Optimal Hardware Specification/ system Performance ?

[DVDtalk]

I work for a University & in the lab PCs we see that we need to convert
& capture in differnt File Formats & then compress data using software
Like virtualdub or TMPGENC , etc. We also burn DVDs using ULEAD
DVD workshop on a Pioneer A04 DVD-R.

The above process of converting & Burning is very Time processing
So I wanted to know whether a DUAL processor would improve the
performance or do we need to Upgrade memory

We currently are Running a DELL precision 410 pentium 3 500 Mhz
512 MB RAM , 32 GB SCSI hard disk, NVDIA Graphics card
& Dazzle Video Capture card.

We are planning to go for a DELL Precision 530 workstation
xeon 1.8 GHz 512 MB Ram , so whether a Dual processor machine again would help speed up the process.

I also wanted to clarify whether the DVD burning applications &
Compression software make use of a Dual Processor.

Thanks

[vcdfreak]

TMPGEnc support multi-processor system which in a benchmark I saw improves the encoding time by 20-30% (Dual Athlon MP/XP system) compared to a similar single processor setup.

Usually adding memory won't help much as encoding is a processor-hungry process.


Dual processor systems also make software like Adobe Photoshop 6.0, Premiere 6.0, ...those that support multi-thread processing, run faster. Those that are not supported, it might run slightly slower or equal.


If you go for P4, get Adobe Photoshop 7.0. It's optimized for it.


Hope this helps.

[DVDtalk]

Thanks VCDFreak , I really appreciate your advice