Jeff, as a reseller and long time tech I have to disagree with you on pricing at least... I won't argue that there is a great value for purchasing an off the shelf machine that is backed by a major manufacturer. Building your own takes a lot more than going down a check list and picking parts...

One thing that typically is not taken into account when comparing the cost of DIY vs. off-the-shelf is the time taken. If it takes you an optimistic couple of days to build your own and put it to use (not to mention the time spent researching what to buy), that's a couple of days of lost productivity. If you have a lot of business, it isn't necessarily the more cost effective option to DIY and lose income.

I used to build all my own systems but it was for fun. My current system is off-the-shelf (albeit a refurbished shelf - great bargains) because I use it primarily for profit making and didn't want to go through the time-consuming DIY process.

Garrett,

Have you already run the "New Rendertest" - found in the Sony Vegas Forum?

It would be nice to know hos fast your system is, since we have quite similar builds. No-one has yet (at least published) a faster render time - than my 82 seconds... You might come quite close.

The main reason I built my system out of components was to avoid all the bloatware that vendors put on readymade PC's. I was also able to build my similar high-end system at remarkably lower cost...

Christian

Disregard post

Hi Christian,

I'll go look for the New Rendertest file and let you know.

Garrett

Christian,

Do you have a link to where I can find the file?

Thanks,

I believe he's referring to this one:

http://www.johncline.com/rendertest-hdv.veg

I am not sure that is the correct one because I just did it in 28 seconds. And that was using my boot drive.

Danny Fye
www.vidmus.com/scolvs

It is the correct file but you're supposed to render it out as HDV using the default MPEG2 "HDV 1080-60i" template.
The current "speed record" is 82 seconds.

Only just read this. In my experience in 9 out of 10 cases BSOD (Blue SCreen of Death) is due to bad memory. I used to build quite a few PC's and as soon as I ever got this, first port of call was a fresh memory stick, or, if you are running a pair, try removing one at a time and see what happens to your stability.

If you can buy some fresh stuff try that. Avoid budget, for a few pounds more you will get crucial or corsair.

Christian,

Ran it, couldn't beat your time. My machine came in under current config at 85 Seconds.

Under the current settings I haven't upped the voltage to any components yet and I've on OC'd it to 3.2Ghz. I've had it at 3.4 stable but opted to back off a little since I wanted to really be sure I wasn't going to get a hiccup mid edits.

At one point I had it running at 3.6 with only minor glitches. It was getting alittle hot then. At that time my graphics card hadn't arrived yet and so I barrowed a card I was going to use in a build I was doing for my bro. I was OC'ing the graphics card (a 9800 gtx oc) then too and fried it..oops.

Maybe I'll try cranking my machine backup just for fun to see what it can do the test in. Also, I wonder if I shut down my virus and firewall software if that would speed things up.

Christian, are you running Vista? (32 or 64) or XP. That may be an interesting comparison.

Hi Garret,

Sorry that I didn't include the direct link to the rendertest in my post...

85 seconds is very good indeed! Congrats! If your systems runs and is stable, leave it as is - and be very happy :)

I achieved 82 seconds by overclocking my QX9650 to 3,82GHz, running the core at 1,27V. It runs even happily up to 4,1 GHz, but I stepped back to ensure stability and reliability (and lower temps as well). Albeit, you have to have a good CPU fan, I'm running the Zahlmans best (biggest) one. My CPU temperature never exceed 63 degrees, thats considered to be on the safe side. And - I did NOT turn off my virus and firewall software!! I tried but did not see any difference, at least with this test, that is not really pushing the hard disk i/o that much.

I'm running XP x64, and Vegas PRo 8 runs very smoothly on it. Hopefully also Vegas 64 will, evn if not officially supported. Well - neither is VP 8.0 - but it runs smootly. The only exeption is the media manager, that I had to disable. It would be ironic if Vegas Pro 64 bit is the ONLY application that forces me to switch to Vista....aarghh...

Overclocking your graphics is useless, especially with Vegas (the only exception is some 3dr party video FX plugins that MIGHT use your GPU). These high-end cards are already running at extreme temperatures (due to inefficient cooling) and might be already overclocked at the factory - it easily happens that you kill them by teasing them further.. You learned the hard way :(

Christian

I seemed to have opened a can of worms here. However, many thanks to you all for your constructive help.

So far my original problem seems to be with Windows and not Vegas. I have spent some time re-loading drivers with the most vulnerable ones appearing to involve Nvidea. - My Mbd even uses an Nvdea Chipset.

In the process, (talk about troubles !!), I twice tried to download the latest chipset drivers only to find that the download was corrupted and a message to replace it. On the second attempt it simply stopped at 99% ! Disgusted with M/S Internet Explorer, I downloaded & installed Firefox, & hey presto the driver downloaded faster and she woiked !!

I also, ran a registry cleaning program many times to get the 847 errors down to zero. So now Vegas 8 seems to be working again but it is early days and I'm holding my breath !

Thanks very much again guys.

Ron Cooper.

Did you ever change your ram? Also BE SURE to update your network and video drivers...

Hi Ron,

I was having all types of problems with IE a while ago so I went with Firefox and have since never looked back. If you start getting BSOD's again you might try wiping out your sound card driver and reinstalling the latest. Again as with any driver replacement it is best to totally wipe out the old driver with a drive cleaning software then install the updated version.

If I recall correctly you're running an SLI MOBO and to be honest I have had many more problems with drivers and SLI boards that the IP35 chipset. For Vegas SLI is not an advantage so I opted to go with the IP35 chips. They seem to be more stable for most of the aps I run.

Good luck.