Vegas Pro 15: Hardware recommendations for high end PC.

kiwiandapple wrote on 7/3/2018, 11:09 AM

Howdy Vegas,

Just to clarify, I build PCs for my friends and family, as well as a few clients. A friend of mine recently bought an AMD Threadripper system and is having a lot of issues with it. So he asked me to build a new Intel based system for him.

I am very much not a video editor myself, I at most edit some holiday pictures. However I have had many requests for editing PCs so I know in general what to look for.
However, I've never had a request for a Vegas editing PC. After a lot of online research I could barely find any benchmarks for hardware. Where they compare different CPUs, RAM settings, GPUs & Storage options to determine what is beneficial.
Lots of software videos and articles are available to help with setting up Vegas though.

Here is an amazing detailed look at CPUs for Adobe Premiere by Puget Systems. They sadly do not have any articles for Vegas Pro.

Essential Information:

Vegas version & build: 15.0 Pro (Build 361)
Windows: 10 Home (version 1803)
Footage: .wmv video clips
Destination: YouTube - .wmv files

What we want:

Preview: As smooth as possible previews. FAQ has been read!
This is the main priority over anything else, the work flow needs to just not lagg. I've found out that there is a lot of options available to make this possible, but we want as high quality as possible previews.
Stability: which is fairly obvious because of the instability that he currently troubles a lot with. I will get workstation 'certified' hardware. Just am not entirely sure about for example AMD video cards vs Nvidia.

What I know about hardware:

CPU: It looks like that CPU speed (IPC) is more important than getting a lot of cores. However, I am not able to find the sweet spot in terms of cores/threads. Also something that has been mentioned is PCI-e lanes. How much impact does it have when we don't even use GPU acceleration?
The debate is thus about getting the i7-8700K (16 lanes & less RAM upgrade ability), i7-7800X (28 lanes), i9-7820X or i9-7900X (40 lanes).

Also found out about this:

the MAGIX AVC/AAC encoder, which inherits the same functionality and adds rendering acceleration via QSV or NVIDIA NVENC (supported NVIDIA GPUs).

So for the CPU we can potentially use QuickSync? Does only work for the AVC/AAC encoder?
Is this useful for YouTube?
RAM: The amount is going to be 64GB, to pretty much give Vegas a lot of RAM for "dynamic RAM preview".
Based on my own personal testing with Vegas 15 Pro (trial / build 361) speed is important, as well as low latency (CL) timings for rendering. Not sure about previews.. I can only render 2 min videos at most, so I've cut a clip from him to this length and rendered it. I have 16GB of DDR4 3000MHz, CL15.

* 3000MHz, CL15: 3min12s
* 2133MHz, CL15: 3min41s
* 2133MHz, CL13: 3min20s

I think that these are some interesting results, however my friend does not care too much about render times. They're fast enough regardless. It's the preview that is more important. How much does the RAM speed / CL timings influence this?
GPU: FAQ has been read!
GPU acceleration is based on OpenCL. Which is something Nvidia cards are not very good with. However based on many forums posts here it seems that most people still prefer Nvidia over AMD because of stability. Also because of the ability to use the NVENC. Again, is this useful for when the end result will go to YouTube?
How stable are the AMD RX500 / Vega series cards in Vegas 15 Pro? Can those be used for .wmv codecs?
Storage: I could not find much information about this either. Obviously this system will have at least 1 SSD. But I am not sure if it benefits him to get an NVMe high speed SSD for the workflow. Also is it possible to use an SSD as scratch disk?
NVMe SSDs are very expensive and if it does not gives any performance benefits, it's stupid to get in my opinion.

Thank you all very much for any help you can provide. This is much appreciated.

Comments

JoeAustin wrote on 7/3/2018, 11:38 AM

Thanks for the post. I'm currently using a Radeon R380 based card. GPU rendering cuts time by only about 25%, but with periodic quality issues, so I just default to CPU renders. I know Vegas is very picky about cards, and wonder if someone out there has had better results? I'd love to know, as I have several projects ahead that have many hours of video to render.

BruceUSA wrote on 7/3/2018, 12:30 PM

All I am going to say is this. I chose AND 1950x over Intel cpu here all day long. No problem with smooth playback what so ever. You can look me up for sample run on Vegas here.

Ps. Tell your friend to move away with wmv codec. For YouTube video. Out put the video file main concept mp4 or magix avc mp4 is much better choice and better quality.

