Hi guys,

I've been searching around on the forum on the performace (improvement) of MC v3. In basic I understand that v3 performance is very good and I understand that it is taking some advantach of the extra processors but not a lot. Some effects do. I have tested this in the past with Xpress pro HD 5.1.8 on a dell precision 650 by adding a second processor and found that improvement of performance was close to nothing.

Avid keeps telling us to buy faster HP's everytime HP updates their machines. And as HP stops making the old one's you have no choice except second hand. But buying a dual quad core (most extreme) and then using only 1/8 or 2/8 of the processing power seems a waste to me.

My question is to users that use several different types of HP machines (on unity) on how their experience is on perfrmance. Is avid (MC v3) on a 8400 or 8600 faster then on a 8200? If avid practically uses only a single core I would expect it to be faster on a single 3.4Gig xeon then on a 2.4 dual core. But there are other factors also at stake. HD speed, PCI bus speed. Graphic card speed and memory capacity. etc..

What's the practicall experience in the field? Randall, Doc, BLKDOG?

 Hi

I hope I can answer to this one too :-)

As a freelance I am working in some post productions places. All of them are using the officical HPs computers.

Till last week I was using at home an "old" PC with single core, P.4 3Ghz with 2GB of RAM and Geforce 6600GT card. I can tell you that my home "custom" PC was not working any slower then any HP work staion, beside maybe heavy reandering of heavy effects. For most of my work it was the same.

Then I have upgraded to MC 3 few weeks ago. Preformance hasn't drropped, but I also read that the new MC 3 can render faster on new PC.

So I have upgraded my PC this week to a Quad Q9450 4GB ram and a 8800GT. Yes! rendering is much faster! and general preformace might be a bit better. I didn't find yet a post production place with MC 3 to compare their preformace.

My buttom line is that post production places must use HP just to be covered for the tech side. From my own expriance, HP's work stations doesn't give better performaces. Quad core works faster with MC 3.

Several weeks a go I began building a new system for home.  I bought a refurbished xw8400 from www.lamicrogroup.com.  Because Avid isn't really hitting a 8 cores, or all the time, I chose a single QC 3.0.  That saved me $900 -$1,000.  I haven't done any heavy lifting yet, so no real-world results to report, but it does seem very snappy on MC v3.0.  Also, I picked up the nVidia FX3700 @ www.provantage.com, and Vista Biz 64 from www.tigerdirect.com.  All for under $3k.

 thx randall and dor.

I've heard from a colleague that MC v3 (64bit version) on vista 64 bit does use multiple cores and that on a quad core it goes like a rocket.  I on the other hand am completely running on xw8200 dual xeon 3.4 using XP 32 bit and all projects are SD video. no HD (yet). I'm upgrading to v3 next week ( I hope) for XDCAM compatibility. I did understand that under XP 32 the render processes indeed use multiple cores but what about the application itself. What about the connection manager with unity. Is there aybody out there that has several configurations next to each other and sees difference?

 I do not have any experience with MC v3. . .  However I can atest to the performance difference between the XW8200 and the XW8400.  A little over a year ago I upgraded from a XW8200 with dual 3.4G Proc to an XW8400 with Dual-Dual 2.6G Proc.  At the time I was working on a weekly show that I used as my benchmark.  I noticed about a 33% decrease in render times after the switch.  (ie, my 15-minute renders dropped to right around 10-minutes)  While the change was nice, it did cut significantly into my forum time.  [:'(]

Also, on the multi-processor front.  While Avid is not coded for multi-proc yet. . .  Windows does spread it's various system operations across those processors, so in theory, that would leave more space available on the processor that it does use.

Do a CTRL-Alt-Del while rendering, and take a look at the resource monitor.  You'll see how Windows uses the processors.

 thx editguy.

That what my experiences were until now with avid. Only renders significantly improved from extra processors. But that seems to have changed in MC v3.

I would like to know how much it has changed. And what I can expect in my case editing SD video connected to a lanshare. Will I see any improvement when upgrading from xw8200 to 8400 or 8600. Or might I even see a decrease as part of the MC v3 application uses only a single core and that single core is slower then the one I aready have.