Vista vs XP
 

Okay, I have been using Vista for a long time, but, these darn reports on performance of the two keeps getting to me.

So, David's, or anyone, have you done an A/B with the same project,
CS3, and cineform with each OS and seen which one is faster/most stable?

Thanks

Dave

"Windows XP Significantly Outperforms Vista, Tests Show"

http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=204203975

Which is why on my new Intel quad core 9650 with 8gig ram, I opted for XP Pro 64bit. Vista just ant pretty.

Having said that Im only now hearing horror stories about Adobe CS3 Master Collection NOT installing on an XP 64bit machine. Can anyone confirm this?

I stupidly just assumed from reading a post in this forum saying that cineform worked with XP 64bit that Adobe would as well. Can anyone confirm they have CS3 master collection installed and running fine on XP 64bit?

I did find a post on the adobe forum for a work around but it looks way messy which leads me to believe the problems are more to do with the installer than the applications themselves.

Hmmmm

Man, if you think vista is bad, X64 stuff is worse. I have tried a few times
and I totally gave up.

Dave

Thanks Dave, not really liking you right now.

Oh well Ill have my computer end of week - so either it works or I re-install XP Pro and have 4gig of ram sitting around doing squat.

I just cant understand huge companies like Adobe...were in an industry that’s constantly screaming 'more ram, more ram' at us yet there is so little support for the only OS that would allow us to actually use it.

I mean one of the main reasons I went 4 cores with 8 gig is to take full advantage of Nucleo Pro in AE. This based on a post I read from one of their techs with the consensus being Nucleo Pro works best with roughly 2gig available to each core.

Madness...

Hello.
I am using CS3 in Xp64 for months with no problem.
He completed a documentary on HD (Blackmagic Decklink) and everything perfect.

You De man Manuel, at the very least it gives me hope.

I made a list of every application I really need and am checking for X64 compatibility / workarounds (isn’t that the way you do it, order the system and then check to see if your software is compatible with it?)

Fingers crossed.

Paul, as I understand it, it doesn't make any difference as to whether you use 32-bit or x64, as the limitation for the amount of memory accessible is limited to the 2 GB for each 32bit Window app. No one that I know of has ever figured a way around that prob. It hurts us especially with full HD (1920x1080) scale video and trying to use CF (it's not their problem) and other plugins.

It's a royal pain and the reason we need 64bit ADOBE APPS! Are you listening Adobe? Port your applications to 64bit, if you really care about your customers!

Only workaround we've ever found, is to keep projects broken up as small as possible, especially when doing large scale video, memory intensive stuff.

Sorry for the bad news. If anyone has solid proof they can do anything else, they'll be a hero here!

For our two bits, stick with XP Pro...you'll thank yourself if you do. Vista is DOA and most major corporations are now waiting for Win 7. I've been doing computer stuff since 1985 and the trend is clear. Vista is a dead fish and MS will beat it until extracts everything it can from it. If you can make it run, more power to you, but if you can chose, use XP for now.

Hey Stephen,

Honestly if it wasn’t for Nucleo Pro I probably would. However the way Nucleo works is that even though AE is 32bit, Nucleo opens multiple versions in the background for as many cores as you have.

That’s why I went 8gig as that way 4 versions of AE will be used at the same time on my Quad core to render and each will be allocated roughly 2 gig of memory. Something Nucleo couldn’t do on a 32 bit O/S, or at least that’s what I was lead to believe.

I have to admit I was a bit mystified with Adobes lack of 64bit support. I too hope this changes sooner rather than later. I hear Sony are releasing a Vegas 64bit version very soon...maybe this will be the start...

Here at CineForm, we do discourage the usage of Vista due to its performance setbacks and lingering compatibility issues.

However, a friend shared this link with me: http://www.pctuneuptips.com/tips/vis...FShxYAodjGRdIg

It's a list of 10 Vista *tweaks* to help improve performance. We've got a 2.6GHz Core2Duo laptop running Vista (but with only 1GB RAM), and after following these steps, I can actually browse the internet at a relatively livable speed. The lack of RAM is preventing me from doing any video work, however.