D7K wrote on 7/3/2018, 1:47 PM

with the avc mp4 get the best AMD GPU you can. I have a lowly i7700/4200 (OC4400) and with the 8 gig AMD480 most of my 4K rendering is very, very fast (from 1:1 to more if I have a huge project (most of mine are 30 seconds or less). I find most of the time I am only using 16 to 18 gig out the 32 available.

kiwiandapple wrote on 7/3/2018, 4:22 PM

Thanks for the post. I'm currently using a Radeon R380 based card. GPU rendering cuts time by only about 25%, but with periodic quality issues, so I just default to CPU renders. I know Vegas is very picky about cards, and wonder if someone out there has had better results? I'd love to know, as I have several projects ahead that have many hours of video to render.

Interesting, thank you for your information.
@D7K has other experiences though.

All I am going to say is this. I chose AND 1950x over Intel cpu here all day long. No problem with smooth playback what so ever. You can look me up for sample run on Vegas here.

Ps. Tell your friend to move away with wmv codec. For YouTube video. Out put the video file main concept mp4 or magix avc mp4 is much better choice and better quality.

He got too many issues, some non Vegas related that he just does not want to stick with it. He's not very technical and just want the PC to work. I understand that Threadripper is awesome, he got the same one right now and is just not happy.

I was not aware of the quality. He's using his own render settings that according to him are the best quality. I'll let him know (he reads this post as well).
Aside from better quality why is the main concept mp4 or magix avc mp4 a better choice? Purely quality is or there more to it than that?

with the avc mp4 get the best AMD GPU you can. I have a lowly i7700/4200 (OC4400) and with the 8 gig AMD480 most of my 4K rendering is very, very fast (from 1:1 to more if I have a huge project (most of mine are 30 seconds or less). I find most of the time I am only using 16 to 18 gig out the 32 available.

As I said in the post, we don't care about render times much. This is not the issue that we currently have, instead we want to get the smoothest preview & timeline. This is where we currently lagg when using the expensive Threadripper PC and want to fix that.
It's by no means horrible, but we're both certain that it can be much better. Hence I am here wondering what CPU & GPU to get, as well as if an NVMe SSD can help with the preview at all or not.

I don't know much about Vegas at all, I don't use it. I have the trial version and been going through a few tutorials to figure out what benefits Vegas and so on.

fr0sty wrote on 7/3/2018, 10:51 PM

"Aside from better quality why is the main concept mp4 or magix avc mp4 a better choice? Purely quality is or there more to it than that?"

The reason you want to use AVC over WMV is because AVC supports GPU acceleration with encoding, and even if you choose not to use GPU accel, it typically encodes faster, is supported on far more devices.

D7K wrote on 7/4/2018, 10:29 AM

I guess the real answer is to try and find out what slows down your work flow with your specific setup and then find work-a-rounds or do that kind of stuff last. I have no problem viewing on dual screens when I am working with my setup. All of my files come from Panasonic cameras. It depends on what FX you use, the codec from your camera, the speed of your drives, and of course your CPU/GPU/Memory. The other thing you can do is work with proxies, lots of different ways to try and make things work.

iggy097 wrote on 7/7/2018, 6:05 AM

I can't imagine that Threadripper is the cause of the lagging preview window.

I can tell you my system specs and the only time my preview window lags is when I am editing 4k footage - and I have Looks plugin enabled and I have the preview windows quality set to Best - Full.

Other than that I don't lag at all with the preview window set to Best - Full (1080p projects) - I plan on upgrading to the new Threadripper this summer when it drops.

Anyhow - here are my specs - and this machine is several years old and performs very well.

Intel i7 6800k - overclocked to 3.8 / 3.9, Asus Strix X99 Gaming Mobo, Nvidia GTX 1080 GPU, 32GB of G Skill Trident Ram, 1TB Samsung 960 Evo, 1TB Samsung 850 Evo.

dream wrote on 7/7/2018, 8:14 AM

this looks amazing thread,

why dont you use .mp4 ? its used by all in 2018 because its mobile friendly and all platforms accept it.

i have 8700k with 16gb and gtx1060 ,playback is smooth and fast with nvence

Cliff Etzel wrote on 7/10/2018, 2:36 PM

My recent desktop upgrade is an i8700k Oc'd easily to 5Ghz, an Asus Z370-H mobo, 32GB Corsair LPX Ram and AMD R9 380 4GB Card. Works flawlessly - still laggy when using Neat Video but that's a given no matter what as far as I can tell. Without using it, I can peg my CPU to 100% on Renders and if I use VCE as the render option, GPU gets pegged to as much as 70% while CPU sits around 60% - never seen that til the hardware upgrade - and Vp15 v361 is rock solid.

Reyfox wrote on 7/13/2018, 5:42 AM

I use an AMD RX480 8GB. Stability with the card has not been a problem. The drivers have been solid, at least for "me". AMD VCE rendering is extremely fast. I see 100% usage GPU and 60-80% CPU usage. That to me is great. Only downside to this? If you play back the rendered file on your Vegas timeline... it will do nothing but stutter no matter what Preview is selected.