WMV rendering times: Pentium 4 vs i7

Sidecar2 wrote on 10/12/2009, 4:15 PM
I spend so much time waiting for a render it would be worth a new computer just for that.

1. Can anyone provide stats concerning Vegas rendering times when upgrading from a Pentium 4 (say, a 3.0 gHz machine) to some flavor of i7?

2. Are similar improvements available when encoding to MPEG-2 or back to AVCHD from an AVCHD show?

3. Does a RAID drive speed up render, especially if rendering to the same drive that holds the project media?

Thanks.

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 10/12/2009, 5:01 PM
anything newer from AMD (AMD 64, X2, Phenom) or Intel (core duo, core quad, i7, i5) will blow the p4 out of the water. That pretty much sums it up. :D
fldave wrote on 10/12/2009, 5:07 PM
Disc speed on a P4 doesn't matter much. WMV is very CPU intensive, MPG not quite as bad.

My main machine is a P4 still, don't do any AVCHD yet. I have a AMD X2 also, it does speed things up a bit.

Next big jump will hopefully be a Win 7 on at least an i7 machine, with 8 cores.
Sidecar2 wrote on 10/12/2009, 5:08 PM
So if you could choose your dream processor, what would it be?

Also, what would your 2nd best choice be if Choice #1 was too expensive?
fldave wrote on 10/12/2009, 5:11 PM
Actually, I have been too busy to even shop around for the latest.

I hear the i7 8 core setups (dual cpu??) are the dream as of 3-6 months ago.

And it should (it had better) blow these P4's to smithereens.

TeetimeNC wrote on 10/12/2009, 6:51 PM
I went from a 3.0Ghz pentium 4 to a 2.4Ghz i7. I'm running Vista 64bit and Vegas 9b 64bit. I would guess my render times for wmv are as much as 6-8 times faster. With AVCHD my render times are probably about what DV render times were on the pentium. These numbers are just off the top of my head, but should give you a relative feel. There is a thread here of veg benchmarks - do a search for more definitive answers.

Jerry
Hulk wrote on 10/12/2009, 7:00 PM
TeeTime is right on.

I went from a P4 3.06 to a C2D 3.2 and it was about 4 times faster. Go to a quad and you're looking at an 8x speed increase. Plus the i7 itslef is faster than Core2Duo so maybe 10x faster. Seriously.

What to get? Cost no object the Extreme Edition i7.

For value you can beat either the 920 overclocked to about 3.6-3.8GHz or the 860 with a slight overclock.

Personally I'm going to go with the 860 because the triple channel memory has little if any impact on video editing. I also like the efficiency of the 860 when it comes to electricity use. And finally the turbo mode actually is useful.

I think the biggest advantage of the 920 and it's faster siblings is the fact that the 1366pin mobo for these chips is supposed to accept the upcoming 6 core CPU.

6 cores, 12 with hyperthreading....mmm

- Mark
MozartMan wrote on 10/12/2009, 7:29 PM
Well,

I had Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.0 Ghz) overclocked to 3.6 Ghz. in my previous system.
When I was encoding from MPEG2 SD to MPEG2 SD it was taking about 5~6 minutes to encode 3 minute video.

Now I have new system with Core i7 920 (2.66 Ghz) which overclocked and runs at 4.00 Ghz.
Now, when I encode from MPEG2 SD to MPEG2 SD it takes 1minute 30 seconds to encode 3 minute video. Preview window looks like it is fast forwarding at 2x.

That's Wow!

I forgot to mention that when I was encoding from MPEG2 SD to MPEG2 SD on previous and current PC I was converting 4x3 to 16x9 and medium sharpness was applied to the whole video.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 10/13/2009, 6:19 AM
So if you could choose your dream processor, what would it be?

a phenom 2. cheap enough to let me get a bunch of other goodies. :D

Also, what would your 2nd best choice be if Choice #1 was too expensive?

regular phenom. :D Have one & I love it. Works perfectly!
zstevek wrote on 10/13/2009, 8:27 PM
I had a P4 3.0 GHz (Hyper Threaded)

Purchased a new computer and use a phenom 9350e (65w) CPU.

The render times for AVI files is about 4X faster.
CClub wrote on 10/15/2009, 10:11 AM
Regarding render times, I always used to say, who cares, I just start a render and it's done in the morning. Now, with HD and longer projects, it had been taking a day or so for a full render. But even that in itself wasn't a problem, as I could just do other things. The biggest problem was fixing a small little glitch about 4 minutes in, or a minor text modification 18 minutes in. I'd have to re-render the whole thing, and then I'm rendering for another day. Annoying as hell. That's why I just went to an i7 920.
Byron K wrote on 10/15/2009, 10:52 AM
I'm in that exact situation right now. To keep rendering times bearable I try to keep my clips down to 15 min or less which can take up to 6 hours to render on my P4HT machine. Also I only edit in standard TV resolution. It's actually kind of nice because I can zoom, pan and scan on a 720p clip with no loss in quality.

Getting ready to move up to DIY i7 860 machine in a few days. Hope to have the hardware by the time Windows 7 is released on the 22nd. (: