How much needs to be spent for a noticeable PC upgrade & would it be worth it?

Paradigm

Look for something like this…. on ebay for £250 buy it now

• AMD Ryzen 5 5600XT Processor (Brand New & Factory Sealed)
• ASUS Prime X570-P Motherboard
• Latest BIOS Installed
• 16GB (2 × 8GB) Patriot Viper DDR4 RAM
• 3600MHz Memory Speed
• Dual-Channel Memory Kit

SammyBoyd

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6677394/how-much-needs-to-be-spent-for-a-noticeable-pc-upgrade-would-it-be-worth-it

Cisco has already given you an option for around £200.Obviously, your very old CPU is the bottle neck in your system. Handbrake uses that by default, unless you turn on Hardware accelerated video encoding via the NVENC encoder, utilising the new graphics card. But even then, all the other processes, including decoding and audio etc are still going to be handled by the CPU.

So your answer is simply to upgrade the CPU. You can do that in the way Cisco has suggested or you can find a used device somewhere.

With their suggestion, expect Handbrake performance at least three times, up to five times, faster than now. Of course also much faster for all of your other intended tasks.

SammyBoyd

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82080056#Comment_82080056

No, £200 as illustrated by Cisco, will make a huge difference. Your CPU is lacking.

Using your analogy, expect 0 - 60 in anything from 1.6 to 2.6 seconds.

SammyBoyd

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82080238#Comment_82080238

Any reason why you didn't post with a link?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/168542606306

SammyBoyd

A technical comparison between your current CPU and the £250 bundle suggested above:

• H.264 / AVC Encoding: A 1080p video encode that struggles at roughly 15–20 FPS on the aging Phenom II 1055T will easily fly past 100–140 FPS on the Ryzen 5 5600XT.

• H.265 / HEVC Encoding: The Phenom II will choke severely on H.265 due to the complete lack of AVX/AVX2 instruction sets, forcing it to fall back on slower legacy code paths. The Ryzen 5 5600XT will handle it efficiently, making H.265 encoding actually practical.

For Cisco's suggestion of the Ryzen 5 5500:

• H.264 (1080p) Encoding: Where the Phenom II 1055T chugs along at 15–20 FPS, the Ryzen 5 5500 will effortlessly push 90–110 FPS on identical 1080p presets.

• H.265 / HEVC Encoding: The Phenom II lacks the hardware instructions required to encode HEVC efficiently, making it painfully slow. The Ryzen 5 5500 handles H.265 natively and smoothly, turning hours of rendering into minutes.

Boohoo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82080542#Comment_82080542

Would this bundle still need a graphics card?

Neil_Jones

The 5600XT does not have graphics on board.
Neither did the listed Phenom.

The clue will be in the model number of the processor - - the general rule of thumb for AMDs if it has a G (or GE) it will have graphics otherwise it can be taken that it won't.

Paradigm

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82080536#Comment_82080536

No reason really, was just an example of what's available.

B0bbyEwing

Wow didn't know it could speed things up that much.

Is it correct that a fast encode with handbrake results in poorer quality?

By that I mean the exact same settings on my slow machine as they would be on a better machine. I'm not talking about slow settings on my machine vs different fast settings on a quicker machine.

I'm going to guess that the output should be the exact same, just quicker. But I read a while ago that the output would be poorer, hence me asking.

SammyBoyd

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82080721#Comment_82080721

Misread your question. You are correct. The quality will be the same. Just the process will be quicker.

What you read likely referred to the choice of a Fast Encode setting via HandBrake, as opposed to a device that is capable of encoding more efficiently.

You will have also the option of H.265 encoding with the device upgrade. I guess you can think about what is best for you.

Here you can see some comparative figures with reference to encoding times: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-5-5600/13.html