What Mpeg Encoder Should i Use with HT?

[TioSolid]

Hi, i have a pentium 4 HT, so what mpeg encoder should i use to get the most from my processor?, since its hyperthreaded and this could speed up the things a little

[jagabo]

Hyperthreading adds very little performance. Some programs even run slower with hyperthreading enabled -- TMPGEnc comes to mind.

[TioSolid]

i just asked because while encoding my videos, the cpu charge never reaches 100%, only 50, 70%..

[jagabo]

i just asked because while encoding my videos, the cpu charge never reaches 100%, only 50, 70%..

When running a single threaded encoder on a hyperthreaded CPU you will see total CPU usage around 50 percent. That doesn't mean that there is another 50 percent of the CPU available since the two virtual CPUs share the same hardware internally. Switching to a multithreaded encoder will usually only get you 10 to 20 percent more performance.

TMPGEnc lets you enable or disable multithreading. A test encode on my hyperthreaded 2.8 GHz P4 took 107 seconds (50 percent CPU usage in Task Manager) using a single thread. That was reduced to 90 seconds (100 percent CPU usage) when using multithreading (a 15 percent reduction in encoding time).

Dual core CPUs have two real cores (they may share L2 cache and/or other components) and can perform much better. I ran the same test encode on my Athlon 64 X2 3800+ and it took 106 seconds with one thread (50 percent CPU usage), 53 seconds when using two threads (100 percent CPU usage). So the rendering time was cut by 50 percent.

On the other hand, TMPGEnc is know to be one of the slowest MPEG encoders. I played around with the CinemaCraft Encoder free trial a while back on my A64 system. It would render faster with both cores enabled but the difference wasn't as dramatic as with TMPGEnc. I recall total CPU usage with two cores ran around 70 percent, and the reduction in encoding time was proportional. But CCE was still faster than TMPGEnc under both conditions.