Hardware suggestions for fast encoding...

[whi55l]

Hey guys

Im going to upgrade my system and need suggestions on what sort of CPU's to buy and how much RAM...

Basically the only thing I do on my PC is surf the net and rip Divx's..... Currently I have a P3 733, 256RAM, and the things chugs away at 5 fps, which takes aggeeeeeeeees....

People have told me that it doesnt really depend on the processing power, which seems like alot of BS to me...

for e.g, I have been told that the time it takes to rip a Divx movie between a P4 2.4 and a celeron 2.0ghz is virtualy none at all.. is that right??

Im not that active or up to date on what to get, so any suggestions would be much appreciated...

Would there be any difference between AMD and Intel chipsets in processing time??

Thanks peeps

[martinlw]

Afaik, you want something with huge memory bandwidth - cpu processing is important, but you'll find most of the time the cpu would be waiting for more data from the main system RAM.

Thus, an optimal system would be one with a p4 and an 850e motherboard with some 1066 rdram. Although I hear sis have a new chipset out that will support quad channel rambus (up to 9.6 GB/s mem bw).

If you are opposed to rambus, your next bet is to get a p4 with say, an i845pe chipset and run your fsb as high as possible, and get some gourmet ddr ram (corsair etc) that you can run at the most aggressive timings (cas2 - 5-2-2).

The reason not to get an AMD is that even though with the kt 400 etc you can get a pretty fast channel between the northbridge and ram, but its limited by the speed the northbridge can send data to the cpu. The p4 has the advantage here cos its fsb is quad pumped. That's also why each mhz you overclock it you will see substantial gains in performance.

note - do not get a celeron, there's no real point, you might as well get the cheapest p4.

This would be the main determinant of your encoding performance.... but also you'd want at least 512 mb ram (imo) if you're running win2k or later. And some fast harddrives, I'd recommend 2 (yes, two) 7200 rpm drives... this way, you can say, set one to store the intermediate files while the output is written to another. Saves drive head movement..

[chickeneater]

Originally posted by martinlw
And some fast harddrives, I'd recommend 2 (yes, two) 7200 rpm drives... this way, you can say, set one to store the intermediate files while the output is written to another. Saves drive head movement..

yes, two HDD's would be great, but what would be better is putting them on some RAID. A great place for getting the lowest price on computer components is www.pricewatch.com because it searches virtually all of the online vendors for the lowest price.

I would not suggest Rambus with a P4 because it is too expensive. Plus, the benchmarks proved that DDR did better than RAMBUS. So if you get the money, get DDR at 333-400Mhz.

If you are willing to spend a bunch of money for something good, look at the P4 3.06Ghz. It is way better than the other P4's because it has "hyperthreading" Which makes it act like there are 2 processors.
GOOD LUCK

[martinlw]

Actually, DDR was faster than rambus originally but now the new 1066 32-bit rdram is faster, with similar latencies (before latencies were longer).

I'm not a rambus supporter but as of now it does comprise the faster platform.

Yeah a RAID solution would be perfect, I didn't think of that - you could possibly get a mobo with an inbuilt raid controller, or get an add on card, and run them in raid 0 or something for pure speed and stuff data integrity

[khp]

Using raid is of next to no use for divx encoding. Using 2 Harddisks, as 1 source and 1 destination will consistenetly outpreform a raid system. Especially those low end onboard raid0 solutions. The problem is that the raid controller introduces a bigger latency, which in divx encoding is much more important that raw bandwith.

The only place in digital video processing where raid makes any sense is in raw capture, where you need both the speed and extra space offerend by raid systems.

The same applies to RAM. AFAIK RDRAM is pretty much dead on the PC platform, Intel most probably won't release any new chipsets surporting RDRAM. If you care to look overhere

http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/20021125/intel_granitebay-15.html

You will see that a DDR266 based board outpreform a PC1066 based board in divx encoding.

[Enchanter]

A better idea would be to go for dual-channel DDR solutions. Both Intel and SiS have released supporting chipsets. The Intel chipset is faster than the competition, but I'm sure it will be at a significantly higher price.

[chickeneater]

In addition to not getting RAMBUS, is the terrible price. a 512 DDR PC2100 on pricewatch right now is $48 (american)!!!!!!!!!!!
In August, it was $108
for PC2700 it is $51.
I also like DDR because it has a way better and cooler name than rambus or rdram...

AMD processors are terrible if you want fast (DDR and above) memory because their fastest FSB is almost a quarter of the P4. Plus they put higher numbers for their processors to make it seem faster. Like the AMD XP 3000 is only 2.16Ghz at 333Mhz. Curse them!

