CPU speed : its never at 100% ?

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

FatRakoon

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This is something that has bugged me on and off for some time, but I have not really worried about it too much, with PCs today being as nippy as they are, but it was drawn back to me again this morning...

What I am doing is all perfectly legal so please dont have a go if you think otherwise cos its not naughty.

I am working on some video files and I have a program that strips DVDs of any menus and extra languages etc, and this program is a single core program which is a bit irritating, but I can run a ton of them and work on a handful of different videos at once and so thats cool with me.

Now, I was doing 4 of them just now, and I started thr first one and it said it will be done in 2 minutesand whatever seconds, and then I started the other 3 and when I looked they were all saying 6 minutes +

I then opened the task manager to see the CPU % and I am only twiddling my thumbs at around 11% ?

What the hell is the CPU doing for the other 89% for it to be so awful?

As a quick test, I re-ran the very same files and this time, I forced each copy of the program into 2 cores each and it went much better but I was still only floating half way?

Surely there is something that I can do to get the thing to prioritize apps better than it is doing?

I have set tasks to be hiigher priority, but that only works on one app and the rest of the system kind of flounders until that app is closed, and I have of course enabled all cores and that does not seem to do all that much really.
 
I would expect your CPU is sat around waiting for 89% of the time because of IO.

Open Performance Monitor and have a look at what other factors are being hit harder than your CPU when you hit the Go button.
 
as SpOOn says, it is an i7 so maxxing a singe core corresponds to 100/8~11%.
sounds as though the program even if you launch it mutiple times is only running concurrently perhaps due to licensing limitation of program or temporary files shared between the multiple runs (so one will not start until other has finished)
 
skyripper said:
I would expect your CPU is sat around waiting for 89% of the time because of IO.

Open Performance Monitor and have a look at what other factors are being hit harder than your CPU when you hit the Go button.
Click to expand...

I'd guess this too. Maybe bottlenecks elsewhere with IO or disk read/write?
 
Ok, multiple replies... Lets see..

Ok what program? - This one in particular is called DVD2ONE. Fairly old now, but I really like its simplicity.

I have seen the issues with most apps on most multicored systems where it seems to limit its entire CPU power to that of one core. This in itself is NOT a worry most of the time because it IS a single threaded app and I can expect that to happen, and this is why most of the time, I can run these apps more than once and have it chew up one core each app, but what I was seeing this time, was that I was running 4 copies of it and the entire CPU % was still floating at 10-11%

As for bottlenecks with the disk, I was doing the convertion from SSD to RAM DISK and so that was not possible here.

As another mention, I used this app for years and I even ran it on my barton giving it 4 copies running and it did it like a bullet... My main AMD of Intel are not that much quicker with this program and thats a seriously annoying thing... Probably cos maybe it does not use the extra features of newer CPUs and just uses raw power.
 
Has it ever worked properly on your computer?

It's an old program, maybe it doesn't like the instruction set from the Skylake, big differences between that and a Barton.

If I had some files at work to test with I would.
 
sympton could correspond to DVD2ONE program somehow getting a processor affinity that you need to reset, or more likely, since it is curious that execution time of one job gets pushed out as you start another in parallel, does tool have an option to cause jobs to communicate and limit combined cpu resources .. no - you would know if there were such an option.
 
Given a quick google of DVD2ONE and multi-thread mostly brings up posts from 2008 and earlier, I'd say it probably never was coded to run multi-threaded, and that subsequent runs of the same program are communicating back to a single first process and running in one queue (probably due to some crappy open source codec embedded in it).

Do you actually want DVD output (ie. VOBs or an ISO) at the end of this? Or is this to then put into another processor to turn into something smaller after?
 
Its always been a great program and has never let me down, but I do admit that itsbeen a hell of a while since I have used it, so how knows.

DVD output.

No, what I had done previously, is got all the memebers of our group to give me their footage and I then combine them all into files and then we put those into a DVD and use TMPGDVDEnc to put basic Menus on.

We were limited to 4.4GB that way, but for most things its fine.

