Need a new system for Vegas - any suggestions?

[Hugh Mobley]

I use a dual core 3.2 gig with 2 gigs of ram, never been happy with it, but I thinks its this particular computer, and definetely not enough ram, My friend has quad cores, 4 gigs of ram, seems to work, I believe one the most important things is the ram, with vegas 8 and if you need realtime etc, you need a min of 4 of ram. that most important, and if you use the computer for anything else, your daily stuff, and you have alot of other programs on it, the more ram the better. if its just a work station for vegas only, which most of us don't do, then thats different, I have always had mine built, then you can put in exactly what you want. you want a motherboard with plenty of slots. I would also look at a power supply of maybe 1000 watts, and if you have it built make sure the builder flashes the bios with the latest update.

[David Delaney]

I am going to look at the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 / 2.4 GHz - that seems like a good idea. I am trying to get a motherboard/cpu combo at :

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...rt=Price%20asc

There seems to be some good deals there for combo under $400.00.

I have the other computer with 3gig of ram that is the AMD BE 5000+ - it is still not fast enough. Again, I heard the motherboard has something to do with the speed as well, but I am not sure when it comes to rendering if it makes that much of a difference.

[Jeff Harper]

I just upgraded my MOBO, and I'm so sorry I did not see the release if the i7 processor coming. If you have any way of going with the i7, that is the move to make. Everything else under $500 became obsolete in the last week with the release of that new chip, and they are only $500 at newegg.

They chew up video and spit it out. They are absolutely perfect for Vegas, it is almost as if the i7 was designed for Vegas.

You'll pay more for Ram (DDR3 is required) but what a way to go.

Anyway, good luck. My q6600 is running just fine and is pretty fast, and if that is the route you go you'll be fine.

[David Delaney]

Thanks Jeff,
I think I am going with the Q6600 just because of the price. I know the new intel chips are going to change everything, but unfortunately they are not changing my meager paycheque.

[Mike Kujbida]

David, you'll be quite happy with the Q6600.
When I built my machine, I decided to go with the QX6700 because it was the best available at the time.
Needless to say, I took out a 2nd mortgage to pay for it too :-)

[Jon McGuffin]

Having built many systems over the years for myself as well as clients I can second most of what John has already said..

a few facts as I see it..

- Vegas does not care much about hard drive speed and really doesn't care about the GPU (unfortunately).

- Intel based systems run circles around AMD systems. You should not be in the market for a Phenom despite their price points which are not that much cheaper than Core 2 Duo 3.0Ghz chips which, frankly, are probably faster anyway. Stick with Intel. I'm not a fanboy either, I just call it like I see it..

- You are definately better off building the system complete rather than either upgrading or piecing it together. It would have helped to hear more about what you consider a budget. A price guide along with your existing system would be a plus.

- WinXp will only see about 3Gb of RAM, you should consider moving to Vegas 64-bit and I think 4Gb of RAM is about the minimum consideirng the cost for decent PC6400 (800Mhz) DDR2 Ram is about $60.

The Q6600 is a nice chip, very popular and been out for awhile. If you can swing this on a P35 based motherboard with 4Gb of RAM, you should be able to easily get those three main components for under $400 delivered. Throw another $200-$300 to cover maybe a new hard drive, possibly a case, quality power supply, and maybe even a $60 video card (8600GT is a good one, so is the AMD 4350 series).

I realize a build like this probably gets out of range for your budget but frankly, you're better off probably doing it right than doing it at all. You joked about having to get a 2nd job, but as crazy as that sounds, why not? You could probably pick up some temp job for a week or two - even at a low wage - and walk away with enough $$ to pay for the entire thing. How hard is it really to earn $700 - $900 when you really think about it? Sometimes earning your way into something you want feels a lot better than saving your way into it. Just a personal opinion there..

Jon

[Jeff Harper]

Originally Posted by Jon McGuffin

- Vegas does not care much about hard drive speed...(unfortunately)Jon

Video editors who demand performance always use the fastest hard drive they can get.

Technically your statement is true, Jon. But if you are editing a video with Vegas (or any NLE) and the foootage resides on a slow drive your editing experience will not be the same as it would be if the footage was on a much faster drive. You could also say that Vista doesn't care about hard drive speed and that would be true as well. But if you run with a slow drive vs a fast drive you will know it immediately. I sold an old P4 pentium computer with a 15K SCSI hard drive to a friend the other day and he cannot believe how it flies. Programs load incredibly fast. Of course it is still a P4 and cannot perform miracles, but it handles Vegas 7 just fine.

Have used RAID 0, non-RAID, 1TB WD Blacks, Raptors (every variety of Raptor drive available including the newest 150GB version and all of the old versions) the 1TB Samsungs, 15K RPM SCSI in RAID, etc., etc., and there is a noticable difference in the editing experience from one configuration to the next.

The difference begins when bringing in new footage. Peak-building can take 3-4 times as long on a slow drive, and with ten to twelve hours of footage or more that can be a lot.

Performance on the timeline is also much better with the faster drives. A slow drive will also contribute to a choppy preview experience.

