Dual Core or single does it really matter for captures. Which mainboard?

[budz]

$89 E2160 at 3.2 GHz:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/09/12/pentium_dual_core/

we found the mid-range model Pentium Dual Core E2160 at 1.8 GHz to be extremely overclockable: we could run 3.2 GHz on standard air cooling using the boxed cooler.

Thanks for that interesting article. I have that cpu but have it installed in a Intel 945 mobo w/only ddr 667 ram. It's only overclocked to 2.23ghz. I'm hoping to buy another Gigabyte mobo & ddr 800 ram to overclock it to 3.0ghz.

[gll99]

$89 E2160 at 3.2 GHz:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/09/12/pentium_dual_core/

we found the mid-range model Pentium Dual Core E2160 at 1.8 GHz to be extremely overclockable: we could run 3.2 GHz on standard air cooling using the boxed cooler.

Thanks for that interesting article. I have that cpu but have it installed in a Intel 945 mobo w/only ddr 667 ram. It's only overclocked to 2.23ghz. I'm hoping to buy another Gigabyte mobo & ddr 800 ram to overclock it to 3.0ghz.

That's one of the cpu's I've been looking at too in my quest. I found benchmarks where they compared the results of an E4300 with the E2160 since they both run at 1.8GHz the difference is that the E4300 has a 2mb cache to the E2160's 1mb. With both running at default speed, In the encoding divx tests the E4300 was only marginally better. I found that a bit surprising. Now in my case I would be comparing it to an E4400 running at 2GHz but then the E2160 could just as easily be clocked that way to get similar response to a stock E4400. The E2160 sells for $103 and the E4400 is at $142 in my area.

The one thing that's still not clear is how dual cores or core 2 duo are recognized. What if I use a capture program that doesn't make use of the second core is it a feature that a program has to address or does the cpu architecture automatically switch when one core of the cpu is overworked. I don't want to end up that my favorite capture program sees the cpu as a single core 1.8GHz in which case I'm no better off than with the P4 1.6 oc'd to almost 2.2GHz that I have now.

[Soopafresh]

If you wish, you can use MLin's SMP Seesaw app, which will move services or apps to a particular core that you choose.

http://www.mlin.net/SMPSeesaw.shtml


BTW, did you see this?:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115031&Tpk=e4500

[jagabo]

The one thing that's still not clear is how dual cores or core 2 duo are recognized. What if I use a capture program that doesn't make use of the second core is it a feature that a program has to address or does the cpu architecture automatically switch when one core of the cpu is overworked. I don't want to end up that my favorite capture program sees the cpu as a single core 1.8GHz in which case I'm no better off than with the P4 1.6 oc'd to almost 2.2GHz that I have now.

A single threaded application may be bounced back and forth between the two cores (to spread the heat) but is never running on more than one a a time. Overall performance will be about the same as that of a single core CPU of the same design and clock speed. But keep in mind that a C2D core is about 50 percent faster than a P4 core of the same clock speed for many applications.

[gll99]

Back to a mobo question:

RLT69 mentionned DDR3 ram so if I move up on the motherboard I can't ignore this model which supports DDR3 and DDR2. It's model Asus PK5-C priced at $169 locally

http://ca.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=534&l4=0&model=1694&modelmenu=2

What has me wondering is this statement about the P35 chipset

The chipset officially supports the memory frequency up to DDR3 1066MHz/DDR2 800. Due to the tuning by ASUS exclusive technology, this motherboard natively supports up to DDR3 1333/DDR2 1066MHz.

Another site said this about the P35 chipset:

In the mainstream, Intel's new "965" equivalent is the P35. As you can see, support for DDR3-1066MHz is in there, as well as support for up to a 1333MHz system bus. You can be sure motherboard manufacturers, like Asus, will offer BIOS options for DDR3-1333 memory speeds as well, though technically the chipset doesn't officially support it.

