Stay away from that thing.
For that price you can get the same but with a RTX2080 Ti, which is like literally 8 times faster as an GTX 1060.
If you buy that, you are wasting money.

If you want to get professional PC Systems and have the money to spend look more towards https://www.pugetsystems.com

But for 2500 USD you can build your own monster Videocreatormachine. Dont be afraid of it, just research how to build on youtube, pretty much anybody can do it. And you safe money and learn things.

Same CPU, an RTX 2080 Ti a good Mainboard, big NVMe and fast storage etc. 2300+ USD for a machine that uses a 180 USD GPU is just crazy.

I have not yet found any evidence of RTX cards performing better in Vegas than 10 series GTX cards, and definitely have not found evidence that they do better than even cheaper AMD cards. AMD uses VCE, which Vegas supports as well, similar to NVENC. Someone really needs to do a thorough benchmark with Vegas and various forms of hardware. I'd love to, but getting my hands on that gear is out of the question for now.

+1 fr0sty

Somewhat agree with eikira on GPU - for that much money on the machine, they are utilizing Hardware now considered close to FOUR YEARS OLD!

You can see my signautre of what I use, and it performs great. And if you do a search for BruceUSA on this forum, his computer is similar to mine, though he has that Awesome AMD Frontier Edition (jealousy streak showing - heh,heh! :) ) Yep, can do most footage straight from cameras, though still when doing the 4K from either of my GoPros' (5 or 6 Black at 30 or 60fps), my new Sony FDR AX-53 - footage gets transcoded. Plain and simple. Or, you can do proxies. Either way is fine. Use DaVinci Resolve 15 Basic for GoPro's, and the occasional 4K OBS capture; and I use Sony Catalyst Browse for the AX-53 to go to an MXF wrapper. And with using ALL PCI-e SSD for source footage, render, cache files, thumbnails, etc., the machine runs great. I am thinking of getting the AMD Radeon VII once my tax return comes in, but still debating. It might take a while for any proxy builds/transcodes to get done, but I just go play on my OLD HP Laptop, or watch a movie, or go shoot some more with the cameras. Better to let this guy do it thing on the proxy/transcoding than suffering through the Herky-Jerky of the timeline, giving me headaches, and ...well, at least my monitors have survived Outbursts!!!!!

I think too many are caught up in "How fast can this thing render, or, How much resolution, or How much this and/or that, etc., etc., etc. Think of it this way, are you doing a video to just do a video (like a lot of the junk on YouTube and elsewhere), or are you wanting to Create and Share something, whether with an Audience, or Family Keepsake?

For the money that you would spend on the aforementioned machine, you could go to the MicroCenter Computer Outlet nearby (may be in Columbus, OH), and have them put together something much more powerful, and tested. Heck, really want to save money, check out "Paul's Hardware" on YouTube, and get a lot of the parts via NewEgg or Amazon, and put it together yourself! Or, if you are lucky, you might have a family member or someone who works IT (not the software guys - typically they only do software - I know, I was the Hardware guy when I worked at a School District - that was both desktops and servers). Plus, what is your final goal of video editing? For family, 1080p, 4K, lots of effects and whiz bang features in your film? Are you using Movie Studio or Vegas Pro? Plan to game on the machine at the same time or try to be "Super Multi-Tasker" (either Not Recommended when it comes time to render out though - better safe than sorry - Mr. Murphy will always win out!)

I do appreciate the input! I'm only beginning my search and assessing my needs. Most of what I do is Multi track audio. I often shoot live bands and record multi track for mixing at home using a DAW, Sonar. I do currently have Vegas Pro 14 and my current computer struggles, (it's 10 years old) but still get's me there. I have 4 cameras, one of which is 4K. No gaming needed. I just want a rock solid reliable capable computer with sights set on the future to hopefully get me close to another 10 years.

an Intel chip, as Vegas only supports hardware decoding via Quicksync. Even with very powerful cpu's and gpu's people here still have problems with timeline performance on some 4k+ video formats. I don't have a fast computer but when QSV decoding is working I don't have a problem with a 4k60p format on timeline, but now that QSV isn't working (no hardware video decode) the 100% cpu load makes timeline unusable

an RTX card such as 2060 is much more powerful than Non Vega consumer AMD card on Vegas. It's a real beast & most cost effective fast OpenCL card for high performance. People seem to have now accepted the quality limitations of Hardware encoding (nvenc,VCE,Quicksync) & believe it's ok to use for many/most purposes. If that is also your thinking then the highest quality and fastest hardware encoding is seen on the new Nvidia cards such as Gtx1660/ti , RTX2060etc. The worst quality is AMD's VCE, it's also the slowest, so I'd stay away from AMD cards if you believe hardware encoding will be common place for you.

