HARDWARE: give me opinions

macgregor wrote on 10/7/2004, 8:46 AM

Hello.
RIght now i am going to start a big project. Since i will be using a lot of effects and tracks, render times are huge.

So I have two problems to fix:
- previewing
- rendering

In order to render faster, the best choice right now i think is to buy a P4 3 Ghz HT as a server and main computer, and 1 or 2 cheaper network computers.

I have two options for the network CPUS:
- I could buy TWO whole P4 Intel® Celeron® D 325 (2.53 GHz, 256 MB cache, 533 MHz FSB for just €300
- Or another Intel® Pentium® 4 with HT (3.0 GHz, 1 MB cache, 800 MHz FSB) for around €600

I´m sure the 3.0 HT will go faster than the celeron, but we are talking that we can have TWO PCs for the price of one, rendering together in the network, and having each one 512 Mb of RAM and a 80 Gb hard disc.

Since i have not use the network render in vegas, i do not know how fast things go.
That is why i am writing this, so you could give me your personal experience.

And second point, how to speed up previewing. Since i use level correction, and cropping... usually the preview screen goes too slow (around 4 or 5 fps). I do not want to mute video tracks nor to ignore video effects, becasue that is what i need to see. And if i render a preview, it takes a lot of time which i don´t like.

Is there any way to speed this up? Thanks for reading the whole post. Bye!

Comments

Coursedesign wrote on 10/7/2004, 9:17 AM

P4 3.2E (800 MHz bus, 1MB cache) is the sweetspot for price/performance right now.

You also need lots of RAM to get decent performance, 1GB would be absolute minimum for what it sounds like you're trying to do.

Celeron sucks for rendering, you'll get better performance and more use out of one P4 than 2 Celerons. Can't you get something better than a 2.53 P4 for a 2nd machine? This is practically surplus at this point.

If you have limited funds, spend the money on getting top performance in one machine. At least 1GB RAM (1.5-2GB preferred) and fast media drives (WD 8MB cache are nice for IDE, and Seagate Raptors kick butt with SATA interfaces). This will also help your preview problem, which is all about CPU performance (and RAM).

macgregor wrote on 10/7/2004, 9:24 AM

Right now i have an old computer but 768 Mb of RAM. WIth vegas i didn´t ever had a problem with RAM. Why should i need more?

Is a RAID 0 the best choice to speed up HD reading and writing?

Coursedesign wrote on 10/7/2004, 10:34 AM

RAID0 is a last resort for speeding up drive access. Last because if one drive fails, you lose everything.

Better is to just get faster drives, like for example the (relative to performance) inexpensive Seagate Raptor 10,000rpm SATA drives.

Whether it is worth it to use 2 PCs instead of 1 for editing depends on how you work.

If working on several projects at the same time, where some projects need to be rendered while editing the next one, the answer is obvious, get 2.

If working on single large projects that can be rendered overnight say when needed, get the fastest possible single machine.

RAM usage depends on a lot of factors, and if you don't have enough physical RAM, Windows will use virtual memory (shuffling memory segments to and from disk = sloooow).

Wolfgang S. wrote on 10/7/2004, 5:04 PM

I have invested in following system recently - be prepared to spend a lot of money.
:-)

- SATA raid 5 system, with 4x 200 GB Seagate Barracudas, 7200.7, 8 MB Cache; raid 5 is superior to raid0, since here you have a good data protection - I see something about 580 GB space, the rest is used for data protection. If one drive fails, you can substitute it and still re-create the information

- SATA Controller Promise Fast Track SATA150 SX4, DIMM 256 MB S-DRAM 133 MHz

- as systempartition a SATA Western Digital Raptor, 36.7 GB, 8 MB Cahce, 10.000 upm, 5.2 ms access time

- board S-479 ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe. By the way, you could also buy a board with raid-5 onboard - but if the board crashes, everything is gone. The standalone raid-controller should be available for longer.

- intel P4 3.2 GHz

- 2x 512 DDR-RAM, PC-3200 CL3.0 Samsung

- AGP Matrox P750 Parhelia-LX, 64 MB. A great card, but unfortunately Vegas does not support the overlay features.

- big Tower Server-rack, Cheiftec DA-01BLD, with 420 watt, and four super silent cooler. Disable the original cooler in the rack, it is much too loud. Take another processor cooler, it is a nightmare how loud the original intel cooler is.

- at the front foresse firewire und usb2

HT is not really supported by Vegas, the mainconcept encoder is optimized for that, but I have not seen a huge advantage by switching on or of HT. People think that it has an advantage if you render in the background, and continue to work in a second instance.

Overclocking increased render performance a little bit, but you are doing that at your own risk. However, the ASUS boards support that in a nice way - and temperature control was still fine when I overclocked the processor by 10%.

All together the system works fine.

riredale wrote on 10/7/2004, 8:34 PM

If you're wondering just how much ram is necessary, download a little freeware program called RamPage. It installs into your system tray and continuously displays a number showing just how much of your ram is currently available.

I think you'll find that you will rarely, if ever, find a need for anything more than 512MB of ram. I could be wrong.

rmack350 wrote on 10/7/2004, 10:40 PM

If working between two systems, would gigabit ethernet be a good thing? I'd think it would help.

Even if you don't use network rendering, you could mirror the media on the second system and then just set a mark in the middle of your project and render one half on one machine and the other half on the other.

Another possibility is to use a dual processor system. Then you can get a render going on the same system you edit on. If you are the only person working then this might work out. If you have help then they could be using the second machine.

Also, I remember in the initial render tests, Spot was getting slightly faster times on a SCSI system. This is because SCSI has less cpu overhead, and that is a big point. Many RAID setups add CPU overhead and if the system renders slower than it can write to disk then the RAID isn't helping.

As far as HT goes, if Vegas uses the CPU at 100% when rendering, it isn't going to go any faster with HT. But the system should be more responsive.

There may be other ways to get yourself more time. Direct to disk recorders could save you some capture time. You might be able to rent them in your area.

Finally, if the project is big, you're going to get a lot smarter about being efficient.

Rob Mack

macgregor wrote on 10/7/2004, 11:21 PM

Thanks to all.

Now, the Big question.

Has anyone experienced with net rendering? Could we say that 2 CPUS cut render time almost as half (supossing you have fast HD and fast ethernet), 4 CPUS take 1/4 of the time... and so on? Or not?

Perhaps in reallity it is not so much advantage because there is a lot of data transfer throught the net, we do not see impresive result has we should see for example, rendering 3D, where you cut render times by half.

rmack350 wrote on 10/8/2004, 9:39 AM

You really need to search this forum, as well as a few other Vegas forums, on the subject of network rendering.

Also search for post about frameserver.

Unfortunately, once you start the job you won't have much time to study-except during long renders. Maybe that's a good reason to have two machines.

On the GB ethernet front, it ought to be faster than firewire (but not good to edit over) so transfering media should be pretty quick. However, it's even quicker if you do the big transfer once and then use software to keep the two folders in sync. Then you could just use the scheme of rendering half on one machine and half on the other.

Rob Mack