The Joy of Dual Core

[TheFamilyMan]

Just for anyone who is curious, and also to gloat a bit...

I have an AMD Athalon64 X2 4200+ in my new rig. With it, my VIVO video card, mobo and a dedicated 250GB SATA drive (7200RPM), I'm able to capture 640x480 video via virtualVCR, encode with dvdshrink, and make this post all at the same time...without any dropped frames...nada...ZERO!!! No more "better not even touch the computer" while capturing Also TMPGEnc Plus simply smokes, it achieves realtime and better encode times using high quality motion search.

Thanks for reading.

[edDV]

Is there some way you assign the tasks to the two processors?

Does the perfromance meter in Task Manager show separate performance displays?

[nirbhayn]

Is there some way you assign the tasks to the two processors?

Does the perfromance meter in Task Manager show separate performance displays?

I have pentiumD & any conversion just sprints to the finnish line. i encoded 3 hrs long avi to SVCD using cinemacraft with 3 passes & high wuality motion search. and i finnished it in 25 min.
Now thats what i called Super fast.

[Richard_G]

What operating system? Normal XP or XP64?

[TheFamilyMan]

Is there some way you assign the tasks to the two processors?

Does the perfromance meter in Task Manager show separate performance displays?

What operating system? Normal XP or XP64?

I'm running 32 bit XP home edition, it sees two processor threads that are each displayed by the Task Manager. The Task Manager reports %100 usage only if both cores are pegged. I've been letting XP decide the processor affinity for the tasks being executed, i.e. I just run the programs as if I had single core CPU. It seems to do a really good job at it, as shown in my first post. I've got a spare disk on which I'm going to install fedora linux 64 bit (some day). I see no need for XP64 yet, other than that my rig is ready for it.

[pijetro]

You know, speed like that makes me look forward to my next computer purchase..
On a side note, seeing as how fast you're potentially editing/encoding, do you think it would be safe to say that a Matrox, or Canopus DV hardware card is going to be necessary in the near future??

[edDV]

You know, speed like that makes me look forward to my next computer purchase..
On a side note, seeing as how fast you're potentially editing/encoding, do you think it would be safe to say that a Matrox, or Canopus DV hardware card is going to be necessary in the near future??

It is when you factor in HD (MPeg TS, H.264 and VC-1) where the hardware assist requirement is even higher.

The good thing about next gen ATI cards is they are adding both HD decode and encode assist under DirectX control.

See p 6-9
http://www.ati.com/products/radeonx1k/whitepapers/X1000_Family_Technology_Overview_Whitepaper.pdf

[TBoneit]

Is there some way you assign the tasks to the two processors?

Does the perfromance meter in Task Manager show separate performance displays?

I have pentiumD & any conversion just sprints to the finnish line. i encoded 3 hrs long avi to SVCD using cinemacraft with 3 passes & high wuality motion search. and i finnished it in 25 min.
Now thats what i called Super fast.

Which Pentium D? I've been thinking about it but the price on the two core with Hyperthreading is obscene. $1000+ just for the chip.

Are you using the Dual Core non-Hyperthreading Chip? What speed DDR2?

What Speed 3.0, 3.2 etc....

I've been thinking about upgrading/Second Computer with a Dual-Core P4 on a Asus MB.

One reason for a second computer would be to run two sets of encode at the same time or encode and burn on one and surf etc on the other. I tend to run TMPGEnc Xpress in batch mode overnight.

Thanks for any feedback

[TheFamilyMan]

Interesting reading on dual core performance...but maybe it's a bunch of ****'n'bull...
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2484&p=5

[nirbhayn]

Is there some way you assign the tasks to the two processors?

Does the perfromance meter in Task Manager show separate performance displays?

I have pentiumD & any conversion just sprints to the finnish line. i encoded 3 hrs long avi to SVCD using cinemacraft with 3 passes & high wuality motion search. and i finnished it in 25 min.
Now thats what i called Super fast.

Which Pentium D? I've been thinking about it but the price on the two core with Hyperthreading is obscene. $1000+ just for the chip.

Are you using the Dual Core non-Hyperthreading Chip? What speed DDR2?

What Speed 3.0, 3.2 etc....

I've been thinking about upgrading/Second Computer with a Dual-Core P4 on a Asus MB.

One reason for a second computer would be to run two sets of encode at the same time or encode and burn on one and surf etc on the other. I tend to run TMPGEnc Xpress in batch mode overnight.

Thanks for any feedback

INTEL PENTIUM D 3.2GHZ 2X1MB 840 DUAL CORE
GEIL 1GB PC4300 DDR2
POWERCOLOR ATI RADEON X800GT 256MB PCI-E DUAL DVI

This sure will fulfill ur needs. because while converting i play games(BF2, doom) msn, listen songs winamp, watch dvds etc. there is no problem for multitasking.

