Why is my Pentium D so slow ?! :-(

[Zetti]

Hi all,

I bought recently a Pentium D 930 (dual core), and I run it in a 1 GB memory system (Asus MoBo).

I would expect it to be as fast as the light... :P

But I've realized its performance is disapointing - or I was expecting too much

For example, last night I tried to do two tasks simultaneously; to open a WAV file in Sound Forge while TMPGenc would de-multiplex a MPG stream.

It took AGES

I looked at the system performance and it said that the two CPU's usage was of just 15%........why ? shouldn't the "ultra fast" processor be used up to its limits ?

I have enough CPU cooling, running below 50 Celsius Degrees for these simple tasks - BIG Zalmann cooler proper attached, for sure.

Do I have to set up anything in the computer, maybe in the BIOS ?

I run Win XP Pro SP2

Thanks,

Zetti

[JohnnyMalaria]

What kind of hard drive do you have?

Were you ripping/processing from a DVD/CD?

[Zetti]

What kind of hard drive do you have?

Were you ripping/processing from a DVD/CD?

Thanks Johnny,

No, I was demultiplexing (splitting audio from video) a MPG file using TMPGENc, the file was already at the HDD.

Well, my boot HDD is a SATA one, the other two data discs are regular PATA drives.

I use the PATA drives for file storage, the Boot SATA disc only runs the softwares.

I gave the example above but in fact I could mention many other examples in which I have tried doing two or three things together and the computer took ages, but with its CPU usage below 20%. I am not speaking about video encoding cause I know it's CPU demanding anyway, but even simpler things like importing a M2V stream into DVD Maestro along with opening a WAVE file in Sound Forge takes AGES

What bothers me is: why doesn't the CPUs work harder, considering I have enough cooling

Thanks,

Zetti

[JohnnyMalaria]

I use the PATA drives for file storage, the Boot SATA disc only runs the softwares.

Perhaps your PATA aren't running at the max PIO mode/DMA etc.

Try copying one of your files to the SATA one and see how it performs...

[jagabo]

last night I tried to do two tasks simultaneously; to open a WAV file in Sound Forge while TMPGenc would de-multiplex a MPG stream.

It took AGES :x :-x :? :cry: :evil:

The situation you are describing is I/O limited. The CPU was spending most of its time waiting for the disk drive.

[Capmaster]

@Zetti - Always loved that avatar!

It sounds like the weak point isn't the CPU, but probably the HD as JohnnyMalaria and jagabo said. Maybe your data drives are ready for an upgrade to SATA2 (300)?

[NormaJ]

Well, I can't say much about the technical part (hardware), but, when it comes to Sound Forge, I usually go for a walk and come back to my pc later... :P I'm dual core too

[deadrats]

Hi all,

I bought recently a Pentium D 930 (dual core), and I run it in a 1 GB memory system (Asus MoBo).

I would expect it to be as fast as the light... :P

But I've realized its performance is disapointing - or I was expecting too much

For example, last night I tried to do two tasks simultaneously; to open a WAV file in Sound Forge while TMPGenc would de-multiplex a MPG stream.

It took AGES

I looked at the system performance and it said that the two CPU's usage was of just 15%........why ? shouldn't the "ultra fast" processor be used up to its limits ?

I have enough CPU cooling, running below 50 Celsius Degrees for these simple tasks - BIG Zalmann cooler proper attached, for sure.

Do I have to set up anything in the computer, maybe in the BIOS ?

I run Win XP Pro SP2

Thanks,

Zetti

the problem lies more with the software than the hardware. tmpg especially is slow as hell, forget what anyone says about your I/O holding you back or needing faster drives, tmpg takes it's sweet time muxing and demux (it depends heavily on how long your movie is and how much bitrate the video and audio streams use), i've used it on a pc with a RAID 0 setup and it still took ages.

for a much faster muxer try:

https://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=ImagoMPEG-Muxer

and for demuxing try:

https://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=PgcDemux

if you plan on doing alot of audio and video work and think that I/O is holding you back, you might consider installing as much ram as the motherboard will support and creating a ram drive (i.e. if it supports 4 gigs of ram, create a 3 gig ram drive) and use that for muxing/demuxing and/or editting wav files, but my own tests with ram drives lead me to predict that you will be dissapointed with the performance increase (it gives less of a boost than one would expect, if it gives any boost at all).