[Enchanter]

Originally posted by chickeneater
AMD processors are terrible if you want fast (DDR and above) memory because their fastest FSB is almost a quarter of the P4. Plus they put higher numbers for their processors to make it seem faster. Like the AMD XP 3000 is only 2.16Ghz at 333Mhz. Curse them!

Just don't say this around any AMD fanboys . . .

[Batman]

The only reason for getting an AMD would be if there is a substantial decrease in price (for instance, if you can build a dual processor amd PC).

[khp]

Originally posted by chickeneater

AMD processors are terrible if you want fast (DDR and above) memory because their fastest FSB is almost a quarter of the P4. Plus they put higher numbers for their processors to make it seem faster. Like the AMD XP 3000 is only 2.16Ghz at 333Mhz. Curse them!

I'am appalled by the lack of understanding displayed by some members of this forum. It's true that the P4 uses a higher FSB, but Intel only achived the higher FSB by reducing the bus width.
The same applies to the cpu clock speed clock for clock the P4 significantly underprefoms not only the Athlon but also the much older P3.

Intel desiged the P4 to have very high clock speeds, not because it would result in better overall preformance, but because it would exploit the fact that people like seeing bigger numbers. Shame on Intel.

I suppose high clock speed is great for selling PC to the morons who only llisten to the marketing hype. But for real world preformance it make little difference.

ATM it's true that Intel has about a 5%-10% overall preformance lead. But if you are looking for a cpu in the 100-150$ range (which is what most people look for) an athlon will offer you about 10-20% better preformance than a P4.

[I26]

Well I can help shed some light on the P4, RAMBUS setup. I am using a Pentium4 2.4B Northwood CPU and have 256MB of pc1066MHz Samsung RAMBUS installed on an Asus P4T533-C motherboard. This system kicks major a$$ in my opinion as far as encode times go. My Pentium 3 500MHz system used to take 19 hours to do a movie and with this I can sometimes encode faster than you could sit down and watch the movie. I had it encoding at highest quality settings over 40fps with XMPEG. With Flask it ranges in the 20fps to 30fps range and with Gordian Knot it took 2.5hours for a movie I just backed up which was 110min. long. I still can't get over the speed this thing has. I want to add more RAMBUS but money is tight right now so it will wait. I spent quite a bit of money at Newegg when i built this system and I am extremely happy with it. The really good news is I can OC the sh!t outta this system once I get some better cooling gear. Hope this helps.

[khp]

It should hardly surprise anyone that a 2.4ghz P4 will outpreforms a 500mhz P3.

What I simply don't understand is, why you spend big bucks on a P4+Rambus system, and only put in 256MB memory. Unless you only use the computer as a dedicated encoding machine.

With just a few office applications open your system, will very quickly run out of physical memory, and start swapping. At which point my AthlonXP1700 (with 512 mb ram) will outpreform your P4 by an order of magnitude.

[I26]

Well i realize that it will outperform a p3 500MHz but i didn't think by such magnitude. I mean really lets be frank.....outperform, yes thats a "given". At almost 10x faster encoding rates....i never would have thought.

Why only 256MB of RAMBUS? I could only afford that much at the time. Plus they did not have any 256MB sticks avail and I wanted my system parts. It was better this way due to funding. I spent $700 the day after xmas.....that was all I had at the time to do the build. I will add more as money comes avail for it but right now its tied up. And yes I mainly use it to do encoding. Sometimes I play a game here and there but 95% of the time its an encoding machine.

I am not complaining about only 256MB of RAMBUS...I have plenty of room for expansion. My board supports 2GB of that stuff with 4.2GB transfer rate. Its simply something to look forward to down the road.

My machine I think is spec'd nicely. Has ok video, sounds killer, and is plenty fast for the stuff I do. Not to mention I put it all together. I have some few things on the wait list to buy but for now I am tons happy with it.

[khp]

Originally posted by I26
Well i realize that it will outperform a p3 500MHz but i didn't think by such magnitude. I mean really lets be frank.....outperform, yes thats a "given". At almost 10x faster encoding rates....i never would have thought.

If you are experiencing a 10x speed boost, you are most cirtainly not doing a fair comparison. With all other things beeing equal, you should get a 4-6x speed boost from an upgrade like that. You might want to look at THG's latest benchmark marathon, for a short comparison of a large range of CPUs

http://www17.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-22.html

[I26]

i went from 3.xfps avg to about 28.xfps avg while encoidng. I don't know what else to say. Maybe you think I am bs'ing you but I really have no reason to. The numbers are what they are other than that I just don't know what to say. I will take a look at that site later though...wanna see what it has to say.