Is the upgrade worth from 1ghz to 1.8ghz or 2ghz

[frederick]

Im am trying to justify to build another computer. I already have a case, the case was intended for another p3 computer but if the price is right. I will move into the p4 world. I would love to move to a 3ghz but I am on tight budget trying to get out of debt and paying cash for a system that is better then a pIII 1ghz system. Encoding takes to damn long. Has anybody done a bench mark test and also where to get a motherboard cpu combo for a good price.

[WeedVender]

Encoding takes 3 hours for an entire movie on my P3 1 ghz system..(main Concept/ and CCE)
even faster in this system... 1.8 or 2 ghz, i dont think it really matters.
Just get the one that is cheapper.

[rhegedus]

If you're trying to save cash then wait a few months. The new P4 with 800FSB is out, so once these become widely available, the price of the 533FSB chips will come down. I bought a 2.26 533FSB in August, and with the money I spent then I could buy a 3.06 533 FSB now.

Whatever you buy will ALWAYS be cheaper in a few months time but if your short of cash, hours spent encoding overnight are free. Upgrade when the time is right for you, not your PC.

Regards,

Rob

[spiderman2k1]

I have a AMD 1.8Xp with CCE in CBR mode I encode in real time. dvd2dvd-r is good but for some reason it locks up for some people it might be a AMD problem. i did not have this problem with older version's. Why not try DVD2ONE very fast for DVD's

[Bondiablo]

that's usually been about when i upgrade, when i can double my processor speed without having to buy the latest and greatest. it's always been a noticeable difference. to help justify it... most people have had no trouble overclocking the p4 1.8a to 2.4ghz. the current p4s in general seem to be good overclockers. i'm running my 2.4b at 2.88ghz and the only reason i don't run it at 3ghz is, this is as high as i can go and still use the most aggressive ram settings. in tmpgenc it takes me about 3.5 hours to encode a 1.5 hour movie for vcd with 2 pass vbr and highest motion search precision.

[MOVIEGEEK]

frederick,
Here's a benchmark of CPUs:http://www17.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-25.html
A great place to find deals is here www.pricewatch.com

[version20]

Just suggesting you take MOVIEGEEK's advice and check out Toms Hardware website, they recently posted benchmarks for processors all the way from old p100's or so, to some of the fastest newest processors available. Check it out, the increase in encoding time could very well be neglible if you are unable to purchase the "latest/greatest" I know it is for me.

-v20

[Bondiablo]

just based on that one benchmark, i don't see how you could say it's a negligible difference unless you go to the latest and greatest. the difference from a 1ghz p3 to a 1.8a p4 was more than a 45% decrease in encoding time.

[John]

I went from a 1500 amd to a 2100 even increased my ram to 512 mb, when it comes to programs like tmpeg i still dont think they are using the newer processors to thier best advantage, my mates 900 amd is still as fast as mine, maybe ive got a dodgy motherboard, my local computer shop tryed to put me off buying a dual processor system, i still would like to try one to see how fast it is.

[WeedVender]

I have one.. Dual Xeon 1.5 ghz each.

Well I have to say that I can encode faster than real time. One detail I didnt put in the PC specs of this site is that I have an SCSI HDD.
This baby spins at 10,000 RPM and 36 gb is more than enough for video related to MPEG 2 and Divx compression. I think thats the reason for such a high encoding speed, along with the Xeons.'

I "wasted" like close to 6 or 7 grand for this system.

[mrtristan]

That's impressive. What format to what format? If I'm doing something in 720X480 DV to SVCD, the fastest that I ever see is realtime. My MP's are clocked faster than your Xeons in megahertz, which is a surprise. AMD usually outperforms Intel at similar clock speeds.

Makes me wonder if I should have gone with Intel.

I have one.. Dual Xeon 1.5 ghz each.

Well I have to say that I can encode faster than real time. One detail I didnt put in the PC specs of this site is that I have an SCSI HDD.
This baby spins at 10,000 RPM and 36 gb is more than enough for video related to MPEG 2 and Divx compression. I think thats the reason for such a high encoding speed, along with the Xeons.'

I "wasted" like close to 6 or 7 grand for this system.

[WeedVender]

Well I use the SCSI HDD running at 10,000 RPM. That helps a bit. 2 gigs of ram also helps. Also my Xeons have 1 mb of cache.. that might make the difference.

