Erni,

Are you using Vista 32 bit?

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Mac Pro, dual-quad (8 cpu), basic-ish OSX Leopard 10.5.4 (no updates), XP Pro (32) SP2, Vegas 8c (trial download) at its default settings) running under BootCamp then under Parallels 3.

BootCamp = 1:52 (BC as part of OSX Leopard 10.5.4)
Parallels 3 = 8:22 (P3 build 5608 of 10 June 2008)

The BootCamp-based result is not that different from Herb's 1:56 for Vegas 8a BootCamped onto a Mac Pro Quad (posted 11/8/2008).

For the BootCamp render, the rendertest-hdv.veg project rendered in a consistent 1:52. XP's Task Manager showed all 8 CPU's busy, but only four of them (reflecting Vegas's limitation of 4 threads) at 100%, the others being more sporadic around 25%. I wonder if the other 4 were busy doing some kind of housekeeping to prop up the BootCamp layer. Still helping Vegas along in that case, despite the latter's maximum of 4 threads.

I followed the instructions: "set the project properties for "HDV 1080-60i" and render it out as HDV using the default MPEG2 "HDV 1080-60i" template at the "Best" render setting". Also before that (negative rtfm syndrome) tried rendering to what appeared initially as default, namely "HDV 1080 60i Intermediate" (i.e. Cineform) and it reported one second less (which thanks to temporal quantization could of course be anything "up to" one second less). Not significant I would say.

Anyone getting better figures for Mac Pro + BootCamp or Parallels 3 or who has comparative rendertest results for Parallels 4 or VMWare or one of the other ones? Any VM config tips?

<<<See better figures for the same machine later in this thread, where I tweaked-down BootCam and got a better figure for Parallels by upgrading to their Version 4 and tweaking >>>

"Are you using Vista 32 bit?"

Nope, WXP 32

Erni

Okay, so I wondered how the Core 2 and i7 stacked up. Here are the numbers I gathered from my own machines. All tests were under Vista 64 with SP1.

Core2 (Q6600 / eVGA 780i / 4 x 1GB Corsair DDR2/ Seagate 7200RPM):
138 seconds 32 bit (4 threads), 2.4GHz w 1066MHz RAM
124 seconds 64 bit (4, 8, or 16 threads), 2.4GHz w 1066MHz RAM

i7 (i7 920/ eVGA x58 / 3x2GB Corsair DDR3/ Seagate 7200RPM):
113 seconds 32 bit (4 threads = max Vegas 8.0c 32bit allows), 2.66GHz w 1600MHz RAM
101 seconds 64 bit (4 threads, for comparison with 32bit), 2.66GHz w 1600MHz RAM
71 seconds 64 bit (16 threads), 2.66GHz w 1600MHz RAM

i7 Overclocked
58 seconds 64 bit (16 threads) overclocked @ 3.2GHz 160 BClk
52 seconds 64 bit (16 threads) overclocked @ 3.7GHz 185 BClk

i7 Underclocked (to 2.4GHz, for comparison to Q6600)
130 seconds 32 bit (4 threads), 2.4GHz w 1066 RAM
121 seconds 64 bit (4 threads), 2.4GHz w 1066 RAM
84 seconds 64 bit (8, 16 threads), 2.4GHz w 1066 RAM

so, not having access to anything other than my e6600, what would i be better off upgrading to:

a. quad q9550

b. i7 920

more likely than not running on wix xp 32bit / 3gb ram (i'll hold out till win 7 debuts it's first service pack before upgrading!).

to be honest, i'm more concerned with previewing than i am rendering.

tia

leslie

i7 is the way to go building from scratch - no doubt about it.

Mac Pro, dual-quad (8 cpu) > OS X 10.5.6 > Parallels 4.0.3810 > XP-SP2 > Vegas 8.0c:

Fastest result so far for this Parallels version was for Parallels virtual machine cores=4, hypervisor=off and Vegas threads=2 (why this magic number?!), taking:

6:07

This makes it about 25% faster than for Parallels 3, bringing it to about 1/3 the speed of Boot Camp and comparable to a dual-core. Getting there...

