How much Memory for Rebuilder?

[chinook9]

Administrator sorry if this is the wrong place to put these questions but I expect the DVDRB experts are the ones who can answer them.


I am building a new system for encoding with DVDRB with HC and possibly other encoders. System will consist of Asus P5B Deluxe, core 2 duo e6300 which I will overclock to about 400MHz FSB, and high quality (Corsair or OCZ) PC2-6400 memory. I planned to use my old ATA133 drives. I will not use RAID.

Will I need 2 GHz of memory?

If not, should I go with 1 stick of 1GHz or 2 sticks of 512 Mb?

Would the funds be better spent on 2 SATA drives?

[blutach]

I run with 1Gb of Corsair (2 matched 512s) very adequately using multiple encoder processes with Procoder 2 (Athlon 3800 X2, OC to 2500Mhz). Memory taken during encoding is nowhere near full - each encoder takes about 150Mb on average.

Regards

[nwg]

I ran it fine with 512MB RAM before I built another computer with 2GB RAM. It shouldn't really make any difference between a 1GB or 2x512MB.

I would still get 2GB if you can afford it but it depends on what else you use. I have seen used memory go above 1GB a few times.

[techreactor]

I am running it with 512 MB RAM and can emphasis that encoding is faster with a better faster processor and more than that additional RAM does not affect that much.

[Chewy]

You are better off with 2x512's of cas 4 like this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145040

than 2x 1024 of cas 5

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145590

if you want to game heavy and multitask then
this would be best

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145034

the 6400 seems to be the best deal tho
get a good cpu cooler

[jdobbs]

If you are using a drive that is defragmented and has plenty of space, you probably won't see a huge amount difference between ATA 133 and SATA. You'll find that partitioning out an additional virtual drive for video processing is probably more effective for improving speed on that front. That helps to keep the fragmentation down. If you are running on a partition that is badly fragmented or within about 10% of capacity (increasing O/S overhead) -- it really slows everything down.

By far the most effective factors are processor speed and memory speed. MPEG encoders like CCE and HC crave CPU time. As long as you have at least 512MB, memory size doesn't seem to improve speed much. The exception would be if you are running a lot of other processes along with DVD-RB, forcing disc swapping to start. When I increased my video computer from 512MB to 1GB, I saw no speed increase at all.

[chinook9]

Excellent!!! Exactly what I wanted to know. I ordered everything.

I went with e6300 OEM, 2 x 512 Crucial Ballistix CAS 4 RAM. I remember that Chewy recommended Crucial in another thread. I wanted the Micron chips which I'm sure the Crucial has and I read recently that the new Corsairs don't necessarily have them.

I also have Arctic Cooler Pro 7 on the way. It is an excellent value at $16 and only weighs around 500 grams.

Not having to replace my drives saves me a lot of money. I have 3 or 4 ATA drives and I can easily set them up as JDobbs suggested. Using DVD-RWs and hard drives I already have, this whole thing will only cost $689. Heck of a deal.

This was one successful thread. Thank you again.

[Chewy]

Ballistix

is a little pricey but stable and reliable

I caught the end of the 256 meg modules with ddr 4000/500 cas 2.5

matched sets had gone for as high as 100$

bought 2 single sticks at same time for 26$ each, when I tried out 2x512's of xms cas 2 pc3200 my bench times increased for a shrink transcode

have fun tweaking it and setting it up, you'll learn a lot