[lordsmurf]

It's a hard drive bottleneck issue, simple as that. Want to speed it up? Demux to another drive on another IDE channel. Watch speed increase some.

[Soopafresh]

"forget what anyone says about your I/O holding you back or needing faster drives"

Come on, deadrats. That's a bit insulting to the expertise of the people responding.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-d-920-930_9.html

[deadrats]

"forget what anyone says about your I/O holding you back or needing faster drives"

Come on, deadrats. That's a bit insulting to the expertise of the people responding.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-d-920-930_9.html

it's not meant to be "insulting" but there are numerous people that see something along the lines of "hdd performance is the true bottleneck in overall system performance and has been for a while" and then preach it as gospel every change they get.

it's very easy to prove that hdd performance is not the limiting factor, if you have enough ram (i currently have 2 gigs of ram) create a ram drive of 75% the total ram and test encoding, muxing and demuxing speed with the following 3 variations:

test 1 - read and write drives are the same

test 2 - read and write drives are different (and use different ide channels, if you like)

test 3 - read and write to the ram drive.

hell, i used a system with 2 Gigabyte iRam Drives and the performance delta was negligable.

anyone that feels their "expertise" has been insulted needs to put their beliefs to the test before offering them as factual advise.

[JohnnyMalaria]

The advice I offered is meant to provide a simple troubleshooting step to rule out a hard drive bottleneck.

If you believe something else may be at play, by all means suggest it, but please do not discredit the free advice of others.

After all, this is VideoHelp, not Video-That's-A-Dumb-Suggestion.....

[deadrats]

The advice I offered is meant to provide a simple troubleshooting step to rule out a hard drive bottleneck.

If you believe something else may be at play, by all means suggest it, but please do not discredit the free advice of others.

After all, this is VideoHelp, not Video-That's-A-Dumb-Suggestion.....

again, i don't see how my post can possibly be misconstrued as derogatory, insulting or anything similar.

some people, including you, suggested that the posters harddrives were the problem, i suggested that it's his choice of applications and offered advice as to alternatives that would offer a nice performance increase.

someone then questioned why i would dismiss the hdd as the culprit and i explained why.

i never said "that's a dumb suggestion" nor did i imply it. i simply said that anyone that feels the hdd is the culprit should put his beliefs to the test.

i fail to see what i did wrong...

[KBeee]

Unless your HDD's are seriously faulty, it's something else. I'd first check my motherboard BIOS settings.
I can't believe I'm reading here that people seriously suggest that a Pentium D dual core encodes so fast that a hard disk can't keep up.

[Capmaster]

i fail to see what i did wrong...

Not the first time .....

I can't believe I'm reading here that people seriously suggest that a Pentium D dual core encodes so fast that a hard disk can't keep up.

Are you kidding? Most of the time with video it's the HD slowing things down. With lesser CPUs than a Pentium D. That's why it's so critical to get a large, hellishly fast, separate HD for video data, or better yet - two of them for the source and target. A perfect HD for video would be a U320 SCSI or an SAS drive.

Don't believe me, start a poll and ask people who do it for a living

[jagabo]

Unless your HDD's are seriously faulty, it's something else. I'd first check my motherboard BIOS settings.
I can't believe I'm reading here that people seriously suggest that a Pentium D dual core encodes so fast that a hard disk can't keep up.

last night I tried to do two tasks simultaneously; to open a WAV file in Sound Forge while TMPGenc would de-multiplex a MPG stream.

[Scorpion King]

Demux with Tmpgenc of a 3.5G mpeg2 file my CPU load is about 8% with the source and the destination on the same SATA Raid-0 array. With the source on the SATA Raid and the destination on my IDE Raid-0 array the cpu load is about 14%. The process speed seemed to be about equal. So a simple demux operation in Tmpgenc doesn't use a lot of CPU power so your low cpu loading appears normal....

I didn't try it but loading an audio file into an audio editor program shouldn't be that cpu intensive either. lol Again your low cpu loading looks normal to me.

Drive performance can be benchmarked and the throughput easily checked. One program that comes to mind that we all have is AuxSetup.exe. This program comes with VirtualDub and can give you a good idea what your drives are capable of, although it may not be extremely accurate.

