Intel/AMD New Gen Laptop Performance on Vegas 20

Sadlylate wrote on 4/12/2023, 12:55 PM

Hi guys!

I'm looking to buy a Laptop to carry the work I've been putting out thru Vegas on my main desktop PC. This laptop will be docked for a majority of it's time at my Office space and so I'm trying to buy a higher spec laptop to sort of match the performance of my desktop at home.

I've currently have a desktop with a AMD 5950x paired with a 3080TI GPU which has served me fine throughout my edits.
My edits often make use of Sapphire and Red Giant Universe plugins & multiple video layers using AVC content (more specifically OBS recorded content)

On benchmarks the new Laptop CPU's seem to perform really well! The AMD 7945HX seem to come very close to desktop performance in multithreaded benchmarks... However Vegas is it's own unique beast to tackle and isn't always too kind to new hardware (In my experience) and so these benchmarks might not be relevant to what I'm trying to achieve.

As for Desktop benchmarks for Vegas 20, I saw that a combo of a Intel CPU + Nvidia GPU seem to have the best performance (Source)

I doubt anyone in the community would own a AMD 7945HX Laptop already but I'm very interested in seeing it's performance stacked up against the highest intel based CPU

What are you guys's experiences on laptops and Vegas? Is it even worth considering? Or still a dream too far fetched

My sights were on the Asus Strix SCAR 17 with a AMD 7945HX / 4080 Nvidia Graphics card... But it looks terrible (aesthetically) and so I'm looking for ANY excuse to buy a Intel based with a more professional non-gamer aesthetic instead/

Hope you can help me out!

Many thanks in advance!

Comments

Rednroll wrote on 4/12/2023, 4:55 PM

Give me about 2-4 weeks to finish setting up and configuring my new laptop and I can start putting up some Laptop vs Desktop comparison Vegas benchmarks.

My Laptop's Specs

CPU: Intel i9-13900HX

GPU: Nvidia RTX-4080

Memory: 64GB Crucial DDR5 4800 Mhz

Storage: Dual Samsung 2TB 980 Pro NVMe m.2 SSDs

Cooling: Heatpipes over CPU and GPU, Dual fans, Liquid Cooler

As of now, I just have a Cinebench R23 benchmark after getting the OS and Drivers installed and that is without the liquid cooler attached. I've seen others post cinebench scores in the 28-31K range with the same laptop and the liquid cooler attached.

RogerS wrote on 4/12/2023, 6:50 PM

See my signature for two benchmarks. Laptops that can manage heat under load work well in Vegas. I'd rather have an Intel iGPU for decoding as it is most compatible.

Rednroll wrote on 4/12/2023, 9:55 PM

See my signature for two benchmarks. Laptops that can manage heat under load work well in Vegas. I'd rather have an Intel iGPU for decoding as it is most compatible.

The new laptop came with an Intel "Arc Control Panel" app as part of the drivers package. I was reading another discussion about the new Arc line of Intel GPUs. I guess I'm kind of confused by all this. Does that mean my iGPU is part of this new "Arc" lineup? The Arc app decided to install and include itself as part of the startup apps. Like most things that appear in the startup menu, I tend to disable it from doing that.

The Arc app reminds me of Nvidia's GeForce Experience and Nvidia Control panel combined. An app to make preference adjustments and check for available driver updates. Any idea if I need that app running in the background for anything?

I also tend to get very confused on how to best go about configuring the Nvidia control panel and Vegas preference settings on a laptop for best playback and rendering. I used to not be too concerned with that since my past laptop the GPU and iGPU were very low performers, so I just made adjustments in Vegas to whatever gave me the best playback results which tended to be selecting the CPU. Now should be a different situation. So for example, there's these display mode adjustments in the Nvidia control panel. Is that where I should be setting things so Vegas is using the Intel iGPU for decoding as you describe or is that all done within the Vegas preference settings?

It's like there's so many darn GPU adjustment settings between the Nvidia App, Intel App and Vegas a mostly audio guy like myself gets a bit overwhelmed trying to figure out what the heck is going on.