While running, it used what looked like (on activity monitor) 2-3 cores.

Mac Pro, dual-quad (8 cpu) > OS X 10.5.6 > Parallels 4.0.3810 > XP-SP2 > Vegas 8.0c:

Tweaked out a faster result than before, consistently achieved with Parallels virtual machine CPUs=2, Vegas threads=3 or 4 (both the same; was slightly slower when threads=2). In addition, less influentially, preview RAM=127MB, virtual machine RAM=2GB (but default 512MB was OK too), hypervisor=off.

5:22

Also tried the Internal Preferences trick
[http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=587156]
of setting min threads=4 and max threads=8, with virtual machine CPUs=8, but this produced the worst result of all, of almost 15 minutes (like my old single-core laptop). More is less...

Mac Pro, dual-quad (8 cpu) > BootCamp > XP-SP2 > Vegas 8.0c:

Tweaked the BootCamp render time down to:

1:12.

Achieved by setting Vegas threads min=4 max=7.

This is a non-standard number-of-threads for Vegas 8.0c, it can be defined via internal preferences (shift-Option-Preferences). Warning: playing with internal settings risks fouling up your Vegas system.

Note that the setting for max threads, namely 7, was 1 less than the number of physical cores. Setting it to 8 resulted in a staggering 45 additional seconds. Once again, more can be less...

The min threads setting of 4 reduced by only 2 seconds as compared to leaving it at its default of 1.

We need someone with an i7 965 oc'd to 4.0 to run this test to see what the 6.4 QPI does for speed.

0:59

with untweaked Intel i7, Vista 64, Vegas 8.1, rendering to MPEG-2 using Best. Time was about 50% more with WinXP Pro and 8.0c. I'll do complete tests sometime in the next few days.

John, just checking, did you render to MPEG2 with the default "HDV 1080-60i" template set to "Best"?

John, just checking, did you render to MPEG2 with the default "HDV 1080-60i" template set to "Best"? Yes.

I actually got 29 seconds on my first render and then realized (this was at 1:30 a.m.) that the default render in Vegas 8.1 uses the AVI template and that template defaults to using the Sony YUV codec. This is MUCH faster than the MPEG-2 render. I think this may explain a few of the extraordinarily fast renders reported elsewhere in this long thread. If you just click on render and look at the template, it actually says “HDV-1080i” so it looks like the template you recommend in the first post in this thread. However, it is the wrong codec.

I had actually hoped for slightly better performance, so I went back and re-checked everything. The custom setting in the Render As dialog have been all changed around in 8.1, and so have the defaults. In particular, the quality slider is NOT set all the way to the right. So, I moved it to the right and re-did the test. Surprisingly, I still got 0:59. All eight cores were at 100%. I tried a few tests with various RAM settings in Vegas, but that didn't change anything, so it looks like (thankfully) the interactions with that setting may have been improved.

This is a stock computer from Polywell. It came with NOTHING on it except for Win XP Pro, Vista 64, and Nero. This is a far cry from Dell and HP computers that are loaded with junk.

I spent exactly two minutes after booting Vista getting it functional (the computer shipped with the display settings at something other than native). I then installed 8.1 and did the render test. My point in saying this is that I didn't have to tweak or sweat bullets or over-clock or anything. I just opened the computer and away I went.

In a day or two I'll try to do some more serious tests. However, I have played some AVCHD clips from the SR12 I borrowed. Using 8.0c under Windows XP, on both 1920x1080 and 1440x1080 clips, I get full frame rate (29.97) playback using Best preview quality, with the preview windows enlarged so they display full resolution (1440x1080). I then added the color corrector fX and did a quick color correct, and still got full framerate. There was, however, still a slight delay in getting up to speed when I clicked on a new loaction on the timeline.

That’s the good news.

However, scrubbing at more than about 2x, even in preview mode doesn't give a good experience with AVCHD. I then tried it with HDV, and found the same thing. Even with this fast computer, the playback performance is only slightly improved from my six-year-old single-thread, single-core, single-CPU Pentium.

