Running Vegas 8 on an HP XW6000, dual Xeon procs (2.66), under WinXP. I have 1.5 Gb of RAM, capturing HDV from a Canon HV30. Playback wasn't all that great but was workable. I doubled the RAM, so I now have 3Gb. I was expecting to see a performance improvement, but I don't see anything better. the current project is about 12 minutes long, and has Several layers, chromakey, some loops, lower 3rds. But playback is about the same, and sometimes seems worse than when I only have 1.5 Gb of RAM.

Am I missing a step? or was I just expecting too much. Media drive is 120 Gb, but it is getting full so that might have something to do with it, but I've only added one clip since the RAM upgrade.

Any settings I should look at and maybe change?

Adding effects is CPU intensive but doesn't really increase RAM requirements. So by increasing the RAM, you've really not gained anything unless the RAM was swapping in and out of virtually memory to begin with. While the extra RAM won't hurt, it often won't gain you what you think it might when editing video.

chromakey with HDV is a CPU killer, add to that multiple layers and you know you need to upgrade to Quadcore or better. You need to pre-render. It`s that way with every editing app.

Thanks all, I guess the short answer is "yes." LOL

Yes Bill, your Xeons are just a little long in the tooth for HD with the added effects. Ram has very little effect on Vegas.