XDCAM HD with Vegas 7 - looking for full frame rate output to PAL/NTSC monitor

[Mark P. Stuart]

I am editing an XDCAM HD project on a 3yr old 3Ghz Intel Dell PC with Vegas 7.

Project settings set to HDV 1080-50i 1440x1080 25fps for PAL.

Setting the preview resolution to half (960 x 540) pretty much achieves the full pal frame rate (25)

Enabling OHCI 1394 DV output drops the frame rate to around 12 to 15 fps.

I cannot get Windows Secondary Display to work consistently - got it working once but cannot get it again.

Anyway, I prefer to monitor on an external PAL monitor for colour balancing and interlace reasons.

I know a faster CPU PC will speed up the frame rates. However this is a one off project and I'm not ready to upgrade PCs at the moment.

My question is: what can I do to improve the frame rate of the external output? Does outputting via an AJA or Blackmagic card have a CPU hit like the OHCI DV output does? If not would I expect to get the same frame rate that you get with the video playing within the PC window? Do either of these cards accelerate the real time capabilities?

Any recommendations on the best AJA or Blackmagic card to get for Vegas?

Many thanks in advance