Processor Question

epz_2

mulldoonuk wrote: »

I'am not a Gamer..

but getting "into" a lot of video encoding/converting myself...
hence my original post.
Reading these replies the general opinion is go over to the darkside :eek:
however..

this is my Motherboard...

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=ALIVENF6G-DVI

would it be possible to just upgrade the cpu?

if your encoding app supports cuda or opencl then a £150 grahics card will maul any rig you can build outside a datacenter, i would advise you check it out.

yenc i think used a cell coprocessor and cuda and were able to drop encode time down from 40 mins to 7min on an old cpu.

globalds

make sure the q6600 is a SLACR

with the right board this is easily overclockable ..I have 2 running at 3.4 ghz

running at 38-41 degrees

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1159/overclocking_the_g0_slacr_q6600_to_4ghz/index.html

siliconbits

mulldoonuk wrote: »

I currently have a..

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4600+ 2.41 GHz

say i were wanting to buy a processor double the power/speed of this...


what would i be looking for?

btw..

Would prefer to stick with AMD

so don't suggest i move over to the darkside.

Thanks

You won't be able to get an AMD CPU double the speed/performance if you stick to the same motherboard. It is not compatible with AMD's Phenom/Quad core processors. So here are your 3 alternatives

(a) Spend around £55 on a X2 5400+ Energy Efficient and Overclock it.
(b) Upgrade your motherboard and your CPU. A Phenom X4 and a motherboard
should cost you around £140. Keep the rest of your components
(c) Buy a new PC. A good Quad Core with a Nvidia GTS250 card and 4GB RAM costs less than £400.

Sell the rest of your stuff on Ebay

weegie.geek

CUDA isn't great for video encoding. The only app I've seen is an h264 encoder, and it's severely limited in terms of output options. You're stuck to a few profiles and that's you. Not seen an xvid encoder or an mpeg2 encoder either. I'd love a gpu accelerated xvid encoder.

mulldoonuk

siliconbits wrote: »

You won't be able to get an AMD CPU double the speed/performance if you stick to the same motherboard. It is not compatible with AMD's Phenom/Quad core processors. So here are your 3 alternatives

(a) Spend around £55 on a X2 5400+ Energy Efficient and Overclock it.
(b) Upgrade your motherboard and your CPU. A Phenom X4 and a motherboard
should cost you around £140. Keep the rest of your components
(c) Buy a new PC. A good Quad Core with a Nvidia GTS250 card and 4GB RAM costs less than £400.

(a) Don't have the know how!

(b) Have Vista Pre OEM isn't an OEM OS linked to the mobo???

(c) Any suggestions?


this caught my eye...(no OS though)..

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159381

2.2Ghz?

A Dual Core 3.+ Ghz would be better/faster?

gaming_guy

if you get a phenom, go for a phenom with 50 on the end or a phenom II.

the phenom processors with 50 on the end are the better ones because the older ones have a performance bug - see the 2nd paragraph here

epz_2

weegie.geek wrote: »

CUDA isn't great for video encoding. The only app I've seen is an h264 encoder, and it's severely limited in terms of output options. You're stuck to a few profiles and that's you. Not seen an xvid encoder or an mpeg2 encoder either. I'd love a gpu accelerated xvid encoder.

every benchmark i have seen recons its about a 400% but i am not an av geek so dont really care abou encodes as such, my impression is if you throw 200+ cores at something that scales so well its bound to help but the apps need to be written to use it.

weegie.geek

Xvid encoding doesn't scale at all well. Two cores is about the max it'll utilise, and it won't max both of those out. Trying xvid on quad core will give you 40% usage on all 4 cores, or something useless like that. h264/x264 will use more or less as many as you want to throw at it, I believe.

Not sure if it's that it has been written with two threads in mind or if it's a technical part of the encoding, being a fairly linear process with a lot of referencing back to previous data, that hinders it. I don't know enough about that side of it to really say, I just want it faster.

epz_2

i would put money on it being the encoder, if you think about what the app is doing (1) it should scale near perfctly assuming you could keep the whole thing in memory.




(1) running a compression algorithm across multiple frames comparing time, frequency and colour

basmic

I wish ConvertXtoDVD used CUDA encoding.