Why is there a difference between what the chipset supports and the motherboard's bios? Does that affect how the ram performs.

And.... what the heck is this about DDR3 bios upgrade for all Asus P5K p35 chipsets. Aren't the ram slots different between DDR2 and DDR3 so what are they talking about since none of the PK5 boards I checked except PK5C have DDR3 slots.

http://www.thinkcomputers.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3677

I will probably only buy 1mb DDRII-667 to start and upgrade later but I don't want to buy a more expensive mobo just for DDR3 and then find out that only a new soon to be marketed chipset truly supports DDR3 natively.

[TBoneit]

Chipset supporting things doesn't mean that they were implemented. The Bios also needs to support a feature.

Is it possible you are getting bogged down by too many choices? It sounds as if you over researching.

It might be time to take a deep breath, Step back. List your requirements and prune out any choices that do not meet those needs.

[stiltman]

Chipset supporting things doesn't mean that they were implemented. The Bios also needs to support a feature.

Is it possible you are getting bogged down by too many choices? It sounds as if you over researching.

It might be time to take a deep breath, Step back. List your requirements and prune out any choices that do not meet those needs.

Ding...Ding...Ding...Ding

I agree 100%
I almost fell into the same trap. I stopped looking. I wrote down on a peice of paper what I wanted and what I needed. I then went strickly by that. With the motherboard I wanted, I max'd out the CPU and got enough RAM to do what I wanted to do.

[gll99]

Chipset supporting things doesn't mean that they were implemented. The Bios also needs to support a feature.

Is it possible you are getting bogged down by too many choices? It sounds as if you over researching.

It might be time to take a deep breath, Step back. List your requirements and prune out any choices that do not meet those needs.

It was all so simple at first .....

All I started out wanting is to capture interlaced divx 720x480 without the cpu hitting 100%

In the short term, must have:
Mainboard with at least 1 mb DDR2-667 ram support.
A better cpu than the P4 1.6 purchased 5 1/2 year ago.
3 pci slots or (minimum 2 pci with onboard firewire) or (some combination to allow 4 ide devices, 1 firewire, pci tv tuner card and possibly a pci sound card)
A new atx case
Video with 2 or 3 outputs, 1 to dvi monitor, 2 to vga projector, 3 to tv-out.

Like to have but not critical:
2 ide controllers supporting 4 devices
agp port to save $$$
Quad core support for future upgrade

The Asrock Mboard I first looked at seemed like the one to go with but then I found out it only supported Sata1 and the PCI-E slot although it's an x16 format it only supports 4x.
The sata problem was resolved when I found out that the board comes in a nearly identical sata II rev at the same price but the PCI-E speed problem is true. How much that will affect the future options for pci_E video cards is unknown but they seem to have only a very specific list of acceptable cards.

So that caused me to waver and brought things to a halt until I checked out more options.

Then came the complications or at least some other factors
Do I want the option to move to Vista now or later so would my purchase be compatible?
Asrocks don't overclock as well as others. In benchmarks I read, Asrock boards scored about 3% lower in divx encode but they also scored 11% lower in mp3 encoding that other motherboards using the same core 2 and core 2 duo. I usually capture divx with mp3 audio so this is important.
I looked at mobo's with onboard video but they only have 1 vga out so I can't use that. One Asus had an agp port but it's old stuff which doesn't seem to support core 2 cpu's and didn't have DDR2 or Pci-E upgrade options.

Now I'm looking at DDR3. Is it something I need or will need soon?

That's why I looked at Asus boards with DDR3, a 1333 fsb and a P35 chipset.

If I eliminate DDR3 then I can save a few $$ with an Asus P5LD2 R2.0 945P chipset which sells locally for $110

http://www.asus.com/products4.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=515&l1=3&l2=11&l3=185&l4=0

It's an older chipset but support core 2 duo in R2.0 of the board. It has 3 ide controllers (1 at 100 and 2 1333 utra dma). DDR2 ram tops at 667MHz which is all I plan to use anyway and the fsb clocks to 533, 800 and 1066.

