Will a better video card increase encoding time

[bbeiler]

Currently I have a ATI all-in-wonder radeon (AGP 32 MB). My other configurations are a 1.6 ghz P4, 512 RAM, All P4's advertise a 400 Megahertz internal bus, however, mine is only showing up as a 100 mhz internal bus on the Bios. My friend has an athlon xp 1800 with 256 ddr ram. We both use TMPGE at highest quality with 2 Pass VBR to convert DVD's to SVCD. He can encode a 2 hour movie in about 11 hours, where it will take me up to 22 hours. The only thing I can think to warrent the difference in speed is that he has a 64 mb video card and mine is 32 mb. Yes I know his "Relative" clock speed is 200 Mhz faster, however, I don't think that should cut his time in half. Does anybody have any input on this matter.

Thanks

Brent

PS. Yes my DMA is turned on.

[BJ_M]

the video card has nothing to do with encoding speed at all.. you could use a 4 meg ati rage and the speed would be the same ..

your friend has a faster cpu , faster memory and a faster system bus speed.

100 is correct for what you see -- its 100 x 4 quad pumped or something they call it ..

[pacoreguenga]

yeah, the video capture card does not change things. Also note that "ddr" stands for "double data rate" which means faster memory. Also the bus is faster.
I have a P4 at 1.4GHz but my bus runs at 800MHz, which lets me encode very fast, indeed. When I encode high quality film transfers I get around 14-16 hours encoding time at my preferred TMPgenc settings for a 2 hour movie.

[bbeiler]

Actually, I believe I just researched and have answered some of my own questions. Thanks, both of you for answering my question of the video card. I didn't think it had anything to do with encoding speed. However, I did a little bit of research on the DMA thing. My selection boxes were set at DMA, however, neither cd-drive was recognizing it. (both drives on secondary cable-select). The primary said DMA mode 2 and the slave is a zip without DMA capabilities. So I searched the internet and found something about the registery needing to be adjusted as well those selection boxes. I made the adjustment. Everything was the same except now it said DMA ultra mode 5 for the Harddrive. "Ok", I'm thinking, "That's a little better" (I guess the higher the number the better. I then began to think about my internal configuration. I did a little more research and found out that the zip drive being on the same IDE channel will slow down the Harddrive. (It will only run as fast as the weakest link). I then opened my computer and disconnected the zip drive (I don't use it that much anyway). I also took my two drives off of cable select and made the writer my master and the DVD-Rom my slave. I booted the computer, and went to the DMA boxes. Both drives the DMA was activated. My life just got better :P. In fact, I am burning at 16x as I am writing this and I was surfing the net like a crazy man, with no slow down what-so-ever. I am very curious as to how the encoding will go.

I still have one problem. When I click my computer the DVD-ROM drive still has the zip drive logo, but the drive still works. How do I change that?

Also, pacoreguenga, I believe the 800 MHz that you are refering to is the RAM bus. I think the fastest internal bus is the new P4's with 533 MHz.

BJ_M: You stated that my friend has a faster internal bus. However, I believe the 1st generation Athlon xp's have a 266 MHz bus. If what you said is true: "100 is correct for what you see -- its 100 x 4 quad" (which makes complete sense,now that you mentioned that.) Wouldn't I have the faster bus? Just a thought. I very curious how fast I can rip and encode now.

Anyway, thanks for the replies. I just started using this forum. It's pretty cool

Brent