If you're stuck with Vista, it's at least worth a shot. They should all be safe modifications, but don't hold me or CineForm liable if something goes wrong! ;-)

Just wondered where you got the info that Nucleo could do more than 4 GB under Windows? We'd really like to know. I can't find any info on their website. If they can, it would certainly be of use to many others here.

Hi Stephen,

Good question - it was going back a while but I believe it was in a post answered by a Gridiron employee.

Don’t forget I’m talking about AE/Nucleo running on a 64bit operating system with multiple cores (4) meaning 4 instances of AE running where each would be allocated around 2gb of memory.

Best bet would be to shoot them an email to get it straight from the horses mouth. I would but as my system is days away from arriving I figure I'll just test it out for myself.

Paul, AE is a 32bit application and I believe the same constraints apply irregardless of whether you're thunking that 32bits in a 64bit environment. It's the 32 application that limits it, not even the OS.

Since many of us also use quads, AE, PP3, and many 32bit plugins and would love to access more memory for the reasons I stated, if you discover some new light on this, we're all ears.

If not, I think you better review that 8 GB RAM purchase, as unless you have 64 bit apps to use with it, it'll just sit there doing absolutely nothing for you. If it's already bought and on it's way, then you can just hope Adobe ports it's apps soon, so you (and many many others) can use it.

As I stated earlier, if you do discover something new that can gain benefit from that 8GB RAM, please share it with us here!

Nucleo DOES allow the 32bit version of AE to access more than 4GB of RAM, in a way. By executing multiple instances of the AE program process, each can access a different segment of RAM. The only thing these other instances do is render frames at the request of the primary GUI instance. This solution doesn't increase the maximium processable frame size in regards to Memory usage, but does increase the speed of rendering on larger complex comps.

(added later: Mike, don't waste your time answering this, as we can look it up on their website. If you do use it, however, we'd like your take as to cost/benefit in the the real world)

Mike, to get a better handle on how this could help in real life situations, can you paint a little better picture of how you're using it? Since AE already utilizes most of the processor power we have (quad), is the gain mostly just for prerendering background layers as you are working?

I'm just a little fuzzy how it could show real performance gains. Is it actually "swapping" background video layers into additional memory space on those sessions, to allow for more undo levels, or holding them until an idled processor can be put to work on them?

If it does process in the background, and feed out different layers to virtual AE sessions, it could certainly help workflow on large comps.

Do you actually use it, and does anyone else here use it? If so, please share your take on it. Any true gains are certainly welcome.

I have used the basic version in the past, but CS3 rendered that obsolete with the "Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously" option, which also allows AE to address more than 4GB of RAM. This only comes into play when RENDERING, and is simply accomplished by farming out the render job to a separate instance on a different CPU, similar to the way that frame renders can be farmed out to other systems on the network when rendering.

Nucleo PRO does more than that, but I have never used it. If you use AE all the time for complex work on a fast multi-core system, Nucleo Pro will probably allow you to work faster.

Did find some very interesting info in the AE manual (who would have guessed?):

"After Effects on the Mac OS X operating system can use up to 3.5 GB of RAM. After Effects on 32-bit Windows operating systems can use up to 3 GB of RAM; however, to use more than 2 GB in After Effects, you must configure Windows appropriately. (See the Microsoft website for details.) After Effects on 64-bit Windows operating systems can use up to 4 GB of RAM with no special configuration.

Note: These numbers are for each After Effects process. The background processes used to render multiple frames simultaneously can each use the amount of RAM mentioned above. (See Render multiple frames simultaneously.)"

If the above is true, it seems theoretically you could access much more than 8 GB. So, add another quad (V8 config) and 16 GB and supposedly you could render those all in the background? If that is true, we'd be gaining in some situations to use Paul's idea. Maybe there really is something there? I know Gridiron admitted that AE CS3 can basically do what they are doing with Nucleo Pro, but they offer other benefits as well.

Paul, you might be on to some good info from that post you saw. Let us know when you get your system!

More good news?
 

(note: after actually checking it out, I've been this route before and it crashed our workstation! don't try it unless you add another boot line you can fall back to...) Sorrrrrrrryyyyyyyyy......

http://generalspecialist.com/2006/05...m-in-after.asp

I use the /3G boot switch on a number of systems, and it works fine for us. Matrox AXIO install turns it on by default. It CAN really screw up your system if you have software that is incompatible with it. 64bit is a way better option if it is possible for you. But with that, all of your hardware has to be compatible. No go for Matrox, Xena, etc.

