What are your Vegas editing machine stats?
 

Ultimatly I'd love to have 2 desktop computers one for gaming/internet and one just for work. Unfortuantly I only have one computer to do both. I do have a laptop but don't use it to do actually edit projects, I use it mainly to learn/practive all the new program I'm trying to learn.

What are the stats on your Vegas editing machine?
Mine:
Athlon 2200+
Asus A7V333
XP Home
512 mgs DDR 2100
40 gig Maxtor ATA133 (OS/Program drive)
80 gig Maxtor ATA133 (Dedicated video drive)
G-force 4 ti4600
Sony DRU500a
Lite-On CD-RW
Soundblaster Audigy 1
Klipsch Promedia 5.1s
Sony 21" E540 CRT display

Also what is your dream Vegas editing system?
I'd love to upgrade to a:
Asus Nforce Ultra MB
Athlon 3200+
1 gig of paired PC2700 DDR
Serial ATA Raid 0 (two Maxtor SATA 120gig drives for video)

Lastly what are your feelings regarding AMD vs Intel for Vegas editing? Any benefit going with Intel over AMD. I know the benchmarks on the Athlon always outperform Pentium 4 with Premiere but I wonder if that translates over to Vegas.

Before I say this, let me assure you that I've always been an AMD junkie in the past. They've consistently in the past churned out better processors at cheaper prices. The 1.4 Ghz computer I have at home and the 1.7Ghz computer I have here at work both are Athlons and were the top monsters when I built them.

Unfortunately, currently, Intel is winning the race in pretty much every arena (except cost, of course). When the next wave of architecture changes finally hits the street, this may be different, but in the mean time, see good ol' reliable Tom's Hardware site in the CPU section for details and specific explanations that pretty much sum it up.

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/index.html

As it stands today, mid-2003, if you purchase a system today that you want to be top PC dog, it should be an Intel. But this subject must be revisited at the end of the year when the next wave of 64-bit PC processors hit the streets.

I know that Athlon can't keep up with the clock speed and most benchmarks that the P4 is churning out- however anytime they use an NLE and video encoding as a benchmark the Athlon always seems to come out on top. Why, I have no idea- I don't know how/why the winmark and business program benchmark results don't carry over to NLE video encoding but it doesn't.
Tom's Hardware is a great site- it's been set as my "homepage" when I log on to the internet for a long while now. Another good resource for benchmarks is Maximum PC. That's where they benchmark using NLE encoding. Though, like I said, it's based on Premiere.

Regarding 64bit processors I think AMD might beat Intel to the punch- their Barton 64-bit processor is slated to come out fairly soon. I'm holding off upgrading to find out which MBs this new processor supports. Also benchmarking figures would be nice- I don't want to pay a premium if it's not going to benefit me in encoding/gaming speed. If it turns out they aren't what they are cracked up to be (the Bartons that is) I'll have to go to back to Intel with whatever their fastest CPU is at that particular time. It'll be the first Intel PC I've owned since my ooooold Pentium 120. Wow technology moves fast.

One guess I have for the performance discrepancy, is that Premiere being an older NLE (until Premiere Pro comes out), it may be that it is not optimized for the latest P4s architecture. Whereas the AMD, by all counts, is functioning in a way that has not developed to the point of P4s. As Toms Hardware suggests, AMD seems to have stagnated a bit. This is probably because they are a smaller company with limited resources, and are probably devoting most of their resources to developing the next level chip which should whoop the Intel. Intel being big enough to be able to devote time to up the current technology while still developing the next-level technology without skipping a beat.

Anyway, that being the case, it may be very likely that in Vegas, it being a more optimized application with current technology, may function much faster with an Intel chip.

But this is just conjecture. Don't hold me to it... just a scientific hypothesis.

I wonder if anyone could benchmark Vegas's performance under an Intel chipset vs AMD. That would be quite interesting. The results would easily influence my decision when upgrading my computer beings I ditched Premiere to run an all Vegas workflow.

That's one of the reasons I started this post, to see what most Vegas users were using- though that wouldn't be a "benchmark". Hmm maybe I should ask some techs over at Sonic Foundry.

Re: What are your Vegas editing machine stats?
 

