I have been told by the technical manager at the video editing company I use that if I changed my processor from the present dual core 3.2ghz to a 3.02ghz i7, I would gain nothing and quite possibly see a reduction in performance due the the way in which the architecture in the new chips wors, which Liquid cannot take advantage of. 

My present system is OK for SD (although rendering a 20 minute clip with full color correction took pushing an hour today) but is really inadequate for HDV work.

 

What do you technically aware people say?

Many thanks

The best performance for Liquid seems to come from high core speed Conroe dual cores ( E8500, E8600). With Liquid, no advantage using a lower core speed quad.

It really depends on what you are doing. If you are doing a video export then yes, the number of threads that Liquid will spawn is limited to 2 and the hot quad won't do anything for you.

BUT...

If you set your timeline up to your export format it will render as many slices simultaneously as you have cores. I have used this technique to GREATLY reduce my rendering times for SDE projects. If you try this on a quad core and it doesn't use most of the processor then you need to look for other data bottle necks in your system. Once I got my system optimized Liquid can keep my quad core above 95% utilized while rendering.
 

Cmedico

That is very interesting and goes to the core (pun intended) of my issue with editing HDV.  My system handles multpiple layers of HDV, but renders at a speed that any snail could out run.

I'll take another look at my trail.

John,

Take a look at this:  http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-q3-2008/Premiere-Pro-CS3-HDTV,833.html

This is not a perfect comparison but provides guidelines.  TomsHardware is a pretty respected site BTW.

If I compared the performance of the i7 920 (2.66Ghz) VS. the Q9450 (also 2.66--this is the one that I use) I would say that the delta between the rendering times in Premiere are significant.  Funny--In Photoshop, the Q9450 is slightly faster than the i7.  Here's all the applications tested:  http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-charts-q3-2008/benchmarks,31.html

cmedico:

If you set your timeline up to your export format it will render as many slices simultaneously as you have cores. I have used this technique to GREATLY reduce my rendering times for SDE projects. If you try this on a quad core and it doesn't use most of the processor then you need to look for other data bottle necks in your system. Once I got my system optimized Liquid can keep my quad core above 95% utilized while rendering. 
 

I'm not sure what you mean - can you expand on this? When I am waiting for rendering to complete on my timeline ("standard" HDV timeline) I know I am never using four cores at simultaneously.

lasssman:

cmedico:

If you set your timeline up to your export format it will render as many slices simultaneously as you have cores. I have used this technique to GREATLY reduce my rendering times for SDE projects. If you try this on a quad core and it doesn't use most of the processor then you need to look for other data bottle necks in your system. Once I got my system optimized Liquid can keep my quad core above 95% utilized while rendering. 
 

I'm not sure what you mean - can you expand on this? When I am waiting for rendering to complete on my timeline ("standard" HDV timeline) I know I am never using four cores at simultaneously.

 

You have to use CPU effects for this to work. GPU effects don't render simultaneously.

In my case I am exporting to DVD so I set the timeline codec as "DVD Compatible MPEG2". When I drop any non conforming (HDV) video onto the timeline it renders it in the background while I'm putting the titles and other things together. As I drop more video onto the timeline it will render up to 4 simultaneously (which is the number of cores I have in the CPU). I am able to keep my quad core process or over 95% busy using this process. When all slices have rendered I can FUSE the timeline or burn it directly to DVD in just a few minutes.

If I am only working with a single video file I cut it into 4 pieces and remove 1 frame of video from each cut location. You don't miss the clipped frame and Liquid will then treat the edit points as real. If you don't do this it will still render as one file and as one thread on the processor.  

I'll set up a timeline and grab some screen shots to better show what I'm talking about.