Will I benefit from a 2-CPU System?

Peter Moore · July 29th, 2003, 05:16 PM

Wow, looks like 2 Pentium Xeons are the best. But they don't have 800 MHz FSBs? Strange. But it looks like it makes little differences.

John Hartney · July 29th, 2003, 06:31 PM

I've been told Vegas uses one processor for video and the other for audio, when presented a dual board... That came from the vegas sofo board and was confirmed by Douglas Spotted Eagle...

Peter Moore · July 29th, 2003, 08:24 PM

Hm, I wonder if that's only when one instance of Vegas is open? I'd want to use two instances to render two different scenes at once.

Still, I wonder: does Windows know to assign different processors to different processes automatically or must the software specifically support this? So if I open two different instances of Vegas, or Vegas and then Premier, will XP give one to one processor and the other to the other?

Barry Gilbert · July 30th, 2003, 10:47 AM

I may be wrong Peter but it would seem to me that the software you are using would have to be the one making that distinction. Not the OS. Have you thought about asking the folks that make Vegas? They may be the best to answer that question.

Peter Moore · July 30th, 2003, 06:43 PM

If I open two different programs, or two different instances of the same program (or processes as Windows calls them), then it should be the OS who decides which processor to assign those processes to, not the programs themselves. That behavior is too low-level, I would think, for a Windows program.

Can anyone confirm though?

Gints Klimanis · July 30th, 2003, 07:36 PM

>a 240 gig SATA raid0

Glen,

How does this Raid work for you? I have a hunch that
video encoding programs just aren't performing well as they may be limited by the hard drives during the DV file read. While this is probably less of an issue with 8 MByte buffers on hard disk drives,
I'm stuck with some large drives with 2 MByte buffers.

Peter Moore · July 30th, 2003, 09:57 PM

Not sure about your hard drives, but I'm pretty sure that's not an issue for most. For instance, rendering unaltered (cut with no effects, I mean) DV footage can go as much as 3x realtime for me. Try encoding that with color correction and 16x9 clipping, and we're talking about 1/10th realtime.

I love the Mac users who claim, though cannot substantiate as far as I've seen, that the G4 can do color correction of DV in realtime.

Glen Elliott · July 31st, 2003, 06:02 AM

Gints, I would think processing speed would be the bottle-neck while encoding. I don't see even a 2mg cache HD becoming your weakpoint- I just don't think the encoder can process that much info that it has to, in turn, slow down to match the write speed the the drive.

I'm going with a raid not because I need it- I'm working with a 2mg cache 7200rpm ATA133 Maxtor drive now for my video and I've never dropped a frame yet. I'm planning the raid just for the sheer hd space. It's cheaper to buy two 120gig SATA drives than one 220 (if one even exists in SATA). Plus as you know it's faster- even though I don't think it'll directly benefit me at least I know the speed is there if I need it!
Plus I'm looking forward to having a case that isn't cluttered by standard IDE cable- that is the baine of the interior of my case. Then again I could use rounded cables but have been weary with reports of data corruption when using them- is this true? Can anyone confirm this allegation?

Lars Siden · August 4th, 2003, 12:32 PM

Hi,

Had a dual P3-800 system with 1gb 2clk 6ns memory.

My "old" P4 1.5gz kicked a*s with the dual machine...at least using Premiere 6 and Mainconcepts MPEG encoder. The single P4 was easy 30% faster than the dual P3-800

My current setup is:

P4 @ 2.53ghz 1.5gb fast memory -> Working machine

P4 @ 1.5ghz 768mb -> Rendering machine / file server

I remote the sever using terminal services...start rendering on that machine...and happily plays games or makes some C# code on my "work" machine.... this is "true" multitasking....

Besides, it is always nice to have a file server...makes re-installing the "work" computer a breeze...

As I said, this is just my 2 cents....

// Lazze

Rob Lohman · August 11th, 2003, 05:48 AM

To give a bit more information about Windows & multiple processors.
Now I'm not an expert on the area of multiple processors, so I
won't say too much about that.

There are 2 things in Windows that are important with regards
to applications and processors. We have processes and threads
(also fibers, but I'll leave these out for now).

A process is more or less a single instance of an application. So
if you start Vegas it has only one process.

Which you can check yourself if you have Windows 2000/XP by
right-clicking on the task bar and choosing task manager. Go
to the processes tab and you'll see vegas40.exe there one time
only. If you open it a second time it will be there two times.

Funny thing to mention is that the second instance is using a lot
more memory on my system then the first instance. Edward?

