Processor Question

[vandakeg]

I am just starting to price out a new system that I am going to build. But I was just wondering about processors.

All I do is video editing in Adobe Premiere and After Effects, so almost all of my budget will be geared towards a motherboard and processor(s) in order to get the fastest possible render times.

How comparable is a dual Xeon 3.02ghz system to a Hyper Threading 3.02 Pentium4? Is Hyperthreading really going to give me double the rendering speed?

The dual Xeon system is kind of what I've had my mind set on since I started pricing systems out, but if I can get comparable speed from a HT P4, and save myself about $600, it might be worth it.

Many of my renders are very effect oriented, and take FOREVER on my 1.4ghz P4 (sometimes 300 hours of straight rendering for a 60 minute video.) So, as you can see, every ounce of speed is necessary. If a Dual Xeon system is only 20% faster. it still may be worth the extra money, as that could translate to a couple days less of render time.

I guess my question boils down to this: is a Dual 3.02ghz Xeon system going to give me render times more than 20% faster than a single P4 3.02 w/ HT?

[rallynavvie]

Whoa, where are you finding dual Xeon 3 gigs for the same cost as a 3.06 P4? A 3.06 P4 with 800 MHz bus runs around $350-400 for the single processor. EACH 3.06 Xeon (with 533 bus I believe) runs just under $500. SO the HT would be $400 whereas the Xeon system would be $1000 just for CPUs. However 2 3 GHz CPUs are going to be roughly twice as fast as the single HT at the same clock if you're using something that utilizes dual CPUs. A dual 3.06 GHz Xeon system would be horribly fast, arguably the fastest (32-bit) machine on the market right now. However if you're referring to having 2 ~1.5 GHz Xeon's to make up the clock speed of the HT I'm not sure who would win out. I've seen an HT in action and it's not that impressive. I'd still take the dual CPU option over an HT.

I use AfterEffects and Premiere as well on my system and my rendering times are pretty minimal. I've seen 6 hours on an encode once, but that's about the longest. What are you running that would take 300 hours? Even on a 1.4 GHz CPU that seems excessive. If you want to go a cheaper route you could get something similar to mine. Tyan makes some better dual CPU boards than what I have that are really good. Maybe you'd even want to think about getting onboard SCSI so you can use faster drives for NLE.

[obiron]

vandakeg

I recently did an encode comparison using TMPGEnc between a dual 2G Xeon and a single 3G HT p4. I used a 1 minute avi clip; my goal was to compare hyper threading to dual processors; admittedly, not an apples to apples comparison but I thought the results were kinda lame, (i.e. not sure what they tell me). If you're interested I posted results here:
http://webpages.charter.net/kylerh/Performance/perf.htm

[vandakeg]

Thanks for the replies guys.

@rally - I realize the Dual Xeon system is going to be more expensive, I am just trying to figure out if the higher price is worth it (which it would be if a dual Xeon system would render twice as fast as a HT'ing P4 with the same clock speed.) If I go the duallie route, i'll be gettign a supermicro board, which would be about $200 more than an asus board that i'd get for the HT'ing P4. So the Xeon system, including the mobo and 2 cpus, would cost me about $800 more total.

I use the Magic Bullet plugin for AE, which is an incredibly involved plugin, and very slow effect. The SteadyMove plugin that came free with Premiere Pro also seems to be horribly slow on my system. I just did a test on a 30 minute wedding video, and let it go over-night. 14 hours after it started rendering, it claimed the remaining time was 634 hours! This is after a fresh install of XP, and only having PPro and AE installed!

@obiron - Thanks for the link. Am I reading the chart right? Did the HT'ing P4 render twice as fast as the Dual Xeon system?

[obiron]

vandakeg wrote:

Am I reading the chart right? Did the HT'ing P4 render twice as fast as the Dual Xeon system?

In the case of disabling TMPGEnc multithreading option and the hyper threading option, it appears, yes. However, as I said previously, this may not be apples to apples. It's a 2G dual Xeon vs. a single 3G P4 HT processor. These are what I have to use at work and at home, respectively. By turning off the multithreading, I think we are comparing raw processor speed. And by disabling multithreading, I believe that only one processor is used in the dual system. So we're talking a 1.77x (4:00 -> 2:15, just to take one example) decrease in time vs. a 1.5x increase in speed.

When using multithreading and hyper threading, there's a 1.36x decrease in time (2:21 -> 1:44) . This is still repectable.

