The right PC for Video Encoding

[vsenapati]

I have got a Pentium III 800 Mhz and would like to upgrade to Pentium IV 2.4 Ghz(800 Mhz), D865 GFB MB and 400 Mhz DDRRAM. I would like to know that although the Motherboard speed is 800 Mhz but the RAM speed is 400 Mhz , does it mean that the data transfer is restricted to 400 Mhz as the RAM speed is only 400 Mhz ? Then I can go for D845 where the MB bus speed is 400 Mhz. Any comments on this issue ?

[obiron]

vsenapati,

I'll take a stab at explaining what I know about this; hopefully someone who knows more will set us both straight. I, too, am about to spring for a video oriented system. My investigation has tuned me into the 400Mhz vs. 800Mhz discussion. Here is my understanding:
Intel has recently released the 865PE chipset which if I'm not mistaken is what you are looking at in your motherboard description. This chipset has what they call an 800Mhz FSB (front side bus) which is the bus that interfaces the memory (among other things) to the CPU. This 800 MHz number is really a marketing ploy. The FSB is really 200MHz. They get the 800MHz from the memory type. The DDR Ram (DDR = Double Data Rate) performs a transaction on each clock edge. Therefore they get it to 400Mhz with DDR ram. To get to 800Mhz, the 865 chipset uses a Dual DDR setup or DDRAM . So, I believe you are on the right track in looking for this comibination of chipset, motherboard and ram.

In addition, I'd seriously consider getting the P-IV 2.4C, 2.6C, 2.8C, or 3.0C CPU chip. These are also recent Intel releases that support the Hyper Threading technology that the 865PE chipset supports. This should get you better multi-processing response from your system.

This link will give you a review of Intel's 875 chipset which is the higher priced higher functionality version of the 865PE. I think the only thing lacking in the 865PE is the PAT technology but the review should refer you to another link that talks about how Asus got the PAT technology to work in the 865.

http://www.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20030414/i875p-01.html

That link should explain a lot about DDRAM, hyper threadiing, PAT, Serial ATA drives, etc. In my opinion, a very good basis for a video encoding machine. At least that's what I'm looking at now.

I hope this has been some help to you.

Ron

[Str8Rippin]

This is an except from ocaddiction.com:

"Front Side Bus Explained

Some of you may be a little confused by the way Intel implements their Front Side Bus and System Bus Speed. Without getting too extremely technical, I will try to break it down in layman's terms. Initially, the Pentium 4 line of processors were introduced with a 100MHz FSB and 400MHz System Bus. The 400MHz comes from the "quad pumped" data transfer rates which mean the data can be sent 4x per clock cycle, which in turn effectively makes the transfer rates as fast as 400MHz. Additionally, a "quad pumped" FSB of 133 will give you 533MHz as we have seen with the "B" model CPU's, and finally with the latest "C" model CPU, we have a 200/800MHz Bus.

Finally, what we hope to see here with the new "C" version CPU's with the 200MHz FSB is a higher level of performance while retaining a similar clock speed of previous processors, notably the 3.06B/533. On paper, the 800MHz FSB sounds great and your initial thoughts are that we will definitely see performance increases, but without proper implementation of this new specification we could see some serious bottlenecks. Here is how Intel does it. The 800MHz FSB will offer a minimum of 6.4GB/s of bandwidth. Currently, the technology for a memory interface that will support that does not exist, it's simply too fast. So if we can't have faster memory, lets just widen the memory interface which will in turn increase overall bandwidth. With the new 865 and 875 chipsets Intel used the 64-bit DDR memory interface of the 845PE chipset, and added a second 64-bit channel in addition to adding DDR400 support (PC3200). 128-bit memory interface (64-bit x 2) with DDR400 gives us the 6.4GB/s of memory bandwidth with is balanced with the 800MHz FSB. NO alien technology, no gimmicks, no tricks, just plain and simple a MUCH wider path to give us more overall bandwidth."

Here is a round up of 20 865/875 motherboards from Anandtech

VIA has a new P4 chipset that looks like it'll give Intel's chipsets a run for their money. [H]ardOCP has a preview.

[LanEvo7]

I'd stay away from VIA chipsets for the P4. In the past they've been very buggy. Their chipsets for the AMD are ok though.