Many professional editors run only the fastest drives in a raid 0 configuration and for good reason. Fast drives and video go hand in hand. To me the hard drive and hard drive controller I use are as important as the processor.

If the video editor is a hobbyist all of the above may not matter. Heck, there are plenty of small-timers like me who will live with a slow hard drive rather than part with the dollars required for better performance. That is fine for them. I say who cares? To each his own.

In addition there are plenty of folks for whom fast does not mean anything. But if you are looking for performance, the hard drive cannot be overlooked.

[Kostas Papadakis]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

Video editors who demand performance always use the fastest hard drive they can get.

... But if you are editing a video with Vegas (or any NLE) and the foootage resides on a slow drive your editing experience will not be the same as it would be if the footage was on a much faster drive.....

..... Fast drive and video go hand in hand.

Happy :) to hear it from another user.

[Jeff Harper]

Disregard this post, it was completely pointless and I just edited it out.

[Jon McGuffin]

Okay, yes, I tried to hedge my comment there a little by saying hard drive performance doesn't mean 'much' but your point Jeff is well taken and for that matter, I edit on a RAID 0 setup with a Raptor drive as my system drive and I do notice a differnece, however a few points..

The guy in this post is in the mood for a 'budget' build and all things considered, CPU & RAM are really the biggest 1-2 punch in terms of performance. He also mentioned in his post frustration with rendering times being the main issue he wanted to upgrade. There, again, CPU & RAM are going to be his big players, hard drive speed in terms of rendering performance is not going to matter a whole lot..

That being said, timeline performance I believe is faster while reading off a RAID 0 set or a faster drive, but the performance improvement, while noticeable I still suspect is fairly neglible. I am kinda moving on the assumption that the user will at least have a decent 7200rpm SATA-2 drive with a fair amount of available space.

So, it is true, hard drive performance can and does make a difference.. I just don't think in this particular forum it's an area he should spend much $$ on.

Jon

[John Cline]

A faster system hard drive will make Vegas load slightly faster, but once it's loaded, Vegas isn't going to run any faster.

DV and HDV files require just under 4 megabytes/second and even the slowest modern hard drive, including external USB and Firewire, can maintain a sustained data rate of 30 MB/s. The new Seagate 1.5 terabyte drives (available for about $120) can hit sustained speeds of 120 megabytes/sec. Rendering video is bound almost 100% by CPU and memory speed if it is actually having to render the video due to the application of filters, adding titles or modifying the original video in any way. If the video hasn't been modified, then Vegas will just copy the file and that's where hard drive speed can come into play. Also, Vegas (or any other program) can copy data much faster when going from one physical hard drive to another. If you're dealing with uncompressed intermediate files, then simply copying huge files can be a time consuming task, even at 100 megabytes/second.

Nevertheless, hard drive speed is a relatively minor factor when truly rendering files. Generally speaking, Vegas will be more productive and responsive with a faster CPU and memory.

[Jeff Harper]

John, I did not mention rendering peformance relative to hard drive speed. I was talking primarily about scratch drives and overall responsiveness, I thought that was clear.

Before disputing this further we should swap out our 10K rpm drives with 5400 rpm IDE drives and then make our recommendations based on those results.

[John Cline]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

John, I did not mention rendering peformance relative to hard drive speed. I was talking primarily about scratch drives and overall responsiveness, I thought that was clear.

Before disputing this further we should swap out our 10K rpm drives with 5400 rpm IDE drives and then make our recommendations based on those results.

While you didn't mention rendering performance, the question that started this thread was entirely about rendering performance. David Delaney said, "I have been rendering a lot lately and the times are ridiculous - 3-4+ hours for videos. I would like to cut that down to a reasonable amount."

Basically, David was asking what the most cost effective way would be to speed up his renders as he didn't want to dip too far into his Christmas fund. A 10k hard drive is not going to speed up rendering by any significant amount, a faster CPU and memory will. A single 10k rpm 300 GB drive is about $200, whereas a 7200 rpm 1.5 TB drive is about $120. The savings could be spent on a faster CPU and more RAM (and he'd get an extra 1.2 GB of drive space.)

BTW, your statement about swapping 10k drive for 5400 rpm drives had a sarcastic, if not outright condescending, tone to it.

[Jeff Harper]

You're right, my statement did appear sarcastic, and I apologize for it. I was obviously off track from the purpose of the thread, and again, my apologies to all.

[Jon McGuffin]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

You're right, my statement did appear sarcastic, and I apologize for it. I was obviously off track from the purpose of the thread, and again, my apologies to all.

hehe

No need to apologize, I thought it was actually kinda funny... I say so because I was working on a my laptop last night, sitting in the kids room and frustrated as can be looking down at this machine waiting for it to do just about anything. Of course, it's a perfectly capable dual core machine with 2 or 3Gb of RAM, but I knew all too well it was the stupid 5400rpm hard drive in there that was the real cause of my frustrations...

In the end here, John you are right and you have a good point too Jeff because when looking at overall system performance, the hard drive has a tendency to be the weakest link just in general computing and no 'solid' build should be without a good drive..

Jon