What I forgot to mention on web page is that the dual Xeon has RDRAM not sure what speed, and my home system has dual channel DDR Ram giving an effective FSB of 800MHz. If I used a dual 3G Xeon I believe the time would have been faster on the dual 3G.

My experience at work is that the dual processors are great if the software you're using knows how to take advantage of it. TMPGEnc can do this. It can also run multiple threads on a single CPU system. Also, there is pitifully little dual processor aware software out there, so you might want to keep this in mind.

I believe that the type and speed of memory and the speed of your disk drives are equally, if not more, important decision when putting together a system.

[vandakeg]

I agree that there aren't many programs that take advantage of dual processors, but After Effects and Premiere are about 90% of what I use my computer for, and they both do well with dual processors.

As far as HD speed goes. I'll be running a (4) 120GB drives, in a SATA Raid Array, set up for striping. So the speed should be there, although that will only improve the performance of the program itself, it should have nothing to do with render speeds.

[rallynavvie]

Using similar settings in the same version of TMPGEnc I was able to encode faster that a friend with a 3.06 HT. He didn't have as much RAM but I think his was dual channel so he actually should have been faster in that respect. That was when I still had 1900 MPs in my machine so effectively 400 MHz faster in combined clock speed. I'm assuming the faster Xeons would be that much faster.

Tis true Adobe does like to utilize dual CPUs with their products. That's the main reason I ended up getting a dual CPU system over a fast single processor. The only time it isn't as fast as a single is when I'm using programs that can't use 2 processors, such as games.

If you go for the dual Xeon computer let me know how it works for you. I'd like to see how well it works for Premiere and AfterEffects.

[vandakeg]

I'll be sure to let you know how it goes. I'm thinking about waiting a few months now though... I heard rumors about new chips coming out before christmas, meaning the current prices will fall. If this is true, I'll definitely be waiting until that happens.... seems we've been stuck at 3ghz for awhile now!

[mrtristan]

Seems like you're leaning to the dual processing side. Since you're not looking for pure speed, I think you'll be happy. I have a dual Athlon MP 2000+ machine and I was a little dissapointed at first, but I've come to love it.

In terms of general speed, the single cpu at a higher clock rate will seem faster. However, I have trouble bogging down this system, when I multitask. Encoding two clips at the same time hardly adds to the individual encoding time of each single clip. In other words, if each clip would have taken 1 hour to encode individually, doing them together would only take about ten minutes more. That's where Tmpgenc shines. I'm guessing that Adobe Premiere would have similar results.

I also burn cds, listen to mp3s, and surf the net, all while encoding two clips at a time. I never feel like the system is bogging down.

I know people with their 3Ghz HT P4s will tell you that they can do the same thing and I don't doubt them. I don't have any experience with P4s, so I don't have any basis of comparison. I can tell you that I'm more than satisfied with this system, though.

[halcyon026]

Theres more to rendering speed than a CPU. The HDD and Ram are just as important. Any Info the system runs has to pass through all of these things. Getting a faster serial ata or scsi hdd with a good amount of cache ie: 8mb, and some Corsair ram will be as much an improvement as a CPU upgrade. And Dual channel is always bada$$.

Just make sure the motherboard you get can go as fast as the other hardware you get. Like the FSB speeds and the speed of corsair ram and the speed of your HDD. Unless youre useing a controller card. Then put your drive with the OS on it as master on the system and the fast drive on the controller card and make a swap file 125% the size of your ram in a fat16 partition. Thats double the amount of ram and another 25%. Thats so if youre on XP it would complain about running out of space. and Defrag the drive before making the swap. You can use partition magic to make a new fat16 part. Then defrag the swap file. make sure tell windows where your new swap file is and tell it to stop useing the old one.

[vandakeg]

Actually, processor speed is the only significant factor in rendering video. As long as you have enough ram, and a decent hard drive. A 10,000 rpm scsi hard drive will not render video any faster than a 7200 rpm IDE hard drive. Similarly, 2gb of ram will not render video faster than 1gb, although it will allow for multi-tasking w/o as many problems.

That is not to say that better and faster ram or hard drives will have no effect on the program that is being used for the rendering, it just won't have an effect on the render times themselves.

and make a swap file 125% the size of your ram in a fat16 partition

Fat16?? I haven't used Fat16 since Win95! I thought WinXP only recognized NTFS file systems.