Since I was reading these files from my 1TB SATA drive I thought the problem might simply be disk performance. Since my main drives are 15,000 rpm semi-exotic drives that are supposed to be much higher performance, I moved the HDV and AVCHD test files there to see if performance is better.

Nope.

I think this shows that Vegas playback still needs work. A LOT of work. I will need to repeat these tests on 8.1 to see if it is better.

One final note. The render times on 8.0c were much worse than the 0:59 for 8.1 (1:30 for the Rendertest-HDV file). I think this is entirely attributable to the lack of support for more than 4 cores. I tried “tricking” 8.0c into using more cores by tweaking the “internal” settings. This didn't result in any improvements. Thus, I am not entirely sure I understand what 8.1 is bringing to the game, unless there is some underlying technical reason why only four cores can be supported in a 32-bit O/S.

I believe your assumption about people using the "wrong" settings for comparisons.

I've got a quad core Q9300 and it renders in 4:09 in Vista 32, Vegas 8.0c, which is twice as long as many slower chips have been reported here.
If I try to change the threads higher than 4 in Vegas, then Vegas changes it back to 4.

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Avanti: hold SHIFT while you go into Preferences and under Internal you can change the upper limit for threads.

Would it do me any good?


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Yes, in most cases, where there is not no single thread app(filter) restricting parsing out multi threats.

If I try to change the threads higher than 4 in Vegas, then Vegas changes it back to 4

Would it do me any good?No version of Vegas, other than 8.1, will utilize more than 4 threads. You can temporarily change it using the internal preferences, but if you do render tests, nothing gets faster, and if you look at CPU usage, you will not see any other cores doing anything useful.

So, it doesn't do anything.

I spent some time on this last night, and did some brief renders using 8.0c using 1, 2, 3, and then 4 threads. The times for 2, 3, and 4 were identical. Only 1 thread produced slower times. Setting to 8 (using the internal preferences) actually seemed to be slightly slower.

My conclusion: multi-thread rendering is partially broken in all versions of Vegas other than 8.1 (I also performed a similar test in 7.0d and got the same results as with 8.0c).

Perfectly right.

Well, should we then be unhappy because we can "only" render in 4 threads?

No.

Look at the Task Manager. Rendering a normal job on my 2 x Quad Xeon it shows all 8 cores are busy - and with a total average load from 40-80 percent - depending on what is being rendered just now (FX's, Neat Video, Transitions, Plugins etc)
- and it is hard to imagine that you can utilize 8 cores more from one job (you also have the I/O bottleneck).

So, just as John Meyer writes, there is a natural limit at the 3-4 threads - and this is not only limited in Vegas - but also (or more) in Windows.

Personally I think that the way to faster rendering (forgetting add-on cards or GPUs for hardware rendering) is not more threads but faster CPU's.

[i]Well, should we then be unhappy because we can "only" render in 4 threads?[/I]Yes, we should, because in fact, it looks like it is only rendering on two threads, and it actually doesn't even come close to maxing out those two. Thus, a lot of CPU horsepower is being wasted. Of course, if you are willing to purchase Vista and then install 8.1, you can overcome this flaw in 8.0c.

My point is that if there is actually some Windows limit in XP 32-bit, that's fine, but the software should still be able to correctly work to that limit. But, perhaps there is something that keeps this version of Windows from utilizing each core. That sure doesn't sound plausible, though.

FYI tests performed 1-24-2009

Q6600 2:08 (128 seconds)

Installed new CPU

Q9650 1:40 (100 seconds)

ASUS P5K Deluxe Wi-Fi/AP motherboard machine with 4GB Ram running 8.0c.

For a speed reality check, read the first posts in this thread. Things have gotton much quicker since this thread was started. Soon gonna need yet another version of rendertest in order to be a challange.

Dell XPS 420
Q6850 (3ghz quad extreme)
4g RAM (3.3 recognized-32bit Vista)
ATI Radeon HD2600XT

Pathetically slow: 6m 39s (399 sec.)

Somethin' doesn't seem right with that.