Render is a big issue. For one of my clients I am preparing to reconvert their entire library to flash in 3 quality tiers it will be a render only project. Here are the benefits that I think I will see in the upgrade.

C2Q (4 theads) -> i7 (8 threads)
32 bit o/s -> 64-bit o/s
3.2 GB Ram -> 8 GB Ram
.... -> intel Direct Media Interface from new socket 1156 on new MB.

I missed that completely. But I agree it wouldn't be worth an upgrade. At most you might halve the rendering times, so instead of overnight, it will take... overnight. Unless you have a great need for a second workstation, forget it.

I also missed that you're thinking of WinXP 64 bit. A real Frankenstein's monster. Wait for Win7.

The this client sounds like exactly the kind needed to justify the upgrade. Just make sure you don't need the money for something else rather than planning ahead a bit more and pocketing the extra ~$1k. I still believe that the render differences (even with HT enabled) won't be so massive as to be double, but I could be wrong (since I have neither a quad core, or an i7).

I also wonder what your encoding scheme is and can it fully multithread to the level an i7 can allow? If you are rendering in vegas to AVC/h264 then I believe it can chew up all the cores, but if you are usign an app like On2 Flix Pro, I am less certain abut the encoders ability to multi-thread and hence make use of the additional HT threads.

Flix Pro and the ON2 VP6 codec are single threaded video codecs. That is the downside of this video format. No matter how many cores you have it just will not use them.

One thing we have done, although it is a tad buggy, is to encode multiple files with Flix Pro at the same time. We do this by running two or more copies of the program. They still encode just as fast but this way you make better use of your cores. Be aware however that Flix Pro is a pretty buggy program and sometimes it may not like to do this.

H264 is really the future of Flash with Flash player 9 and above and the best thing is that Vegas can already export this format.

So then is the Vegas h264 codec multi-threaded? I jsut rendered to it but did a network render to my render machine and forgot to check the queue when it was running to see if the machine's CPU was pegged or not. I haven't tried the avc/h264 render locally yet.

I will be rendering flash out with Adobe media encoder CS4 and it does take advantage of multi-threading.

The XP Pro 64 includes an upgrade to Win 7 on release. I really do not like Vista and am trying to bypass it on this round because I do not want to spend time getting cozy with Vista right before I get ready to switch to Win7. What issues are you familiar with in the 64 bit version of XP?

I decided to re-edit this one since it has been a brutal week and I haven't gotten enough sleep and I think my original wording could have been misinterpreted as ungrateful. Thanks to everyone for their comments. My Q6600 based system is being pushed to it's limits and I often seem to bottleneck around the RAM. I also have read that between the C2Q series processors and the i7 processors that you can increase render speeds 20% or more and supposedly with the new Intel Direct Media Interface and the i7 you can get up to a 37% increase in rendering speed. I also am having some issues with my preview window in Vegas Pro 9 and believe this to be due to my Ram and processor. Talking to many of the fine people on here, it is my understanding that most of the i7 users running 64bit with lots of ram have resolved that issue since 9.0a came out...

But getting back to the system upgrade I detailed before. ( http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/1362749-post343.html ) What do you guys think of this configuration? Has anyone tried any of these components out? Anyone built around the new 1156 socket, yet? How about XP Pro 64-bit vs. Vista Business 64-bit? Any other thoughts or advice? Thanks for your comments and opinions.

Back to the drawing board
 

I spoke with one of the techs at TigerDirect and according to him, the new i7 800 series are actually not much better than the high-end C2Q chips despite the improvements made in the 1156 socket MBs. He did say that the 900 series i7 on the older socket platform are significantly better than the C2Q chips even though they are less expensive so I am heading back to the drawing board on this build...

I have the reverse experience. Built my own Q6600 PC with a local shop 1.5years ago and it has been crashing non stop. Finally replaced the mobo and everything seems ok but now Vegas 8.0c will die in the middle of a render (OS works fine, render progress stops but remaining time goes on!!). Given up and I'm thinking of getting a DELL XPS only to hear the horror stories here! Yikes!

Sean -
I'd do a reinstall of everything - if you had a bad mobo, it probably means that most if not all of your installs are corrupted to some degree... need to have a stable system before you start installing software, otherwise you end up with bad files when things crash midstream - been there done that...

SSD + i7 + Asus P6T
 

anyone tried using SSD instead of HDD for running the OS. I am thinking of buliding my own i7 rig with a 128GB SSD for OS only. The video storage will be 2X1.5TB HDD on Raid. Mobo will be Asus P6T. Heard a lot of good feedback about this mobo.

Hope to hear some feedback before I spent extra on the SSD. Thks

Before you select either the i7-8xx/P55 or the i7-9xx/X58 platform, consider this:
Adobe Forums: Initial thoughts on Lynnfield versus...

Though I've not yet used an SSD for a editing rig, the performance of these devices varies greatly depending on the brand, model etc. As of now, the general consensus seems to be that the only two drives that have bring the most bang for the buck are the new X-25M Intel drives and the OCZ Vertex Turbo drives.

Jon

No way are SSD's justified price-wise these days. They'll save you a few seconds during boot, and they're surely the wave of the future. But they won't speed up your editing at all, and more importantly they won't speed up any rendering either! So what's the point?

I think the SSDwill work better as a scratch disk. something that requires frequent changes for mobile editing