Has anyone tried running XP within bootcamp on leopard? Apple claims that XP will run natively, with full access to all hardware and processes (including usage of some leopard features). I have not upgraded yet, and I still have a dual G5 (non-intel box). I'm contemplating a move to a quad macpro and run both OS' on it, (which takes care of my need for non-mac software).

Anyway, it would be interesting to see if XP runs better in a mac... hmmm.

I have a MacPro running 10.4 and the Beta of Bootcamp. I have not upgraded to 10.5, which includes the release version of Bootcamp. It does give XP direct Access to the machine. With a little creativity, you could proabably remove OSX and make it XP only, that is how independent the XP install is. The old Bootcamp beta is set to expire at the end of the year, now that the final version was released in 10.5, but that is not supposed to affect current installs, just no updates anymore.

Thanks Stephen, Im eager to test it out but my new system STILL ISNT HERE :-(

Apparently the system builder is having problems getting the Areca 1220 raid card up and running. So hopefully only a few more days...

OK Ive not had much time to test as Ive been insanely busy but I just rendered out an old 30 second TVC i did to compare.

On my old Dual AMD 4400 with 2 gig ram running XP 32bit and AE 7 it took a full 14 minutes to render.

On my new Quad Intel QX 9650 with 8 gig ram XP 64bit and AE CS3 with only the render multiple frames switched on (ie no Nucleo Pro2) it thundered home at only 2 minutes 45 seconds!!!

I was watching the task manager and all 4 cores were maxed and the memory usage shot up from 1.8gb to 7.2gb. So even without Nucleo pro 2 the basic nucleo technology CS3 has in built certainly does make use of more cores and loads of ram which only 64bit allows you to use.

Of course Nucleo Pro 2 offers some amazing workflow advantages so Im definitely still going to throw that into the mix. But for anyone who's been thinking about 8gb ram and x64 O/S at this stage I can only say its a dream come true.

Wow, that's the most encouraging news I've heard all day! Keep us posted and maybe there's hope afterall...

Paul, I'm really interested in how it performs with the rest of the Adobe CS3 package. Especially Premiere Pro CS3. When you do some big stuff (HD), give us a plug on how it does, especially CF'ed and BIG.

Maybe we'll switch to x64 after all...(but there's still something tickling my brain about why we didn't a few months back...)

Paul, any more problems with the x64?
 

Any news to add to what you said before? We're building a new ws and I'm thinking getting x64 to try it as well.

Any pro's or con's to add to your previous news? Are you sorry you got x64? Any conflicts with your software?

Lets see, I have dumped all my vista systems and went back to XP.

Now, for the heck of it, I spent the last 2 days loading up a system with
Xp X64. Last time I tried this, I had lots of issues. I was very surprised that this time I have not. Just trying to figure out it I can get the vista sidebar
on it. Works fine on XP, but may not on X64.

So, if I fire it up, will let folks know how it goes, but so far pretty impressed.
Something to be said when a product gets to SP2, if not SP3 coming.

Dave

I like the sound of that Dave! We went ahead and ordered x64 just for the heck of it too, to load on a new workstation we will be building. We sure hope they've got some of the pieces in place now, so we don't spend days trying to stomp on bugs!

Since these are mostly CS3 machines, we're hoping to gain the additional memory access for AE stuff and......fingers crossed........Premiere Pro CS3. That would save us a bunch of time with CF, as right now, we have to use the "save, unload PP3, reload, open project again, try to render without an error" workaround with HD stuff, due to the 32bit mem restrictions of XP and PP3's greediness for that space.

If we only gain that one thing, additional mem space, we'd go to x64 on all our machines. Then, some nice day, maybe Adobe will port these apps to a 64bit OS and we'll start all over again.

Very interested in knowing the performance of Photoshop and Premiere CS3 in XP64 too...

