I just upgraded CPUs and thought some folks might be interested in the results.

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Mobo : MSI K7Turbo-R Limited Edition, RAID version
RAM : 256MB, running at bus speed on mobo
Drives: 20 gig main + 60 gig capture
Software: TMPGEnc v2.53, VDub 1.4.9
OS: WinXP

Source material: 22 minutes of DV
Processing : Frameserved from VDub to TMPGEnc
Target format : SVCD, using default template in TMPGEnc.


Original CPU: Athlon T-bird 1.2 Ghz
Bus speed: 100 Mhz
Time to encode: 2 hr 40 min

New CPU: AthlonXP 1800+
(Note: my mobo reported this processor running at 1150 Mhz)
Bus speed: 100 Mhz
Time to encode: 1 hr 50 min

New CPU: AthlonXP 1800+
Bus speed: 133 Mhz
Time to encode: 1 hr 23 min

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Fascinating isn't it? The new processor, running at a 50 Mhz slower speed, shaved 50 minutes off the encoding time. My belief is that this is due to the improved architecture of the AthlonXP processors, along with the use of SSE instructions by TMPGEnc.

Once I upped the bus speed to 133 Mhz, the encoding time dropped further by 27 minutes. Heh, now I can do some more noise filtering and still have the process take less time than the 1.2 Ghz CPU took if I want.