So to save $60 is it worth loosing future flexibility even though it's good enough for today?

There are other Asus boards with similar specs and a 965P chipset and they range from $125 to $150. Some have only 2 pci, have onboard firewire, only 1 ide but support ram up to 800 fsb. So they would be a consideration if I elemiminate DDR3 as a requirement.

This and more is why it's not as simple as it seemed at first.

Lately I've been thinking of spending the $169 on the Asus p35 chipset mobo with DDR3 support, buying only 1 mb of DDR2 667 ram, buying the cheapest pci-e video card I can get and only an E2160 cpu with a $40 to $60 case. That would cost just under $500 tax included for the hardware but would allow me to upgrade parts as needed without changing the mobo for a long time. I still have the price list, this is about half of what it cost when I pieced together the P4 1.6GHz more than 5 years ago. The 1 dimm of 512mb (pc2700) DDR333 cost $259 plus tax then and that was after a price drop . It had been selling for $329.

Keeping the same mobo might be important later if I decide to buy an oem version of Vista. It seems that it's tied to the mobo that it's initialised with.

[budz]

gll99 my Core 2 Duo computers use cheap PCI-E video cards that I bought off of Ebay. They're ATI X300 & X300SEDell PCI-E video cards w/ 128mb but it does the job for video encoding. I don't game so it's enough for me. Also at a later time you may want to consider buying a SATA DVD burner since most newer mobo's only have 1 ide.

IMHO if you're looking to make sure the mobo you choose is able to be upgradeable at a later time then buy a mobo with the 965, P31 or P35 chipset. With the 945 chipset you will be very limited on overclocking the E2160 processor. I'm suggesting this to you because I didn't do my homework very well when I decided to build a core 2 duo system. I bought the Biostar 945 chipset mobo and as you have seen it's not able to overclock more than 2.30 ghz. I do like the Gigabyte socket 775 P53 chipset mobo's as it's easy to overclock the core 2 duo processors. Just my 2 cents!

[FulciLives]

I noticed that you said you wanted to hook up to your TV.

I suggest you go with the Nvidia 7600 GT (not the 7600 GS).

Why?

The Nvidia 7600 GT is the cheapest PCI-E Nvidia graphics/video card that fully supports ALL features of the Nvidia PURE VIDEO technology. Very key for the best in TV out quality.

According to newegg.com you can get a Nvidia 7600 GT for just under $100 US Dollars.

The EVGA 256-P2-N550 -T2 sounds like a good choice as does the XFX PVT73GUGD3. Both feature a HDTV capable TV out with S-Video or Component Video as output choices. Both also have two DVI outputs and include at least one DVI to VGA/D-sub adapter.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[TBoneit]

The thing is you sound like someone that keeps things as they are for several years. Example P4 1.6, how long ago was that?

In 3 years if you decide to upgrade the CPU most likely you will have trouble finding a older design that works ina 3 year old Mobo. CPUs keep changing and evolving.

Bite the bullet, Buy something better than you need now and don't worry about upgrading the CPU. Everytime I've upgraded the CPU I've ended up changing the Motherboard too. I work in a computer store and trying to keep to many things involves to many compromises.

Only thing is if you intend to go to a different encoding that requires a high power setup in the near future <1 year than do it now and be done.

Good Luck

BTW $110 retail on that Asus is a good price.

[Soopafresh]

Upgraded a machine today - just the mobo and proc - all the other parts were re-used

Original Proc = AMD Athlon64 3000 Socket 754, DFI LanParty Mobo
2GB RAM

Benchmark (Avisynth-Deinterlace-X264 1Pass) = 102 seconds

New Proc = Intel E4500, Gigabyte GA-8I865GME-775-RH ($45 for the mobo, $145 for the chip)

Benchmark (Same process as above) = 67 seconds @ SingleThread
Benchmark (Same process as above) = 36 seconds @ Multithread

* Multithreading was invoked in X264 with --threads auto

[gll99]

I resurrected this topic for closure (for now)

I hate threads that die without some sense of whether someone resolved their problem.