Well, I just updated my system to xp x64 with 8 gig of memory
with my quad core, dual processor system. I have been kinda able to get
a m2t export to work that just crashed under vista and XP.
It now is able to use a lot more memory and renders faster.
And, all 8 processors are being used 70-90%.

No more vista, YEA!!

Dave

Continues to sound encouraging! How're things working with PP3? Have you used other CS3 progs as well?

We're putting together the parts for another single quad ws, with a Gigabyte GA-X38T-DQ6 board this time:

(http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/...me=GA-X38T-DQ6)

and DDR3 memory. When the new 45nm CPUs drop in price and gain in speed the end of 2008, we'll update the CPU to the fastest we can afford by then, bump the mem to full DDR 1800 (O.C.), and play with overclocking some.

With this newer x64SP2c, we're hoping the probs with x64 are pretty much gone and we'll gain some decent AE and PP3 performance too. Mostly big memory space is what we're after, but when things are totally stable, we'll play around overclocking and also up the mem from 4GB to it's 8GB max (too expensive right now!).

It's not a "workstation board", but should fly for what we need. The two, true full PCI-Express 2.0 (x32 duplex) slots help too, and the heatpipes on the mb are very cool (no pun intended) indeed.

Thanks for your info and keep us posted on your "glows and woes", and maybe we can avoid some pitfalls along the way as well.

I have not tried any other apps yet, still trying to get my m2t export solved.
But, after fighting this for a year, and the first try with X64 it worked,
well, I am sold!!

What is XP X64 SP2c? I know XP has a SP3 in Beta. I have not heard of
anything for X64 XP yet.

Dave

x64 SP2c is the last release I know of for Win Pro x64. It was released into the system builders channel in Sept, and you can find it pretty easily. Don't think there's any real changes, just MS licensing stuff. It's just SP2.

Nothing yet on a SP3 for it, but I would bet money that MS will have one in the near future, since Vista has been so problematic. They'll probably do a backpedal for a little while, until their Win 7 is released in a year or two.

There is a new update for IE for XP x64 though from two weeks ago: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en

Okay, I assume it will do updates for me to get it.

Now that vista is behind me, I sure can think of LOTS of stuff I did not like about it. The file structure. The new search. The DRM. The UAC.
I just hope for windows 7 they focus on performance and not all the garbage
they added on. I wonder if Vista will be remembered like ME? Since I dumped ME quickly, and now Vista, I guess so for me.

Dave

Thanks, that is SP2 which was released in March and I have.

Sure seems pretty stable. Another thing now is CS3 PPro is
using like 1.8 gigs of memory so it is doing all it can now in
32 bit mode!!

Dave

If your PP3 climbs beyond 2 GB, THEN you've got something big! Can't imagine that happening, but...if it does, be sure to give some input here. Others are monitoring this post for sure.

Well, if this x64 OS can run CS3 with enough stability, and even add some benefits to AE users, maybe we can hold on until Adobe has their apps ported to 64bit?

I don't really blame them for not releasing 64bit versions though, what with MS's confusion on Vista, but it sure would be nice to hear a little hope from them. As the HD sizes and resolutions continue to climb, the memory space and parallel computing power needs increase exponentially. 32bit is way too light for such needs and the world is quickly moving to 64bit.

Can you imagine if we went to some kind of 3D video? Even these quads would then seem like the 4.77 Mhz NEC V20 CPU in my first computer!

Power breeds new possibilities, and possibilities produce new innovations. New innovations push for more power....and so the cycle goes on.

I would have to look, but in the past with XP and vista, I thought the most I saw was like 900M. So, when I saw 1.8 gig, I was impressed.

And again, I could not seem to get my export to work, it would always crash.
Well, I just completed the m2t with X64 and no failure, (had to get the frames right), and am exporting to tape as I write. YEA!!!!!!!!!!

So far, I have seen no issues with any s/w I have loaded, or CS3 PPro
issues.

Dave

1.8 GB was right where PP3 crashed or gave errors when we were doing more complex HD (1920x1080) stuff with CF's Prospect HD. It was usually with larger stills in the mix, or even just several layers of CF'ed HD video. I guess that's were PP3 get's too greedy and just doesn't allow enough headroom for CF to work.

Congrads on the export to tape. We'll be watching for any further info when you do larger HD stuff.