Dual processors and encoding

[vermilion]

Just about every day I find myself doing some type of video work on my PC. Either I'm endcoding a video, or capturing a video from VHS. Becuase of this I'm not able to do any gaming at all, and my PC is tied up doing video work all do. So I was wondering, if I had a dual processor set up, would I be able to capture, or endcode video, and do gaming at the sametime without messing up the video? With a dual processor set up of at least 2.4 GHz

[RabidDog]

NO not unless you are playing chess ludo or minesweeper any modern game will suck up all the memory bandwidth and processor time. While it may not "BREAK" your encoding, it would certainly cause any video capturing to be a complete mess. Better off to get a cheapish 2nd system and either use that for gaming or encoding. You only need 1 keyboard and monitor remember (KVM).

[vermilion]

Awww man, that sucks. So, this wouldn't even work with 2 gigs of memory

[RabidDog]

try it p4 2.4 hyper plus TWO gigs of memory could work... but memory bandwidth would be the problem IMHO... but go For it... what have you got to lose??

[indolikaa]

vermilion,

The RabidDog has spoken wisely. 'Tis better to try the 2-computer/KVM approach and your results will provide much more happiness. We here at The Ranch actually do the same thing you have discussed: capturing and processing video while gaming.

We considered a dual Xeon system. Instead, we built two machines. The first is for capturing the video, whether it be DV.AVI, ATI AIW or even the good-ol uncompressed AVI. The second machine crunches the video into a presentable and video-legal format. Both machines cost less than what we priced a dual processor system, and we even squeezed in a monitor that the two machines could share.

You'd be surprised how much it doesn't cost to do it this way. I was.

.indolikaa.

[vermilion]

What do you mean by KVM?

[indolikaa]

KVM allows you to use one monitor with multiple computers. You plug your keyboard/mouse/VGA cables into the box and then connect as many computers to the box as the box will handle. You can then switch between those computers. Think of it as having, say, 8 computers but only needing one keyboard, monitor and mouse to run them all.

[housepig]

I'll second Indolikka - a separate computer and a KVM is the deal - my video box is not slowed down by having a bunch of other desktop software clogging it, and my general use box isn't tied up capturing or encoding video.

[simkiss]

I'm running dual 2.8 Xeons with Hyperthreading off. I have 3GB of RDRAM and I use SCSI 160 drives.

I have no problem processing or editing video while anything else is running. In fact, a typical sitation would be to have video processing going on (never uses more than 55% of system CPU time), Flash MX open (hog), Photoshop(hog), Internet Explorer, Encarta 2004(hog), Notepad, Word, and MusicMatch(memory hog too) running all at the same time. Never had it crash once from running multiple applications. The time it takes to encode/decode is much faster with dual processors, so I vote for this option if you'll be doing a lot.

Also, what's another $350 for a 2.0GHz spare w/ KVM? Probably worth more than that to you if you're asking these questions.

[indolikaa]

simkiss,

A question of curiosity. I was not aware of an Intel platform with dual Xeon HT processing cores that supported RDRAM. It was my understanding that Intel shifted to DDR Dual Channel memory for Xeons processors with caches greater than 256Kb.

What board are you using?

EDIT: Never mind. Intel 860 Chipset. Shit, how did I miss that?!

[vermilion]

I have seen some borads that support RD RAM, but they are more then the ones that support dual DDR. simkiss, do you have AIM, Yahoo, or anything like that?