Intel has Xeon chips that are based on i7 tech and you can get dual motherboards for them.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/review/1528599/xeon-w5590-breaks-records-part

Six and Eight core chips exist for Servers and are coming soon to desktops.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/computers/?p=1284&tag=col2;topRated

Yes, the 3.33GHz Xenons are what the tech guys at my company or suggesting, so I guess that dual Xenons (if they are based on the i7) should be better than the single i7.

Thanks!

Here's a thread that was started by John Cline, that you should find helpful:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=526098&Replies=444

The above thread discusses a standardized rendering benchmark that can be used to compare Vegas, running with different hardware configurations and OSes. There is a similar program for Premiere Pro, which also might give you some additional information:

http://ppbm4.com/Benchmark.html

PPBM4 is a little more elaborate, as it compares not only MPEG2 encoding, but also AVI encoding and rendering the timeline.

Thanks for the links. I ran John's test and got pretty good results on my i7 machine ... 55 seconds.

My goal here is to help "direct" my tech department at work in building a machine for me. I do lots of video editing for my company, and they have finally decided to buy me a editing machine so I don't have to work from home to do it.

They have suggest a dual CPU Xeon 3.33GHz config instead of my i7 extreme 965. Just trying to figure out if this is a move up, down, or sideways.

Current Home System
Windows Version: Vista 64-bit Home Premium
RAM: 12GB DDR3 1333MHz
Processor: 3.2GHz (i7 Extreme 965)
Video Card: ATI Radeon 4870X2 (2GB)

Note that if you look at the PPBM4 list, the dual CPU, octacore Xeon 5580 and 5590 systems were not the fastest, but rather, the fastest were some quad core i7 computers that had been optimally tuned to the benchmark. The speed and number of processors is not necessarily the only factors in NLE speed, as the OS, the disk subsystem, the GPU and the RAM (amount and speed) also contribute to the score. How a specific NLE (Avid vs. Vegas vs. Premiere Pro, etc.) uses the various system components is also a major factor.

Yes ... there are so many different factors, it is really hard to make comparisons.

I did notice that four of the top five used the ATI HD 4870 video adapter ... I have the x2 model of this. Truth be known, I won't know for sure until the new unit is sitting on my desk.

B

62 seconds to render using the settings John gave at the top of the thread: HDV using the default MPEG2 "HDV 1080-60i" template at the "Best" render setting. My previous time was 124 with Vegas pro 8 64 bit.

34 seconds with good selected as opposed to best.

8 cores (2.50ghz each) and 8gigs of ram. This is using the Skulltrail MOBO with two quad Xeon cpu's.

These are the results I posted on John Cline's Render Test.

So if you go through the results you can tell that some i7 based systems beat my times. Vegas still doesn't know how to utilize 8 cores in an efficient way and I also opted for some slower cores instead of the best available (the price point was too high for my budget).

j razz

FWIW ... when I render to HDV using SV9 64-bit, all 8 virtual cores peg at 100%.

I also have 6GB of Dynamic RAM Preview in the SV9 Video Preferences, and this seems to increase RAM/CPU usage during final render.

If I set Dynamic RAM Preview to zero, CPU usage is ~15%, and the render time for John's benchmark goes from 55sec to 4min, 28sec, so that Dynamic RAM setting is a significant one. Not sure what the optimum is, but ...

B

Ran the render test above on my i7 machine.

36 seconds to render

All CPUs and HT cores at 100%

Byron,

Which test did you run? There are a couple discussed in the thread.

If it was the "rendertest-hdv.veg" test, your result seems amazingly good, considering other results from people with faster CPUs, more memory, more GPU, etc. Did you output to the HDV preset?

No offense intended ... just wondering if there's something about your system that isn't included in your profile.

Thanks!

B

Ahh, I was rendering the "rendertest-hdv.veg" using the following setting:
Blu-ray 1920x1080-60i, 25 Mbps video stream

Render time for the "HDV 1080-60i" template took exactly 60 seconds.

Thanks for catching that!