Windows will put different processes on different processors if
possible to answer the earlier question. So as Edward pointed out,
you can have one process/instance/application [all the same]
rendering and you can do something else in another one.

Now within a process Windows creates threads. By default one
process has one thread. Now here we get into how an application/
process can take advantage of multiple processors. Windows
has the ability to run different threads on different processors,
but for this to work to your advantage an application has to:

1) have multiple threads doing DIFFERENT things

2) design the application so that each thread can work as
standalone as possible without needing other threads or
blocking access to harddisk/memory/devices/resources that
that another thread might need

Only with this might you see an increase [mostly only on time
consuming things].

Back to our process list in the task manager. Go down in the
menu 'View' and to 'Select Columns'. Enable 'Thread Count' and
hit OK. On my system vegas40.exe is using 12 threads at this
moment. Now this does not mean that all 12 threads are actually
doing something or will work in your favor on a multiple processor
system [it might actually slow the application down if it is not
programmed for such a system].

As you see it is a complex system which will not garantuee that
if you put in an extra CPU it will also increase your speed. It might,
but it won't by default. An application must be specifically be made
to work in your favor [as most serious 3D rendering applications
are for example]

Edward Troxel · August 11th, 2003, 07:17 AM

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : Funny thing to mention is that the second instance is using a lot more memory on my system then the first instance. Edward? -->>>

Does the second instance have the focus? I wonder if it could be related to the Options - Preferences - Dynamic RAM Preview? I know that Vegas is very friendly to other applications. The first instance probably gave up that memory so the second one could use it.

How does the memory usage change if you minimize both and then start up something like Photoshop?

Rob Lohman · August 11th, 2003, 07:34 AM

I did some testing and got some interesting results. When I
start Vegas 4 [without any projects loaded] it uses about 23
mb of memory. If open up a second instance (without minimizing
the first one) they both use 23 mb. If I open up another application
like Visual Studio.NET 2003 (which uses 12 mb) nothing happens.

If I however MINIMIZE one instance of vegas it is only using
around 800 KB (yes, KB) of memory. If I restore it, it uses 3 mb...

Funny, but seems to go alongside with your remarks. I hadn't
noticed in my first test that it originally used "a lot" (relative) and
then dropped down when I minized it.

Glenn Chan · August 17th, 2003, 04:21 PM

This has been covered in the VV forum at sonic foundry. Rendering with 2 processors doesn't increase render speeds much. Vegas Video isn't very good at using the second processor (it uses it to process sound and to encode DV, which isn't as intensive as rendering video). The second processor could come in handy for multitasking. Hyperthreading makes the machine see 2 processors instead of one. All the calculations are still done on one processor and there could be possible bottlenecks. In some benchmarks of raw calculations, hyperthreading decreases performance by around 10%. Applications that are not optimized for hyperthreading would not see much, if any increase in speed. I'm not sure if VV is optimized for hyperthreading.

In the Tom's hardware benchmarks, dual xeons are about as fast as just one pentium. It doesn't seem like the cost of dual xeons is worth it. Also note that results could be drastically different with Vegas Video. If I had the money to get dual xeons I would get a G5 instead. You'd have to wait until it comes out but the dual 2mhz is probably going to be at least twice as fast as the 1.42DP G4. I'm pretty sure the 1.42DP G4 can color correct and output via firewire in real-time (might be able to do 2 layers of that). The old old Dual 500mhz G4 at my high school can do CC in real time with FCP3 (but not output via firewire simultaneously). In terms of FCP versus Vegas Video, each has its advantages. The color curves in VV are really cool and they aren't in FCP (3rd party plug-in required). The workflow is very very different- Vegas Video made no sense to me coming from Final Cut Pro. Everything in Vegas Video is upside down, including the timeline on top. *Depending on what you do*, FCP might be the better choice than VV. The FCP4/G5 combo looks like it's going to kick some ass. You can emulate PC programs that don't have Mac equivalents.

As for rounding IDE cables, it's better if you keep the cable short (not the long ones that are out of spec) and if you cut every 4 wires. Every other wire is a dummy wire that sucks up cross talk between the signal carrying wires.