What are the stats on your Vegas editing machine?
(This is also my general purpose, do everything computer)
HP Pavilion 793
3.06GB Pentium 4 w/ Hyperthreading
512 MB pc2100 DDR RAM
40GB ATA 100 (OS/Program Drive)
100GB ATA100 (general storage drive)
120GB ATA 133 with PCI controller card (dedicated video)
ATI Radeon 7500 All-In-Wonder AGP video card
Onboard USB 2.0 (2 front,4 back) & Firewire ports (1 front, 1 back)
Onboard sound
On board video (disabled)
2.4x DVD+R/RW
Vegas 4.0 +DVD
XP Home

Also what is your dream Vegas editing system?
All of the above in a laptop with widescreen LCD

Lastly what are your feelings regarding AMD vs Intel for Vegas editing?
Intel rules with 3+ GB CPU's & Hyperthreading, but I'm very curious where AMD's 64bit processors will take us -->>>

Antec 1080 480w server tower
P4 2.4 533FSB 512cache (soon to be upgraded to H/T CPU)
Abit IT7 Max2 mobo Series2 10xUSB 4x1394, multimedia portRaid disabled and used as IDE, with extra 1394card installed.
1x 80WD 7200RPM 8mb Cache HDD (system and stock material)
2x 120GB WD 7200RPM 8 mb Cache HDD (Video and Audio doubles as temp for DVDr and Cd Writing)
SBLive Audigy running ASIO drivers
Radeon9000Pro 128mb AGP gfx card overclocked to 200mhz(soon to be upgraded to 9800)
1Gb Corsair 3200 DDR Ram 400mhz
Yamaha F1 44x CDR-W writer with Disc t@2
Pioneer A05 4x DVDr writer
Kenwood 5050 110w x5 5.1 Surround Amp
Custom built speakers and sub (made em myself)

Soon be getting 2xLCD monitors

XPPro
Vegas4 + DVD
Soundforge6 and the rest of the Sonic Foundry kit
Pinnacle Studio7 + Hollywood fx (only use it for HFX)
and loads of other apps...

This is just the workstation....pls dont ask what the full kit list in the studio is (synths keys samplers etc etc.. LOL )

i have another system but its so old its only used for covers, accounting and general cd burning.

as for Hyperthreading and the P4 i have some benchmarking on main concept running on Hyperthreading CPUs but its on another board which i admin...
Ill find the link to the benchmark and post it here, but its about 20% faster than a CPU without....

Bench reviews
 

take particular note of the Main Concept encoding comparison...

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030521/800fsb-12.html

Lian-Li aluminum chassis
Intel D850EMV-R motherboard
512 MB Samsung 1066 RDRAM
Intel 2.26 GHz P4
1x 40 GB IBM ATA133 HDD (OS & apps)
2x 80 GB IBM ATA133 HDD, RAID-1 (working video)
1x 80 GB external firewire HDD (archives)
GeForce 4 Ti 4400 video card
Promise ATA133 raid card
Adaptec 4 port firewire card
Viewsonic P95f monitor
Yamaha YST-M15 computer speakers
Sony DRU-500A DVD burner
Internal Zip & floppy drives

MS Win XP-Pro
Vegas 4 + DVD
Acid Pro 3 with SoundForge XP 5
Oh, and some games :)

Currently I'm filming my short movies using Sony TRV-900 cameras. Would like a Panasonic DVX-100 tho ;)

I agree that the dream system would be a super powerful laptop, with the ability to hook it up to big external monitors & disk drives when at home.

I also just built a gaming system out of a Shuttle XPC barebones system. They have the latest 400 MT/sec nForce chipset in one model, as well as the latest 800 MT/sec P4 chipset in another model. If you don't need a lot of PCI cards or disk drives, these systems are really nice (small and quiet, too).

Re: Bench reviews
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Peter Jefferson : take particular note of the Main Concept encoding comparison...

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030521/800fsb-12.html -->>>

Wow thanks for the heads up- welp guess that settles it, Pentium is the way to go for Vegas encoding speed. Hmmm gotta come up with the cash to build a new Pentium 4 rig!

makes a hellofadiference doesnt it... LOL

20% boost...
and apparently Main Concpet support dual CPUs so the results shoudl be similar if running a dual CPU system...

Why because of hyper-threading? Is there any configuration involved in setting up hyper-threading or is it some sort of default feature on the Pentium 4s? Also at what speed does Pentium offer hyper-threading?

H/T on Intel is minimum of 2.4 and upwards... not bad really...
and the fact you can overclock it is even beter...

hyperthreading with XP in lamens terms confuses the machine in thinking that its runnign 2 CPUS... its alot more complicated than that, but thats just a basic way to look at it...

Do you have to run XP Pro to take advantage of HT? I know it's not two logical CPUs but I'm asking because only Pro can handle dual processors to begin with.

In addition to that- does the program have to be written to take advantage of HT, or does it occur naturally with all apps?

depends on the application, but usually you dont have to do anythign as XP Pro will configure resources according to priority.

Win XP Pro is the only OS which supports H/T technology at this time..