TMPGEnc Speed Issue

[Mac Everyman]

I know that TMPGEnc takes time....but having exhaustively read postings here and elsewhere, I seem to be experiencing considerably slower coding than most other folks, even though I have a new, pretty speedy machine.

My system:
Dell P4, 2.4GHz, 512MB RAM. It's fast.
All other programs closed, including antivirus and screen saver

TMPGEnc settings:
MPEG-2
All CPU settings checked (except multi-threading)
Motion search precision: High quality (slow) (but still not the slowest setting)
2-pass VBR at 8000 max, 4000 avg, 1300 lowest, with padding
Task priority: high
No preview
Caching of first pass allowed (4MB)
Use of operating system memory allowed

I admit that the first three settings are pretty demanding, but is it still normal for a fairly fast machine with loads of memory to take 8-9 hours encoding a 2 hour movie (and just the video portion at that)? And don't even think about filtering. Based on a test I did with a 2-minute clip at the filter settings I want, the same 2-hour movie would take 120-hours to process!!

Any suggestions?

[Faustus]

Yeah thats a little high for that system. How much do you know about PCs in general? Cause what I would suggest first is you uninstall any Dell installed software your not using. Then run MSconfig and ditch anything in there you dont' need either (minus the stuff that is always needed of course) Then see if that helps you times. If not do a defrag, and as a last resort I'd reinstall the system and see if that helps.

[Mac Everyman]

Thanks for the tips. I'm pretty adept at tweaking a PC, and I've used MSCONFIG in the past to strip out unnecessary start-up programs. Also regularly defrag. I suppose I could do an operating system re-install, but just thinking about that makes my head spin. And realistically, I would bet that it would only give me a 10-15% improvement, or maybe none at all.

Is it possible I have a memory management issue? I partitioned my disk and keep all video files on the secondary drive. Do I need to set up virtual memory for this second drive as well?