RogerS wrote on 4/12/2023, 10:49 PM

Your CPU has an Intel® UHD Graphics iGPU with it. I uninstalled bonus Intel software and just kept the driver.

For NVIDIA I never installed GeForce Experience and use VEGAS to check on new studio drivers. There's nothing to adjust in NVIDIA Control Panel for VEGAS. For other software I enabled the 10-bit pipeline as I have a 10-bit capable display.

For adjusting GPU it's in VEGAS preferences only.

Wolfgang S. wrote on 4/13/2023, 1:23 AM

As for Desktop benchmarks for Vegas 20, I saw that a combo of a Intel CPU + Nvidia GPU seem to have the best performance (Source)

I doubt anyone in the community would own a AMD 7945HX Laptop already but I'm very interested in seeing it's performance stacked up against the highest intel based CPU

What are you guys's experiences on laptops and Vegas? Is it even worth considering? Or still a dream too far fetched

My ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED (H7600, 12th Gen Intel) with internal HDR preview on the laptop monitor shows a nice performance with Vegas, also because the processor has an i-GPU and the Laptop an RTX 3070 Ti with 8 GB ram.

https://www.asus.com/de/laptops/for-creators/proart-studiobook/proart-studiobook-16-oled-h7600-12th-gen-intel/

I cannot say, if the AMD CPU 7945HX outperforms the H7600 processor, and in which aspects (playback, rendering are the two criteria).

Overall, I do not know how well the integrated GPU AMD Radeon™ 610M performs, that is integrated in the AMD 7945HX.

Playback depends also on the type of footage, if an i-GPU will add a lot of playback performance or not (for long-GOP it helps really, but for all-i footage an i-GPU it may be less helpful compared to more cores).

To choose in the display mode the "automatic selection" is the right setting, because if I do that on my laptop I see all the render settings for NVENC (what should be VCE with the AMD processor) and QV (for the i-GPU) are available. So for rendering it is nice to have both NVEND and QV available, but I do not know how well VCE performes here.

At least, it would be nice to learn more how well the Nvidia RTX-4080 performes in the laptop of Rednroll for Vegas.

Sadlylate wrote on 4/13/2023, 6:19 AM

Give me about 2-4 weeks to finish setting up and configuring my new laptop and I can start putting up some Laptop vs Desktop comparison Vegas benchmarks.

My Laptop's Specs

CPU: Intel i9-13900HX

GPU: Nvidia RTX-4080

Memory: 64GB Crucial DDR5 4800 Mhz

Storage: Dual Samsung 2TB 980 Pro NVMe m.2 SSDs

Cooling: Heatpipes over CPU and GPU, Dual fans, Liquid Cooler

As of now, I just have a Cinebench R23 benchmark after getting the OS and Drivers installed and that is without the liquid cooler attached. I've seen others post cinebench scores in the 28-31K range with the same laptop and the liquid cooler attached.

Wow! That looks like an amazing new addition, Congratulations! I'm very interested to hear your findings.. I am however a bit on a tighter time table as I'm eager to get moving on this.
It seems like the combination of having Intel's I-GPU could help a ton on decoding whilst using NVENC for the rendering.. And seeing the laptop selection on Intel's side of things have a lot more options over the AMD.. I will most likely be buying a 13980HX paired with either a 4080 or 4090 (laptop) graphics card

See my signature for two benchmarks. Laptops that can manage heat under load work well in Vegas. I'd rather have an Intel iGPU for decoding as it is most compatible.

This definitely seems the way! I have never tried using the iGPU on Desktop before but I have a system that houses a i9 9900k so I could perhaps get a glimpse of how it would perform using my content! Thank you for your addition

As for Desktop benchmarks for Vegas 20, I saw that a combo of a Intel CPU + Nvidia GPU seem to have the best performance (Source)

I doubt anyone in the community would own a AMD 7945HX Laptop already but I'm very interested in seeing it's performance stacked up against the highest intel based CPU

What are you guys's experiences on laptops and Vegas? Is it even worth considering? Or still a dream too far fetched

My ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED (H7600, 12th Gen Intel) with internal HDR preview on the laptop monitor shows a nice performance with Vegas, also because the processor has an i-GPU and the Laptop an RTX 3070 Ti with 8 GB ram.

https://www.asus.com/de/laptops/for-creators/proart-studiobook/proart-studiobook-16-oled-h7600-12th-gen-intel/

I cannot say, if the AMD CPU 7945HX outperforms the H7600 processor, and in which aspects (playback, rendering are the two criteria).