July 30th, 2003, 10:47 AM	#19
Barry Gilbert Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Winnsboro, SC Posts: 96	I may be wrong Peter but it would seem to me that the software you are using would have to be the one making that distinction. Not the OS. Have you thought about asking the folks that make Vegas? They may be the best to answer that question. __________________ "No matter how good she looks; somebody, somewhere is tried of putting up with her crap." Randy Brazell

August 4th, 2003, 12:32 PM	#24
Lars Siden Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Sweden, Stockholm Posts: 469	My 2 cents Hi, Had a dual P3-800 system with 1gb 2clk 6ns memory. My "old" P4 1.5gz kicked a*s with the dual machine...at least using Premiere 6 and Mainconcepts MPEG encoder. The single P4 was easy 30% faster than the dual P3-800 My current setup is: P4 @ 2.53ghz 1.5gb fast memory -> Working machine P4 @ 1.5ghz 768mb -> Rendering machine / file server I remote the sever using terminal services...start rendering on that machine...and happily plays games or makes some C# code on my "work" machine.... this is "true" multitasking.... Besides, it is always nice to have a file server...makes re-installing the "work" computer a breeze... As I said, this is just my 2 cents.... // Lazze __________________ Sony HDR-CX130,Canon 5DMKII,i7 930@4.0, 12gb memory, 3x SSD + 2x1Tb(stripe), Geforce 480, Dual 24", Win 7 x64

August 11th, 2003, 05:48 AM	#25
Rob Lohman RED Code Chef Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Holland Posts: 12,514	To give a bit more information about Windows & multiple processors. Now I'm not an expert on the area of multiple processors, so I won't say too much about that. There are 2 things in Windows that are important with regards to applications and processors. We have processes and threads (also fibers, but I'll leave these out for now). A process is more or less a single instance of an application. So if you start Vegas it has only one process. Which you can check yourself if you have Windows 2000/XP by right-clicking on the task bar and choosing task manager. Go to the processes tab and you'll see vegas40.exe there one time only. If you open it a second time it will be there two times. Funny thing to mention is that the second instance is using a lot more memory on my system then the first instance. Edward? Windows will put different processes on different processors if possible to answer the earlier question. So as Edward pointed out, you can have one process/instance/application [all the same] rendering and you can do something else in another one. Now within a process Windows creates threads. By default one process has one thread. Now here we get into how an application/ process can take advantage of multiple processors. Windows has the ability to run different threads on different processors, but for this to work to your advantage an application has to: 1) have multiple threads doing DIFFERENT things 2) design the application so that each thread can work as standalone as possible without needing other threads or blocking access to harddisk/memory/devices/resources that that another thread might need Only with this might you see an increase [mostly only on time consuming things]. Back to our process list in the task manager. Go down in the menu 'View' and to 'Select Columns'. Enable 'Thread Count' and hit OK. On my system vegas40.exe is using 12 threads at this moment. Now this does not mean that all 12 threads are actually doing something or will work in your favor on a multiple processor system [it might actually slow the application down if it is not programmed for such a system]. As you see it is a complex system which will not garantuee that if you put in an extra CPU it will also increase your speed. It might, but it won't by default. An application must be specifically be made to work in your favor [as most serious 3D rendering applications are for example] __________________ Rob Lohman, visuar@iname.com DV Info Wrangler & RED Code Chef Join the DV Challenge \| Lady X Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Buy from the best: DVinfo.net sponsors

August 11th, 2003, 07:34 AM	#27
Rob Lohman RED Code Chef Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Holland Posts: 12,514	I did some testing and got some interesting results. When I start Vegas 4 [without any projects loaded] it uses about 23 mb of memory. If open up a second instance (without minimizing the first one) they both use 23 mb. If I open up another application like Visual Studio.NET 2003 (which uses 12 mb) nothing happens. If I however MINIMIZE one instance of vegas it is only using around 800 KB (yes, KB) of memory. If I restore it, it uses 3 mb... Funny, but seems to go alongside with your remarks. I hadn't noticed in my first test that it originally used "a lot" (relative) and then dropped down when I minized it. __________________ Rob Lohman, visuar@iname.com DV Info Wrangler & RED Code Chef Join the DV Challenge \| Lady X Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Buy from the best: DVinfo.net sponsors

July 29th, 2003, 05:16 PM	#16
Peter Moore Trustee Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Arlington VA Posts: 1,034	Wow, looks like 2 Pentium Xeons are the best. But they don't have 800 MHz FSBs? Strange. But it looks like it makes little differences.

July 29th, 2003, 06:31 PM	#17
John Hartney Major Player Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Elgin, Illinois Posts: 206	I've been told Vegas uses one processor for video and the other for audio, when presented a dual board... That came from the vegas sofo board and was confirmed by Douglas Spotted Eagle...

July 29th, 2003, 08:24 PM	#18
Peter Moore Trustee Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Arlington VA Posts: 1,034	Hm, I wonder if that's only when one instance of Vegas is open? I'd want to use two instances to render two different scenes at once. Still, I wonder: does Windows know to assign different processors to different processes automatically or must the software specifically support this? So if I open two different instances of Vegas, or Vegas and then Premier, will XP give one to one processor and the other to the other?

