I just downloaded and installed the Vegas Post trial. I opened up a very small v17 project I had just finished and after configuring v18 to have the same template and other settings as I use in v17, I tried a render. The time difference was breathtakingly different. The v17 render was 2 min and 9 seconds. The v18 render was 41 minutes and 57 seconds!
Both v18 and v17 intermittently use my GPU but v18 used it WAY less. Also, this project is just 55 seconds of video and I was only using color grading in processing!
Oh and learned that once a v17 project is opened in v18 and saved, that v17 can no longer open that project, so in my timings examples, I had to use two different project names that were clones of each other.
Hopefully this is not normal for v18...
Thanks,
Jonathan