Overall, I do not know how well the integrated GPU AMD Radeon™ 610M performs, that is integrated in the AMD 7945HX.

Playback depends also on the type of footage, if an i-GPU will add a lot of playback performance or not (for long-GOP it helps really, but for all-i footage an i-GPU it may be less helpful compared to more cores).

To choose in the display mode the "automatic selection" is the right setting, because if I do that on my laptop I see all the render settings for NVENC (what should be VCE with the AMD processor) and QV (for the i-GPU) are available. So for rendering it is nice to have both NVEND and QV available, but I do not know how well VCE performes here.

At least, it would be nice to learn more how well the Nvidia RTX-4080 performes in the laptop of Rednroll for Vegas.

Yeah I have yet to really find a lot of data on the newer AMD Laptop performances
I did see AMD desktops in the benchmark chart above and according to some Youtube videos, the AMD 7945HX performs near the AMD 7950x DESKTOP benchmark on Cinebench multi core.. But obviously I've got no clue how well that translate into neither playback nor rendering.

I think I will play it safe and order a 13980HX intel laptop.. Perhaps I'll give the new generation refreshed ASUS Zephyrus Duo with a 4090 a go.. But it's a hefty price for something I'm not entirely sold on just yet!

as well as I've got no clue how well that second screen would work in my Vegas workflow ... Timeline on the bottom and the rest above perhaps?
The laptop will mainly be used in a docked mode on a very large screen (Samsung odyssey g9 neo) so it'll have to be quite the unit to power all of it

Thanks for all the fast responses, everyone!

RogerS wrote on 4/13/2023, 6:47 AM

Truthfully Intel QSV can also do rendering quite fast. The difference is in timeline processing (Fx, etc.) where the NVIDIA GPU will process things quite well. See the benchmarks in my signature for examples of different GPUs and CPUs.

For a mobile 4090 make sure the system can adequately cool and power it- if it gets limited when the CPU is also under load there's no point in paying more for a 4090.

Sadlylate wrote on 4/13/2023, 6:52 AM

Truthfully Intel QSV can also do rendering quite fast. The difference is in timeline processing (Fx, etc.) where the NVIDIA GPU will process things quite well. See the benchmarks in my signature for examples of different GPUs and CPUs.

For a mobile 4090 make sure the system can adequately cool and power it- if it gets limited when the CPU is also under load there's no point in paying more for a 4090.

It seems like ASUS's cooling solutions are fine under load.. I'm mostly working with Chroma Key from Sapphire more than anything else.. Which the GPU should be able to tackle relatively easily. As it does give me full 60FPS playback on my more dated desktop computers as well

Would you recommend the Intel QSV for timeline processing over the Nvidia GPU in my use case?

After monitoring my main desktop utilization with an AMD CPU, It definitely seems like it can make use of the multiple cores that the AMD 7945HX has to offer.. With GPU Utilization spiking to around 50-70% but absolutely pushing 100% CPU during render

Wolfgang S. wrote on 4/13/2023, 7:02 AM

Yeah I have yet to really find a lot of data on the newer AMD Laptop performances
I did see AMD desktops in the benchmark chart above and according to some Youtube videos, the AMD 7945HX performs near the AMD 7950x DESKTOP benchmark on Cinebench multi core.. But obviously I've got no clue how well that translate into neither playback nor rendering.

There may be a difference between published benchmarks, and the performance increase that you may see in Vegas in real life.

But beside all the theoretical approaches - what type of footage will you edit on the new machine? Which camera do you use?

