Thanks verymuch OldSmoke. I'll look into that card. But does that card have problems with the AVC 1080p internet template which I use for youTube quite a lot?

Yes it does have problems. You will not get GPU acceleration even if you set it up; it will be just as fast as CPU only. You have two choices: Buy a used GTX580 from eBay or similar sources or use a R9 290/290X and use Handbrake for Internet delivery. Search for a post by a user by the name Marco.S; he developed the a script that allow to frame serve from Vegas to Handbrake and get the best results for Internet format at low bit rates, much better then Vegas can do. It wont be as fast as rendering with the GTX580 from Vegas but it will be of better quality.

Thanks again OldSmoke. I did find a second hand Gigabyte GTX580 (UDV edition, whatever that means) for €112 and a new Sparkle GTX580 asking price €189.

Do you know if they are the same size as my GTX650, so that no other hardware upgrades would be necessary?

These would be considerably cheaper than the R9 290/290X option. I don't do 3D, so would I lose anything other than rendering speed?

(By the way, at the risk of sounding idiotic and driving everybody up the wall, if I just uprgraded my CPU from the current i5 3,3 GHz and gave up on GPU acceleration, would that work as well as upgrading the graphics card?
So in other words, does GPU matter? )

You should still be able to use your GPU. If you switch GPU on, then it should stay on!
I have a GTX 770, which worked perfectly for a long time. For some reason I've never got to the bottom of, it's crashing Vegas if I do a multicam edit only. Fine for everything else. Preview is noticeably better with GPU on - especially if I've applied any effects. The latest drivers are not necessarily the best one for your card!

Funnily enough, preview is smooth even with multiple sources and effects applied. But I can't seem to be able to render the same project any more than 6 minutes without a crash. Single sources with a few NB effects and tools are fine. Crashing is most likely to happen if keyframed track motion together with keyframed pan & zoom is applied to a multicamera sequence, which is often the case in my concert videos.. In the current project the use of animated Heroglyph routes together with NB titler text and NB overlayed video clips is the most likely villain.
N.B. After I reinstalled the latest build of v12 and the latest nvidia driver, Vegas now allows GTX650 for GPU and it stays on. Sadly, it still crashes just the same. I tried switching to an older Nvidia driver (2012, I think) but no difference. How far back should I go?
So what I want is stability; rendering times don't really matter.
Would the GTX580 give me that? I just want to make sure switching back to an older model is worth the money.
I use the computer only for HD multicam video (not 4K) and image editing with with NB and Heroglyph plugins (possibly Hitfilm later)(plus the net), not gaming, is that card sufficient for that?
And if I buy the gtx580, should I use the 650 alongside it,, or sell the 650?
Lastly, I have my video material on an external 1 TB hdd (usb 3.0) and render to the internal hdd (seagate 500 gb, possibly 8 years old) where I also have win7 and V12 installed. I know this is not the ideal setup, so should I render to the second external drive (1 tb usb 3.0)?
Sorry about sounding like a five-year-old.
Last minute edit: I read the specs for asus gtx650 and it says cuda support so are you absolutely certain the gtx580 is a better option?

@Gabonviper

Before you run out and buy a new card, have you tried setting Preview RAM to 0? That has helped other users in this forum.

Edit:
One more thing to keep in mind. Most of the plug ins you mentioned work better with AMD cards. OpenCL/GL isn't well implemented on Nvidia cards. So maybe a HD6970 or HD7950 would be good. Always check the size of the card! And you may actually be able to leave both cards in the system.

Thanks I'll try that
Edit: OldSmoke: the precise model of my card is Asus GeForce GTX650-DC-1GD5 and the specs (for example here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1681412166) say it has 384 Cuda cores and supports Cuda technology. But you are saying the GTX580 is the last safe bet for GPU acceleration as the older models do not support Cuda?
So how is it?

And here we go again. This has been posted a 1000 times. The codecs used by Vegas for MC AVC and Sony AVC are written by Mainconcept at the time where the latest CUDA architecture was based on the Fermi GPU from Nvidia. Fermi ends with the GTX500 series and later models are based on Kepler or now Maxwell. While your card has 384CUDA cores, the GTX580 has 512 cores and a much better bandwidth, the codec will see it but is not written to support it. Most of the timeline acceleration is written in OpenCL and OpenGL, both are not well implemented in Nvidia cards. So, as of today, you can buy the latest and greatest Nvidia card, the GTX580 will still be faster because Vegas and the codecs where written for it. The only newer cards that work well are AMD/ATI R9 2xx series with the R9 290 or 290X being the top models. However, those are not supported by the MC AVC and Sony AVC render codecs and will be as fast as CPU only during rendering.

I so wish we could make this a sticky in this forum!

Thank you OldSmoke. I understand this must be frustrating but at least I now understand it better.I think Asus is not really coming clean about the issue here so what is the layman to believe?