Good luck.

{EDIT}: I just installed my old copy of Creative Wave Studio and loaded up some audio files. The WAV format (pcm) files loaded with very little CPU load. Loading an MP3 file bumped the CPU to over 50%. A 33.5MB PCM file loaded quicker than a 3MB MP3 file....

Hope this helps.

[deadrats]

i fail to see what i did wrong...

Not the first time .....

like it's my fault that certain people have such delicate sensibilities that the slightest edge to a post offends them. reminds me of a certain wimpy forum i belonged to for a short time, the mods were such limp wristed sissy boys that every other post i made was considered offensive. the worst of them was this one clown, what a dummy he was, he tried to get into a physics discussion with me and wanted to show me how educated he was and asked me what must be one of the most non-sensical science question i have ever seen.

God, what a dweeb he was...

I can't believe I'm reading here that people seriously suggest that a Pentium D dual core encodes so fast that a hard disk can't keep up.

Are you kidding? Most of the time with video it's the HD slowing things down. With lesser CPUs than a Pentium D. That's why it's so critical to get a large, hellishly fast, separate HD for video data, or better yet - two of them for the source and target. A perfect HD for video would be a U320 SCSI or an SAS drive.

Don't believe me, start a poll and ask people who do it for a living

just because you can find lots of people to agree with a stupid belief doesn't make it correct. if it was the hdd slowing things down most of the time, then upgrading cpu's wouldn't offer any improvement in performance, but as one who went from a D 820 to a D 945 to an E6400 on otherwise the same exact hardware, i can tell you for a fact that the hdd was not what was holding my pc back.

even with a low-end hardware encoder you aren't likely to be bottlenecked by the hdd, but if you want to believe otherwise, feel free to spend a pile of dough on a SCSI card and 15k hdd's.

You are in breach of the forum rules and are being issued with a formal warning. Please refrain from attacking other members.
/ Moderator Cobra

[Webster]

No, I was demultiplexing (splitting audio from video) a MPG file using TMPGENc, the file was already at the HDD.

Well, my boot HDD is a SATA one, the other two data discs are regular PATA drives.

I use the PATA drives for file storage, the Boot SATA disc only runs the softwares.

Thanks,

For example, last night I tried to do two tasks simultaneously; to open a WAV file in Sound Forge while TMPGenc would de-multiplex a MPG stream.

Does the source file for both of the WAV file and MPG files locate on the same drive?? I mean did you try to access two files from the same drive at the same time??? If they are, that a lot of movement for the head to move to access the data....
Or did you try to output to the same drive at the same time? If you did, that is alot of movement for the head to move to write two files to the same drive at the same time..
You have to remember that HD access is measure in term of millisecond......

Either case, the HD is the bottleneck. You need to have 4 drives to get the optimium result. 2 source drives and 2 destination drives. Otherwise, reading/writting two files from/to the same drive at the same time will cause a bottleneck slowdown. And it doesn't matter how fast (or how many core) your CPU is or what software you have.

[redwudz]

I think Zetti may have 'left the building.' Sorry, a poor Elvis simile.

There are other things besides hard drives to cause slow computers. I would go to BIOS and see it you have optimum settings there. Check your CPU to see if it is running at it's rated speed. A dual core CPU is generally no faster than it's single core version. The big advantage is in multitasking.

I would also check the performance with a program that can use both cores. Divx is an easy one. Check your performance during encoding by checking with Task Manager. You should be getting 60% or better with both cores.

Another way to check your system performance is a benchmarking program like Sandra. One place for it: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4664 You should be able to check most parts of your system; hard drives, DVD drives and most of the hardware. You can also check for your motherboard on some overclock sites. Even if you don't want to overclock, there are often some good tips there. Also check reviews for your motherboard and see what they say.

Some motherboards require a little 'fine tuning' to get the most from them. Good luck.