Almost a year has passed and certain things needed attention so the upgrade plan took a back seat but this past few weeks I started looking again and made a decision.

Nothing was bought from big box stores or online. I got my parts from various small local suppliers of computer parts.

I bought a new mid tower case for $30. Cheap price but more than I expected, it runs very quiet with a 500 watt ps and 2 pre-wired front usb, front audio earphone and mic jacks hidden behind a pop-out door. Black box with a silver/grey(gray) front and easy access side panel. It was so good after I took it out of the box and opened it to look inside the case I went back and bought another one for something else.

I then bought an Asus P5N-EM HDMI matx motherboard. This mb can handle most new cpu's up to the 45nm quads. In addition to vga the onboard video can be set to output on the dvi or hdmi connector and is hdcp compliant. So if I decide to get a pc bluray player or burner someday it will handle that.

http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?modelmenu=2&model=2036&l1=3&l2=11&l3=628&l4=0

The only thing it doesn't have is firewire onboard but I already have a pci addon card for that nor does it have DDR3 support but at $79 for an Asus board it's perfect for my needs. It has on-board shared video up to 256 mb but it can be disabled in the bios to switch to a pci-E x16 video card. Right now this is exactly what I wanted to keep down the up-front costs .

The cpu came next and I decided to buy according to immediate needs and not desires. So I bought an Intel 2 core 2ghz E2180 for $85. In time I'll get the quad but the cheapest quad locally was the Q6600 at $225 but it's a 65nm processor and I was eyeing the newer 45nm technology quads which right now are too expensive. I'll get one when the price drops ( now you know why I bought a second case)

I then bought 2 2gb dimms of DDR2 800mhz ram (total ram 4 gb). This set me back $104. They originally wanted $89 per dimm for this ram but someone else offered no-name "value" ram at that price so they price matched.

I already had a free 250gb sata1 drive so didn't need a new hdd to start. I also had a spare bt878 tv tuner card and a firewire card to fill the 2 pci slots on the mb plus a floppy and an extra 8x LG burner to get things going and the case is (power) sata ready and the mb came with new sata and ide cables/ribbons and ide to sata power connector which I didn't need but will when I buy a new hdd etc... so, in the short term, there was nothing else to buy.

I put everything together in a very short evening and it worked flawlessly on the first try. I have been running test captures for the past couple of days trying different settings and xvid/divx options to find the top point of this processor and trying my new Philips dvp-5990 usb 2.0 capable divx player (but that's another story). It's more than I hoped for and it's running at stock speed.

Not bad for $298 plus tax. Based on what I've seen so far it was the right choice and it was finally time to do something. As one of you said (in different words) you can think yourself into circles and never make a decision.

Thanks to all those who offered suggestions I reread your points before making these purchases. In the end I went with my real needs and still got quite a bit of future proofing at minimal cost.

btw) I originallly thought I would move my ide drives to the new box and that's why I wanted a mb with 2 ide slots (4 devices) but moving to sata2 is more cost effective in the long run and I'm not retiring the old P4 completely so the ide 300gb and 200gb hdd will get lots of secondary use.

The next items on my list are a larger sata2 hdd and a new burner (likely sata also). I might also look at a usb tuner card to free a pci slot.

Oh the fun. Lots to play with and so little time.

Yes dear I'll be there in a minute. What's that you say? Is it an hour already??? Alright tben, just a few more minutes and I'll be there right away, I promise!

[budz]

[quote="gll99"The next items on my list are a larger sata2 hdd and a new burner (likely sata also). I might also look at a usb tuner card to free a pci slot.[/quote]

Make sure your mobo chipset controller is compatible with any sata dvd burner.