I think I will play it safe and order a 13980HX intel laptop.. Perhaps I'll give the new generation refreshed ASUS Zephyrus Duo with a 4090 a go.. But it's a hefty price for something I'm not entirely sold on just yet

This one here?

https://rog.asus.com/de/laptops/rog-zephyrus/rog-zephyrus-m16-2023-series/

Seems to be a nice machine. For the video editing, I would prefer a machine with an OLED monitor today - what is great for color grading. And you should be able to calibrate the display, for color grading.

as well as I've got no clue how well that second screen would work in my Vegas workflow ... Timeline on the bottom and the rest above perhaps?
The laptop will mainly be used in a docked mode on a very large screen (Samsung odyssey g9 neo) so it'll have to be quite the unit to power all of it

Can this display be calibrated? Do you wish to grade your footage to HDR or SDR? For HDR the 400 nits are not so nice, because too low. The unit has a nice large monitor, but without calibration I would not spend this amount of money.

It the timeline is on the top or bottom seems to differ - whatever you like.

RogerS wrote on 4/13/2023, 7:21 AM

Would you recommend the Intel QSV for timeline processing over the Nvidia GPU in my use case?

No, for the timeline any GPU will beat an iGPU handily.

For decoding and encoding the integrated GPU can more than hold its own.
Intel GPUs, including iGPUs, can decode more types of media than any AMD or NVIDIA GPUs. NVDEC decoding can have some stability issues in VEGAS though I don't have recent experience as I avoid using it.

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 4/13/2023, 9:09 AM

It seems like ASUS's cooling solutions are fine under load..

@Sadlylate I can attest to that. I have the Asus Zenbook w/12900h & Nvidia 3060 and I like the air cooling... The keyboard half props up when open giving enhanced ventilation to the electronics beneath. I didn't go for the version with the secondary display so the battery will get me by about 5 to 6 hours of untethered. Reasonably decent performer though no competition for higher powered desktops. I particularly like the 16" 4k display which comes pantone pre-calibrated.

Sadlylate wrote on 4/13/2023, 9:20 AM

Yeah I have yet to really find a lot of data on the newer AMD Laptop performances
I did see AMD desktops in the benchmark chart above and according to some Youtube videos, the AMD 7945HX performs near the AMD 7950x DESKTOP benchmark on Cinebench multi core.. But obviously I've got no clue how well that translate into neither playback nor rendering.

There may be a difference between published benchmarks, and the performance increase that you may see in Vegas in real life.

But beside all the theoretical approaches - what type of footage will you edit on the new machine? Which camera do you use?

I think I will play it safe and order a 13980HX intel laptop.. Perhaps I'll give the new generation refreshed ASUS Zephyrus Duo with a 4090 a go.. But it's a hefty price for something I'm not entirely sold on just yet

This one here?

https://rog.asus.com/de/laptops/rog-zephyrus/rog-zephyrus-m16-2023-series/

Seems to be a nice machine. For the video editing, I would prefer a machine with an OLED monitor today - what is great for color grading. And you should be able to calibrate the display, for color grading.

as well as I've got no clue how well that second screen would work in my Vegas workflow ... Timeline on the bottom and the rest above perhaps?
The laptop will mainly be used in a docked mode on a very large screen (Samsung odyssey g9 neo) so it'll have to be quite the unit to power all of it

Can this display be calibrated? Do you wish to grade your footage to HDR or SDR? For HDR the 400 nits are not so nice, because too low. The unit has a nice large monitor, but without calibration I would not spend this amount of money.

It the timeline is on the top or bottom seems to differ - whatever you like.

I was looking at this model right here!
https://rog.asus.com/de/laptops/rog-zephyrus/rog-zephyrus-duo-16-2023-series/

The price seems to be literally 1000 euro's higher than the one I'm viewing from the Netherlands though.. Anyways, the content I'll be working with is screen recorded content on PC using the OBS Software so no camera directly involved

As for the screen.. It being a Laptop it'll still be mainly used docked.. The screen on the Zephyrus is Mini-LED I believe which from the reviews and experiences looks to be more than fine for what I need. We don't really grade our content all that much.. Simple saturation bump will do the trick for the audience we're reaching for.. I had the Monitor "laying around" as in not really being used for anything as of yet.. So I thought it'd be a great workspace for my future little office/desk

Would you recommend the Intel QSV for timeline processing over the Nvidia GPU in my use case?