[VidGuy]

Don't forget your crappy hard disks affect your encoding time by a lot.

You can get a huge difference in encoding time by putting your source and encoded mpeg on physically different hard disks (not just different partitions on the same hard disk).

[gee69]

i am kind of far behind these new MB that has 533 or 800 FSB. So if all these new stuff, does that mean that the hard drives should be also ATA serial or what? I am confused with all these new technology for the PC.

What can you recommend as far as motherboard, hard drives, controller cards (do some mb have this controller built in)..and also I see these new hard drive cables...so lost now.

will be building a PC dedicated just for home video editing and then to DVD...so what can you recommend...

Thanks you for any advise

[rhegedus]

It depends on how you're going to capture the video in the first place.

If it will be via a firewire appliance (like a DV Cam) then I'd save some money and get a motherboard with on-board sound and graphics (you can always buy a sound or graphics card later if you want to). All you need is a firewire card to slot in.

If you're going to be capturing by another method then get a motherboard with on board sound and a graphics card that can also capture, like the ATI/Hercules All In Wonder cards (see the capture cards section on the left).

If you want to capture from a mixture of sources then get a praphics card that can capture from s-video and firewire (again, see the card list on the left).

The processor will be chosen by what the motherboard can handle and by your budget.

I'd get two hard drives - one to use as a system drive (for the operating system and for file storage) and one for capture only. I've got 3 IBM Deskstars and they have never given me any trouble.

If you want to author to DVD then get a Sony DRU500 dvd writer. Read the DVD writers section to find out why (basically, it can burn in -R/-RW/+R/+RW format, so there will be a choice for all stand alone DVD players).

If you want to rip DVDs then get a fast DVD ripper. I hear Lite-On are very good.

Good Luck,

Rob

[WeedVender]

Get a brand name DVD-ROM Drive 16x
Get 512 or 256 MB of RAM.
Get a moderate motherboard, doesn't have to be expensive.
and an ATA 100 or higher HDD thats at least 7,200 RPM.
Also get a medium to fast CPU.

If you serial ATA, the current bus transfer rate for it is about the same as IDE. In the future, though it will be able to accomodate up to 700 mb/s on the SATA line. Serial ATA is a bit faster but not for a break through

[rhegedus]

Yeah, sorry - forgot about RAM. I'd get at least 256Mb, but 512Mb is what you need.

Regards,

Rob

[oneday]

I went from a P3 450 w/256 mb of ram to a AMD2100 w/1gb ram. I cut my encoding time from 3 hours to 45 minutes. {encoding VCD and SVCD with Nero.} As you can see there is a difference with a faster chip and more memory. If money is a issue buy AMD. Buy a good motherboard , so in the future you only have to upgrade the cpu.

[rkr1958]

In the future, though it will be able to accomodate up to 700 mb/s on the SATA line.

700 mb/s or 700 mB/s? 700 mb/s = 87.5 mB/s, which is slower than ATA 100.

[version20]

just based on that one benchmark, i don't see how you could say it's a negligible difference unless you go to the latest and greatest. the difference from a 1ghz p3 to a 1.8a p4 was more than a 45% decrease in encoding time.

I guess I should have been more clear in my statement that the increase may be negligible and "I know it is for me"...I am running an AMD 1700XP, not a 1Ghz - so I would not gain anywhere near 45% increase.

-v20

[Dubber]

I dunno how much money you wanna spend on MOBO+CPU, but for reasonable results (cost wise too), you may wanna go with either Celeron 2GHz or Athlon XP 2400+.

[WeedVender]

[quote="rkr1958700 mb/s or 700 mB/s? 700 mb/s = 87.5 mB/s, which is slower than ATA 100.[/quote]

700 MEGABYTES PER SECOND (mB)

[Bradskey]

Just my experience encoding with TMPGEnc, being an AMD guy, going from a 1.2 GHz Thunderbird to an XP 1700+ was a moderate increase in speed -- maybe 15-25%, which matches the reality of about a 250MHz difference between the two. XP chips based on the newer core (XP 1800+ and higher) probably will show much larger gains. I have fast Seagate 7200rpm drives, but I'm still using PC133 SDRAM. Going the PC2100 route will likely help also.