[gll99]

budz wrote

Make sure your mobo chipset controller is compatible with any sata dvd burner.

All I know is what it says that the board supports Sata2...

- 4 x SATA 3Gb/s with RAID function

I didn't know there were issues with sata burners. Mind you, I never even thought of buying one until just recently so never paid much attention. I don't see any special reference to ide/sata writers with the mobo specs or manual.

What should I look for?

[Rell]

budz wrote

Make sure your mobo chipset controller is compatible with any sata dvd burner.

All I know is what it says that the board supports Sata2...

- 4 x SATA 3Gb/s with RAID function

I didn't know there were issues with sata burners. Mind you, I never even thought of buying one until just recently so never paid much attention. I don't see any special reference to ide/sata writers with the mobo specs or manual.

What should I look for?

i never thought about sata burner issues when i bought one. mine works like a charm on old 865 chipset ASRock motherboard (775i65G).

[TBoneit]

Good luck with the Asrock mobo.

You might want to keep an eye on the capacitors. We just changed out 14 bulging caps to bring a Asrock socket 478 Mobo back to life. The alternative was change the Mobo. Then, most likely have to do a repair install of XP and Updates etc.

So evidently Asrock and DFI are two brands we've fixed with replacement caps. Symptom when the computer was brought in was no video. Based on past experiences I'd bet they've been having problems getting it going for a while.

[budz]

budz wrote

Make sure your mobo chipset controller is compatible with any sata dvd burner.

All I know is what it says that the board supports Sata2...

- 4 x SATA 3Gb/s with RAID function

I didn't know there were issues with sata burners. Mind you, I never even thought of buying one until just recently so never paid much attention. I don't see any special reference to ide/sata writers with the mobo specs or manual.

What should I look for?

Mobo's with the INTEL CHIPSET ICH7/8/9 will work with SATA DVD burners. NVIDIA chipset will work only if you download and use the latest drivers from the NVIDIA website. VIA chipset mobo's will not work with SATA DVD burners. You'd have to use a SATA PCI CONTROLLER card that uses the SILICON IMAGE CHIPSET 3112/3114/3512 in order for it to work correctly. Also older JMICRON chipsets don't work as well with SATA DVD burners. I do know the newer JMICRON chipsets will work but I'm not sure what mobo's have them. It's the SATA CONTROLLER CHIPSET on the motherboard is what will matter if a SATA DVD burner will work correctly or not.

SATA was originally made to work with hard drives and not optical drives. Older mobo's would/could have compatibility issues where one would have to use a SATA PCI CONTROLLER CARD.

[gll99]

According to the Asus Mobo link I posted above my mobo chipset is "NVIDIA GeForce 7100/nForce 630i" and the only reference in the manual is that "due to chipset limitations the NVIDIA ..... does not support Serial optical drives under dos". I don't know if this implies they won't work as boot drives or if they are ok under bios and window control and so could still be used to install and boot from but just not under dos. I suppose if you have at least 1 ide dvdrom on the system there's no real concern for bootup and installs.

It's not a big issue either way and it's still cheaper right now to go with an ide burner. If I need to free up some ide slots on the off chance that I might use an ide hdd, I still have a spare raid/io pci card which could use the slot freed up if I go with a usb tuner. I also haven't explored any pci-E x1 devices yet either to see what is available. So there are many options.

@budz
Thanks for the heads up. At least I'm forewarned no matter which way I decide to go. This issue had not even crossed my mind.

[FulciLives]

I'd go IDE unless you MUST go SATA ... to the best of my knowledge all Blu-Ray capable drives are SATA only (although I could be wrong).

But if an IDE version exists for what you want (like a "regular" CD/DVD burner) then to hell with the possible issues of a SATA version of the drive.

