Upgraded to Vista x64
 

I was editing SD with Premiere CS3 on a Core 2 Dua 2.4, 3GB RAM (667), 36GB WD 10k Raptor system disk and SATA RAID0 Project files drive. With XP 32bit. All was pretty good.

In preparation to going HD (AVCHD native) to be exact. I changed XP for Vista x64 and replaced my RAM for 8GB (800) and anticipated a performance boost...

Well, apart from Vista actually seeming to run slower than XP, my timeline rendering (preview & final output render) are no different.

Was I being too hopefull?

Part of the issue I think is that the programs from CS 3 are still 32bit which have their own memory addresssing limits. Hopefully you will find 64bit more stable due to the signed drivers and such. My 64bit system with CS3 has been rock solid for me.

No, you weren't being too hopeful. I found I had faster rendering with Vista 64 bit.

I would have suggested going with a Quad core (q6600 is now under $200) rather than upgrading your memory, or doing both. Your money would have been better invested in a more powerful processor. I know that is a painful thing to hear, and while you can feel better about having it, but I can't imagine you'll see huge difference with it.

As for vista running slower, if you haven't yet tweaked Vista, google Vista tweaks. Don't forget to change your power settings also, so that your drives don't power off. I also suggest avoiding turning off UAC as that can create more problems than it solves.

If your MB doesn't support Quad-Core processors, your next step would likely be a new PC or upgrading your MB and processor. As long as you get a DDR2 board, you could still use your new memory.

I suspect so. The extra RAM will help when running multiple applications, but in general for a single application, the 64-bit operating system will actually use more system resources than XP 32-bit. That in itself probably wouldn't make a noticeable difference for most tasks but CS3 apps are 32 bit (and NOT Vista certified, BTW, so proceed at your own risk) and aren't going to directly benefit from the 64 bit OS. Also, there are a lot of things like the Aero interface, gadgets, UAC that eat up CPU clock cycles in Vista, so you might want to turn those off if you haven't already done so.

I haven't done any native AVCHD editing myself, but reports seem fairly consistent that you might find that a dual core processor won't do very well with it. Most say that you really need a quad core to natively edit AVCHD smoothly.

FWIW, I'm modifying my editing box this weekend so I can dual boot into either my existing XP with CS3+Cineform setup or to Vista x64 with CS4 (non-Cineform at least for a while). Although I don't have a whole lot of spare time to do detailed comparisons between the two setups, I'll definitely do at least a few "A/B" tests of some common renders, and will probably give native AVCHD editing a try. Will report when I have some time to play with it.

Why should 64bit be faster than 32bit when doing rendering with a 32 bit codec?

The main benefit with 64 bit is that you may adress as much memory as you want (and make 4gb available to each 32bit app you run.)

MAYBE if the codec was optimized for 64bit you could see a small gain from "coopy transfers cpu->memory". The big gain will be when the codecs/programs are optimized for running multiple threads. Many things in for instance Premiere cs3 are optimized for Quadcores(MT)

// Lazze