But now Im going through our old disks and Im backing them up, but Im using DVD2ONE to strip the videos from the disks seperately, and then I am converting them into MPG so that everyone can now watch them in their phones or Tablets etc

So no, keeping them as VOBs is not anything I actually need, but this way is how I have done it for years... If I had one single program that does what I need, then thats great, but I have found that specific programs that just do specific jobs have done their jobs absolutely brilliantly. Plus the apps I use, are free.
 
but Im using DVD2ONE to strip the videos from the disks seperately,
the bottleneck will be reading from the dvd's

makemkv to strip the videos, vlcplayer or handbrake to convert, but most phones/tablets should play mkv's (mkv is just a 'container' eg mpeg2 vid +pcm audio)
 
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lude1962 said:
but Im using DVD2ONE to strip the videos from the disks seperately,
the bottleneck will be reading from the dvd's

makemkv to strip the videos, vlcplayer or handbrake to convert, but most phones/tablets should play mkv's (mkv is just a 'container' eg mpeg2 vid +pcm audio)
Click to expand...

No... Im converting from SSD to RAM disk. In these, I am not using DVD at all, apart from the original copying to the HD and as I have 4 DVD Drives, I am simply copying them with fileManager and doing all 4 at the same time to 4 folders, including the VOBs etc, until I have copied all of the DVDs ( Thats done ) and then Im stripping the videos from the DVD Menus and then I will be converting the VOBs into single MP4 files and then putting them onto a bunch of Flash drives

If I was doing one or two then I would not have an issue, its just that I am doing a load at a time and thats what was slowing.

Dont know why, but Im not a fan of Handbrake... I see many love it but, I dont know why. Im just not.
 
Yeah, it absolutely is, plus its also on Linux too, but it just doesnt do anything special that some of the other apps I use do.

I will re-give it another run, by all means, but its just that.. Well... I was just not thrown back by it.
 
Handbrake Major feature is you give it Any amounts of CPU & threads & it will use them all to do Its Job Effectively.

I used to Run Handbrake on a old Mac Pro 2x 8 Cores with HT

Handbrake used all 32Cores/Threads!

you can even do multiple jobs side by side & split them into CPU Cores.

So you could do 4 jobs with X cores each if you wished.
 
Well, I did have Handbrake installed, I just deleted the Icon.

I gave it another shot and within a very short space of time, I remembered why I dont like it...

I loaded up a file, then I realised that I had to add it to the list, I did this and then it failed saying something about ... Oh hell what was it?

Hang on...

Ok, load up file
Now I have to go to prefs and organise the file extentions
Bugger it, while having a look thru the options, I downloaded an update... Start over...
Ok, bit better... Opened file and it showed it.
Added to queue and showed the queue and pressed start and it did it quick.
Well, shrunk a 186MB file to 122MB and a quick look, it looked identical and sounded it too, the Bitrate went from 160 to 120, rez was the same of course and it took 27 seconds so thats not bad at all..
I will try it on my server shortly to see how it fares on that.

Maybe I was a bit too hasty, perhaps because I dont like how it seems to hide the list or how it does the list, is a bit iffy to me, so... I will give it a fair run and see how I am with it.

Thanks .
 
IDIOT MODE

I did ask how to batch but then Rerunning it on my Server I saw ADD ALL, so idiot mode seems stuck on for me right now.

But anyway,a sort of back to the original post...

My Server isan Opteron 6380 2.5Ghz Dual CPU machine, giving me a nice 32 Cores to mess about with.

Im getting 50% use with handbrake?

I did notice that cores 15,16,30 and 31 are all still parked, but still, all of the other cores were all showing the roughly 50% use.

I need to look into that. I will unpark the other cores, but still even HandBrake is now only using 50%.

For what its worth, It was using 99% on the I7 and I have done nothing with the settings other than whatever they are stock.

And I selcted the same files to work on?

--

Interesting...

With the Opteron Server, I just grabbed a dump load of files of various types, all videos and some AVI some MP4 and all of various resolutions and kinds etc, and with all 32 cores unparked, the file file was at 48-54%, the second dropped to a steady 15% the next up to 24% and then back to 50% for the fourth...

Its clear that different codecs require different work and the difference is drastic.

I will have a play with the very same files on the 8 core systems in a bit.
 
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You've probably got a bottleneck i/o, data cache etc. One data cache is shared between 2 'cores', 2 'linked cores' at 50% probably = 100% data cache use*

*just a theory
 
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just a theory?
As one who has gaineda PHd in Biological Evolution, and who debates many a twit abotu evolution, I utterly hate that term.

But I see what you mean, and yes, in this instance, I would tend to accept that thought.

It is one of the things that I dont like AMD.

Correct me if I am wrong ( and I usually am ) but Hex Core AMDs have their own caches and yet 8 cores ones share the L3 cache, effectively tying up half the cores.
 
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