[halcyon026]

Sorry i think i may not have been clear on the swap file stuff...
make the space on the disk double your amount of ram plus 25%. Then tell windows to use double the amount on the new fat16 part. IE. if you have 256mb of ram you would use 512mb on the swap file disk partition you made. But the total size of the disk partition would be 512mb plus 25% which is another 128mb. so the disk partition would be 640mb. then you make sure windows uses 512 - 512. It has a minimum and Maximum size, you just want it to be 512 on both.

The normal way windows will use its swap file is messy. It uses the same drive that all your programs are on and it gets all fraged up. Plus it sets the minimum and maximum sizes different... Then windows actually monitors the system and changes how much it thinks it will need... Needless to say this slows it down and also gets even more fraged as it jumps from one swap size to another.

The reason for useing fat16 is because its faster. now I know most of you are thinking, NOOOO fat32 or NTFS is faster than fat16, while fat32 does open apps about 50% faster i think it is, It is not faster as far as access times and adding info and deleteing it. IE useing it as RAM which is what a Swap file is basically.
HAHA, man this thread isnt even about swap files and here I am going off about it. Im just bored at work and needed to do something . Later!

[Solarjetman]

I thought WinXP only recognized NTFS file systems.

Windows XP can handle NTFS, FAT32, FAT16, and FAT12 (floppy disk format).

It can only be installed to a NTFS or FAT32 though.

[vandakeg]

Windows XP can handle NTFS, FAT32, FAT16, and FAT12 (floppy disk format).

It can only be installed to a NTFS or FAT32 though.

Whoa! I thought you were only suuposed to learn ONE new thing a day... today I learned TWO!

[RabidDog]

maybe save your money on hardware and buy some better software 634 hours for an encode! tell imageworks to render their own stuff. :P
what about the new athlon 64 , surely 64bit proc will handle this better. Ask them (AMD) nicely and they will lend you a proc (maybe)

[vitualis]

Have a look at http://www.tomshardware.com for reviews and benchmarks on the new Athlon64.

IMHO, unless you are after the status factor, I don't think it is worth the premium. Go for a P4 with HT.

Regards.

[rallynavvie]

I don't think the 64-bit CPUs are going to be any faster this soon. I think once there's a native OS for it and apps made for that OS then we'll see far faster encoding times. Until then it's basically just a quick dual CPU machine (since I think the Opterons are all still dual, not single, CPU systems), not the fastest. And I do think having 2 of the fastest Xeons is going to be totally worth the extra cash over the single HT. Yeah, it'll be a bit of a status symbol, but man will that thing move when running several Adobe apps at the same time.

Oh man, now I'm kinda leaning toward getting one of these. Too bad I just blew my spending money on the Adobe Video Collection

[indolikaa]

I would take dual Xeons over a single HyperThreader.

[vandakeg]

Thanks for the input guys... but.. I just thoght of another option.

There has been a lot of success OverClocking 3.02ghz P4s to 3.8ghz, still keeping it stable, and very usable. Should I even consider OverClocking as an option? Other than the Processor, will that void the warranties of anything else?

My computer, for the most part, is on 24/7, for months on end, and that is the only reason I'd be a bit hesitant to OC. However, if I were to do it, I'd do it right, and get the best cooling system I could (the system I'd build would be the same one built here at Tom's Hardware.

[RabidDog]

I would take dual Xeons over a single HyperThreader.

two "real" processors are going to be better than 1 real and 1 virtual most of the time. what about dual p4 (not HT)?

[rallynavvie]

No support for dual P4, the Xeons are the multiprocessor version of the P4.

I was just thinking about the overclocking issue. The safe overclockers are using a VapoChill I'm guessing. Imagine what you could do overclocking two 3 GHz Xeons with that system You wouldn't need to nearly increase the speed on them like the single P4s to achieve mind-boggling speeds, plus the possibility of running two of them up to 800 MHz FSB for a massive combined bus speed. You'd need a serious board to keep up with all that, dual channel RAM a requirement for sure.

If I didn't have to blow $5k on a DSR-250 this winter I'd be looking at upgrading my computer to the dual Xeon refrigerated system. Maybe next year. Or maybe for Christmas if I'm really good

[vandakeg]

Rally - I've never even seen anyone OC a Xeon, so I never even considered it. This opens up option #4... has anyone here actually OC'd a Xeon? I'd love to get some input!

[flaninacupboard]

surely if you wish to build a super computer then disabling virtual memory and installing 2 gigis of ram would be a better option? or is it impossible to disable virtual mem under XP? what happened to good old ram drives? you cxould create a 1gig ram drive on startup and use that for a Vmem swap file....no?

[rallynavvie]

What's wrong with 2GB of RAM?