...an RTX card such as 2060 is much more powerful than Non Vega consumer AMD card on Vegas. It's a real beast & most cost effective fast OpenCL card for high performance. People seem to have now accepted the quality limitations of Hardware encoding (nvenc,VCE,Quicksync) & believe it's ok to use for many/most purposes. If that is also your thinking then the highest quality and fastest hardware encoding is seen on the new Nvidia cards such as Gtx1660/ti , RTX2060etc. The worst quality is AMD's VCE, it's also the slowest, so I'd stay away from AMD cards if you believe hardware encoding will be common place for you.

For balance, here are the views of some very experienced Vegas users in the pro-AMD camp: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/gpu-rendering-only-uses-15--115352/?page=1#ca714794

And here are results that indicate that the quality of AMD VCE AVC rendering is excellent: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/cpu-render-vs-vce--114009/?page=4#ca706625

Personally, if I had to buy a top-end PC today, I would get an AMD Vega GPU, or I might take a punt on the new AMD Radeon VII.

I had forgotten about the price drop of Vega56. Yes it's cheaper than rtx2060, and very powerful in vegas. It's just too bad about VCE hardware encoding, the heat and the hairdryer noise of it's fan on full. It may not fit in with a general purpose sort of enviroment where you also want to play games, and watch videos.

Considering I do have an audio recording studio here, I must admit the sound of a hair dryer sounds frightening.

I don't actually track in the same room with the computer, but still, when you make noise for a living you learn to value silence.

Thanks for the links and I'll keep reading a shopping.

Considering I do have an audio recording studio here, I must admit the sound of a hair dryer sounds frightening.

I don't actually track in the same room with the computer, but still, when you make noise for a living you learn to value silence.

Thanks for the links and I'll keep reading a shopping.

Then consider a watercooled GPU, you spend a bit extra but can keep it cooler and quieter as well. In general, EVGA has prebuilded GPUs like that.

Ok I'm pondering the whole video card thing for a bit... Now I'm wondering how RAM comes into play. Is RAM important if you're editing 4K footage, or is it more about special FX? At what point would one want more than 32 gig of RAM?

Is RAM important if you're editing 4K footage, or is it more about special FX? At what point would one want more than 32 gig of RAM?

Well, yes and no. Its important for prieviewrendering (ctrl+b) loop selections etc. so more is better in general. But i dont see a need in more than 32GB.
Just get 2x16GB fast RAM sticks, for a 2channel/4channel Mainboard with 4 RAM slots. So later you can upgrade to 32 when needed. 3000+ MHz.

I had forgotten about the price drop of Vega56. Yes it's cheaper than rtx2060, and very powerful in vegas. It's just too bad about VCE hardware encoding, the heat and the hairdryer noise of it's fan on full. It may not fit in with a general purpose sort of enviroment where you also want to play games, and watch videos.

@Former user Is VCE encoding generally noiser than NVENC encoding? First I've heard of that.

https://studiocat.com/opencart2/index.php?route=product/product&path=89_91&product_id=81

Would love to hear your thoughts on if this would be a good route to go....

and if so, are any of the options better recommend than what's in the package?

Thanks!

I had a similar question in regards to that

My office is looking to purchase a video workstation

We were thinking about getting this one

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1455694-REG/msi_trident_x_plus_9sf_054us_trident_x_plus_9sf_040us.html

but I just caught this new one that was announced at NAB

https://www.4kshooters.net/2019/04/10/nab-2019-hp-z6-z8-g4-workstations-now-boasting-up-to-56-cpu-cores-and-native-8k-video-support/

Is a dual Xeon much better than a single i9, does Vegas work well with a Quadro card or is the RTX 2080 a better option?

 

Is a dual Xeon much better than a single i9, does Vegas work well with a Quadro card or is the RTX 2080 a better option?

 

I think your linked MSI prebuild is a very reasonable and good price choice for what its offering.

On your question about a dual xeon being better or a i9 single one. I can report only my experiences with a test i had on my system. I have a 6850K CPU 6 Core set to 4GHz and tried a XEON 14 Core at 2GHz and i found no benifits on more cores at all in VEGAS. I think the i9 9900K 8Core is very powerful for Vegas. The HP Workstations on the other hand with Quadros GPUs and Multi CPUs XEON you have room for other software to utilize, like cinema 4d, blender etc. but overall you will pay insane prices for a usable and reasonable system which makes sense from HP.

 

Is a dual Xeon much better than a single i9, does Vegas work well with a Quadro card or is the RTX 2080 a better option?

 

I think your linked MSI prebuild is a very reasonable and good price choice for what its offering.

On your question about a dual xeon being better or a i9 single one. I can report only my experiences with a test i had on my system. I have a 6850K CPU 6 Core set to 4GHz and tried a XEON 14 Core at 2GHz and i found no benifits on more cores at all in VEGAS. I think the i9 9900K 8Core is very powerful for Vegas. The HP Workstations on the other hand with Quadros GPUs and Multi CPUs XEON you have room for other software to utilize, like cinema 4d, blender etc. but overall you will pay insane prices for a usable and reasonable system which makes sense from HP.