No, for the timeline any GPU will beat an iGPU handily.

For decoding and encoding the integrated GPU can more than hold its own.
Intel GPUs, including iGPUs, can decode more types of media than any AMD or NVIDIA GPUs. NVDEC decoding can have some stability issues in VEGAS though I don't have recent experience as I avoid using it.

Right Okay, so my experience with Nvidia is so-so! But not bad by any means.. Render times are usually quick if I leave some RAM Preview on (for some reason seems to make a difference) instead of leaving it on 0
but 0 RAM Preview proved to be more reliable on the more intensive edits

It seems like ASUS's cooling solutions are fine under load..

@Sadlylate I can attest to that. I have the Asus Zenbook w/12900h & Nvidia 3060 and I like the air cooling... The keyboard half props up when open giving enhanced ventilation to the electronics beneath. I didn't go for the version with the secondary display so the battery will get me by about 5 to 6 hours of untethered. Reasonably decent performer though no competition for higher powered desktops. I particularly like the 16" 4k display which comes pantone pre-calibrated.

I was hoping to get closer to desktop performance with the new tech of this last gen.. The bandwidths are a bit higher and the same with the power throughput.. Hopefully it's enough for what I do.. I'm not planning on working with high res content.

Worst comes to worst I can return the laptop and build a small ITX type desktop.. Where the other way around may be a bit harder to pull off (returning parts rather than 1 product)

Wolfgang S. wrote on 4/13/2023, 10:03 AM

I would expect, that for your purpose this laptops will be quite an overkill. Significant cheaper laptops should perform here quite well.

So, maybe you give us more details about the footage used? A mediainfo printout would be great.

8bit - in which format? How many fps? Is it HD or UHD footage? And so on.

RogerS wrote on 4/13/2023, 10:12 AM

I also think you're not going to have any performance problems with such a laptop for that intended use.

Sadlylate wrote on 4/13/2023, 10:15 AM

I would expect, that for your purpose this laptops will be quite an overkill. Significant cheaper laptops should perform here quite well.

So, maybe you give us more details about the footage used? A mediainfo printout would be great.

8bit - in which format? How many fps? Is it HD or UHD footage? And so on.

Sure here you go!

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L5.1
Format settings                          : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames        : 4 frames
Codec ID                                 : avc1
Codec ID/Info                            : Advanced Video Coding
Duration                                 : 20 min 13 s
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 39.0 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 120 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 3.556
Frame rate mode                          : Variable
Frame rate                               : 60.000 FPS
Minimum frame rate                       : 58.824 FPS
Maximum frame rate                       : 62.500 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.157
Stream size                              : 5.51 GiB (99%)
Color range                              : Limited
Color primaries                          : BT.709
Transfer characteristics                 : BT.709
Matrix coefficients                      : BT.709
Codec configuration box                  : avcC

Does this suffice?

Yeah it's most likely pretty overkill but I do struggle from time to time when my timeline gets more clogged up after inserting cuts/transitions and other layers so I want to make sure I don't leave things up to chance.. As well as wishing I had gone for a more expensive model after settling for something cheaper

Sadlylate wrote on 4/13/2023, 10:20 AM

I also think you're not going to have any performance problems with such a laptop for that intended use.

I'm a bit hesitant as I've invested in a Laptop prior back when the 1000 Nvidia series were just launched.. Obviously a lot has changed since.. on both Vegas and laptop progressions.
But I found that my older laptop with the "top tier" specs it had at the time didn't cut it at all and basically became a glorified Netflix machine

So I'm hoping we've come some way since

Wolfgang S. wrote on 4/13/2023, 10:23 AM

That seems to be a standard 8bit UHD 60p footage. Do you have experience with this footage in Vegas by now? I understood that in your posting. If yes, then is it really significant if the preview goes down with a transition?