[djriggs2001]

Hi I run a full sata2 compliant system with the Pentium D 940, I must say I find my system to be slow my fasted avi to dvd encodes take about 20mins. my cpu activity is around 80% under realtime load,
generally I tend to have to believe alot of the problems lie in the software of what we use, to make this relavent to the original posting I shall plod on I used to use TMPGENc this exact time 6 years ago, oddly enough on a beta version of this very same OS (xp) and yes at the time my old pentium 3 used to struggle along with its harddrive, but as a year or two went on I upgraded and upgraded and things got faster and faster then BOOM I hit a wall. in the year 2004 Im no longer knocking hours and 30mins off my encoding times during upgrades, no Im knocking off a minute or two, this is mainly because clock speeds became very irrelavent. and they started pumping these fancy chips with new and improved code and less on the actual speed of them just technology upgrades, the only things that got faster were programs that encorporated this new software. sadly xp hasnt got much faster since the dawn of a celeron 2ghz.

what Im trying to say is, if your encoding anything, and you have a nice new processor and you want to get it to stretch its legs what you have to ask yourself what program encorporates most of my processors technology, I know alot of biased encoding programs that will run circles around me on an amd but yet if I use intel based software I do the same the other way around.

probably useless information but I like to adopt not only an upgrade in hardware but an upgrade in software.
8)

[Zetti]

THANKS TO EVERYBODY THAT REPLIED,

Well, I'm here :P

ad some problems yesterday and couldn't check the PC, but this morning I went through all messages...

Well, I mentioned softwares like Sound Forge and TMPGEnc just as examples, the slowness I've noticed refers in general to all programs, not only these two specific.

I tend to agree that it is HDD related, I've noticed that pure video encoding doesn't go so slow, the "problem" is more noticeable when I'm reading/writing from the HDD intensively.

Last night I tried the test of opening a WAVE file in Sound Forge from my 3 different HDD's, these are the times that SF took to open them:

Total length of audio

1.24.42.976 SEG TOTAL - 48 KHz, 16-bit stereo (DVD standard)

F (Boot): SATA 25.313 seconds

G: SATA 23.015 seconds

H: PATA 17.454 seconds

To me, it sounds strange that the SATA discs are slower... :P

My Mobo is capable of supporting only one SATA2 drive, the ones I have are regular SATA.

Well, thanks for suggesting about new hardware, but so far I have already spent enough money on this PC :P

MANY THANKS,

Zetti

[jagabo]

F (Boot): SATA 25.313 seconds

G: SATA 23.015 seconds

H: PATA 17.454 seconds

To me, it sounds strange that the SATA discs are slower... :P

Not necessarily. The speed of the interface doesn't matter for this type of operation, the transfer rate of data off the platters is the limiting factor. Both PATA and SATA exceed the speed at which data can be read off the platters.

Hard drives spin at a constant speed. The data is stored with a constant linear density. So during one revolution of the platters more data can be read off an outer cylinder than off an inner cylinder. The difference with current drives is around 40 MB/s vs 80 MB/s.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/16/2007-hdd-rundown/page14.html#data_transfer_diagrams

So the differences in load time may be simply a matter of where the file is located on each drive.

Also, if your computer description is accurate (1 GB DRAM), you may to start seeing some swapfile action when opening a GB file. Opening a file on the same drive as your swapfile will be slower in this case.

[deadrats]

You are in breach of the forum rules and are being issued with a formal warning. Please refrain from attacking other members.
/ Moderator Cobra

Cobra, who exactly did i "attack". i only spoke in vague terms about a different forum that i no longer belong to.

i didn't say anything bad about any member of this forum so it's completely ridiculous to issue a warning. furthermore, contrary to what whatever-his-name is thinks, i never even came close to implying that any posters advice was a dumb suggestion, i said it was wrong and offered the guy asking the question suggestions for alternative software to use.

if you want to see a personal attack, look back through fulcilives' posts to me (and about me) where he calls me an idiot, moron, dangerous to this forum and completely clueless, yet i haven't seen him get any warning.

so what exactly is your problem?

[rhegedus]

Unless your HDD's are seriously faulty, it's something else. I'd first check my motherboard BIOS settings.
I can't believe I'm reading here that people seriously suggest that a Pentium D dual core encodes so fast that a hard disk can't keep up.

I only have a P4 2.26 and it is quite noticable whether or not the encode destination is the same as the source file or not. It becomes more noticable the larger the file size is - try a VOB to uncompressed avi conversion and you'll see what I'm on about.