Is this system any good for video encoding?

[carrachu]

Hi there I just went and bought a new system today and was wondering what how you felt about it for encoding video.
Athlon 3100+ ECS L7VMM3 266 Front Side Bus,Powerlink 500 p/s,512 DDR2100 Ram @ 266Mhz,Case is a Chen Ming 601AE (Blue)comes with 3 80mm fans and room for one more in the front bottom of case,also I have added a 18" Cold Cathode,2 Sunbeam Dual Device IDE Cables w/EL Wires (Blue),80gig 8 mb Cache Maxtor Drive,LG 52x32x52 CD Burner,Lite-On 451s DVD-+R/RW (Has hacked firmware to 851s now burning at 8x no problems),also running a 12 gig Western Digital as slave to encode to that drive.
OS is Windows XP Pro
Just wanna get some input as to wether or not I should add some more ram or anything else to factor in?
Here is a pic of the case,will up the complete computer when I borrow a digital camera.
Thanks

[mickle]

Can't imagine that you will have much trouble encoding with that system.

[Faustus]

Athlon 3100+ ECS L7VMM3 266 Front Side Bus

I highly suggest you pull that heatsink off and find the part on the chip... because even if a 3100+ existed it WOULD NOT be 266FSB it should be at least a 333FSB, something is going on. I think you were sold an over clocked chip.

[carrachu]

Flaystus I will definetly take a look at it but I think it is overclocked because ecs sells the boards factory tuned meaning overclocked I guess?
But I will definetly look into it. Thanks

[rallynavvie]

RAM isn't a necessity when doing encoding. 512MB is a good amount when running XP. You may still want another 7200rpm hard drive in that setup. Which motherboard is it running? I would also get rid of that CD burner and replace it with a LiteOn 166 DVD-ROM if you're planning on doing any ripping. Not only is it a good all-purpose drive it actually rips at a good pace. You can use the DVD burner if you need to burn a CD after all.

[Faustus]

Flaystus I will definetly take a look at it but I think it is overclocked because ecs sells the boards factory tuned meaning overclocked I guess?
But I will definetly look into it. Thanks

carrachu any board worth is own weight can be tuned to overclock a CPU, I dont see ECS tuning the board to do such. Likely they did and call it "factory tuned" meaning "We overclocked it for you and sold it at a higher price"

You must remember ECS doesn't sell the CPU with the board...they just sale systemboards. And i've never heard of a System board that overclocks a CPU by default.

[carrachu]

Hey there Flaystus,I have found a few pages with the 3100+
http://www.coreyscomputing.com/products.asp?start=25&step=25&Abr=220&Num=3
here is another one,towards the bottom,sorry don't have the direct link for it,
www.cbit.ca
and one more.
www.computeravenue.mb.ca
From what it says it is a Athlon 1600 factory tuned to 3100.
Anyways I will take off the fan and get the info from the chip if any.Then we'll see what it says and maybe get something from Amd's website about it?
None the less it seems to be doing very good? LOL

[holistic]

...1600 CPU TUNED TO 3100+ ....

What absolute bullshit. Sounds like they tuned your bank account.
A 1600+ is 1.40 GHz . That 3100+ sounds like a model number/marketing gimmick.
Elitegroup L7VMM3 PRO3100A+ is an Athlon @1900MHZ

Also , researching a little and looking at the ECS webpage it would appear you have a mobile chip soldered to the board. (sold as mobo/cpu ass'y)


To answer question : Video Encoding is processor intensive : The faster the processor the faster the encode . 1.4 Ghz will get the job done...but slower then most.
(*** slight variations may occur with different encoding applications and the way they make use of L1/L2 cache and hyperthreading)

[Faustus]

UGGGGH!
Why the hell do companies do crap that this. Its more then just wrong... it creates confusion, and its lame. Greedy is what it is.

If its running fine the you fine, if its fast enough for you then its fast enough. But if it really is a 1600 Mobile chip I wouldn't count on it out performing my actual 3000+.

[rallynavvie]

I ran mobile 2500s in my machine to emulate MP 2400s. The advantage of the mobile Athlons is they draw a lot less volts from the board so increasing their clock via core voltage is much easier. You basically just run it up to the max voltage allowed by the board. In my case that would have been in the range of MP 2800s or better but since I wanted stability over speed I just went with a pretty moderate setting.

But those 2500 are out and the old 1900s back in since I was looking to sell the rig to get an MPEG card for the new one and wanted to return it to OEM specs.

[mujahid7ia]

I ran mobile 2500s in my machine to emulate MP 2400s. The advantage of the mobile Athlons is they draw a lot less volts from the board so increasing their clock via core voltage is much easier. You basically just run it up to the max voltage allowed by the board. In my case that would have been in the range of MP 2800s or better but since I wanted stability over speed I just went with a pretty moderate setting.

But those 2500 are out and the old 1900s back in since I was looking to sell the rig to get an MPEG card for the new one and wanted to return it to OEM specs.

plus Athlon MPs aren't multiplier locked.

[carrachu]

Hey there,
Okay I have phone a few computer stores today to find out more about this chip.It's a Athlon XP 1.9 (3100+Pro)
It's suppose to be built around a mobile chip.
They tell me they are very good boards and haven't had any returns on them yet....anyway I think this will get the job done.
The only thing I'm really concerned with is the heat from this thing.If it's overclocked then it's gonna throw some high heat.The comp guy tells me the stock fan is built for such a thing butI think I will just replace it with a bigger one?
and the bus speed is still only 266 but there suppose to be getting higher on the next 2-3 models?

[rallynavvie]

Water-cool it or get a Thermalright SLK-900 heatsink and slap a 92mm fan over it.