. For 10 hours, I'd use at least 10 chunks.

Rendering speed depends on the format you render to. Avi to Avi is super fast. Mpg2 and 2 are much lower while wmv is almost real time.

Matt.