[TBoneit]

Thanks for the info, Looking at prices it seems that CPU & Asus Mobo P5WD2 Premium & 1 Gig DDR2 + New PCI Express video card will take me to $900 to $1000 range... OTOH nice feature set on the Mobo. And adding in that I've never had problems in terms of longevity or stability to me Asus is worth the extra.

Just wish I could re-use my old DDR but it might hold back the CPU so....

Anyway Thanks again for the feedback

[TBoneit]

Interesting reading on dual core performance...but maybe it's a bunch of ****'n'bull...
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2484&p=5

Just looked at the page referenced above:

They compared a Athlon 3800+ against a Intel 3.0Ghz Cpu.... No wonder the AMD won the benchmarks.

Not the best way to compare IMHO.

[dennismv]

>Is there some way you assign the tasks to the two processors?
if you have two separate tasks, then yes.

In Win2k/XP
Alt-Ctrl-Del to get the Task Manager, Select Processes tab.
locate the "Image Name" of the 2 processes
For each right click, select "Set Affinity".
For one process select CPU 0,
for other process select CPU 1.
Done

[remee]

Interesting reading on dual core performance...but maybe it's a bunch of ****'n'bull...
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2484&p=5

Just looked at the page referenced above:

They compared a Athlon 3800+ against a Intel 3.0Ghz Cpu.... No wonder the AMD won the benchmarks.

Not the best way to compare IMHO.

why is that? because they gave intel a 1GHz lead? the AMD X2 3800 only runs at 2.0Ghz.

what is important is that they are in the same price range of low three hunderds. So, to joe consumer who has a set number of dollars in his pocket it is a great comparison.

[edDV]

Interesting technogy to watch but why buy in at top prices when software support is lacking? I'm waiting at least until spring.

[guns1inger]

Most dual core CPUs have relatively low single core speeds. If you need real MP grunt, get a true multi-processor. Until then, a fast single core machine will beat a dual core in any task that is bound to a single CPU.

[TBoneit]

Interesting reading on dual core performance...but maybe it's a bunch of ****'n'bull...
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2484&p=5

Just looked at the page referenced above:

They compared a Athlon 3800+ against a Intel 3.0Ghz Cpu.... No wonder the AMD won the benchmarks.

Not the best way to compare IMHO.

why is that? because they gave intel a 1GHz lead? the AMD X2 3800 only runs at 2.0Ghz.

what is important is that they are in the same price range of low three hunderds. So, to joe consumer who has a set number of dollars in his pocket it is a great comparison.

Except that AMD has been saying for a while now that clock speed doesn't matter and that the 3800+ should perform like a 3.8Ghz Intel.

Now Intel is De-emphasizing Clock speed.

[GullyFoyle]

Most dual core CPUs have relatively low single core speeds. If you need real MP grunt, get a true multi-processor. Until then, a fast single core machine will beat a dual core in any task that is bound to a single CPU.

If you have dual processors and dual drives does that mean you can convert and burn two files at once?

[edDV]

Most dual core CPUs have relatively low single core speeds. If you need real MP grunt, get a true multi-processor. Until then, a fast single core machine will beat a dual core in any task that is bound to a single CPU.

If you have dual processors and dual drives does that mean you can convert and burn two files at once?

In theory but software is needed to manage the process.

[TheFamilyMan]

If you have dual processors and dual drives does that mean you can convert and burn two files at once?

You don't need dual processors to do this if you have two DVD writers (I'm assuming that that is what was meant by dual drives). Though if you had dual processors this operation would complete much sooner, at least the convert step would.

I can't think of any special software that would be necessary to do this. There are lots of apps, including TMPGEnc, that exploit multicore and multiprocess systems quite nicely without any special intervention or configuration. I imagine that as this technology becomes more common in the marktet place, more apps will be designed to run multi-threaded.

Most dual core CPUs have relatively low single core speeds. If you need real MP grunt, get a true multi-processor. Until then, a fast single core machine will beat a dual core in any task that is bound to a single CPU.

That is why I chose the Athalon64 4200+. It's the eqivalent of two 3500+, which are pretty quick CPUs in their own right, though by no means the fastest out there. From a sheer cost standpoint, purchasing this CPU was a bit foolish but I couldn't resist given the situation I was in.

[GullyFoyle]

If you have dual processors and dual drives does that mean you can convert and burn two files at once?

You don't need dual processors to do this if you have two DVD writers (I'm assuming that that is what was meant by dual drives). Though if you had dual processors this operation would complete much sooner, at least the convert step would.

Yes two drives.
Without dual processors would there be more errors when doing two conversions at once?
I have read about people converting running some other app playing on the net and running an im service at the same time. That strikes me as overkill.
Doing decent conversion takes some rescources. Doubling that would take substantial power.
At least to have it error free.

