Definitely go for RAID1 over RAID0. If you're really that concerned about the speed that modern drives just don't cut it for you then go with four drives in RAID10.

This is just a gut feeling, but there are still a lot of processes that use fewer cores rather than more, and these processes will benefit from the fastest clock speed possible.

Six cores is enough even with optimized encoders, Vegas not being one of them.

+1 musicvid

I would rather build a 5930K or 5960K system because clock speed is more important. Also keep I mind that Xeon CPU don't run at higher clock speeds on all cores. Save the money and buy a R9 Fury X for your system. And certainly don't buy a Titan card, it's not well supported.

"So our real question is which XEON chips we should choose. Remember we are getting two of them."

E5-2667 v3 - 8-core 3.2GHz

Find something to run in the background like SETI@Home. Backup often if you use RAID 0. Happy computing.

So other than RAID options and going with an ATI card (thank you for this info), I'm still not sure about core count making a difference with Vegas.

Has any one ever checked if Vegas will really use all cores when rendering? If it maxes out at 6 or 8, it probably makes more sense to simply go with a fast i7 system.

Thoughts?

"Has any one ever checked if Vegas will really use all cores when rendering?"

The core utilization is dependent on the encoder. The software maximum video render threads default is 16. I've observed encoders using all eight at 100% and also using all eight at less. No cores were idle, just not pegged.

[Anecdotal Evidence]

1080-24p

Mainconcept MPEG-2 Blu-ray 1920x1080-24p 25 mbps

Mainconcept AVC-MVC Bluray 1080-24p 25mbps

Sony XAVC Intra 1920x1080-24p

HDCAM SR 444 1080-24p

Vegas2Handbrake

Image Sequence (DPX)

[/Anecdotal Evidence]

2017-05-25 Repaired broken links caused by Dropbox software change.

I'm about to spec my new system. Reading several threads here the suggestion is more cores is generally better. Assuming cost isn't an issue (there's little in it anyway) would people recommend and older i7 5820 o/c @ 4.2GHz or an i7 6700 o/c @ 4.4GHz

(I'll be combining this with an SSD system drive, PCI-E 1.2TB SSD project drive, AMD R9 390X and 32GB RAM)

I have to say the considerably lower TDP (and consequently cooler running) of the 6700 is tempting.

I will be working mainly in HD although I may be using 4K source from time to time.

Vegas pro 13 definitely uses all cores of my dual Xeon HP Z820 systems when rendering.
Absolutely no doubt about that .

The restrictions of only 16 cores can be overruled in internal prefs settings .
Same way the max preview RAM amount can be overruled in internal prefs .

Interesting. For me the number of max. rendering threats always jumps back to 16 in the internal preferences too if I try to increase that.

Running SSD's in RAID 0 can't have any possible benefit for Vegas, while exposing you to serious data loss as mentioned by Jamon.
I ran RAID0 SSD's for a while just for grins, and while the benchmarks are impressive, the real world performance over a single SSD wasn't really noticeable if you don't count faster start-up time for applications.

RAID 1, might make more sense, or if you don't want to give up the space, make sure you have an aggressive back-up plan.

The history of performance of RAID 0 with video encoding over the past twenty years is not very favorable.
Drive throughput has rarely if ever been shown to be a bottleneck over those same years.
For those who don't do full backups daily, RAID 1 has a legitimate place in video production, however.

Core count matters, but here are some other factors that matter almost more so:

* Memory amount - windows needs more than you think is excesses due to disk cache

* Optimized memory bandwidth and latency - DDR4 system with 32GB of ram would be much better than a old low GHZ Xeon with high core count.

* GPU compute units - maxing this stat will optimize your opencl CPU+GPU hybrid. With AMD cards dividing the stream processors by 64 generally gives you the physical compute units on the GPU. You want even results, gpus with fractional results indicate disabled parts most likely due to manufacturing flaws. AMD X series has full compute units and hence the highest compute abilities. NV cards are pretty much the same in OPENCL mode but generally perform lower than AMD. CUDA is not effectively utilized in Vegas.

* PCIE 3.0+ GPU speed - make sure that your gpu is actually interfacing at 3.0 and not less due to sharing bandwith with other accessory cards. If the system memory is 20GBs and the GPU is 50-500GBs+ you can see how the PCIe3.0 interface is the bottle neck.