In addition, if you have the different settings of Vegas in an older existing system, it could be worthwhile to review them.

Sadlylate wrote on 4/13/2023, 10:36 AM

That seems to be a standard 8bit UHD 60p footage. Do you have experience with this footage in Vegas by now? I understood that in your posting. If yes, then is it really significant if the preview goes down with a transition?

In addition, if you have the different settings of Vegas in an older existing system, it could be worthwhile to review them.

I've got many years of experience with it! It's not unbearable but it's definitely not great.. The preview will be mostly fine but the actual TIMELINE is lagging like crazy sometimes. We keep finding ways to improve it through enabling or disabling features though

Wolfgang S. wrote on 4/13/2023, 10:57 AM

Ok. What are your project settings? What are your preview settings? Preference settings for the GPU? And the I/O Settings?

Screenshoots would be great to see.

And typically, how many fps does your actual system reach at the moment with those settings without and with a simple transition?

And since we are now talking about your existing machine - what are the specs of that machine?

An additional comment: I do not know that type of footage. And also not, how well Vegas is optimized for the playback of this footage. It could be, that even really high performance systems will not deliver your wished results - means full 60p playback. But let us continue.

Sadlylate wrote on 4/13/2023, 11:40 AM

Ok. What are your project settings? What are your preview settings? Preference settings for the GPU? And the I/O Settings?

Screenshoots would be great to see.

And typically, how many fps does your actual system reach at the moment with those settings without and with a simple transition?

And since we are now talking about your existing machine - what are the specs of that machine?

An additional comment: I do not know that type of footage. And also not, how well Vegas is optimized for the playback of this footage. It could be, that even really high performance systems will not deliver your wished results - means full 60p playback. But let us continue.

I can send my project settings but generally its matching the content aside from the resolution. I edit in 1080P. Vegas doesnt love OBS footage but it isnt terrible.. I get full 60FPS playback on my main computer (so two video layers one being chroma keyed ontop of the other) unless Ive got effects pushed on it or text etc

IO Settings all are on Legacy support to support these files else the audio goes missing unfortunately.. preference setting is set on GPU and i usually edit with 16GB preview ram. I swap it to 0 if i really encounter crashes.

I should note that I am not running the latest vegas version on my main pc as for the latest version i encounter issues with.. (My windows build related)

j-v wrote on 4/13/2023, 11:58 AM

Screenshots were asked

Sadlylate wrote on 4/13/2023, 1:59 PM

These are the settings I run with

RogerS wrote on 4/13/2023, 11:06 PM

For OBS try keyint=1 instead of 0 for smoother scrubbing, especially with cuts. That may solve the other issues you've been addressing with workarounds.

With VP 19/20, I'd disable legacy AVC and HEVC and not attempt to use MKVs.

For a system with only 32GB ram, allocating a full 50% just to dynamic ram preview is too much. Even if you're frequently making ram previews a few GB should be enough.

Wolfgang S. wrote on 4/13/2023, 11:40 PM

Thank you for the snapshoots. Generally spoken, most of the settings seems to be ok for me. Typically I would set the project settings to fit the footage, what means that I would have tried to run the project wit UHD resolution. But for sure it can be done to reduce the resolution of the project to HD resolution, to improve the playback performance.

The ram allocation to the GPU seems to be high with 50%. What happens with the playback in terms of fps, if the allocation is reduced to the default figure? Are the fps reduced?

In the I/O settings, I see that no i-GPU is used? Since you have not posted the full specification of the actual PC, it is not clear if the CPU has no i-GPU, or if the i-GPU is not used by the user (if available, I would test an i-GPU to see, what happens with the playback performance).

However, I miss the important information what Vegas Pro 20 build is used, and why the latest build does not work on this machine.

For the assessment of the playback capabilities- what settings are used in the plaback settings? Best/full for example?

Since the used GPU is quite modern, it could happen that this specific footage (not optimised foe editors like Vegas) may not perform significant better on a high-end system in Vegas Pro 20.