I've been real happy with my IDE Pioneer DVR-115 which I bought a couple or so months ago although I understand a very new DVR-116 is now out.

Just my 2 cents worth ... which might not even be worth THAT much LOL

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[budz]

Most newer motherboards only have 1 ide connection & have 4-6 sata connections. I forgot to mention when using a SATA DVD burner raid and achi have to be disabled within the mobo bios.

[gll99]

@FulciLives
Ide or sata isn't much of an issue either way. If I had bought Sata without knowing the potential problem then I might have wasted hours wondering what the ?/@% was going on but at least now I know.

The thought of a combination bluray player / dvd burner or even possibly a bluray burner has crossed my mind, but I'm not convinced a bd player would be of much use to me at this time so that might be just money well wasted. The idea of creating hd video or even storing large amounts of data on a single disc is more appealing but not based on current media and burner prices. It may be another year or 2 away.

I might even just take the LG 16x out of my old P4 and swap it with the LG 8x in my new system until I decide exactly what I want. This might turn out to be the smartest thing to do. There's no sense creating urgency where there is none but I did learn something important about Sata drives.

@budz
I saw this particular Sata setting in the bios (Raid, AHCI,IDE) and the default is set to IDE. The mobo bios section of the manuals say the obvious things like you can set this option to this or that but they never explain what the benefits are of using each option. The only concern I would have with not using AHCI is not being able to hot swap an external sata drive (if I ever add one). According to the wiki, this seems to be a feature of this setting. Anyway that AHCI setting seems to have its own OS related issues and is a problem for another day.

[budz]

Yuh, sata should be set to ide when using a sata dvd burner. Although some have used ahci setting with some success but issues would later occur with burn speeds.

[Rell]

Good luck with the Asrock mobo.

You might want to keep an eye on the capacitors. We just changed out 14 bulging caps to bring a Asrock socket 478 Mobo back to life. The alternative was change the Mobo. Then, most likely have to do a repair install of XP and Updates etc.

So evidently Asrock and DFI are two brands we've fixed with replacement caps. Symptom when the computer was brought in was no video. Based on past experiences I'd bet they've been having problems getting it going for a while.

I kind of expected that when i bought the board. really its quite cheap, but more importantly i was able to carry over my still working agp card and ddr rams when i built this core 2 duo rig. its been a year and theres no bulging caps so far. anyways, if that dreaded bulging cap happens, i can either look for replacement caps or buy a new board, the latter is what i really feel doing at this point of time

btw, this board's southbridge is just an ICH5, but i guess the bios updates ive done made it possible to run a sata burner. one day i just thought of trying out these sata burners and luckily it was just all plug and play. however, im clueless when it comes to a new OS installation, that maybe those sata burner issues occur on that part...just a wild guess.

[gll99]

I bought a sata burner.

Reasons: Not many $$$ lost if it didn't work, low risk since mobo says it supports Bluray and they are only sata so logically should also support other sata burners, manual says doesn't support sata dvd in dos so implies support in windows and possibly bios but most of all because of my curiosity.

I went looking for a couple of 20x lower cost LG but they had none in stock so settled for a similar featured Lite-on instead (iHAS120) no lightscribe but not a desired feature anyway.

Rather uneventful install, not much to do except plug it in and reboot. I also have an ide LG 8x dvd burner on the system so to test the boot capability the sata dvd drive has to be promoted over the ide one in the bios but that's pretty simple to do similar to what you would do on a multi drive system to promote a hdd in the boot sequence. It booted fine using a Linux distro.

I wasn't sure about Lite-on since it's my first one but now I'm happy with it especially since it bitsets dvd+rw. The LG only does DVD+R so I kept my old NEC (with Herrie's special holiday firmware) around mainly to bitset the +RW disc.

I added a 500gb Seagate sata2 hdd at the same time for video processing. It was immediately recognized by the bios before partioning or formatting. Simple install, formatted to NTFS as a primary partition and no issues.