You are right but both are to blame, SCS and Nvidia. Asus doesn't want to see consumer/gamer cards being used for professional work. A GTX580 is in fact more powerful then must of the Quadro cards and can be modified to be recognized as a professional card by certain CAD software. Nivida knows that and immediately changed the way the hardware and driver now work on the Keppler and Maxwell GPUs. AMD/ATI has made new cards too but they don't use proprietary technology like CUDA but rely on open source like OpenCL/GL for parallel computing which is GPU acceleration in Vegas.
Also be aware that cards like the 560, 570 and 580 are rather big cards and you will need plenty of space in your PC case; in particular ASUS GTX570/580 are 3 slots wide! In addition you will need a good power supply, 750W minimum. Same applies to R9 290.

Interesting. Might still buy the Gtx 580 even though your tip about dropping dynamic RAM seems to have done the trick as I was able to render 10 min of the project for the first time without a crash. I'll see if I can render a 2-hour multicam project, which had to be rendered in 8 separate parts, which results in noticeable and somewhat irritating pauses between the files when the bluray is played. If it crashes, I'll certainly go for the 580. Though that entails more shopping as my power supply is only 600W. Thanks a ton for your help OldSmoke.

Now here's a thing; I'd always thought the RAM set to 0 was for rendering - never thought to try it for my multicam preview problems. Just tried it with a 45min MC edit...perfect! Not one crash. Previously I'd always found the sweet spot (for me) for rendering and previewing was 100. GPU rendering doesn't bother me, but good preview is an absolute must for editing!

I will probably have to buy the tgx580: even though I managed to render a 1,5-hr-multicam hd concert film mpeg-2 for bluray for the first time without any crashes by setting dynamic ram to 0 and turning gpu off, it took 16 hours to finish!

You've got a bottleneck in the system somewhere. 16hrs sounds extreme, but it does depend on effects used. De-noising software such as Neat Video can certainly take a while - as can just about any Magic Bullet effect. Or render over night...

My 45min MC edit above took around 4hrs using Neat Video.

Might well be, though this was a very heavy project. Here's a sample: https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLTDcib3YOnFjHtYb_TYEfiam1ChsZRIys&v=IcoZ9Q35MPY
I hope the gtx580 will shorten render times. I just hope the Sparkle GeForce gtx-580 guru will fit into my moba (msi z68A-g43) and case (Xigmatek Pantheon) Anybody have a similar setup?

Ok I bought a Sparkle GeForce gtx580 Guru and it fit the case. So far rendering seems faster than with the old gtx 650. Preview with many plugins on is a little jittery.
Question:would I benefit from keeping both cards in the system? My psu is 600w, which is minimum for the gtx580 according to the manufacturer (not ideal by any means I know) so how much more power should I have if I keep both cards?

You can have both in the system but I would first get the GTX580 "tuned". What is your Preview RAM setting? have you tried my "OpenCL memory" tweak on the internal tab? Which driver version are you using?

eft the dynamic RAM setting to 0 as that had sped things up with GPU off. I have not looked into the openGL tweak settings. I am using the latest driver for the gtx 500 series 347.25.
Before I install the old one too, should I upgrade the power supply too? Will that have any effect on preview speed?

I would start with default settings and just the GTX580. Did you try and reset Vegas to it's default settings? Careful! This will reset all customized toolbar and keyboard settings too. The best drivers for the GTX580 on my system was 296.10 and later I used 334.89 with my tweak. 600W isn't sufficient for two cards, 750 should be the minimum. Preview wont improve that much but on system a preview ram setting of 200 (default) was the fastest with the GTX580.

With a 2500K even at 3.3GHz you may have hit the ceiling already. The CPU may not be able to prepare the frames fast enough for the GPU to process and it becomes the bottleneck. The best way to judge your system is the SCS benchmark project. I would say it should render in about 40-45sec when rendered to MC AVC 1080 30p Internet template with CDUA on.

Thanks again OldSmoke!
I downloaded and installed 296.10 and would now like to test the card with the SCS benchmark Project, but can you tell me how to get access to that utility? I found no guidelines on the net on it.

By the way, with the new card(the gtx580) in, fan noise seems to be louder. Could it be because of the power supply 600W, which is only the minimum for the card? How does it affect the card's performance? Can it overheat or something?

Reply by: Gabonviper, Date: 1/31/2015 10:44:09 AM
Might well be, though this was a very heavy project. Here's a sample: https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLTDcib3YOnFjHtYb_TYEfiam1ChsZRIys&v=IcoZ9Q35MPY
Love that guitar tone on his version of Muddy Waters Hoochie Coochie Man!

OldSmoke, would you say that 334.89 is still the best driver for the 570? I've been away from this world for a while, and when I fired up my system, I see the update notification for 347.25. Not sure if I should upgrade or not?