July 30th, 2003, 06:43 PM	#20
Peter Moore Trustee Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Arlington VA Posts: 1,034	If I open two different programs, or two different instances of the same program (or processes as Windows calls them), then it should be the OS who decides which processor to assign those processes to, not the programs themselves. That behavior is too low-level, I would think, for a Windows program. Can anyone confirm though?

July 30th, 2003, 07:36 PM	#21
Gints Klimanis Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: San Jose, CA Posts: 2,222	>a 240 gig SATA raid0 Glen, How does this Raid work for you? I have a hunch that video encoding programs just aren't performing well as they may be limited by the hard drives during the DV file read. While this is probably less of an issue with 8 MByte buffers on hard disk drives, I'm stuck with some large drives with 2 MByte buffers.

July 30th, 2003, 09:57 PM	#22
Peter Moore Trustee Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Arlington VA Posts: 1,034	Not sure about your hard drives, but I'm pretty sure that's not an issue for most. For instance, rendering unaltered (cut with no effects, I mean) DV footage can go as much as 3x realtime for me. Try encoding that with color correction and 16x9 clipping, and we're talking about 1/10th realtime. I love the Mac users who claim, though cannot substantiate as far as I've seen, that the G4 can do color correction of DV in realtime.

July 31st, 2003, 06:02 AM	#23
Glen Elliott Wrangler Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 2,898	Gints, I would think processing speed would be the bottle-neck while encoding. I don't see even a 2mg cache HD becoming your weakpoint- I just don't think the encoder can process that much info that it has to, in turn, slow down to match the write speed the the drive. I'm going with a raid not because I need it- I'm working with a 2mg cache 7200rpm ATA133 Maxtor drive now for my video and I've never dropped a frame yet. I'm planning the raid just for the sheer hd space. It's cheaper to buy two 120gig SATA drives than one 220 (if one even exists in SATA). Plus as you know it's faster- even though I don't think it'll directly benefit me at least I know the speed is there if I need it! Plus I'm looking forward to having a case that isn't cluttered by standard IDE cable- that is the baine of the interior of my case. Then again I could use rounded cables but have been weary with reports of data corruption when using them- is this true? Can anyone confirm this allegation?

August 11th, 2003, 07:17 AM	#26
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : Funny thing to mention is that the second instance is using a lot more memory on my system then the first instance. Edward? -->>> Does the second instance have the focus? I wonder if it could be related to the Options - Preferences - Dynamic RAM Preview? I know that Vegas is very friendly to other applications. The first instance probably gave up that memory so the second one could use it. How does the memory usage change if you minimize both and then start up something like Photoshop?

August 17th, 2003, 04:21 PM	#28
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	This has been covered in the VV forum at sonic foundry. Rendering with 2 processors doesn't increase render speeds much. Vegas Video isn't very good at using the second processor (it uses it to process sound and to encode DV, which isn't as intensive as rendering video). The second processor could come in handy for multitasking. Hyperthreading makes the machine see 2 processors instead of one. All the calculations are still done on one processor and there could be possible bottlenecks. In some benchmarks of raw calculations, hyperthreading decreases performance by around 10%. Applications that are not optimized for hyperthreading would not see much, if any increase in speed. I'm not sure if VV is optimized for hyperthreading. In the Tom's hardware benchmarks, dual xeons are about as fast as just one pentium. It doesn't seem like the cost of dual xeons is worth it. Also note that results could be drastically different with Vegas Video. If I had the money to get dual xeons I would get a G5 instead. You'd have to wait until it comes out but the dual 2mhz is probably going to be at least twice as fast as the 1.42DP G4. I'm pretty sure the 1.42DP G4 can color correct and output via firewire in real-time (might be able to do 2 layers of that). The old old Dual 500mhz G4 at my high school can do CC in real time with FCP3 (but not output via firewire simultaneously). In terms of FCP versus Vegas Video, each has its advantages. The color curves in VV are really cool and they aren't in FCP (3rd party plug-in required). The workflow is very very different- Vegas Video made no sense to me coming from Final Cut Pro. Everything in Vegas Video is upside down, including the timeline on top. Depending on what you do, FCP might be the better choice than VV. The FCP4/G5 combo looks like it's going to kick some ass. You can emulate PC programs that don't have Mac equivalents. As for rounding IDE cables, it's better if you keep the cable short (not the long ones that are out of spec) and if you cut every 4 wires. Every other wire is a dummy wire that sucks up cross talk between the signal carrying wires.