are you allowed to browse the web or do anything on your pc

[zdog]

does working on your pc affect anything while encoding a movie

[Anonymous65]

Only that it will take longer to encode the movie. If using Tmpeg, I have had several crashes when I use the PC for other things when encoding, and I had to start over again. So, it depends on how stable your PC is, and the quality of the software you're using.

[choxie]

Actually, I am doing it right now. I run several programs at once, as long as I dont reboot, it keeps on running fine. Like he said it goes slower, but as long as your system is nice and stable it'll be fine.

[pocholin]

That is one of the advantages of having two processors.
If you have a program that doesn't use the two processors it doesn't affect doing other stuff. If you have a program that uses both you can still do other stuff since no program uses the two processors at 100% each.

On the other hand if you have only one Pentium processor you can still do other stuff. if you have an AMD processor, good luck doing anything else, it takes for ever to open programs like outlook express or IE.

Reason why it is worth paying the difference and get a Pentium (although in single tasks it is slower than AMD at the same frequency)

Alfonso

[JTurbo]

I have an athlon1.4ghz running win2k and i can surf, burnCDs, even watch a video clip while using TMPGEnc to encode a SVCD. My apps dont start up any slower either. I have 512meg DDR ram.

Athlon in and of itself is no slower than pentium at multi-tasking. Its all the OS and background software you use.

JTurbo

[THE RIPPER]

ACUALLY AS I SPEAK I'M ENCODING 2 SEPERATE DIVX FILES AND DOWNLOADING FROM MORPHEUS.I HAVE A 1.4 GIG ATHLON WITH 512 OF RAM AND RUNNING ME.

[Platin]

It very much depends on which tasks you do. I have a Athlon 1.2GHz and XP. While encoding using TMPGEnc, I don't notice any lag at all while doing other stuff like burning, surfing, watching divx, svcd or even playing NBA Live 2001.

But when I use CinemaCraft Encoder to encode SVCD, the system runs much slower. So slow that it takes 1 or 2 seconds to open an IE window. Then again, CCE is the fastest SVCD encoder around and if you want speed from the program, you have to expect it to hug as much CPU-cycles as it can get.

[pocholin]

It all depends on the applications, but I built an AMD 1.2 Ghz for my daughter and if it is printing everything else becomes really really slow, even the mouse (usb), that never happened on my prior system a PIII 700 mhz, using the same printer.
Same goes for watching video clips on that AMD. Or for example printing and opening an office program.
The new one is using the same printer as the old one, same amount of memory (but faster memory), faster HD, same OS (winMe). But to my expirience Pentium was better at multitasking. I'm not trying to compare it to the one I have right now because it would not be fair, I have a dual PIII 1 Ghz on W2K, all my comparison is to the old 700 PIII.