[TBoneit]

Conversion is power independent, all that running slower does is lenghten the time the conversion takes. If you were d9ing something else while converting and that something else was jumping between 5% and 95% CPU usage, all that would happen is the conversion would take longer than if it had exclusive use of the CPU, It would still convert error free.

Many time I may be authoring a DVD, Surfing the net, and converting an AVI to MPEG2 or capturing an AVI using an ADVC100. The only thing I watch out for is that if I'm authoring and Capturing they're using different drives on different controllers and to not convert and capture at the same time as Conversion runs at 100%. And I only do those to prevent frame drops.

I mean think about it, when you are converting many things are running in the background. In my case, Norton A/V Two anti Spyware programs plus Spyware guard and Teatimer since It's always connected through 3Mbps DSL to the internet.

I may be doing overkill on the antispyware s/w but if you spent as much time as I do cleaning them out of customers computers......

Cheers

[handyguy]

If you want one here it today's deal dell dot com:
DELL SB 9150 w/ 24" LCD $993 + tax P4 3.2 HT/512Mb/160G/128ATI

after 30% coupon MNXFBLWGB4L34P [Exp 11/23, 4000 uses]

upgrade to Dual core for $50-30%

Yes, that is a 24" LCD monitor.......

[GullyFoyle]

Conversion is power independent, all that running slower does is lenghten the time the conversion takes. If you were d9ing something else while converting and that something else was jumping between 5% and 95% CPU usage, all that would happen is the conversion would take longer than if it had exclusive use of the CPU, It would still convert error free.

So no dropped frames or out of synch audio to worry about.?
Cool.

[edDV]

You need to worry about dropped frames during capture.

Encoding proceeds at a slow disk access rate and under OS file transfer error correction. If you are loosing frames during the encoding step, it is a problem with your encoding software.

[rkgibbons]

Except that AMD has been saying for a while now that clock speed doesn't matter and that the 3800+ should perform like a 3.8Ghz Intel.

AMD has never claimed that clock-speed doesn't matter, they've simply tried to educate the public on the fact that clock-speed isn't the only factor that determines the processing speed of a computer (Apple has been attempting to educate the public on the same fact for many years).

CPU pipeline length and branch prediction are just as important as clock-speed (but these are rarely mentioned in any marketing materials).

Clock-speed provides a nice friendly number that the average consumer can grasp and say, "My 3.0Ghz computer is faster than your 2.0Ghz computer."

Well...that's simply not true.

It's similiar to the Mega-Pixel nonsense in the world of digital cameras. Everyone thinks that Mega-Pixels is the only criteria on which to judge the image quality of a digital camera. No one ever mentions the sensor size -- which plays a far greater roll in the quality of the images a camera can produce.

For certain applications, shorter CPU pipelines and superior branch prediction can completely negate the advantages of a faster CPU clock-speed. Take gaming for instance. The AMD 2.0Ghz processor will consistently outperform a 3.8Ghz Pentium. For business applications, the Intel processors tend to perform better.

[Denvers Dawgs]

Oooops had to edit thought you (TheFamilyMan) had the Pentium Dual core

Anyone have the Pentium dualcore chip? If so What GHz, and what have you done so far that just amazes you (speed of programs/3 of hgih power apps running simultaniously, etc?)

[ToughRoeToHoe]

Tom's Hardware just put out this "The Mother of All CPU Charts 2005/2006" in November: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20051121/

They did find that single cores ran faster, but the dual cores worked better for multitasking.

[Denvers Dawgs]

Hmm.....I was thinking about getting Dual core but since I'd only be doing video editing?Photoshop and maybe internet at the same time The P4 HT should probably do the trick?

[junkmalle]

Hmm.....I was thinking about getting Dual core but since I'd only be doing video editing?Photoshop and maybe internet at the same time The P4 HT should probably do the trick?

What do you mean by editing? If you include conversion to MPEG2 or Xvid or whatever then you should consider the AMD Athlon 64 X2 processors.

If you look at the video conversion charts at Tom's Hardware:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20051121/the_mother_of_all_cpu_charts-31.html

you'll see that the slowest dual core Athlon 64 processor (3800+) is as fast as the fastest P4 (dual or single core) in DVD to Xvid conversion, WMV encoding, and DV to MPEG2 encoding (in the test that they ran).

I use TMPGEnc Plus a lot. You can disable it's multithreading via it's options dialog. I see nearly a 2-fold increase in encoding speed with the option enabled (A64 X2 3800+). In contrast, there is hardly any change in performance on my Hyperthreaded P4 2.8 GHz.

You'll have to check the encoders you use to verify the performance though. Not all encoders are multithreaded and multithreading may not give as good a boost to some.