* DMI3.0 - DMI connects your GPU, RAM, CPU to your HDD. DMI 3.0 uses PCIe3.0 lanes which has more bandwidth, less overhead, and reduced latency.

* NVME support - if you have pcie ssd or M2 storage, this interface protocol allows for massive amounts of storage calls to be handles at once, this is a more native mode for sdd. Normal sata ssd has to work through an interface that was designed for old school hdd. Throughput may be fast on both, but it's the latency decrease that you see the most gains.


Seeing higher gpu/cpu utilization comes from a combination of optimized elements.

Also the max RENDER threads is just that, render threads. Single core systems can run multi threaded applications. Multiple cores help process multiple threads at once. If you dig deep in the preferences you will see the 16 threads render limit, as well as 8 more for AVC decoder alone, and there could be more. For practical systems there is still a shortage of physical cores. Hyper threading helps, but should not be considered a replacement for physical cores.

"Vegas pro 13 definitely uses all cores of my dual Xeon HP Z820 systems when rendering.
Absolutely no doubt about that ."

wilvan,

Thanks for your input. It is hard enough to find a fellow Vegas user (outside of this forum) and even more difficult to find one using a dual Xeon system.

How many cores are in your Z820? Do you know which chips are in there?

Andrew

Would be nice to know the render times of a dual cpu system with the SCS Benchmark project. That would give everyone an idea how much better such a system would be.

Thanks astar,

Excellent info.

I am up to speed with most of this, but heard that the M2 storage (while lightning fast) get a bit too hot and might not be reliable long term at this point. (At least the current crop of drives).

I also looked at the intel 750 PCIe drive and was told they might cause the machine to boot a bit slower, but once booted up, they are super quick. I looked at the 400GB drive, but feel that will be too small for my OS drive. The 1.4TB drive is pricey, but if I combined my OS and Application drive, it might make sense.

I am working with Puget Systems to build this PC. I built my last one and it lasted me many years of basically 20/7 usage, (even with a RAID0 work drive), but we want something that is reliable with a multiyear warrantee for business. Puget Systems seem very knowledgeable regarding Vegas (and other apps I will use - Adobe Suite, HitFilm, etc), but I do like to get the viewpoint of actual Vegas users with silimar systems. You know, those of us with real-world experience.

So all other things being equal (lots of fast DDR4 ram, AMD R9 Fury X, SSD OS Drive, Raid 10 SSD work drive, it seems the best option is a high GHz processor with a bunch of cores, but am I hearing that anything over 8 cores is a waste?

I am really tempted to go with a couple of Intel Xeon E5-2687W v3 @ 3.10GHz (10 core) or Intel Xeon E5-2667 v3 @ 3.20GHz (8 core), but if Vegas maxes out at 8 cores, then why bother with 2 chips and not just go with a single overclocked i7 with 8 cores?

…and what do you think of the ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS motherboard? It looks like the D16 version of this board allows for XEON overclocking?

ah...decisions, decisions.

I am really interested to hear from anyone with a dual chip system that is showing decent utilization and if you are showing all cores being used. I don't need to see 100%, but I would imagine a 20 core 3.10Ghz system at 80% utilization would be pretty darn nice. Time is money, so if we can render faster and possible render while editing another project without performance loss, that is ideal!

Thanks everyone for the great input!!!

Andrew

Why do you think Vegas maxes out at 8 cores? On my system with a few AVC clips on the timeline in playback, I show Vegas running 93 Threads. That is not including Windows and other apps running in the background. Windows will utilize the amount of cores available and schedule service of all those threads.

Limits displayed in preferences are the amount of render threads, and under the hood there is another setting for 8 threads just for AVC decoding. That's 24 threads right there, not including video preview, audio indicators, ect, ect.

Astar,

I was told by another Vegas user that Vegas would not take advantage of anything over 8 cores during rendering. It might have just been a limitation of his system. Of course, I wanted to confirm this with the experts here in the forum!

I know it depends on what codec you are using, but without any system other than our few i7 machines, it is hard to tell what Vegas will really take advantage of.

What chips are in your HP?

Andrew

Numbers of cores and numbers of threads are two very different things.