Thanks for the input

I have not yet found any evidence of RTX cards performing better in Vegas than 10 series GTX cards, and definitely have not found evidence that they do better than even cheaper AMD cards. AMD uses VCE, which Vegas supports as well, similar to NVENC. Someone really needs to do a thorough benchmark with Vegas and various forms of hardware. I'd love to, but getting my hands on that gear is out of the question for now.

I have VP16, always the latest build. I would be willing to render a test and share the results.if someone creates a .veg test file and uploads it with the media somewhere where could download it. My specs are in my signature.

If you're working with DAW software for Audio (and especially if you're wanting to work at the smallest ASIO buffers sizes), what you want to stay away from is the new RTX-2xxx series video cards. Right now, they're causing high DPC Latency. If you're just working with Video (and working at the smallest ASIO buffer sizes isn't a major concern), the RTX-2xxx video cards are fine.

If you're tracking audio with a GTX/RTX card in the machine, what you want is a card that has a "0dB mode" (where the fans are turned off when not under heavy load). DAW software doesn't push the video card... so it'll stay in the 0dB mode while working with ProTools, Cubase, StudioOne, Reaper, etc. Some folks think that water-cooled means quieter. That's not necessarily the case. Water-cooling has pump noise... and fan noise.

You may also be surprised to find out that there's little actual performance difference between using a RTX-2080ti and a GTX-1660 when running your video application (Vegas Pro, Premier Pro, After Effects, Davinci Resolve, C4D, etc.).

MicroCenter in Columbus, OH? They know me extremely well. They can surely build a machine for you. But it is what it is... a machine bolted together by someone who knows nothing about the details of an audio/video machine. They're much more in-tune with Gaming (as that's by far the bulk of their business).

Is RAM important if you're editing 4K footage, or is it more about special FX? At what point would one want more than 32 gig of RAM?

Well, yes and no. Its important for prieviewrendering (ctrl+b) loop selections etc. so more is better in general. But i dont see a need in more than 32GB.
Just get 2x16GB fast RAM sticks, for a 2channel/4channel Mainboard with 4 RAM slots. So later you can upgrade to 32 when needed. 3000+ MHz.

How about RAM on the GPU, how important?

With Intel architecture, there's not a significant speed boost from using faster RAM (DDR4/3200 vs DDR4/2400).

With AMD's "Infinity Fabric" architecture, there is a significant speed boost using faster RAM.

However, it's hard to find a Ryzen motherboard that'll run DDR4/3200 rock-solid stable.

Ironically, on the Intel side, most motherboards will run DDR4/3200 just fine.

On the audio side, you need enough RAM for your largest projects.

If the machine has to hit the Virtual-Memory Swap-File in lieu of enough physical RAM, it'll kill performance.

Additional unused RAM doesn't buy any additional performance.

On the video side, more RAM allows larger previews.

On the audio side, monitoring audio in realtime at the smallest ASIO buffer sizes (thru software based EFX/processing) is something that doesn't lend itself to being heavily multi-threaded. Not all processes within a DAW application can be multi-threaded. For audio work, clock-speed is the most critical factor when it comes to choosing a CPU.

On the video side, video rendering is a process that can be heavily multi-threaded.

It's also important to note that CPU core performance scaling isn't 1:1. IOW, Doubling the number of CPU cores doesn't double performance.

In a perfect world, you want the highest clock-speed AND the most cores available (or that you can afford).

What you don't want to do (especially concerning audio) is sacrifice significant clock-speed for more cores.

If you're working professionally with both Audio and Video, it's important to know all the details.

A video editor can crank up the ASIO buffer size... and work around high DPC Latency.

The audio engineer who needs to trigger/monitor BFD in realtime from a set of Vdrums (at lowest possible latency) can't work around high DPC Latency.

How about RAM on the GPU, how important?

If you chose either high end GPU you get 8gb or 11gb in the non workstations area. so it does not really matter. you will be fine with any of it. The only thing here is speed of the GPU and the RAM on it. but again, any of the high end GPU will boost your setup anyway, but in general, the faster the better, but the size only matters for games really, to load all the high res textures into it.

@james-ollick 

“I have VP16, always the latest build. I would be willing to render a test and share the results.if someone creates a .veg test file and uploads it with the media somewhere where could download it. My specs are in my signature.”

Hi James, why not just use the “Red Car” test, or the Magix built in benchmark project?

@james-ollick 

“I have VP16, always the latest build. I would be willing to render a test and share the results.if someone creates a .veg test file and uploads it with the media somewhere where could download it. My specs are in my signature.”

Hi James, why not just use the “Red Car” test, or the Magix built in benchmark project?

Do you have the link to "Red Car" so I can download it? I found a link but it is not a good one, I assume it was from Sony owned Vegas. Also, not sure where to find the Magix built in benchmark project. I have been using Vegas Pro since v11 and Movie Studio before that and never knew there was a built in benchmark project.